Most people who become Adi Da's devotees have been raised in a Western materialistic culture which does very little in the way of teaching real Spiritual sensitivity: familiarity and intimacy with the actual Spiritual Reality. So when life Gracefully (and often suddenly) enters them into the stream of real Spirituality around Adi Da, the sheer "magic" of Spiritual existence becomes impossible to deny any longer, because the signs of it are everywhere in one's now tangibly Spiritual life, in the Company of a genuine Divine Incarnation.

However, because of the complete novelty that genuine Spiritual life is for most new devotees, one is often like a child in a new world, not sure what is possible or impossible, with no personal experience of the laws of the Spiritual Reality. In such a situation, it is easy for neophytes to unconsciously entertain views about "the magic of Spirituality" that are in fact too extreme, like "everything will proceed as though by magic; I just need to get out of the way." And one can think this sort of thing in any of the contexts of Spiritual life around Adi Da: the practice will proceed entirely by magic; the Adidam Mission will grow and reach everybody entirely by magic; etc. Now there is some truth to this! But Adi Da, the Master of Discrimination, when He see devotees entertaining such an extreme view, tends to respond with the following clarification:

And He'll then go on to criticize either extreme view we might be indulging in. If we don't acknowledge the actual magic enough, He'll describe it in more detail, and call on us to resort to It more. If we tend to suggest everything will happen magically through His Grace, and end up shirking important responsibilities that we (not He) must accomplish, He will point that out, tell us we are putting too much on Him, and then clarify the part that we are responsible for in the "division of labor", to complement or enable His Magic:

And then He usually elaborates:

So when I first began serving the Adidam Mission in 1989, for the reasons I have just described, quite a few devotees were telling me not to worry, the Mission will grow entirely through the miracle of Adi Da's Grace. So it wasn't about needing to do anything with anybody. We just needed to show them a picture of Adi Da and Adi Da would do the work. Or just expose them to a special esoteric "code phrase" like "The Promised God-Man Is Here!" and that would activate an archetype in their collective unconscious. Etc.

I knew there was some truth to this. It certainly was not a conventional Mission. It was not at all about proselytizing. It was about a miracle occuring: the interested person receiving the actual, tangible Revelation of Adi Da as the Divine.

But I also knew that it was about conventional "leg work" as well. And a lot of it: sufficient to reach every part of the planet. Adi Da referred to this "leg work" as "barefoot missionary" work, drawing an analogy with the Christian missionaries of past centuries and currently (e.g., Jehovah's Witnesses), who used any and every resource they had available (including just plain old walking, hence the reference to "barefoot") to cover the globe. Thus, Adi Da insisted that we track Mission progress and provide Him with regular reports of the progress of the Adidam Mission, and insisted on our using all the conventional tools for outreach, from courses, to introductory events, to books, CDs, DVDs, and big screen movies. And He never said, "I will do all the missionary work. All you have to do is wait for people to come knocking on the door of a regional Adidam center saying, "I want to become Adi Da's devotee!"

So this chapter will summarize my explorations into where exactly the Adidam Mission sits, on the spectrum between pure "creature power" on the one end, and pure "miracle" on the other. The success of the Adidam Mission depends, in part, on all those serving the Mission knowing the answer to this question. If we have it wrong, we'll either be putting too much on Adi Da, and not doing essential work ourselves; or else we'll be shortchanging the Mission by relying too much on conventional means and not requiring ourselves to proceed on what miraculous basis we actually can. We will end, in the final section of this chapter ("The Adidam Mission and the Divine Emergence") and in the next chapter (“Something New Must Emerge: The Next Stage of Human Civilization”) with the understanding that the picture I am painting here is just a snapshot of a moment in time (at the very beginning of the history of the Adidam Mission). We'll take a peek into the future, and consider how much more magical the Mission may become as the Divine Emerges ever more fully in this conditional universe.

So when I first began serving the Adidam Mission in 1989, and a significant number of my fellow devotees were telling me not to worry, the Mission will grow entirely through the miracle of Adi Da's Grace, I felt an urgent need to find out where they truth lay, so that my missionary work would have the right foundation.

I conceived of a simple experiment, based on a view that many devotees had: that a photo of Adi Da would be a sufficient means for enabling the miracle of Divine Recognition. Because I would be using spontaneous, social circumstances, I knew it was impossible for me to do this with the rigor of a "controlled scientific experiment". So my goal for the experiment was modest: I simply wanted greater clarification, and more refined discrimination about what the division of labor was (between Adi Da and His devotees) in the Adidam Mission.

