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A Greater-Than-Material Universe
Greater-Than-Material Experiences as Preparation for the Divine It's virtually impossible for a materialist to become a devotee of Adi Da. On the one hand, this is so simply because of the nature of Adidam's "entrance requirements". While becoming a member of other religions or spiritual traditions often occurs on the basis of one's beliefs or one's heart impulse, more is required to become a devotee of Adi Da and a practitioner of the Way of Adidam: one must receive a Revelation: the recognition that Adi Da is the Divine.
And so of course, if one does receive such a Divine Revelation (and becomes a devotee on that correct basis), one obviously can no longer be called a "materialist". But it is also the case that such a Revelation generally does not come out of "left field" to someone who is a staunch materialist — like Saul (Paul) being struck down blind by God on the road to Damascus, and instantly being converted from someone persecuting Jesus's devotees into a devotee of Jesus himself. Generally, in order to be open to receiving such a profound Divine Revelation, the body-mind needs to be prepared gradually through a series of non-ordinary life experiences and the considerations and insights that come from them. That is why almost every story you read of how devotees found Adi Da includes events in their early life (before becoming Adi Da's devotee) that demonstrated to them that there was more to reality than just the material universe. Even though these events didn't necessarily include Adi Da Himself in any overt way, they opened the mind and softened the heart — and that served as a bridge to Adi Da, preparing the being for the great meeting with the very Divine in human form. And for this reason, such events are an important part of one's story of becoming Adi Da's devotee. I'll now describe a few of those preparatory events in my life — it is a veritable "grab bag" of non-ordinary experiences that includes telekinesis, astral projection, cessation of breathing, a UFO encounter, contact with ghosts and other non-material beings, and an expanded consciousness that saved my life. So far, I've been telling my story in chronological order, up to 1983, when I was a graduate student at Stanford University. In this section, I'll jump around a bit. . . including back to when I was a kid, forward to when I was a professor of Artificial Intelligence, and forward once more to 2021. Then I'll return to the normal chronological order in the next section. A Taste of Telekinesis
In 1974, when I was a freshman at Princeton University, my roommate and I were playing backgammon (a game involving dice rolling) one night, in our rooms in Laughlin Hall. We both had had a couple of beers, and we were looser than usual. I suddenly got the notion that I could roll doubles with the dice! I was so certain of it that I bet my roommate a dollar. He accepted the bet. And then I rolled doubles! My roommate handed over the dollar, but smiled and said, "Pure luck". I said, "Yes — and I'm still feeling lucky! Let's double the amount. I bet I can roll doubles again, or I'll give you the $2 and I'll give you back your dollar!" Of course it didn't take a sharp Ivy League student to realize this was a good deal. "You're on!" he said. And I rolled doubles again! I repeated this bet five times more: "Double the amount, and if I lose, I'll give you the bet and you get back all the money I've won from you!", and continued to roll doubles five times more, until there was a pile of money (and IOU's) in front of me and the bet had risen to $128. I had rolled doubles seven times in a row. From a conventional viewpoint, the odds of doing that are about 1 in 280,000! Now sweat was literally pouring down my roommate's forehead, as he contemplated the $128 bet. It seemed certain that at some point, my luck would break. So a part of me could not believe it when he said, "No — NO MORE!!!" and stormed out of the room, leaving me with my winnings. Of course, another part of me knew exactly why he quit: He knew something outside our conventional understanding of the universe was taking place, and it was profoundly disorienting to him. I knew it too — but I was trusting that mysterious "something" and "rolling with it" (so to speak). Sorry to say (re: my bank account, etc.), that particular mood has not visited me again. I should also add: the dice were not loaded. We used them many times after that occasion, and they never behaved in that singular manner again. Astral Projection From 1984 to 1994, I was a professor of Artificial Intelligence by day, at Rutgers University in New Jersey. And then I'd often use the night to carry out various explorations in consciousness and spirituality. One such "project" began when I realized that, all my life, I had been falling asleep every night. . . but I had no idea what actually happened when I fell asleep. So I began an experiment where I would fall asleep every night, but would try to remain conscious as I was falling asleep. Over the course of the next month or two, I made progress. I still couldn't manage to stay awake all the way to the moment my body fell asleep. . . But I came very close, and now could describe a sequence of events that re-occurred every night. The body would relax completely (beyond the "tossing and turning" phase), even to the point where it would require conscious effort to break it out of a kind of "sleep paralysis" it had entered. Then the head would start to fill up with energy, and my attention would be drawn to and concentrated in the "third eye" area above the physical eyes. At that point, I would typically "lose consciousness", and not have any awareness of what followed. But on one particular night, I was still conscious as I felt something new occur: I felt myself rising up out of my physical body! I