The Book of Light

Trish Mitchell

Individuals with no previous knowledge of Avatar Adi Da sometimes have remarkable experiences upon first contact with His books, experiences that bring them into profound relationship with Him, even before His Words are understood, as this story from devotee Trish Mitchell makes clear.

Trish Mitchell I was born in Scotland and grew up in a family which was nominally Presbyterian. Church on Sundays was wearing your best clothes and seeing what everyone else was wearing. It certainly wasn't much about the sacred. Then, when I was about ten, we migrated to Australia, and life became sun and beaches and school and fun.

As I moved into my middle teens, however, I began feeling a sense of something missing. I started to drop into adolescent, existential dispairing moods. As I grew older, I began to really notice the intensity of this feeling of something missing, and began actively looking for answers. My first "answer" was to get out there and have fun, really enjoy! So I experimented with the whole sex drugs rock 'n roll scene of the late 60's and early 70's.

However, despite the current feminist credo, I became aware that multiple sex partners wasn't making me happy, and having fun all the time wasn't really fun at all. I got married on an impulse to someone I didn't know very well, thinking that he was my white knight and this would be the happiness I was looking for. After a year, I realized that wasn't going to work either, so we separated.

When I was in my late twenties, I decided I needed therapy. It seemed to me that a lot of people were into therapy, and maybe through this I would find "myself", whatever that meant. I became involved with a personal growth organization. I really felt the benefit of it — I was starting to deal with some of my ordinary emotional problems.

For eight years, I did workshop after workshop after workshop. You name it, I "workshopped" it! It was crystals one weekend, aura reading the next weekend, how to origame your pet the weekend after. I became actively involved in running and teaching courses and workshops, reading new age books and materials, from Louise Hay to Shakti Gawain. I really enjoyed it. I found it beneficial for myself, and I could see that it made a difference in other people's lives as well. I decided that this was going to be my life now — I was going to become a teacher of this sort of work.

But somehow, I also knew I wasn't really happy yet.

By profession, at that time I was a radio announcer in Melbourne — this was the early eighties. I felt an interesting dichotomy . . . I had a life which was becoming somewhat glamorous in the small pond Australia is, in terms of the global media. I was co-hosting a radio show — I was a minor celebrity in town, attending lots of parties and theatre and dinner and premieres of movies. At one point, I even met Prince Charles and Princess Diana! So there was this apparent success going on in my life on one level; and there was the other side of my life which was this utterly desperate search for "meaning".

So there were these two things going on, fulfillment on the material level and the so-far-unsuccessful search for meaning. I kept wondering to myself when I was going to "get happy"! I thought perhaps there was something wrong with me, that maybe I had a happiness-deficient gene, or something.

I decided to enter into somatic psychotherapy, and I was recommended to a woman called Maryanne Sea. As it transpired (I didn't know it at the time), Maryanne was a devotee of Adi Da. I began sessions with her. She'd lie me down and say, "What are you feeling?", and "What's going on?" And instead of saying things like, "Oh, I'm having trouble with my relationship", or whatever, I would say things like, "I want to know what's really going on! What is this all about, this whole existence thing? What's going on?"

After about three or four sessions, she said to me: "Look, you don't need therapy. There's nothing wrong with you, you're simply on a Spiritual search!" I was totally surprised! I didn't have any understanding of my search for happiness as a Spiritual thing. She said "What I think you should do is go away, read some books, some Spiritual teachings from some real Spiritual teachers, and then maybe come back and talk to me about it, and let's see how it goes on that level."

So she sent me off to a couple of bookstores in Melbourne, and one of them was the Dawn Horse Bookstore.[1] When I walked in, I didn't intend to buy any books, I was just going to check it out. However, as I was leaving, I noticed a large book with a most exquisite cover, a symbol of beautiful horse surrounded by a fire and blue: it was The Dawn Horse Testament of Adi Da. I just had to buy it, so I tucked this book under my arm, got it home and thought, "Gee, that's a nice cover!". I put it on my bookshelf and forgot all about it. I obviously wasn't ready for what was available to me at the time.