So over a period of a several weeks, I used the natural circumstances that arose in my daily routine as a university professor (at Rutgers University in New Jersey) to place a photo where another person could see it on their own, without me doing anything special to draw their attention to it — so whatever they did would be their own response, not something I was leading them toward. The photo was about 6" by 10" — not so big as to draw attention through its sheer size (rather than any Spiritual Transmission), and not too small that people couldn't clearly see Adi Da. In places where I'd be sitting at a table (such as at a meeting or at lunch), I'd set up the photo of Adi Da on the table (lying flat, and on top of other papers, at a slight angle, so it would not look like I had deliberately put it there to be seen) so that the colleague sitting next to me could not fail to see it on their own at some point while sitting there next to me. Just so, if I was walking into someone's office to chat with them as they sat at their desk, I'd place the stack of things I was carrying on their desk; the photo of Adi Da would be on top, lying flat, facing them.

Over the course of several weeks, I managed to do this experiment with about forty different people. My thought was this: if the photo in itself was capable of producing a response of recognition of the Divine (or even any non-ordinary but powerful heart-response) sufficient to be the driving force behind the Adidam Mission, I'd see the evidence of that response in a significant number of these forty people.

I surreptitiously observed the moment each person noticed the picture and took a good look at it. (And I only included someone in the results if there was a moment like this for them.) As it turned out, out of the forty people, only one person had a response worth noting. While most of the people that were in this group of forty were professors or students (not surprisingly), the one person with a response was one of the department's secretaries. I was in the middle of a casual chat with her, when she saw Adi Da's picture. I could see she was having a response. She interrupted our conversation, pointed to Adi Da's picture, and said, "He seems very unusual!", surprise in her eyes.

"What makes you say that?"

"I don't know, it's something about His hand. . . There's something I'm feeling, from looking at His hand, that makes me feel He is a holy man! I can't explain it any more than that."

Now came the real test. If whatever she was feeling of Adi Da's Revelatory Transmission based on the picture was sufficient to serve as the driving force of the Adidam Mission, then I should be able to relay the fundamental communication of Adidam, and that Transmission should overpower and dissolve any obstructions that arose.

"He is a great, great Spiritual Teacher!" I said with feeling.

Her eyes lit up.

"He is the Divine in human form!"

Her brows furrowed and she frowned at me. "Oh no, that can't be! Only Jesus was that."

"But why can't that happen more than once?"

"NO! Jesus is the only one!"

She was starting to get angry now, so I quickly switched the conversation to a different subject. But it was clear that whatever she was feeling of Adi Da's Transmission was not powerful enough to overcome her Christian belief system, and be willing to consider another possibility. Instead, her beliefs had overpowered the Transmission. (And she never brought up the picture again, or asked me any further questions about Adi Da, after that encounter.)

She reminded me of my mother. I had given my mother a copy of Adi Da's The Dawn Horse Testament. She too had a Spiritual sensitivity, and said that, even before opening the book, she had felt a powerful Spiritual Force emanating from it. But she said this not with joy or wonder, but with a profound fear: "I knew then that He was the devil, and I'm very worried for you!" In her Catholic belief system, the only human being who could generate a Spiritual Force of that magnitude — and still be good — was Jesus. According to this logic, and the demonstration of Spiritual Force emanating from the book, that could only mean that the book's source was the devil, or someone allied with the devil.

Fortunately for my mother (as I described in an earlier chapter), after she died, all the obstructions and misconceptions dissolved, and she recognized Adi Da as the Divine in a most profound and wonderful way.

I conducted this informal experiment in my university workplace in 1989, when I became Adi Da's devotee and started serving the Adidam Mission. Adi Da Himself would clarify the matter not too much later, when He gave talks regarding the Adidam Mission such as "You Have to Dissolve People’s Reasons for Not Responding" (5/13/90), "Address People’s Prejudices and Function Effectively in the World" (5/28/90), "Break Through the Barriers in People, but Do Not Resort to Hype" (1/31/91), "Deal with Anti-Guruism" (10/16/91), "You Have to Wake People Up" (5/21/92), etc. Here is one of those talks:

As I look back at this early experiment I did in 1989, with the benefit of over thirty years of additional experience and insights, it's pretty obvious why the experiment was likely to turn out the way it did. Here's why.

We become Adi Da's devotees based on a moment of recognition of Him as the Divine. But then the entire beginning of our practice of the Way of Adidam, however long that takes, is about developing the capability for moment-to-moment recognition of Adi Da as the Divine. But in the beginning, it is nothing like "moment-to-moment" for most devotees. (We'll talk much more about this in a later chapter.) They'll enter into their Communion Hall for their morning meditation, and rest their attention on the large Murti photograph of Adi Da at the front of the hall. It will then take however long (for some, sometimes much of the hour-and-a-half meditation session) before they are able to feel beyond themselves sufficiently to recognize Adi Da.

This circumstance (which is familiar to every devotee) shows that even devotees don't have a guarantee that looking at a picture of Adi Da will automatically mean instant reception of His Revelatory Transmission and instant recognition of Him as the Divine. So if that isn't the case for most beginning devotees, how could we possibly imagine that it would be the case for completely unprepared people?

