Buy the book
AVATARA ADI DA: Its like the Garbage and the Goddess time . [Devotees murmur agreement.] It wasn’t that everybody was, by virtue of the experiences they were having, suddenly capable of advanced practice and so forth. It wasn’t the intention, either. The intention was to serve the argument which I’d been proposing constantly from the time I began formally to Teach.
But Realization is neither a search for nor an attainment of any kind of an object or conditional state. I refer to it as garbage, and so forth, using the metaphor of Rudi always handing Me a bag of garbage behind his back as he hugged Nina. So this was My Instruction to you.
Well, the gathering as it was then only represented a certain range of experience, not particularly great, rather of the normal kind, ordinary kind. So in order to advance that “consideration”, elaborate on it, and give everyone the basis for getting the point I was trying to make, I entered into a Disposition by which devotees started having all kinds of experiences.
But I always addressed them in their report to Me. “I experience such and such,” we’d go through the argument and ask about the self-contraction, and so on-remember? [laughter] “And you’re still doing that even so.” So that was the purpose it was intended to serve. Well, as you point out, in our “consideration” last evening, you all having various experiences along the lines of My “consideration” with you as you sat here quietly – its an example of the same thing. You actually, by Grace, entered into the States I was discussing, suddenly had an intelligence and an experience that enabled you to feel It exactly. Right through into the seventh stage “consideration”.
But, of course, you’re not prepared to do the sadhana of those advancements yet, generally speaking. But its useful for you to grasp what this is all about by becoming most intimate to My “consideration”, to feel it most profoundly. You don’t necessarily have to come and sit in a small gathering here with Me to do it. Some do that sometimes, and its recorded, so – in other words I intend it to be of use for all devotees. I expect them all to be just as serious and to enter into these “considerations” profoundly, on the basis of having all the practices intact and for real. My devotee.”
Beezone editorial note.
Leelas in Praise of Beloved Da.
Avatar Adi Da Love-Ananda, Samraj, Eleutherious.
The Bright Ruchira Buddha
By Frank Marrero
Preface: Crazy Wisdom
In the spring of 1998, I listened to a sweet and intelligent woman complain about the style of some Zen Masters and their treatment of their disciples. She reported how these Masters were often gruff, and from all sorts of signs, apparently on a power-trip. They even hit their students with sticks! She wondered aloud with offense, “Why don’t they promote equality? And where does abuse have a place in spiritual life?!”
Like most Westerners, she was not acquainted with the “Crazy Wisdom” traditions, wherein the Realized Master played free with social norms and common presumptions. And like most Westerners, the idea of a God-Person, a divine person, a truly superior being, is democratically untenable.
In addition, one must be careful when listening to any unfettered genius [rooted in ancient Arabic jnna–madness, akin to manna], and make sure the communication is not only far- reaching, but also heart-deep. For rather than acting in the mood or style of the idealized human (the ascended, pure ascetic), the God- intoxicated One would dine freely, dance madly, discern perfectly, discipline ferociously, and love luxuriously in all kinds of ways with all kinds of people, even “prostitutes, tax-collectors”, “neurotics, and self-indulgent people of all kinds”.
The actions of the “crazy-wise” can be reported in all kinds of ways, and their behavior presumed to be scandalous by common convention. The Western mind has generally not taken kindly to Free Souls, and has been downright murderous with God-Realizers.
I asked the woman, “Have you asked any of those students who were enlightened by the stick, what they thought of their teacher’s ruthlessness?”
I thought about the conversation a great deal. This woman’s sentiment epitomized for me the preference of Westerners in this egalitarian, anti-hierarchic time in history — with our emphasis on self-development and equality.
Selfhood and self-authentication are tantamount in our time. Previous calls for self-transcendence were often tainted with manipulative self-emptying, thereby giving present day selfhood even more necessity and power. Certainly there are many good reasons for self-development and being free from being manipulated. And indeed, there must be a self if there is to be any self-giving.
For many reasons, self-surrender and sacrifice are ridiculed by the prevalent voices of promised fulfillment and the ennui of the status quo. Self-transcendence is even portrayed as anathema to self-esteem. As a result, the truth is just another opinion as equality’s blandness has replaced wisdom, and the preciousness of egoity and opinion claim sacred ground.
