The All-Completing Avatar – The Fulfillment of the Avatar Tradition
Chapter Nineteen
Introduction
During the same years that Avatar Adi Da’s Saving Work with the world began to become dramatically evident, He was also Revealing His Divine Nature more and more profoundly to His devotees. He was Showing Himself to them very directly as the Ruchira Avatar the Manifestation of the Divine “Brightness” on Earth.
In the Vaishnavite tradition of Hinduism, it is said that there are ten Divine Avatars. According to this tradition, cosmic history has already witnessed the appearance of the first nine Avatars, but the tenth and completing Avatar remains to come. He is named “Kalki” and will appear in the terrible era of the Kali Yuga (when the Divine is virtually forgotten), heroically conquering the forces of darkness and restoring all to a life of devotion to the Divine and obedience to Divine Law. Traditional images of the Kalki Avatar in Hindu art show Him seated on a white horse, sword in hand, ready to slay His enemies.
Such an image of the final Divine Deliverer riding a white horse is not exclusively Hindu. It is deep in the human psyche, surfacing also in the last book of the Bible, which prophesies, in vision, the “second coming” of Jesus of Nazareth:
And now I saw heaven open, and a white horse appear; its rider was called Trustworthy and True. . . . His eyes were flames of fire and he was crowned with many coronets. . . . On his cloak and on his thigh a name was written, King of kings and Lord of lords.
Feeling such archetypes to be prophecies of Avatar Adi Da’s Appearance, two devotees brought the Kalki tradition to Avatar Adi Da’s attention. Hal Okun sent Avatar Adi Da a gift of a Kalki medallion, which he had recently acquired in India while in service to Avatar Adi Da, and Bill Stranger offered Him an explanation of the Kalki tradition.
In his report, Bill Stranger praised Avatar Adi Da as the true and final Avatar, the Divine Liberator Who fulfills the Kalki prophecy in this present dark and godless age, and he quoted a description of the Kalki Avatar coined by Judith Tyberg in her book The Language of the Gods:
[Kalki] is the Divine Man, called “white horse” to symbolize the strength and power of all colors, hence “power of full plenitude”. Also Conqueror of Yama, Death, of all duality, all opposition and all darkness, the Divine man on earth, One with the Infinite Divine.
Avatar Adi Da fully received this gesture of recognition from His devotees and even accepted the Name “Da Kalki” for a period of time. When He took this Name, His Blessing Power flowed in a torrent. Those on retreat at Adidam Samrajashram became wildly ecstatic with the Force of Adi Da’s Spiritual Transmission. They began to experience kriyas, blisses, and heart-openings such as had not been seen since the “Garbage and the Goddess” period in 1974. James Alwood, who was on retreat at the time, describes the first occasion of overwhelming Spiritual “Intoxication” during this period, on April 19, 1990.
JAMES: I was waiting in Temple Adi Da, with a group of about thirty other retreatants. We were chanting, expecting the arrival of Beloved Adi Da at any moment. For many of us, this would be the last Darshan occasion of our retreat.
As we waited, the appointed hour came and passed with no word. A few priests came in and removed the items that had been brought out in expectation of Beloved Adi Da’s arrival. A quiet despair started to spread through the room, but then one of the priests ran in and shouted, “Hurry! Beloved Adi Da is already sitting on the steps of Indefinable! Run! Forget your meditation cushions!”
Mindlessly, we all leapt to our feet, ran out the door of the Temple and across the lawn to where our Beloved Guru was sitting, waiting for us. As I moved forward to offer a flower at His Feet, I could hear many of the other devotees breaking out into open sobs and weeping for joy. Beloved Adi Da was an open torrent of Divine Force and Presence.
I moved to a spot on the lawn a few yards back from the steps where Beloved Adi Da was Sitting. As I sat down, my mind and body quickly unwound in the face of His Transmission, and my last thought was “Oh, this is going to be a quiet, meditative occasion”. I noticed Beloved Adi Da’s toes wiggling, in a gesture of Transmission. Suddenly, I was thrown up to a visionary realm where Beloved was before me in the Form of Fire. A spontaneous prayer rose in my heart, “May I give You everything.” As soon as this prayer formed, I felt myself leaping into and merging with Avatar Adi Da in His Fire Form.