So the Adidam Mission is not entirely magic! But there is a lot of magic involved. Most notably, the beginning and the end of the missionary process for any individual are both founded on magic.

Let's look at the end first, when the person becomes Adi Da's devotee. That transition has a miracle as its "entrance requirement": no one is to become a devotee until they receive the Revelation that Adi Da is the Divine Person.

We, as missionaries, serve the individual as much as we can, to open him or her up to the reception of Adi Da's Revelatory Transmission. But only Adi Da performs the actual miracle of Revealing Himself. Such a moment is pure magic.

But Adi Da has also clarified that the beginning of the missionary process also is magic, founded in "Prior Coincidence" with Him:

The story of the beginning of my relationship with Adi Da (told in earlier chapters of this book) is a good example of what Adi Da is describing here. From a conventional standpoint, I learned about Adi Da for the first time while visiting a bookstore in 1983, when I was 26. It would only be many years later that I would discover that I actually was in His physical Company for the first time much earlier: when I was a baby! Adi Da was 17, and He was taking a mathematics class taught by my mother at Columbia University — Prior Coincidence, indeed! And then when I was 14, I experienced the Transmission of His Divine State of Perfect Happiness in a very profound way on the same day that He Re-Awakened to Divine Enlightenment: September 10, 1970. He spontaneously assumed His function of Divine Avatar on that day, and began "meditating" large numbers of beings, including me. He would work with each being until He felt their state being profoundly transformed by His Work with them. These early, synchronistic events clearly were preparing me for the moment in 1983 when I consciously became aware of Him for the first time, and for the moment when I became His devotee in 1989.

Adi Da's "Prior Coincidence" with those who would later "discover" Him in a more conventional way (and often become His devotee) takes many different, often amazing forms, as illustrated by this story from Kiam:

Or this more elaborate story (which is an excerpt from an even fuller story) from Lyn 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, and there is a “recognition” of Adi Da, based on His Prior Coincidence with them.

So the missionary process begins with the Divine Person entering into Prior Coincidence with the person. The missionary process ends when the person recognizes Adi Da as the Divine Person — which is another way of saying the person becomes fully aware that the Divine Person is Priorly Coinciding with them. So the beginning and end of the missionary process are like bookends: the Divine Person Coincides with the person; and the person finally fully notices that Coincidence. This recognition or noticing is then what allows the person to be a devotee of the Divine, enter into relationship with the Divine, and cooperate with the "Divine Yoga" (the Divine Process) that liberates them:

A complete Adidam missionary process takes a person all the way from being an interested individual to becoming Adi Da's devotee. In some sense, the question raised in this chapter is: what does the division of labor between Adi Da's Divine Work and the “conventional leg work” of human missionaries look like in this missionary process? We already have seen how the missionary process begins and ends in magic. Now let's take a deeper dive into what can happen in between the beginning and the end, by studying a number of stories.

* * *

Let's start with the story from Kiam, a resident of Israel whose missionary process began in a miraculous manner: he received guidance from a mysterious being whose face appeared during certain contemplative exercises, providing guidance, but about whom he knew nothing more. The thing that allowed Kiam's missionary process to make further progress was his happening to read a November 30, 2008 article about Adi Da's passing in Ma'ariv, Israel's second largest newspaper. The article included pictures of Adi Da. As Kiam put it: “Discovering that the face belonged to a Real Living Man blew me The F*** Away to God-Knows-Where!” Practically speaking, the discovery that "the face belonged to a real living Man" was accompanied by learning the name of that Man, and being provided with links to websites that allowed Kiam to make further progress in his missionary process.

The article in Ma'ariv could be considered a “conventional element” in Kiam's missionary process. And yet even that article announcing Adi Da's passing only appeared in Ma'ariv because of an earlier article in Ma'ariv that I had written two years earlier: an introductory article about Adi Da as Divine Avatar. That article made for a very unusual submission to a secular newspaper like Ma'ariv! And its unlikely acceptance by Ma'ariv for publication on July 23, 2006, was very much riding on Adi Da's Blessing-Power, which was infusing the world in a particularly powerful way on that special date of 7/23.

"You have to give Me something to work with." I heard Adi Da say that so many times, in the context of devotee practice. He couldn't "grow" devotees in their practice of the Way of Adidam unless they themselves took some personal responsibility for serving that growth. But Adi Da's words apply just as well to the Adidam Mission: "You have to give me something to work with." There was hardly any presence of the Adidam Mission in Israel. Nonetheless, that one newspaper article on that one day gave Adi Da "something He could work with", and He did whatever was necessary to ensure that Kiam actually saw that article. This is a great illustration of something I learned from seeing Adi Da in operation for decades: if you give Him anything, however small, He will run with it, and give you tenfold in return.