Although self-development, mind, and self-authentication are indeed important and essential, they must be appreciated within a larger spectrum for the maturation to emerge that is free of mind’s constant inwardness or to be stable in love. With the modern emphasis on abstract thinking and self-development, the function of receiving, surrendering, and sacrificing has fallen into misunderstanding and misuse. But it has long been noted that surrender followed intent, and that the “divine flow” is the means whereby we yield our ordinary human position into ecstasy.
Instead, rational moderns are supposed to “figure it out” by themselves, and for good reasons, any Divine Master or surrender is suspect, ignored, or discarded. Even “myth” is another name for falsehood. The logic of the self or rational mind is the only ‘concrete’ god of this mortal time. The authorities we like to listen to are “the ones who preach against authority” or cast human development as a hero’s journey. Therefore, in order to receive the most elegant Help, we must understand the arrogance that discards the “Heaven-Born”.
The Guru-devotee relationship is particularly difficult for the modern mind, full of worldly, abstract, and egalitarian presumptions. For membership in the “human” race is supposed to be of the earth growing upward (as the root of human is related to the Latin humus, rich earth; Adam in Hebrew). Our down-to-earth view rarely sees the true horizon of our possibility and is downright incredulous about the voice of the supposed “other” race of beings, those not “human”, not of earth ascending upwards, but the race of the descended Beings, the Avatara, the fully conscious, the fully evolved, the Heaven Born, the God-descended-One, the Divine Reality in Person, Enlightened Love Incarnate. Not the messenger of God, but the Mouth of God.
Fortunately, the human race is replete with stories of truly superior beings, and all religions have a blessed source Person (and most were discarded in their day. Gotama Shakyamuni being the best exception, but the Buddha had a culture to appreciate the Awake One appearing before them.)
Relationship with such a Person is incomprehensible, his/her ego-confronting actions and speech are often difficult to understand and his/her crazy wisdom is easily discounted. And since the appearance of the Divine Person throughout the immature ages has not yet duplicated the Master by the multitude, everybody rejects Him or Her somehow. While humanity is served, refreshed, and regenerated by His or Her Great service and sacrifice, the divine genius is usually discarded, ignored, fought, imprisoned, shot, discounted, stoned, “exposed,” crucified, or made to drink poison.
Of course, we humans must each learn to identify self- serving cult heroes and not become cultic followers who substitute belief for understanding; for then we would fall prey to the exploitive games of powerful wolf and childish sheep. Likewise, we must not automatically presume to be adolescent consumers and buy the packaged substitute sacrifice from the cultic hero, paying handsomely to get clear or get It. In due course, we should look hard and deep at any wisdom and teacher as we look hard and deep at ourselves.
While doubt and questioning are absolutely necessary surrounding the deep and intimate issues promoted in religion and spirituality, Adi Da showed me how to discern the difference between chronic doubt and the right function of doubt. His illuminations guided me to discover how chronic doubt could be understood as the mental expression (and myopia) of my unseen withdrawal and self-contraction, a subtle and anxious reflection of a more fundamental and unconscious constriction. When this root action of withdrawal or closure and its reflection in separation and chronic doubt are truly seen and understood, then a radical responsibility can be clearly exercised. Doubt is restored to its rightful function as a “bullshit” detector, separating “shit from shinola” — until the Bright Shine of Reality Itself is revealed. As Adi Da charged in 1971,
“I did not enter into and endure or pass through the Spiritual process by being a true believer. Doubt was my Siddhi [spiritual power], the kind of Siddhi I acquired through intellectual discipline. I do not believe or communicate bullshit, nor do I suggest that you bullshit yourself. Put yourself through the hard school, and really consider it. You must realize that capacity for discrimination. It takes a long time to be really schooled in discrimination. There is more to discrimination than just things of the mind, ideas and so forth. Discrimination is a tool you also bring to non-ideas – to impressions and events that have nothing to do with intellect or mentality or culture or society. You must bring discrimination to events that transcend the conventional or lower body-mind, that transcend the first three stages of life. And discrimination remains an important instrument for growth into the higher stages. Therefore, you must acquire a similar capability.”