felt two things simultaneously. On the one hand, there was something very natural and familiar about this, which inclined me to just go with it. On the other hand, the conscious mind that was watching this for the first time experienced sheer terror: what if I left my physical body and couldn't get back? What if my physical body died while I was away? I woke up in a cold sweat. But I was exhausted from my "ordeal", and fell back into sleep almost immediately. And almost immediately, I was conscious again. I was in a forest. It was night time, apparently the very same time as it was when I fell asleep. The moon was bright above me. There was a feeling of familiarity to the woods. I loved walking in the woods. I didn't recognize these specific woods from any walks in my "waking life", but it looked like a typical New Jersey forest. I was floating above a stream. Everything was more real than any dream I had ever had in my life. I could hear the water trickling in the stream. I felt myself brushing up against the leaves of the trees. And apparently I could direct myself to float down the stream just by sheer intention. That was the last thing I remembered before I awoke again in the morning. With much research, I realized that I had just had an experience of "astral projection". When I started my experiments, I had no idea that "falling asleep consciously" was one of the standard techniques used to trigger astral projection, so I was quite startled when my "soul" began to leave my body! And my conscious mind was too fearful to let go. But as soon as the conscious mind (and its fear) went to sleep, I immediately left the physical body, after all. And then the conscious mind returned, but without the fear (since the feared thing had already happened: I was already out of my body). I discovered through further research that we all regularly leave the body in this way at night, but we seldom remember our experiences after we return to the physical body.[2] The sense of everything being hyper-real in my "dream" was because it was real. It was what is called an "astral dream", as opposed to the more conventional dreams created by the physical brain (to process the unresolved business of the day — or the unresolved traumas of a lifetime). In such dreams, the astral body actually leaves the physical body, and travels about, not only in the physical realm, but in the astral realms. Very likely then, the forest was a real forest, perhaps somewhere near where I lived. I spent some time driving around trying to find it, without success. Nonetheless, I felt my experiment was a success, and I ended it at that point, feeling I had learned more than I had ever hoped to discover. Cessation of Breath and Breathing Through the Skin Much of my experimentation that led to my astral projection experience involved deep relaxation of the body, while still conscious. One night, while deeply relaxing, I watched as my breathing kept slowing. . . and then it reached a point where all breathing (through nose or throat) stopped. I was lying motionless, and my lungs had ceased to inhale or exhale. I was completely relaxed and free of any concern about this — I knew my body would start breathing again if it needed. But I was completely surprised by what happened next: I felt my entire body begin to breathe through the skin. I don't recall how many minutes this went on for. . . I fell asleep at some point. I was completely delighted by this discovery. At first, I thought it might be a vestigial ability for human beings, given that we are the biological descendants of amphibians. And apparently conventional science does acknowledge that at least 1 to 2 percent of normal human breathing occurs via the skin. (It is called "cutaneous breathing".) But there is no indication that the human body can breathe entirely through the skin. However, that night, during that period, it was 100% of my breathing, and it was easeful breathing; it felt very natural, and feeling the entire surface of my body slowly breathing in and out was a very sensual, pleasurable experience. As I researched this more deeply, I concluded that what I had experienced was not primarily the breathing of air through the skin, but the breathing of energy through every pore of the body, using the subtle breath. (And somehow the cessation of air breathing triggered the "switchover" to energy breathing.) While there are few references to such a phenomenon or practice, I did find this one from a master in the school of Chan (Zen) Buddhism, which matches my experience:
Cessation of the breath (aka breath retention) is an important and natural aspect of every breath cycle in our Adidam practice of healthy breathing, as Adi Da instructs:
In the Hindu yoga tradition of pranayama, complete kumbak (cessation of breathing) is considered the ultimate aim of the practice. Paramahansa Yogananda writes (in The Essence of Kriya Yoga), "The real meaning of Pranayama, according to Patanjali, the founder of Yoga philosophy, is the gradual cessation of breathing, the discontinuance of inhalation and exhalation." An Encounter With a UFO During the time I was a professor of Artificial Intelligence at Rutgers University, I lived, for a while, way out in the New Jersey countryside. It was 1984. One night, after grocery shopping, I pulled the car into the long dirt driveway of my house, which was about a mile away from any other house. I turned off the engine and got out of the car. It was dark (no street lights anywhere) but the sky was bright with stars. Suddenly, I felt a presence. I looked up. Above me, about 500 feet up, was a huge, pure white, triangular object, hanging motionless above me. It was maybe 50 feet wide, with no markings that I could see — just a pure white triangle, an incredible vision of pure light against the night sky. It was perfectly horizontal, so I was looking up at its underside.