After some time, awareness of my body arose, and I felt like I was shouting at the top of my lungs but no sound was emerging. I noticed Beloved Adi Da’s Feet again, and once more, I suddenly found myself back in the visionary realm before His Fire, leaping ecstatically into the Flames.
This cycle repeated a number of times.
As awareness of where I was sitting returned, I noticed that almost everyone was shouting, or weeping, or having extremely exaggerated kriyas of one form or another. One man behind me was exclaiming his awakened recognition of Who was sitting before us, shouting over and over again, “You Are Da Kalki! You Are Da Kalki!” In the midst of all this mayhem, Beloved Adi Da sat quietly, like the eye of a tropical storm.
He seemed to be focused on the horizon, not particularly aware of or concerned with the drama unfolding at His Feet. He seemed to be doing His world-Work, whatever that was. And we, His devotee retreatants, were fortunate enough to be in the path of His Bliss-Regard, as It Poured through us and beyond.
Susan Isaacson, another devotee just completing her retreat, was also at this occasion. She had been struggling through the entire retreat to go beyond her emotionless quality and limit on devotional feeling:
SUSAN: I was one of the last ones to leave Temple Adi Da. While hurrying to Indefinable, I was filled with both apprehension and joy. I was overwhelmed by my own cold heart, and I felt a deep desire to be free of its clutches.
When I arrived at Indefinable, I was stopped short by the most beautiful sight of my entire life. Beloved Adi Da was simply sitting on the steps of the porch He did not even have a chair. He was looking down, and He was very, very Beautiful. We were only a few feet away from Him. By the time I got there, several of the women retreatants were already seated and weeping. I felt so extremely frustrated at being unable to be vulnerable enough to weep with devotion myself that I as bizarre and humorous as it may seem started acting as if I were weeping. Then somehow and I really cannot say how I was genuinely and intensely weeping. It definitely was not my doing. I had never felt such profound emotion. I found myself on my back gazing into the blue sky, and having deep breathing kriyas, a phenomenon I had always envied others for experiencing. My friends told me later that, as I let go of my control of everything, Beloved Adi Da looked over at me with a smile on His Face. Truly, He had swept me beyond self-doubt.
I sat back up as soon as I could, because I wanted to see Beloved Adi Da. By this time, almost everyone had come unhinged. Devotees were praising Beloved Adi Da as the Divine World-Teacher and as Da Kalki. We were being Drawn into a profound recognition of His Divinity, more than in previous Darshans. I started saying and feeling His Name “Da”, and this Mantra took me over. His Spiritual Force was coursing through my body and I became riveted to the spot.
I looked up at Him. The space where we sat with Him had become motionless and timeless. I felt Him as Fire and I was floating above and all around Him. He was Doing and Giving everything.
He Gave me these experiences, it seems to me, not for their own sake but to draw me out and help me feel past the incredible barricade of fear I had been so heavily identified with. Now I was finally able to feel my love for Him, and I was unbelievably happy.
At the end, Beloved Adi Da motioned for us to come up to the porch to receive Prasad. I had no idea how I was going to get myself from where I was on the ground to the porch steps, since I was still completely charged with His Spirit-Force my body and particularly my hands were literally twisted with this Blissful Force. But somehow I managed to crawl forward and bow before Beloved Adi Da. My hands, however, were still rigid claws, stiff with Force, and I was unable to open them to receive the Prasad. This was not a problem for Beloved Adi Da. He Compassionately opened my hands with His own, and Placed the Prasad in them. I backed off the porch and fell in a heap of gratitude on the lawn. I sat up finally to gaze again on the most beautiful sight in the universe, and then Beloved Adi Da stood up and moved back into Indefinable.
While on retreat in June 1990, Charles Seage, Avatar Adi Da’s personal physician, who had served Him since 1978, was overwhelmed by the depth at which He now recognized the Divinity of His beloved Guru.
CHARLES: A few days into my retreat, all the retreatants were invited to attend a formal Darshan occasion with Beloved Adi Da in the Darshan Hall known as Divine World-Teacher Mandir at the Matrix. This Hall is very intimate, and there were only about thirty-five of us in the room with Him.