Adi Da taught me how to let doubt and mind have their necessary time and place, and then to let their discernment serve life’s strength for heart-practice. “First become human,” He said often, for mature authenticity is the necessary predecessor to real adoration, not cultic emotionalisms. For in authentic adoration, recognizing and beholding the Beloved, the Enlightened Realizer and Transmitter of the Heart, mind and doubt are at last forgotten and outshined, and the State of the Master takes over the devotee. “Guru enters devotee.” Fundamental Heart-Light is beyond doubt and beyond belief.
I have often wanted to write these tales for I have had a privileged view of the fierceness of a Free Being, a Wild Heart and True Avatar, the Great One in Person. Gazing upon Him and adapting to the intensity of His Loving Divinity, the loveless ways that I subtly withdraw are more clearly seen by me, and by this critical self-understanding, I become harmonized with Reality Itself, which I find to be identical to the enjoyment of His Company.
My heartiest testimony is I have seen Adi Da, up close and personal, and I found Him to Be Transparent to Fundamental Reality, Always Radiant, Only Serving, Always Free and Giving Freely, the Person of Love Incarnate.
In India it is said, “The Guru is greater than God.” Because, before the Master, there was God, but the Divine Condition of the world was not very well noticed. With the appearance of the Great Guru, the Divine Condition that is the Ground and Heart of everything can be easily felt by any human who has ears to hear.
I pray that my reader will also appreciate his or her own fundamental anxiety, see clearly the myopia of anxiety’s slant, and glimpse the Freedom and Transmission of Avatar Adi Da.
In reading this tale, what must clearly be understood is that the intimate Company of the Enlightened One will purify every limitation one unknowingly enacts. His Personal Company requires this understanding: the Free One will naturally, humorously, and very directly shred your every misunderstanding and highlight every illusion. Naturally, self-understanding will be given in overwhelming abundance. It is the divine Fire, reducing everything that is mortal to ash, at last leaving only what is always and already the case.
What you will find here may confuse, offend, or even outrage you. Every human reacts in some way to the spiritual fire of the free Avatar. It is offensive to the ego, perfectly. Adi Da points out how His actions to be provocative were for the sake of his students’ self-understanding.
“People do well to be offended or even outraged by Me. This is My purpose. But their reaction must turn upon themselves, for I have not shown them Myself by all of this. All that I do and speak only reveals men and women to themselves. I have become willing to teach in this uncommon way because I have known my friends, and they are what I can seem to be. By retaining all qualities in their company, I gradually wean them of all reactions, all sympathies, all alternatives, fixed assumptions, false teachings dualities, searches, and dilemma. This is My way of working for a time. Those who remain confounded by Me, critical of Me, have yet to see themselves. When their mediocrity is broken, when they yield their righteous reactions and their strife toward all the consolations of the manifest self, they may see My Purity. Freedom is the only purity. There is no Dharma but Consciousness itself. Bubba as he appears is not other than the possibilities of men.”
Master Da’s outrageous manner of teaching reminded me of the gargoyles and wrathful deities that sometimes surround religious retreats and esoteric orders. They are there to turn aside those wedded to conventions. Adi Da was not in the religion business and He used ego-offensive truths with genius. Thus, His Divine Presence was first given to an esoteric order that intuited His Gift.
It was reported that as Meher Baba was first approaching Upasani Baba for enlightenment, Upasani Baba picked up a stone and hit Meher Baba squarely in the face, bloodying it, but not stopping Meher Baba. Meher Baba bowed at Upasani Baba’s feet in gratitude. Upasani Baba said, “You can stay.” Discerning the genius of enlightened offense is required. (And it was Upasani Baba who said in February 1939, nine months before the birth of Adi Da, “Times that are this dark call for an avatar. One will soon be born in a Western country.”)
In this conventionally offensive light, I must note Adi Da’s use of capitalization. On the surface, it seems unnecessary, confusing, and arrogantly offensive. But there is a truth in Adi Da’s capitalizations, if we see through their gargoyle appearance. Like the capitalization of “F” in Plato’s Forms beyond forms, or Reality beyond realities, Adi Da capitalizes the all-inclusive and universal beyond any temporal or unique arrangements, including high and low, alpha and omega, and objective and subjective. His Realization and Enlightened Transparency to Reality Itself is Behind the use of capitals, a new scriptural art, if you please.