I just stared at it for a minute. It didn’t move. Neither did I. But it had obviously positioned itself to be right above me, since there was nothing else and no one else for a mile. With that immense ship positioned right above me, I didn't need to see a being with eyes to know that someone was up there looking down at me! So we just stood still, experiencing each other, for about a minute. Curiously, I felt no fear whatsoever. Also: I was not a UFO enthusiast, and I brought no preconceptions with me into this encounter, like: "Are you going to abduct me?", "Please take me away from this place!", etc. Instead, there was just a silent, deeply relaxed communion between us. Suddenly, in an instant, the white triangle split into three smaller white triangles, and each of the smaller triangles shot off in the direction in which it had “split”, across the sky and out of sight.
It/they were gone, in just a split second. And the entire time, the night was perfectly still — there had been not the slightest sound (from them or me).[1] The first thing that struck me about this splitting was my sense that there were not three craft there the whole time — very neatly joined together, with three separate pilots, ready to go their separate ways in an instant. No — my strong sense was that what it was was just how it had appeared to be: a single large triangle. And then, in an instant, the single triangle "morphed" — behaving more like fluid than solid — and literally reshaped itself into three smaller triangles right then and there, that hadn't existed before. I was also struck by the trajectories of these three craft: they did not look like three craft now being "piloted" by three separate beings, each with their own destination. Instead, what I saw was a stunningly beautiful, highly geometric display, where the three smaller triangles moved across the sky at 120 degree angles from each other, perfectly dividing the 360 degree sky into three sectors:
It was a stunning display of beauty that reminded me of the way gigantic whales sometimes breach: bursting through the ocean's surface high into the air, just for the sheer joy of it. . . just because they can. And, because I was the only one watching the "show", I believe this display of beauty was meant for me too to delight in — and I did! I still remember that very personal encounter very vividly now, decades later. And I still have no idea what exactly it was about. Only... it was very clearly about something. Maybe one of these days I'll somehow find out what.
An Expanded Consciousness Before meeting Adi Da, three moments in my life stood out where I seemed to enter a dramatically altered state of consciousness. In those moments, time appeared to slow down, and my awareness expanded to an extraordinary degree, enabling me to function at levels I would ordinarily consider "superhuman". I was thirteen when the first moment occurred (in 1970). I was playing a game of tag with my brothers and sisters. I was at the end of our driveway, and they had just run inside the garage, which was about thirty feet away from me. They had turned on the automatic garage door opener, and the door was closing. When it finished closing, I would no longer be able to reach them. Suddenly an idea popped into my mind, fully formed. I had just noticed a stick at my feet that was about two and a half feet long. If I could toss that stick thirty feet along the surface of the driveway at exactly the right moment and directed exactly right, it would slide under the closing door at the precise moment the door was almost closed, jamming open the door so I could lift the door and get in. Toss it too slow, and it would bounce off the already closed door. Toss it too fast, and it would slide into the garage with the door closing behind it. Suddenly, time slowed down. My mind and body became completely integrated, to the degree where my body knew exactly how to move to achieve the goal. I didn't pre-think it. The moment I knew how to do it was the same moment that I did it. It felt like a slow-motion dance, in which something greater than my usual self (but which was also me) was moving me, with perfect awareness of everything. I forcefully propelled the stick, sending it sliding rapidly up the surface of the thirty-foot driveway, whirling all the way. Just as the door was closing, the stick flew under — and stopped the door. I ran up, and pulled up the door. My siblings were all just staring at me, trying to make sense of what had just happened. * * * Like the earlier moment, my second moment of non-ordinary consciousness was also a moment of unusual physical prowess. I was (still) thirteen. I was in gym class, and we were doing gymnastics, practicing vaulting over the "pommel horse" (so-called because this artificial "horse" was developed in ancient Greece to help soldiers practice mounting and dismounting). The "pommels" are the two handles. In the vault we practiced, you run up to the horse, grab both handles, and throw your legs over the horse, letting the forward momentum of your body help propel you over. It takes quite a bit of practice to get to the point where you can do all this and "stick your dismount" — landing in place on the other side of the horse, body vertical (not swaying), feet together, without needing to take one or more steps to steady yourself.