At the end of the occasion, Beloved Adi Da reached over to dip His hands in the water bowl beside His Chair and sprinkled the water on the Prasad. Then He stood up and passed out the Prasad personally to each of us from His own Hands. I returned to my seat full of gratitude, but there was no sign of what was to occur next.
Beloved Adi Da finished distributing the Prasad and passed the bowl to Adidama Sukha Dham. Then He simply stood before us, His hands open and down at His sides a few inches from His body. Suddenly as I watched Him, it became unbelievably obvious that He is the Divine Person. The Vision He Granted me was astounding. He filled up the entire universe. For a moment, I closed my eyes and visualized His Form, as I usually do. Then that visualization disappeared and I felt Him become so immense and All-Pervading that it was as though I was seeing and feeling His Cosmic Form. I saw that the entire universe is His Form. It was clearly, tacitly the case. He is not limited to His bodily human Form.
The Power of that Vision was overwhelming, and I could not contain the Force of the Realization. Then I felt an incredible Force entering into me, and I let out a low-pitched scream such as I had never made before. I screamed several timesan animal sound, very loudthat seemed to come from deep in my lower body. Later, people told me it was like the sound someone might have made if they were falling off a cliff. The room had been quiet, but I could not contain myself. There was no intention involvedmy shout was just my spontaneous response to that totally overwhelming recognition of Beloved Adi Da in His Divinity.
After that, my hands filled up with energy of an extraordinary magnitude. Energy was pouring out of me. I became completely absorbed in Beloved Adi Da. After He left, I crawled to His Chair and bowed down in gratitude.
In the midst of this flood of ecstatic devotion, Avatar Adi Da continued to Reveal Himself. He Wrote in The Basket Of Tolerance:
I Am . . . the First and the Last, the every where, anciently and always, Promised (and Universally Expected) True God-Man of the “late-time” (or “dark” epoch). I Am, now and in all future time. . . . the Divine World-Teacher, the Divine Heart-Master of all My devotees (East and West). Therefore, My Life and Work and Person must be understood and appreciated in the context of the total (One and Great) Tradition of mankind, East and West. And even those who do not, in any then present time, become My devotees arenow, and forever hereafter, during and after (and forever after) the Avataric (physical) Lifetime of My bodily (human) Divine Form (here)always Divinely Blessed by Me to better understand and appreciate their own (possibly confessed) traditions, and even all “other” traditions, by rightly understanding and appreciating Me and the One and Great Tradition I Have Come here to Represent and to Complete and to Completely Fulfill.
Eventually, Avatar Adi Da came to feel that the associations of the name “Kalki” were too restricted, too specific to one particular religious tradition. He also commented that the typical portrayal of Kalki in political (and even aggressive) terms was not an accurate or appropriate description of His Incarnation. And so He indicated that “Da Kalki” should henceforth be regarded simply as one of His historical Names and not remain in general use.
Nevertheless, the period when Avatar Adi Da assumed this Name was a landmark in His devotees’ recognition of Him. What He was Revealing through His Darshan was beyond anything they could ever have imagined. They were recognizing that Avatar Adi Da Samraj is the Complete Revelation of the Divine Person.
The Divine Intervention
In February 1993, the next phase of Avatar Adi Da’s Self-Revelation unfolded. At this time, He was meeting frequently with devotees. In gathering after gathering, He found new ways to communicate to them the import of His Avataric Incarnation. On February 12, He spoke plainly of Himself as the Intervention of Very God into the human dimension, here to do His own unique, unprecedented Work.
The Great Process comes about when the Divine Intervenes, Appears, Incarnates, Blesses, Teaches the understanding and the transcending of ego, such that the direct Divine Blessing may be received and the Great Divine Yoga may be entered into. This is What I Do.
I am not merely advanced. I am not merely evolved. I Am the Very One. I Am the One you must Realize.
The seventh stage Awakening will be Accomplished by My Avatarically Self-Transmitted Divine Grace. It cannot be Accomplished otherwise. There is no “method” for Accomplishing It. It is entirely Given by Me. It cannot be Realized without My Avatarically Self-Transmitted Divine Blessing.