Years went by. I left the entertainment industry, burnt out. In 1990, I moved to Sydney. Even though I had never opened it, I took The Dawn Horse Testament to Sydney with me as well, and there it sat, unread. One evening, I was at home, nothing much to do, my flatmate had gone out, there was nothing on TV. I looked up at the bookshelf and I thought: the only book I haven't read in my whole bookcase is The Dawn Horse Testament. I thought, "Maybe I'll have a look and see what's in this." I sat down on the couch and I opened it at random.

And then the most bizarre thing happened. I was sitting there reading this book, and suddenly the words started to blur, and light literally started to come off the pages. There was a shimmering light flickering up, like something out of a science fiction movie. I'd been meditating for a few years and my body used to move slightly when I was meditating. I was looking at this book, light flickering off the pages, and my body started to sway! I slammed the book shut and I thought, "What is happening here? Maybe I'm getting the flu!" I was getting hot and I thought, "This is really weird!"

But then I noticed I was starting to feel happy! I opened this book again at a different page, and the same thing happened: Light was streaming off the page! I was seeing the words, and it was as if I was reading Latin or double dutch or Greek. It didn't mean anything to my mind, but I knew what this book was saying! I was reading words that meant absolutely nothing to me — esoteric, unintelligible language to this completely ordinary person — and I was getting happier and happier, my body was swaying, and the light continued emanating from the pages!

I literally ended up hugging this book to my chest and dancing around the room! I was ecstatic! It was totally incredible.

The next day, I was looking through the newspaper and amazingly, I saw this tiny little two-line ad, "Introductory Videos for Adi Da", and in brackets it said "Da Free John". So I rang and said, "I've got to come, immediately! I want to see a video!" I found out later that that was the very first advertisement the Sydney community ever placed in the newspaper.

Two or three days later, I found myself at a house in the suburbs. The video being shown was one of Adi Da in the late 1970's. As He started talking, I had another dose of what had happened with the book, but much more intense. The minute I heard His voice and saw His face, I was moved into an ecstatic state, and then my peripheral vision disappeared. Nothing like this had ever happened to me before. Everything went black. All sound disappeared. There was a roomful of people and the video was loud, but I couldn't hear anything, either. There was only white light emanating from the video. Except for Adi Da's face, everything else was just light, and my peripheral vision was black. Again, I felt very, very happy — unreasonably happy. And I knew I was receiving something extraordinary from an extraordinary Being that was no ordinary man. I just sat there, ecstatic, and at the end of the video, I knew I was Home. I felt a heart rest I couldn't explain, but I'd seen His face and I knew that face, and I knew I was Home!

Finally, I said, "I'm Home! What do I do? How do I become involved?" There was not a shred of doubt in my mind. I'd been searching for happiness my whole life, and I knew Grace when I saw it. Something in me recognized this Happiness. I cried all the way home out of sheer joy. I dreamt about Adi Da all night. It was a weird night. It wasn't sleep, it wasn't dreaming, it was an incredible experience of somewhere in between, and I kept saying His Name very loudly. I kept saying, "Love-Ananda". I didn't even know it was His Name at the time . . . these words just came out.

At about four or five in the morning, I was still just lying there in this incredibly happy state. I looked at the bottom of my bed and there was this Being, surrounded by golden light, with His hands on his hips. He looked at me with a slight smile and a raised eyebrow and said, "Well, it's about time!" And then disappeared.

I thought, "It's about time?" — I must be hallucinating! Surely, no Spiritual Teacher is going to stand at the end of my bed and say, "Well, it's about time!" (I subsequently would discover that Adi Da has an incredible sense of humor and that's exactly the sort of thing He would have said to a new devotee.)

What I did know was He was telling me the truth. I knew He was saying He'd been waiting for me for a long time, just as I had been waiting for Him.

A few years later, I was Graced to be able to live at the Mountain Of Attention — the first Sanctuary empowered by Adi Da, and one of the most ecstatic and holy places in the world to live . . . and I was so grateful.

I never thought that Happiness was real, because I had looked for it for so long and I didn't see it in my life. But every day when I wake up and remember that I'm a devotee of Adi Da, I know that I was wrong and that Happiness is real, that Love is real, and that He is the Great One, and He is here, and there is nothing more important than that.