So you can see from this example how interwoven the miraculous and the conventional aspects of the mission can be, and how essential to the complete missionary process both parts are. Adi Da's Divine Presence plays a particular, primary role, but it depends on our missionary work to provide a link to Adi Da's Name, books, websites, locations of regional Adidam mission centers and Empowered Sanctuaries, etc. And all of these also make people aware that Adi Da is also offering an unprecedented practice — the Way of Adidam — that enables God-Realization. Adi Da describes this in a beautiful way:

Note how He doesn't say, "eventually, the Presence will reveal Its Name." He says, instead: "eventually, you will be able to tell everyone My Name." Providing all the practical details (including His Name) is our responsibility, not His.

* * *

Lyn Hart's story describes a similar missionary process that seamlessly interleaves the miraculous and the conventional. First she heard a mysterious Voice. Then she had visions of someone she acknowledged as her Teacher. Eventually, she "happened" to make use of the services of a body worker who was a devotee of Adi Da, who loaned her one of Adi Da's books. She then recognized that the Voice and the Teacher that had appeared to her were in fact Adi Da. That transition allowed her missionary process to really take off. In the next four months, she read twenty of Adi Da's books, and she then became Adi Da's devotee.

* * *

I'll mention one more example of this kind of missionary process (illustrated by Kiam's and Lyn Hart's stories), where Adi Da's "Prior Coincidence" with His would-be devotee takes a visionary or subtle form at first; but eventually, aided by conventional means, the person discovers that the mysterious being is in fact Adi Da. This is from a story told by devotee DL.

These meetings occurred for some time. And then:

Recall Adi Da's words, "At first, My Divine Presence will be Nameless. But, eventually, you will be able to tell everyone My Name." What I found most intriguing about DL's story, was that it seemed to suggest there was a missionary process that had relatively clear phases, moving from Nameless Divine Presence to Named human Incarnation of that Divine. The first phase was a period where Adi Da was "Priorly Coinciding" with the would-be devotee. For some people, that phase might take a dramatic form, as in the stories from Kiam, Lyn Hart, and DL. For others, it might be much more subtle, with no "stand out" experiental aspect to it. But it seems as though the shift from the "Nameless Divine Presence" to Named human Incarnation of the Divine Presence, proceeds along a "time table" that is unique to each person. As Adi Da (in the form of the mysterious Presence in DL's story) put it: "There will come a time when, through all that's yet to follow, your need for Me will be great and I promise I will find you again and then you will know Me by Name." So it's as though the future devotee is "cooking" during the earlier period of Prior Coincidence. And then (along the lines of "when the student is ready, the teacher will appear") the devotee is ready for the next phase when that Divine "cooking" reaches a point of urgent need for something more, for the next step in the process: the discovery of Adi Da as the human incarnation of the Divine Presence that has been "cooking" them (which many have been experiencing, in one way or another).

Another way of describing these two phases in the complete Adidam missionary process is a first phase which is done by Adi Da working from the Source Position; followed by a second phase that continues Adi Da's Agency, but relies heavily upon our work as "Instrumentality" in providing all the conventional means that help complete the missionary process (and "serve the Extending of My Gifts to all-and-All" — "That work in the 'world' is not Mine to do."):

So in brief: Adi Da does the Work at the Source and we are responsible for doing the Work at the "periphery" (in the world). The complete missionary process requires both types of Work.

In the division of labor in the Adidam Mission, Adi Da is the Source of all the miracles and magic, while devotees are the ones who carry out all the conventional "leg" work: holding events, publishing books, providing education, etc. But the term used in that last quote from Adi Da — Instrumentality — alludes not only to the fact that we must do the “leg” work (or “barefoot missionary” work) for Him in the world, but also to the fact that devotees can also function as instruments or conduits for Adi Da's Divine Magic, through being in Divine Communion with Him — much as we described how the Devotional Prayer of Changes works in an earlier Part of this book.

I'll use the phrase, "Adidam Mission as Puja", as a reference to all the ways devotees can draw upon and magnify Adi Da's Divine Presence and Magic to serve the Adidam Mission. ("Puja" is the Hindu word for "sacred ritual".)

Empowerment by Adi Da and Invocation of Adi Da. One of the distinct characteristics of a Spiritual Transmission Master like Adi Da is that, if you came into His physical Company, there's a very good chance that you would feel His Spiritual Transmission in some tangible way.[1] People describe how they feel Adi Da's Transmission in various ways: they may feel extraordinarily happy; they may feel the ordinary sense of separation from everything and everyone dissolve, and feel connected to everyone and everything instead; their hearts may suddenly open and they may feel love for everyone around them; they may recognize Adi Da as the Divine Person; they may see visions; etc.

Because Adi Da's Divine Presence pervades the entire universe, His Transmission can be invoked and found by devotees wherever they may be located. And that is the basis for each devotee's practice of the Way of Adidam. Each devotee invokes Adi Da in place — wherever they are — and, on that basis, the devotee enters into Divine Communion with Him.

