At the Feet of the Malibu Surfer-Dude

Jan Myer

Jan Myer became Adi Da's devotee in August, 1974. He lives with his family in Northern California. Jan has served Adi Da and His Work in countless ways since then, and participated in occasions with Adi Da numerous times. . . Here are just a few examples: In San Francisco in 1974, Jan worked with fellow devotee Gerald Sheinfeld helping to organize and operate the first Adidam Food Co-Op. From 1975 to 1976, he regularly babysat Adi Da's daughters, Io and Shawnee Free Jones during the first 12-18 months of their lives (while Adi Da was attending Gatherings and outings). He attended many early "Teaching Years" gatherings with Adi Da, where He was Gifted with much intimate and delicious play with His Beloved Guru and many Teaching Lessons. He served as assistant and draftsman to every Adidam architect from 1974 to 1988, and for many others who followed, until the present time. He designed the lighting for all Adidam Temples, Halls and Sanctuary Building Projects, and for all of Beloved Bhagavan's living and work quarters, Sukra Kendras, etc., from 1977 until Adi Da's Divine Mahasamadhi in 2008. He served as architectural and lighting designer on nearly every new building, building remodel and building expansion project undertaken by Adidam in California, Washington State, Hawaii and Fiji. He and fellow devotee Brian O'Mahony continue to operate the San Francisco Bay Area consulting engineering firm they founded together in 1979 — O’MAHONY & MYER — Electrical Engineering & Lighting Design — now with a staff of 32. With Brian, he has been a patron to Beloved Bhagavan's Person and family from 1991 to 2009, and again from 2015 to the present. He served the construction of Adi Da Samraj's Image Installation and Gallery at the Biennale di Venezia in 2007, for which he also designed, purchased, shipped, installed, and aimed all lighting equipment. . . And much more!

It was the summer of 1974, and I was a young man on a quest. I had been reading a new book from the spiritual section of a local bookstore each week for some months. Having learned of the possibility from my reading, I was hoping against hope that the rarest of miracles might occur during my brief lifetime: the appearance of an Avataric Divine Incarnation in bodily human form. So I kept my eyes peeled for such a being, lest I miss Him (or Her) for lack of vigilance on my part.

In the midst of my search, at the bookstore I frequented in those days, I saw (for the first time) the too-happy, too-youthful face of what appeared to be a kind of "Malibu surfer-dude", on the cover of a book I'd never seen before, titled The Knee Of Listening:

The man looked too cool by half, and I was a little offended by the book's subtitle, "The Early Life And Radical Spiritual Teachings" of "Franklin Jones"! I chuckled to myself, thinking, "Just about anybody can claim to be Enlightened these days!" I wandered further down the aisle, and instead purchased a book authored by a "proper-looking", full-bearded and turbaned Sufi Teacher. I didn't give the handsome, obviously self-deluded, young surfer another moment's thought.

On my next visit to the same store, I ran across the young surfer-guru's book again. But this time, I saw something I had missed before: the words, "Forward by ALAN WATTS", leapt off the upper right hand corner of the cover!

My heart stopped. . . I loved Alan Watts' books, and had read everything of his that I could get my hands on! I immediately read his Forward, and almost fainted from the impossible, hopeful anticipation that welled up in me, as I weighed even the remotest possibility that Watts just might be neither wrong, nor lying, in his thundering, full-throated praise of the surfer-guru's spiritual Realization and Teaching!!

And so I continued on in the book. I didn't move from the spot until after I'd read the most important words I have encountered in this life. . . the Prologue to The Knee Of Listening:

Death is utterly acceptable to consciousness and life.

There has been endless time of numberless deaths, but neither consciousness nor life has ceased to arise.

The felt quantity and cycle to death has not modified the fragility of flowers, even the flowers within our human body.

Therefore, our understanding of consciousness and life must be turned to that utter, inclusive quality, that clarity and wisdom, that power and untouchable gracefulness this evidence suggests.

We must cease to live in our superficial and divided way, seeking and demanding only consciousness and life in the present form we grasp, avoiding and resisting what appears to be the end of consciousness and life in death.

The Heart is that understanding, that true consciousness, that true life that is under the extreme conditions of life and death. Therefore, it is said, that One that is is neither born nor come to death, not alive as the limitation of form, not rendered in what appears, and yet It Is the living One, than which there is no other, appearing as all of this, but eternally the same.

There is only the constant knowledge and enjoyment of the Heart, moment to moment, through the instant of all conditions of appearance and disappearance. Of this I am perfectly certain. I am That.

Avatar Adi Da Samraj
Prologue, The Knee Of Listening (original edition)

I can barely remember driving back to my girlfriend's family home. Once there, I immediately sat down to read the entire book in one sitting.

Every page was a Revelation. But just to read this book was both a confrontation and an ordeal. Some passages required my reading them as many as five times, before I could comprehend even a fraction of what was being said.

And the entire time I was reading, I felt the cells of my body being transformed — literally — by the Radiant Understanding and Presence being communicated by this obviously fully Enlightened Being!

At long last, having been awake thirty-six hours straight as I read this book, I finally fell asleep.

When I awoke, I announced to my girlfriend that I was leaving. . . to throw myself at the feet of this impossibly–appearing, Divinely Incarnated Spiritual Master-of-the-highest-order — That One "than Which there Is no other" — that I had been praying might appear!

And I have been Graced and Blessed, beyond description, to be with Him ever since.

This story appears in the section
Finding Adi Da