I am Telling you the Great Secret. It is not Revealed in any traditional books. It is unknown, apart from My Avatarically Given Divine Revelation of It. [Ruchira Avatara Hridaya-Siddha Yoga]
While Avatar Adi Da Samraj was speaking these Words, the Spiritual Transmission in the room was profound. As on countless previous occasions, He was doing what He was describing. In contrast to the night of “Guru Enters Devotee” in 1974, He was now speaking of the “Crashing Down” of His Divine Grace not only into the individual body-minds of His devotees but upon all beings and things.
When a person feels the Transmission of Avatar Adi Da Samraj, he or she knows it is unique and knows it is Divine. There is nothing “personal” or “local” about it. He or she realizes that it is a universal Spiritual and All-Pervading “Fact”. It is Him, in His Spiritual Form. This experience of His Spiritual Presence is how a person comes to know with intuitive certainty that Avatar Adi Da Samraj cannot be compared to anyone. He is not an ordinary man or even an extraordinary man. He is the Very Divine Intensity, Love-Blissful Pressure, Pervading and Surrounding and Touching all, Who happens to have taken a human Form as an Agent of necessary Communication with all beings. But His human Form is just a “satellite” of the One He Is.
Avatar Adi Da’s Great Self-Revelations continued into March. On March 6, 1993, He spoke of His unique Siddhis, or Powers, as the Divine Person. Now that He has brought these Siddhis into the human plane, He explained, it is possible, for the first time, for human beings to Realize the seventh and ultimate stage of life.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: I have brought Siddhis into all planes, into the entire Cosmic Mandala, that permit Most Perfect Divine Self-Realization, and I have thoroughly Communicated to you, in every detail, the Way of the seventh stage Realization. Now that that Great Way has been Given to all, it is possible for all, and your Divine Self-Realization is a matter of whether or not you will choose the Way of Truth and how profoundly you will practice It.
It is not only that My Revelation of the Wisdom-Teaching of the Way of Adidam, the seventh stage Teaching, is complete and for the first time Given. It is that the Siddhis of My Manifestation and My Work have made Divine Self-Realization possible. Those Siddhis will be eternally Effective. I may be resorted to eternally, and My Siddhis are eternally operative.
I have made the Way of Most Perfect Divine Self-Realization possible. That Work having been Done, the Siddhis of that Accomplishment having been established, there need not be any other seventh stage Adept. There cannot be another. The Work has been Done. Now there can be seventh stage Realizers, but there cannot be another seventh stage Adept. There need only be one such Revealer, full of the Siddhis to Accomplish the Work that makes such Realization possible.
And That One is the Divine Person, because the seventh stage Realization is the Realization of the Divine Person. Only That One can Make such Revelation and Accomplish such Work.
DINA LAUTMAN: Beloved, before Your Incarnation, these Siddhis were not possible?
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: They did not exist. To Manifest the Siddhis and to Do the Work, to Accomplish the Work that is universally effective, I needed to be entered into the conditional planes by actual entrance into the Cosmic Mandala altogether, completely.
GERALD SHEINFELD: Beloved, Your Perfect Manifestation Wholly Incarnated, with all the Siddhis that are present because of Your Incarnation is the greatest Advantage that beings could ever have, because everything is complete. We have been Given everything.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Most of what I have Done will not be noticed or seriously addressed in My physical Lifetime. But it is not necessary that it all be noticed, either. What has been necessary all along is that I Do the Work. Therefore, I have conducted Myself so as to Accomplish My Work. And, in all its fundamental details, it has been Done.
JONATHAN CONDIT: You have already Told us tonight that Your human Manifestation was required for Your Siddhis to come into action in this realm. Nevertheless, it seems obvious that Your Divine Influence was felt in the world even before Your Birth.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: People have been seeking Me. Therefore, I Came. I Answered the prayers, and here I Am.
You all must get it. All My devotees must get it. You cannot comprehend most of what I Do. My Concentration, as I told you tonightand before, alsohas been to simply Accomplish My Work, because That had to be Accomplished, regardless of your disinclination, your immaturity and mediocrity. Now it is Accomplished. Now that Work is Done.
You, My devotees, must embrace My Revelation and get down to your business. Tell the truth. Be compassionate. Be truthful but straightforward and loving. I am not here to struggle with anyone now especially, in the extremes of My Lifetime and Work.