(Please see the Introduction to The Dawn Horse Testament for Adi Da’s full explanation.) At first, Adi Da’s capitalizations are a chore and seem unnecessary, but I invite you to take on this yoga. Working to embrace His capitalizations is challenging indeed, but great transmission is the treasure. (There is also a wealth of His teaching that is without this scriptural art and intensity.)
There have been many phases to the Work of Adi Da, which are beyond the scope of this introduction. This tale mainly reflects Adi Da’s “way of working for a while”, when Master Da submitted to us, became us, played with us, helped us create and see the theaters of our fascinations. He worked passionately to “make pictures” in order that we see our obsessions, pain, and illusions. He did this by first baptizing us in overwhelming love and deep enjoyment, then bluntly pointing out the limitations of what was unseen and previously unsaid. Being in His Personal Company was both profoundly joyous and like being striped naked.
“I know the quality of every one who comes to me. I see the nature and results of avoidance in them. I am sensitive to the points of contraction in them. I know that these results do not come from any event outside of them but are held in place now and originally by an action of their own. Thus, I treat them in a way that will turn them to this perception of their own action.
“The manner of My dealing with people is determined by an intelligence that is in reality itself. The mood in which I deal with them from time to time is determined by their strength. I deal with them boldly, even angrily where they are capable of driving directly to their own force. I deal with them indulgently where only indulgence will permit the opening to their own selves. But all moods are mere devices, strategies. It is all the same love, the same enjoyment that is continuous in reality through all its forms. Therefore, behind all My Moods is a radical intensity and demand that is a certain, uncompromising force and intention. I neither indulge nor bend a man for the sake of such exercises themselves. The mood of reality is neither indulgent nor fierce, but a blissful power, a brilliant, absolute fire that is as empty as an ear, containing the force of everything with a sound.”
Everyone who managed to get very close to Adi Da was spiritually burned alive. Everybody reacted at some level to the confrontation and fire, then as understanding of the offense emerged, also profound gratitude. The strong quickly understood His Gift and soon turned out of their selves into liberating understanding and gratitude. Some took longer than others to appreciate the burning offenses. (Like myself, for one day almost two grumbling years later, I finally understood a Gift of His and unexpectedly fell to my knees in eternal gratitude for the liberation I suddenly inherited.) Some take decades to inherit a lesson, and there are those have not yet understood the offensive nature of Adi Da’s close-up teaching.
There are hate-Adi Da websites, run by a small number of people, saying outrageous things. I always invite anyone to survey them thoroughly. But let me say plainly that I was there: it didn’t happen as negatively reported. On one level, believe whomever you want and let happiness be your guide. But it’s like saying Jesus of Galilee partied with lusty prostitutes and the hated tax- collectors; or that he was obviously mad, turning over tables in the safety of the Temple for the bankers. Heavens. Look deeply in yourself and beyond the conventional mind and find a Free Man only in God, in Reality, passionately setting afire any barrier to Love.
From the baptisms of love I experienced sitting with Adi Da, I learned a great deal about the mind and how it works. In the fullness of reality-light, it is easy to see how opinions are based in unconscious reaction and unseen withdrawal, and how this is easily undone in the openness or mystery greater than position and knowledge. This pure awareness was redolent in the Company of my Beloved Adi Da.
Let me preface quite clearly: the stick of the true Heart- Master gives liberation and must be understood, not discarded in automatic doubt and conventional opinion. The stick is pure paradox.
My gratitude ever grows.
This tale speaks mainly of the five months I spent in intimate contact with Heart-Servant Avatar Adi Da Love-Ananda Samraj, my Beloved Teacher, from Sept 9th, 1982 to February 3rd, 1983, the period, place, and Fierce Woman known as Tumomama. These stories must be appreciated within a fiery “Crazy Wisdom” context or else they will be discounted and misinterpreted in the common, misunderstood way. The ego is offended by the service of the Free Ones. This is certain.
There is some appreciation of my time with Master Da both before and after that miraculous period, though most of the tales you hear herein are from that wild embrace.
There is no way I could communicate the truth of that time, the words would melt before you read them. My limitations also qualify these reports; they are colored by the myopia of my immaturity and also tinted by yours. What I remember changes and grows as I change and grow. Therefore, this is a very partial tale, truly an iota, a brief slice and limited remembrance of a Heart- Drunk Person and His Immortal Baptism.
Next
Buy the book