We all stood in line, awaiting our turn. Our coach stood right next to the horse, "spotting" us, ready to assist us (including catching us, if necessary) if anything went wrong. It was finally my turn. I ran up to the horse, and started my vault. . . and felt my glasses fly up off my face! Normally, anyone wearing glasses removes the glasses before class, or wears straps that tie their glasses around their head. But in this instance, I had forgotten. Suddenly, I was in that altered state of consciousness again. Time slowed down and everything seemed to be moving in slow motion. I had perfect awareness of everything, without the use of my senses. Even as I swung my legs over the horse, my face turned forward, I knew exactly where my glasses were: above my head, moving forward like me, but also upward (because of the angle they had flown off my face), so they were a little behind me. Let me be clear: I wasn't imagining or "calculating" where my glasses where. I was directly aware of where they were, without the use of my normal senses. In that state of expanded consciousness, what I needed to do next was perfectly obvious. I landed, sticking my dismount. And then, with a sense of great ease and all the time in the world, I put my two hands out in front of me in the form of a bowl. A half a second later, my glasses fell into my hands, in perfect position for me to gracefully place them on my face. I turned to look at my coach with a big smile. He was two feet away from me and had seen the whole thing. He stared at me. His mouth was wide open. "That was amazing!" he finally managed to say. * * * My third moment of non-ordinary consciousness saved my life. It took place in 1983. I was a graduate student at Stanford University. I was driving down a major road (two lanes in either direction), coming up on an intersection with another major road. The light had just turned red, and there was a car stopped at the light in each of the two lanes in my direction. I was going about 35 miles per hour, so I pressed the brakes to start slowing, only to discover — the brakes didn't work! I pumped the brakes repeatedly. . . they had no effect whatsoever. My brakes had failed completely, and I was rapidly coming up on the intersection and the two stopped cars, with no way of slowing down. In an instant, I was catapulted into that same expanded state of consciousness I have described. Time slowed down. I was granted a perfect awareness of my situation. There was a two-foot high road divider on the left (separating us from the opposing traffic), so no way to drive to the left of the left car. There was a sidewalk skirting a wall on the right, and the sidewalk was filled with pedestrians — so no way to drive to the right of the right car. I was in the right lane, so my normal mind was considering crashing into the car in front of me. But my perfect awareness showed me another possibility — driving right between the two cars. And instantly, the idea became the reality, and I swerved the car over so it was centered on the line between the lanes, and I was headed straight for the opening between the two cars. If my normal mind had been in charge, it would have started screaming: "Are you insane?! It's not even clear that there's enough room to pass between the cars. So you're going to risk smashing into two cars?! Hitting one is bad enough!!" And in that moment, my ordinary mind did produce a horrible image of my car hitting both cars. But my ordinary mind was not in charge. I had surrendered completely to that perfect, expanded awareness, which was now running the show. The car continued right up the middle of the two lanes. The feeling of being in slow motion continued. I felt like I had all the time in the world to "thread the needle" — to steer my car right between the other two sitting cars. . . And the next moment, I was gliding through — a car on either side of me. There could not have been more than an inch to spare on either side, as the car passed through the "opening" at 35 miles an hour. From a conventional point of view, this was utterly insane. But my usual self was not steering the car. It was that perfect awareness, which knew everything. In fact, that consciousness was so at ease, that it turned my head to look into the car on my left, as I glided past. The driver was staring at me, obviously in shock, meeting my eyes with a look that said he thought I was completely mad. . . And then I was through!! No time to celebrate — I was now entering into the intersection. Fortunately, there were no cars immediately in front of me. But the cross traffic (to my left) was just starting up, and cars from the right were also already starting to move into the intersection in front of me, so I couldn't keep going forward. The perfect awareness directed me to swing a very hard right, wheels screeching. Now I was heading down the cross road, leading a pack of traffic starting up about a hundred feet behind me.