Adi Da's Transmission is not merely subjective — it's not only something that that each devotee is aware of and feels "on their own”. Invocation of Adi Da literally opens a portal into another dimension — the Divine Domain — and the Transmission that pours through that portal can be felt by others nearby.

Adi Da's Transmission is most readily available in the things that Adi Da has Invested Himself in and Empowered as His "Agency": the Empowered Sanctuaries (and all the temples and holy places Adi Da has Empowered on the grounds of those Sanctuaries); His books; His Image-Art; His Talks; etc.

For example, if you if you walk onto the grounds of the Mountain Of Attention Sanctuary in Northern California, you may feel Adi Da's Transmission, even if you are not a devotee of Adi Da, because of Adi Da's Empowerment of the entire Sanctuary, and because of devotees' devotional use and care of the Sanctuary, which helps to maintain the Empowerment of the Sanctuary, and constantly refresh its ability to transmit Adi Da's Presence and Blessing to all visitors.

So the Sanctuaries are examples of places of Adi Da's Transmission created by His intentional Empowerment, and maintained by devotees' ongoing Invocation of Him on the Sanctuary. Other places and things were not specifically Empowered by Adi Da, but nonetheless are sources of Adi Da's Transmission because of devotees' Invocation of Adi Da.

A good example is the Communion Hall, a special room in the house of devotees that is set aside for the sacred purpose of invoking Adi Da. When that invocation is done on a regular basis, over time, the Hall begins to be empowered and it objectively feels different: if you walk in the room, you can feel Adi Da's Presence in various ways — for example, a thickening of the air in the hall is one common experience. A tangible feeling of happiness or peace is another. And so are all the other experiences we mentioned earlier, associated with Adi Da's Transmission. As with the Empowered Sanctuaries, even non-devotees (with some spiritual sensitivity) can feel this objective difference when they walk into a Communion Hall.

When Adi Da uses the term "Instrumentality", He usually is referring to devotees whose practice of Communion with Him is sufficiently strong and steady that their own human body-mind has been turned into a temple of the Divine, much like a Communion Hall. When such devotees invoke Adi Da, others around them may feel Adi Da's Presence and Blessing Power — which obviously can be a great service to the Adidam Mission. Adi Da associates devotees functioning as Instrumentality with an advanced level of practice in the Way of Adidam:

However, even beginning devotees can sometimes be sufficiently in Communion with Adi Da to have moments where they spontaneously serve as Instrumentality. (This is particularly true if they had recently spent significant time in His physical Company.) I'll now tell a couple of stories about devotees functioning in this way.

* * *

In early 1994, I was a devotee and I was still a university professor. (I would be leaving academia later that year, to serve Adi Da's Work full time.) I worked with many graduate students who were wanting to get an advanced degree in Artificial Intelligence. One of them — I'll call him Nathan — had an interesting background. His father was the head of one of IBM‘s premier research centers. So Nathan grew up steeped in that environment and culture as a kid: valuing science and scholarship, fascinated by advances in technology, and altogether imbued with a rather materialistic view of reality. He had gotten his BS from Princeton University, and was now completing His Masters degree at my university. Even so, like all human beings, Nathan had another side to him, which came out during a visit to my office, to talk about research possibilities. In that conversation, I happened to mention that spiritual practice was at the core of my life these days. That greatly intrigued Nathan, and he confessed that he had always wondered if there was something more to reality than just the material universe. So I invited him to come to a nearby Adidam study group that would be meeting in a few days, and he eagerly accepted, expressing great curiosity.

The Adidam study group had a particular devotee responsible for holding its meetings. So I spoke with him about Nathan, and he let me serve as the "guest host" for the next meeting.

The group was small and intimate, with just five people attending, including Nathan. I began the meeting, talking briefly about Adi Da as a Spiritual Transmission Master, as a way of encouraging openness and receptivity for what would come next: the Invocation of Adi Da. I could see from Nathan's face that he was open and ready to experience something new!

I had spent significant time with Adi Da at Adi Da Samrajashram very recently, and I was still very much steeped in His Divine Presence. So it was not too surprising that my Invocation of Him that day was particularly powerful — I felt His Presence descend into the room with what felt like immense Force. The room was silent for the next few minutes. I gave myself over to Adi Da's blissful Presence and let everyone else feel whatever they were experiencing.

Then I looked over at Nathan. His mouth was open. His face had a stunned look on it. It was crystal clear to me that he just experienced something completely unexpected and profound.

So I asked him to share with us his experience of the Invocation. At first he struggled to find words, but ended up very articulately communicating what had happened to him.

Nathan became a regular member of the Adidam study group.

