Extraordinary
Evidence > Other
Entities and Realms > Benign Subtle Realms
About the Benign Subtle Realms
Leroy Stilwell
Leroy Stilwell has been a formal devotee
since 1976. He is one of the founders of this website. You can
read his biographical information in the About
Us section.
Avatar Adi Da has spoken about the subtle realms as benign places
or dimensions of existence where the sense of separate self is
hardly noticed, thus they are “places” of apparent limitless joy
and bliss. However, He points out that from the “perspective”
of the Seventh Stage Realization, even this most refined state
of existence, as full of joy and bliss as it may be, is still
a condition of suffering, of non-Realization, albeit nothing like
the most gross physical and emotional suffering potentially experienced
by human beings.
Because the subtle realms are characterized by diffuse recognition
(or even non-noticing) of the separate self, experience in them
is typically free of fear. Also, because one is not so bound to
the separate self identity and bodily imposed limits, one is freer
to notice and participate in the inherent nature of Existence
Itself — Self-Radiant Love-Bliss, Consciousness and Light. The
experience of pervasive and indescribable Joy, Love, Radiance,
and Awareness is characteristic of the subtle realms.
Even in the midst of such potentially magnificent experience,
however, for the devotee of Adi Da, their practice remains the
same: contemplate Him, and simply allow experience to be whatever
it is, for in the beholding of Adi Da one is drawn even beyond
all experience into the absolute prior condition of utter non-difference
that is Reality Itself.