Completely new situation. I instantly let go of all that I had just dealt with, and let the perfect awareness assess the new situation. I was still going at about 30 miles an hour. And then I saw it: five hundred feet down the road, the road started going down a steep hill! Oh. My. God. To go down that hill with no brakes surely would be the end of my life. I had to stop the car before I reached that downhill slope. But that perfect awareness was in charge, and it instantly came up with a solution, and instantly started carrying it out. There was a sidewalk on the right side of the road, about six inches higher than the road. And fortunately for me, no one was walking on the sidewalk. I drove the right wheels of the car up onto the sidewalk for a few feet, so the car was at an angle. Then, as fast as possible, I drove the car back down onto the street again. Then up again. Then down again. And each time I jumped the curb, the friction caused the car to slow down a little more. Up. Down. (Slower.) Up. Down. (Slower.) Up. Down. (Slower.) Up. Down. (Slower.) Up. Down. After the fifth time, the car was barely moving. I perfectly parked the car alongside the curb and it came to a complete stop, just ten feet before the downhill slope. I sat in that car without moving for a half an hour or so, utterly grateful to be alive. I allowed all the much slower emotions to finally catch up with that infinitely fast awareness, and flood over me, and run their course. Ghost Story One night — when I was about five years old (around 1962) — I awoke suddenly, to see a figure floating at the foot of my bed. It was somewhat transparent — I could see through the figure to the room behind. It was an old woman, and she was looking right at me — with a warm, loving smile that made me feel very happy. I fell asleep shortly after, with her still looking at me lovingly. When I woke up, I told my parents about the old woman who had visited me in the night. They both had many questions for me, mainly about her appearance. They particularly wanted to know if she looked Chinese, and I said yes, and I said she was thin like my father. My father then told us that she had visited him too in the night. Later that day, my father received a call from a cousin in China, who let him know that my father's mother had died the day before. She had been very ill, and my parents had known she didn't have long to live, so the news was not too surprising. But the timing of the call — along with my account and my father's recognition of his visitor — convinced them that my grandmother had come to visit my father and me the night before, shortly after she had died. My father had lived in the United States since 1934 at age 12; his parents had sent him to the United States to get the best possible education. His father had died while he was in the United States, and he had only been able to return to visit his mother once in the intervening years (before 1949). The takeover of China by the Chinese Communist Party in 1949 made further visits impossible: the United States government prohibited U.S. citizens from visiting China, and my father was now a U.S. citizen. That only changed in the 1970's, when US-Chinese relations began to thaw a bit after Nixon's visit to China in 1972. So my Chinese grandmother had never met my mother, or me, or my siblings. But the firstborn son holds a special significance in Chinese tradition. I imagine that my grandmother's dying wish was to see her own firstborn son (my father) one last time, and to see his firstborn son (her grandson: me). So she made that happen. And, in my recollection, her visit with me made both of us very happy.[3] Non-Material Beings with a Sense of Humor Now I'm going to jump forward many years, to 2021. What I'm about to write about — contact with certain non-material beings — is not something that happened before I became Adi Da's devotee in 1989, like the other experiences in this section. Nonetheless, it is a part of the "potpouri" of non-ordinary experiences that have occurred in my life, and is a dimension of non-ordinary experience that others have experienced before becoming devotees. So I'll round out my "grab bag" of non-ordinary experiences with this story that is both amazing and humorous. Mary and I moved from California to Virginia in May of 2021, where we rented a house, while we looked for a more permanent residence. We found our house, and moved in in August of 2021. Shortly after we moved in, I began noticing something rather odd. I had a nightly habit of taking a variety of herbal supplements, many in the form of small pills. As I'd take one from the bottle, I'd place it on the counter, and then I'd go to the next bottle. But what was odd was that many of the pills were ending up standing upright — on their sides — on the counter! I'd been taking supplements for years, but I'd never seen anything like that before. It's not that easy