Recall Adi Da's words from a quote I provided earlier in this section:

So the missionary feeling he or she is filled with Adi Da’s Spirit-Blessing is not good enough. But if their invocation of Adi Da helps the non-devotee be filled with His Spirit-Blessing, that’s quite another manner!

* * *

I'll now tell another story of Adi Da enabling a devotee's body-mind to be used as Instrumentality for His Divine Purposes, in serving His Mission.

In the early 2000's, among the many ways I served the Adidam Mission was in monitoring of the "negative websites" — websites that actively posted negative commentary on Adi Da and Adidam. Most of what was posted I found boring and rather tedious to read — generally repeating the same negative gossip and misunderstandings over and over again, year after year. But every now and then, something someone posted would catch my attention. On one particular day while I was monitoring a particular discussion group, someone mentioned that, later that day, Anne Henderson — a good friend of mine and a strong devotee of Adi Da — would be giving a public talk on Adidam in a well-known bookstore (the Bodhi Tree Bookstore) in Los Angeles. The poster (who lived in Los Angeles) said he was going to have some fun: he was going to attend her talk, and disrupt it and embarass Anne with negative questions.

I instantly got on the phone to Anne, and let her know what was coming her way. I suggested that she invoke Adi Da and His Blessing Power as intensively as possible, and she agreed.

I'll let Anne continue the story (the full version of which was published here):

It's a truly extraordinary story of Adi Da enabling a devotee's body-mind to serve as His Instrumentality in a remarkable way. The laser-like beam of love-energy was His response to the embarassing question — a Divine Response doing what no merely human response could do: it dissolved the questioner, and converted him on the spot, to the degree where the would-be detractor signed up for an Adidam course!

One thing that should be clear from the stories we've looked at so far is that the Divine Agency is always active, and is always working with anything and everything we give It to help move the missionary process forward with each individual. Given that, if a missionary process does not complete itself — it doesn't result in the person becoming a devotee — there is something missing on our part, and we need to identify what it is and make it available to the individual. So let's explore this by looking at several stories where the missionary process began with a very promising start, but which has not yet resulted in the person becoming a devotee.

* * *

In 1995, Adi Da appointed Ed Rahsman and myself to be the co-heads of Adi Da's Lay Renunciate Order, a group of devotees committed to intensive practice and intensive service to Adi Da's Work of liberating all beings. It was a great responsibility, that was accompanied by some very special moments. For instance, on the day of this story, as Adi Da walked out from His Residence, The Manner Of Flowers, at the Mountain Of Attention Sanctuary, on His way to grant Darshan to His devotees, He stood still for a moment as I took a specially prepared lei made of flowers, and placed it around His neck. An extraordinary, unforgettable moment for a devotee! Then as Adi Da walked to Paduka Mandir, the Temple where the Darshan occasion would take place, I met up with a special visitor I would be hosting for the occasion. I'll call him "John". He was a very well-known Hollywood movie actor, on the "Hollywood A-List" throughout the 1980's and 1990's, and immediately recognizable by almost anybody who watched movies. John had somehow heard about Adi Da and very much wanted to receive His Darshan. So I escorted John to the Darshan occasion, where we sat and received Adi Da's Darshan for the next thirty minutes or so. The picture below is from a very similar occasion in front of Paduka Mandir in 1995.

Adi Da in front of Paduka Mandir in 1995 Adi Da in front of Paduka Mandir in 1995 (click to enlarge)

After the Darshan occasion, I walked slowly away from the Darshan site with John. I could see that, like me, he was deeply affected by Adi Da's Blessing-Transmission, so I didn't say a word for a while. Then as we started climbing the final hill before leaving the Sanctuary, I turned to him and said, "So what was it like for you?" His eyes were wide, and filled with both wonder and joy. He struggled to return to his verbal mind to speak. Finally, he said simply, "What can I say? I just saw God!" He spoke those words slowly and with force, clearly amazed by what he was saying. I smiled and nodded, and we remained silent the rest of the way, steeped in the shared Revelation of the Divine.

After I watched John get in his car and drive away, I felt so happy — first, for him, that he had received that extraordinary Revelation of the Divine that so few people have received to date; and then with the thought of how much good he could do for the Adidam Mission if he became Adi Da's devotee.

Another devotee kept in touch with John over the following weeks and months, and, through him, I had a pretty good picture of how John was doing. His first reaction was very natural: after receiving such an extraordinary Revelation of the Divine, he wanted to share what he had received with those closest to him. But no one among his family and friends had any spiritual experience whatsoever. Just the suggestion that a human being could be an incarnation of the Divine struck them as ludicrous. And so that was what came back to John from all his intimates: this had to be nonsense; he must be deluded or brainwashed; Adidam must be a cult and Adi Da a cult master; etc. That was the only interpretation that could be seen through the lens of contemporary materialistic culture, so that's what came back at John from everyone he spoke to. In the first couple of weeks, he fought against this interpretation, the memory of Adi Da's Divine Revelation still fresh. But as time went on, he began to doubt his own memory and understanding. And finally he stopped connecting with his devotee contact altogether.