Now that My Work is Done, I must simply Confess My Self to you As I Am. So I am Doing it. [March 6, 1993]
In the midst of these profound Revelations about His Divine Nature, Avatar Adi Da was also addressing the matter of His devotees’ practice of the foundations of the Way of Adidam the listening-hearing sadhana. Starting at the end of March and continuing through the first week of April, Avatar Adi Da Samraj confronted the pattern of “Narcissus” in His devotees with overwhelming force:
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: You want Me to talk about your trying to work your life out. Life does not work out! It cannot work out! That is not the Way of Adidam! The Way of Adidam is about ego transcendence, transcending the very thing that seeks to make it all work out! You are wanting Me to address you in this act that you are making to have everything be hunky-dory. And the whole damn thing doesn’t even exist! And that’s what there is to Realize! Absolute Freedom from this illusion that you call “reality” and are trying to make work out perfectly. You are only looking at yourself! That’s all you are ever looking at! And you want it to work out, “Narcissus”. You are looking at all this and you are calling it “the world”but it is you!
All you ever talk about, think about, or perceive is you. It is a private, egoically “self-possessed” illusion. It is a result of your own knot of separateness, and it registers in this poor little slug of a body-mind you identify with as all kinds of illusions, hallucinations, thoughts, presumptions, ideas, perceptions. The whole lot, the whole ball of wax, is all the result of your own separate position, your own point of view, self-contraction, manufacturing illusions on the base of That Which Is Reality Itself. But you have no idea what that Reality is. No notion. You are not associated with Reality Itself, you are dissociated from Reality. That is the whole point!
Well, that being the case, that is what you have to deal with! But you want to persist in your adoration of the “pond”your experience, your search, and so forthand you are asking Me how to make it work out. I do not have anything to do with the “making-it-work-out” business. I am here to Wake you up! [April 2, 1993]
Avatar Adi Da Samraj cut through every attempt on the part of His devotees to defend themselves from His Criticism. He was tremendously intensifying His devotees’ sensitivity to the knot of self-contraction, to the point where that cramp would become so present, so obvious, so unbearable, so unnecessary, so absurd that they would spontaneously let it go. Late in the night during what turned out to be the culminating gathering of this period, on April 8, 1993, Adi Da brought devotees to that intolerable point. There was a pause while His Radiant Force magnified in the room, melting the clench of “Narcissus”. Then He began to speak differently, quietly:
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Feel into that knot of stress. Feel into it and account for it. See it as your own action. Regard Me in that moment, in every moment. And then you begin to feel Me. Then the surrender comes, the self-forgetting comes, the native sense of Non-Separateness is felt. This is actually what I am Calling you to do! Actually to do that. Just to be doing it grants equanimity to you, even bodily, grants equanimity to your speech, your actions, your feelings, because you are registering this depth-point and going beyond it and feeling Me. This is the context of practice of the Way of Adidam, not merely outer observances. This is what it means to listen to Me: to be examining this point of contraction in depth, to feel it, and by its unfolding to feel Me. This is not the end of the Way of Adidam. It is the foundation of it. Self-understanding and devotion at depth this is what you must do in every moment. This is what it is to practice the Way of Adidam.
You are basically trying to feel good. Why would you be trying to feel good if you were not already feeling bad? You must understand that, Natively, you always already feel good. But not the way you are doing it. You are not in the Native Position. You are in the position of the self-contraction. If you would Stand Prior to the self-contraction and feel beyond it, you would always already feel good in the most profound heart-sense. It would not make any great difference how the rest of the body-mind felt, because the body-mind is part of the conditional world and is always subject to negative changes and disintegration and death. But when you are in the heart-place, you are Awake. You always already feel good. Always! Already! [April 8, 1993]
By this gathering, many devotees found that they could not snap back as easily as before into a state of immunity to their own act of self-contraction. The heartless machine of the ego was too starkly revealed. There was no lasting relief to be found through any kind of seeking for satisfaction. In His Masterful Revelation, throughout that previous year, of the desperate state of bondage to the self-contraction, Adi Da Samraj had begun to Magnify in His devotees the need for devotion to Him, the conviction that He is, truly, the only Help. Everything He had said about the necessity for Ruchira Avatara Bhakti Yoga was starting to prove itself. And the Gift was before their eyes, whenever they looked up from the “pond” and beheld Him in the Radiant Truth of His Being.