to get pills to stand on their sides, particularly when you're just quickly, casually putting them down on the counter. (I tried doing it intentionally. It wasn't impossible, but it was pretty uncommon, unless I slowed down my actions and placed the pill very carefully.) I noticed this odd occurrence night after night. And a thought began to occur to me: could this be a communication of some kind? Now some readers might laugh at this suggested interpretation, because, from a conventional viewpoint, it sounds absurd. But if you've been reading my story from the beginning, you may have noticed that synchronicities — meaningful coincidences — have occurred a lot in my life around Adi Da: flowers in my room bending toward a picture of Adi Da; my going to the same universities (Columbia and Stanford) that He did; my having won a major speech contests as a kid, like He did; my having (at 13) a profound Revelation of Happiness on September 10, 1970, the day that Adi Da "Re-Awakened" to the "Bright" Divine State that was His State at birth; on and on. To live in the sphere of Adi Da's Divine Blessing Power is to open one's life constantly to the miraculous, and the miraculous often communicates itself through synchronicities. I also was aware that, if you don't have a psychic ability that enables you to directly see or converse with non-material beings, a common means such beings use (when they want to communicate with you) is to create synchronicities: events that are ordinary in some sense, but extraordinary in some other sense, and aimed at catching the attention of the person with whom they want to communicate. Like those pills standing on their side, and me noticing that as unusual. My time around Adi Da has sensitized me to paying attention to the unusual in the usual, in much the same way that shamans do. A bird flies across the shaman's path; the shaman doesn't just ignore that, but considers a possible deeper revelation being communicated.
So I began humorously playing with this idea that non-material beings might be trying to catch my attention by turning my pills on their side. I'd see the upright pills and speak to the air, "Oh, it's you guys again!" I had that kind of humorous "exchange" with the unseen for a few nights. But then it got a little boring, since I couldn't really be sure there was someone there. So one night, as I was doing the dishes in the sink, I spoke to my hypothetical, unseen friends. "OK, I guess those pills standing on their side could be you trying to communicate with me. But it's such a tiny demonstration! It's not really definitive. . . I might just be imagining it. Couldn't you do something similar, but a little more convincing, a little more dramatic?" And just as I said "dramatic", the sopping wet sponge I was holding flew out of my hand — I felt it being pulled from my hand! It left my hand in an upward arc, and then curved downward until it was vertical, and then landed in the sink basin, standing upright on its side (like the pills), defying gravity:
My jaw dropped. I just stared for a good long while at the sponge standing there. It reminded me (in miniature) of the Monolith from the epic movie, 2001. I don't have a video of the sponge being pulled out of my hand, of course, but I did take pictures of the upright, sopping wet sponge. I let it stand there for maybe five minutes. And then I tried duplicating what just happened. First I tried replicating it the exact way it happened: just tossing the (sopping wet) sponge over into the empty area of the sink. Not surprisingly, it just landed flat on the sink basin. Then I tried deliberately aiming it to land upright as I was tossing it. That was hopeless. Then I tried deliberately, carefully standing up the sponge vertically — and it just would not stand! It was too full of water and would fall over immediately, no matter how slowly and carefully I placed it. Finally, I drained out all the water so the sponge was much lighter, and tried very slowly and carefully placing it upright. After about ten tries, I finally got it to stand — for about five seconds. Then it fell over anyway. Even with no water, the sponge was just too unsteady to stand vertically for long. It simply was impossible for me to get that particular sponge to stand upright. And yet somehow my unseen friends had managed it, with a sopping wet sponge, that apparently would have stayed upright indefinitely if I hadn't touched it! I laughed loudly, and gave up. I spoke out to the unseen jokers: "OK, you got me! That was very dramatic. Pulling the sponge from my hand was pretty persuasive. And the heavy, water-soaked sponge standing impossibly on its side is definitely more convincing than the tiny pills standing on their sides! You've convinced me that you are real (and that you have a sense of humor). Thank you for clarifying!" I only wish I could have heard the laughter in response, on the other side. * * * I've