* * *

As it turned out, two of the other stories I've told had similarly incomplete missionary processes.

You may recall that Kiam (from Israel) was receiving mystical visions of a spiritual guide who he later would discover was a real human being: Adi Da. He confessed his astonishment at that discovery, and his gratitude for Adi Da appearing in his life. And yet. . . as of this writing, Kiam has not yet become a devotee of Adi Da. No doubt a key part of that was the absence of a community of devotees in Israel who could nurture the development of his relationship with Adi Da, to the point of becoming a devotee.

Just so, I told you how my graduate student, Nathan, received an astonishing Revelation — the Revelation of Adi Da's Presence and Blessing Force — when I invoked Adi Da at the local Adidam study group. Nathan had a very strong response to this, and signed up as a regular member of the study group. I was not able to help him further (through further Invocations of Adi Da, etc.) because I left academia and moved to the Mountain Of Attention Sanctuary to serve Adi Da's work fulltime in a different capacity. And as it would turn out, whatever process of engagement was offered by the Adidam study group was not enough to bring Nathan to the point of becoming Adi Da's devotee. He left after a few months' participation.

You might think that something as profound as the Revelation of the Divine would be sufficient to change the course of a human life! And Adi Da has indicated that this is certainly possible:

But Adi Da's quote is not broadly applicable to our current materialistic culture, but rather describes the cultural context for what He referred to as "the ancient, Walk-About Way". This phrase is not meant to allude to some specific period of history in the distant past. Rather, it is a reference to those "pockets of civilization" that have always existed — from ancient times to today — whose members are spiritually sensitive, whose culture includes spiritual purposes at its core, and which is not only familiar with Spiritual Masters and the great Spiritual Realizations that are possible with their help, but which reveres them.

One such "pocket of civilization" in the contemporary world is in India, which has had a spiritually attuned culture stretching back thousands of years, that not only has great respect for Spiritual Masters, but whose members have the spiritual sensitivity to recognize when they are in the company of such a great Spiritual Master. So when Adi Da visited India in 1973, many Indians instantly recognized Him as a Spiritual Master. Devotee Gerald Sheinfeld describes this (referring to Adi Da as "Bubba", His name at the time:

Here is a beautiful story of the response of one particular Indian man:

So with such individuals, there is not just the reception of a momentary Spiritual Revelation from the Spiritual Master. There is a further, innate understanding that, having received such a Revelation, you want to spend as much time in the Company of the Spiritual Master as possible from then on, so that the momentary Revelation, through time, practice, and the continuing Grace of the Spiritual Master, may become one's permanent Realization.

In contrast with such "pockets of civilization" that are familiar with and appreciative of "the ancient, Walk-About Way" of recognizing and responding to the Spiritual Master, Adi Da has described the time we are in as the "Kali Yuga", which, in Hindu tradition, is understood to be the most materialistic, most spiritually degraded time period in the projected sequence of eras (or "yugas") that make up human history, throwing God, Spiritual Masters, and any greater-than-material dimension of Reality into doubt. That assessment is the basis for this quote from Adi Da:

Adi Da very succinctly summarizes what we need to do in this Kali Yuga, over and against what is necessary in culture familiar with and appreciative of the "ancient, Walk-About Way" of turning to the Spiritual Maaster:

So there are our marching orders for the Kali Yuga, in summary form: "And those who do not immediately turn to Me on Sight should be served in such a manner that they can come to that point in due course." A very useful way to do what Adi Da is calling for is to study all these incomplete missionary processes, appreciate that what was missing was something we have to provide, identify what we could have brought that would have made the difference, and then make sure those elements are no longer missing from the Mission.

So let's do exactly that, using these three examples. (Of course there are many more such examples we can draw from of people who have been attracted to Adi Da but have not yet become His devotee.)

John, the movie star; Kiam, the Israeli resident; and Nathan, the AI graduate student — all three were on fire with the Divine Revelation for a brief while! A very promising start to their missionary process. But the infrastructure for keeping the fire alive in their case, and fanning the flame until it reached the point of Divine Recognition of Adi Da and being heart-moved to become His devotee, was not yet in place, and that was why these missionary processes did not move to completion. What was in place instead was the materialistic culture of the Kali Yuga, which works against the missionary process and the Divine Blessing at every turn.

