Finding
Adi Da > Michael LaTorra
Recognizing Bhagavan
Michael LaTorra is a Third Congregation devotee of Adi Da. He is a retired Associate Professor of English and an ordained Zen Buddhist priest.
In March of 1976, I was driving alone from Florida to California, so that I could finally see my Guru in person for the first time. I had already spent the previous year as a remote student who participated in the spiritual community through a correspondence course. I had read and re-read all three of the Master's books (The Knee of Listening, The Method of the Siddhas, and Garbage and the Goddess) that had been released at the time. I had lived the life-level disciplines (diet and exercise, etc.) and practiced meditation twice daily. I was an eager student who was keen on doing everything "by the book", as it were.
As I drove across the desert Southwest on long, lonely highways between towns, I mused on how I had come to all this. In 1974, I was practicing a Fourth Way teaching (similar to that of G. I. Gurdjieff) in an organization called the Arica Institute. One of my fellow practitioners had become a good friend. One day he handed me a book, saying "You've got to read this!" That book was The Knee of Listening. It was unlike any of the spiritual books I'd ever read before. The author spoke with authority! He wasn't speculating or merely repeating wise words he'd received from others. This man knew what he was talking about from his own personal experience. And in addition to that astounding fact, as a writer, he was brilliant! The quality of his prose was superb. In particular, I found the very short PROLOGUE and the slightly longer EPILOGUE to the early edition of The Knee of Listening to be clear demonstrations of his extraordinary writing skill. So he was a literary genius as well as a spiritual one.
As I rode along, earlier events in my life of spiritual seeking flashed before my mind. There was my first exposure to Buddhism in a class at Antioch College. And my subsequent experience with psychedelics there, which only confirmed for me that Buddhist world-view about which I had been reading. Then came my trip to Los Angeles in the spring of 1972. One night there, when I was feeling utterly bereft and lost, I made a heartfelt prayer to God. All I said was "I believe in You!" Then suddenly I perceived a supernal light in the otherwise dark room. I saw a human form of pure light and boundless love, and I knew this apparition was Divine. (Only after finding out about Adi Da a couple of years later did I understand that this was His form.) I felt blessed. And I was filled with the urge to really lead a god-ward life. Only much later did I find out that on this very evening, only a few miles away, my future Guru was giving His first public talk at the Ashram Bookstore. I had been so close and yet so far!
When I arrived in San Francisco in 1976, I immediately went to the Dawn Horse Bookstore on Polk Street. Devotees there helped me find a place to stay for the night. On Friday, I went to the Sanctuary (then called Persimmon; now known as the Mountain Of Attention). There, in Western Face Cathedral (now known as Temple Adi Da) I had my first darshan. The Master radiated love and bliss. Everyone in the room was swooning with joy. I had never experienced anything like this before! It was totally delicious and utterly amazing.
I spent the night in a cabin on the Sanctuary grounds. I was trying to understand what was going on. I was attuned to the Master's own critique of seeking for bliss and other extraordinary experiences as He explained and demonstrated during the period described in Garbage and the Goddess. Bliss was not the point. Radical Understanding was the point.
On Saturday, I was informed that the Master wanted to give darshan to the handful of new people like myself who had come into His Presence for the first time. We gathered in a small room, some dozen new people and our Guru. Although the rest of us were dressed in long sleeved shirts and long pants, the Master wore only a speedo swim suit. Most of His flesh was exposed to view.
As I sat before the Master on this occasion, I simply wanted to find out Who this man really was. I was not seeking any experience. I simply wanted true knowledge of the Master's real Identity. I gave Him my complete attention. I was focused on simply seeing what was going on before my eyes with this extraordinary man. The first thing I noticed was that I could not detect any signs of ego or limited human persona in Him. Next, I saw shimmering glints of light coming from His skin. And then, within my own silent mind, I found myself thinking the words "You are the Lord". As soon as those words passed through my mind, the Master suddenly turned and looked me directly in the eye. The room vanished. I found myself overflowing with bliss as disembodied awareness suspended in infinite space.
I had finally recognized, with unimpeachable certainty, that Bhagavan truly is Divine. And that complete certainty has never left me. Thank You, Beloved!