had further interactions with these unseen, playful (and — as I was to discover — powerful) beings. (Re: "powerful": for example, they would play a role in helping to cure my prostate cancer, and getting one of the songs I wrote to appear at the top of Taylor Swift's personal YouTube video page, with 50 million viewers.) But I'll say more about them in chapters I'm in the process of writing, collectively titled, "Adventures with the Devotional Prayer of Changes". Like an Arrow, Straight to the Greatest Master All of these experiences — telekinesis, astral projection, cessation of breathing, UFO encounter, contact with ghosts and other non-material beings, and expanded consciousness — opened me up in a profound way to the extraordinary, multi-dimensional nature of Reality, preparing me for the most extraordinary event: finding the very Divine in human form. I would not be surprised if every single one of these extraordinary experiences was connected — directly or indirectly — to Avatar Adi Da. It could very well be His Divine Consciousness that I let take me over when I nearly crashed into those cars. It could well have been a connection with Him that somehow made me "interesting" to that UFO or those non-material beings. But I have no way of knowing that for sure, so I'll leave it at that. The one thing I will say for sure is this: Any of these experiences could have created a major diversion in my life, a sidetrack that would have kept me from finding Avatar Adi Da. I could have become totally preoccupied with developing my telekinetic abilities. I could have gotten into all manner of astral explorations in all the infinite dimensions of conditional reality. I could have become completely obsessed with UFOs, like some friends I knew. I could have focused in the supernatural abilities that seemed to come with an expanded consciousness, and worked to develop that. But none of that happened. I didn't get sidetracked. They remained very useful revelations that served to energize me on (rather than distract me from) my search for the ultimate Truth. And for that, I thank Adi Da — I do believe His Grace kept making my life a straight arrow to Him. I will also add this: From very early on in my life, I was moved to find that which was greatest, and not stop until I had found it. In this, I was like my namesake, Saint Christopher, whose life story had inspired me from childhood on. As legend has it, Christopher was originally a native of third century A.D. Asia Minor (one legend suggests Palestine). He was a very large man, proud of his size and strength. He joined the army of the Roman emperor Decius, because his life ambition was to find and serve the greatest master; and, at that time, from a conventional viewpoint, the Roman emperor was the greatest thing going. That was fine for a while. But one day, Christopher’s legion ran into a band of devil worshippers; and, terrified, all the soldiers took flight. Christopher reasoned to himself that whoever this “devil” was, he must be a greater master than the emperor to so frighten seasoned soldiers. And so he left the emperor’s army and joined the devil worshippers. Again, this was fine for a while; who knows what kind of strange experiences he had with these folks.
There is a wonderful, elaborate story that follows, but the long and short of it is that Christopher does finally run into Jesus, the "owner" of the cross (in the guise of a little child), and, without knowing who he is, carries him across a river (hence his designation as "patron saint of travellers", and his name, “Christopher”, which means "Christ bearer"), whereupon Jesus reveals who he is, and Christopher becomes an unswerving devotee of 'the greatest master". Christopher's dedication of his life to finding the greatest master greatly inspired me. It functioned like a Jungian archetype, informing my life from a young age, and helping to account for why my life quest wasn't greatly diverted by all the extraordinary experiences I've described in this section. They are indeed wonderful! But for me, the "greatest master" was the one who revealed the ultimate Truth — that which is, as Adi Da describes it, "more than wonderful".
* * * I mentioned when I began this section that I would jump around a bit in the chronology of my life, jumping back to experiences I had as a kid, and forward to experences I had as a professor of Artificial Intelligence. In the next section, I'll pick up the chronological order again, returning to 1983, when I was a graduate student at Stanford University.
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I was out here in the yard with some of you a few minutes ago, and we played this game of looking up in the night sky for something extraordinary. Some weird unidentified thing has got to be flying around in order to make us feel a little light, a little wonder.
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