• John the movie star was overwhelmed by the Revelation of the Divine in Adi Da's Company; but his family and friends, raised in a materialistic society with no knowledge of real Spiritual Masters and only a fear of cults and cult masters, fanned the doubt in John to such a degree that John finally let go of the great Gift he had received. With 20-20 hindsight, it should be clear this progression of events was completely predictable ahead of time. The mistake was to have him receive Adi Da's Darshan, and then send him right back out into the world, with no further preparation. Part of an immediate follow-on education process should have included educating John about how virtually no one in his usual support group is going to have the spiritual background or experience to understand what had just been Revealed to him when He received Adi Da's Darshan; how virtually everyone was going to tell him — completely goodheartedly, acting only out of love for him, but also acting out of spiritual ignorance — that he was brainwashed, deluded, and a member of a cult, because they had no conception whatsoever of the reality of Spiritual Transmission Masters and the Spiritual Revelations such beings grant to those come into their company. And he needed to have not just a single contact person on the phone, but a support group of devotees that could provide the counterweight of devotee friends that would more than compensate for the feedback he was getting from all his other intimates.
• Kiam, the Israeli resident who discovered that the mystical guide appearing in his vision was a real man and, more than that, a great Spiritual Master, was utterly astonished and greatly appreciative of Adi Da's Presence and Teaching. Even so, alone in Israel, without any Adidam community to help nurture and deepen his relationship with Adi Da as Spiritual Master, he has never been moved to become Adi Da's devotee. The key missing element suggested here is the absence of a sufficient Adidam presence in Israel that would provide the same kind of education and support as we described with John. There are still many such areas of the world without an actual physical Adidam presence. But in the interim, we should make sure that at least a virtual support group is available for anyone, no matter where they live.
• Nathan, the AI graduate student, received the Revelation of Adi Da's Presence and Power, during my Invocation of Adi Da at the Adidam Study Group. It amazed him and moved him to join the Adidam study group. But at some point he stopped attending, not having sufficient support available in the study group to help fan the flames that would deepen his heart-connection to Adi Da. As with John and Liam, Nathan could very have benefitted from a much more rigorous re-education program and a devotee support group. But what stands out when I think about Nathan's story is the difference that devotees serving as Instrumentality could make in the Mission. The thing that made all the difference for Nathan was not a book, a DVD, a movie, or an introductory event. The thing that made all the difference was an Invocation of Adi Da that was sufficiently strong to make Adi Da's Presence objectively tangible to non-devotees. The reason Adi Da associates "Instrumentality" with level 2 (or beyond) of practice of the Way of Adidam is because it is as that point that a devotee could reliably function as Instrumentality, as needed. Prior to level 2 (as in my case with Nathan), there could be moments when a devotee could invoke Adi Da to that degree, but not necessarily in a way that could be repeated at mission events. Having devotees capable of serving as Instrumentality would transform the Adidam Mission — greatly enhancing the "Adidam Mission as Puja" component.

(In the three stories above, I've alluded to the need for a profound re-education process. In the last chapter, I explored how to fulfill that need through the development of an Adidam Preparatory School.)

The focus of this chapter has been to better understand how much of the work of the Adidam Mission proceeds on a miraculous basis (originating in Adi Da's Divine Power), and how much of it uses more familiar, conventional means (marketing, media, events, face-to-face conversations, etc.). I'll now summarize what we've discovered so far.

There is a huge amount of magic involved in each person's missionary process! It starts with Adi Da "Priorly Coinciding" with each of us. That "prior coincidence" prepares the ground for the mission. Sometimes it manifests in extraordinary ways (people having visions or dreams of Adi Da, etc.) Sometimes it simply means that people will have a greater chance of being drawn to Adi Da and the Way of Adidam, if and when their ordinary lives cross paths with Adidam. But what we have also found is that, in this spiritually degraded, highly materialistic Kali Yuga, much of people's spiritual sensitivity has been greatly dulled, even despite Adi Da's Prior Coincidence with them (as illustrated by my experiment with forty of my academic colleagues). Moreover, even when Adi Da as the Divine is dramatically and unmistakably Revealed, and their heart confesses the truth of that — as was the case for John, the movie star, Kiam, the resident of Israel, and Nathan, the AI graduate student — the cultural forces of the Kali Yuga are so powerful that they can slow, stall, or even undo much of that Divine Work. As Adi Da put it so succinctly: "God is great. But bullshit is greater." So the part of the Adidam Mission carried out by us human beings must be very powerful indeed to be an effective counterweight to the forces of the Kali Yuga. Our conventional tools must be very powerful (and I talked about what a very powerful re-education process — an Adidam Preparatory School — would look like in the last chapter); and our "Adidam Mission as puja" must become ever more effective.

What I have portrayed in this chapter is a snapshot of a single moment in time in a much larger process that Adi Da refers to as the "Divine Emergence". I'd like to now take a peek into the future with you by exploring how this process of Divine Emergence may proceed over time. The right esoteric way to view the Adidam Mission is as a component of the Divine Emergence, rather than as a purely conventional process. And the bottom line conclusion we will draw is that the Adidam Mission will become increasingly more magical — more empowered, moved, and transformed by Divine Grace — the more the Divine Emerges in this material realm.

Part III, Chapter 6