Beezone

The Shakti

Secluded in a corner of downtown Hollywood, hugging the
freeway, is an unexpected haven created by the Vedanta
Society of southern California. At the top of a flight of
redbrick steps stands a white stuccoed temple dedicated to
the nineteenth-century Indian saint Ramakrishna. Domed in
oriental style and flanked by trees and a small garden, the
whole complex has a modest, harmonious quality that brings
relief from the ungainly sprawl of the surrounding streets
and the roar of the freeway. The,temple is freely available
to anyone who wishes to pause there for a time of quiet or
meditation.

It was in this simple temple, on September 10, 1970, at
approximately four o’clock in,jhe afternoon, that Da Kalki,
then` “Franklin Jones”, Re-Awakened to His, Native Condition
permanently, He wrote of this momen in His Spiritual
autobiography, The Knee of Listening:

Suddenly, I became profoundly and directly aware of
what I am’.. It was a tacit realization, a direct knowledge
in consciousness itself. It was consciousness itself without
the addition o f a communication from any other source. I
simply sat there and knew what I am. I was being what I am.
I am Reality, the Self and Nature and support of alt things
and all beings. I am the one Being, known as God, Brahman,
Atman, the One, Siva, the Self.

(The
Knee of Listening)

In September of this year at the Feast of Aham Da Asmi
(“I Am Da”), Free Daists joyfully Celebrate the twentieth
anniversary of the “Vedanta Temple Event” – the Re Awakening
of Da Kalki to the “Bright” Divine Condition in Which and as
Which He consciously took Birth.

At the same time, we are commemorating another aspect of
the Vedanta Temple Event, a Prelude inseparably related to
it, which occurred, also in the Temple, on the previous day.
In a Blissful, Invisible Embrace exceeding all metaphors of
sexual union, Da Kalki Mastered the Mother Shakti (the
Universal Energy and Source of all forms), Who submitted
Herself to Him as His Eternal Consort and the Grace-Giving
Power for His Teaching Work that was about to begin.

This two fold Event – the submission of the Shakti to
Heart-Master Da Love-Ananda and His Perfect Realization of
His own Prior State – took place not only in the domain
of Consciousness but in human time. That is the point.
As the years pass it is inevitable that more and more people
will come to recognize the Vedanta Temple Event as a turning
point in Cosmic history. Already, twenty years later, as Da
Kalki is openly, Revealing the Scope of His-Liberating Work
as The Divine World Teacher, we can more fully appreciate
what the Vedanta Temple Event portended for all humanity. On
the great occasion of this Anniversary, we humbly offer this
tribute to our Beloved Sat-Guru, Da Lov-Ananda Hridayam, in
praise of His All-Sufficient Awakening Power

The Goddess in Her myriad forms is the Energy and
Life-Force of the universe. This Force has been worshipped
by human beings from beginningless time as the “Woman-Power”
or “Mother-Power” of existence, the Creative Energy or
“Shakti” (to use a common Sanskrit term) that births,
sustains – and also destroys – all forms. The Goddess,
therefore, has two sides. She is experienced in benign ways
(as, for example, the preserver of fertility), and also in
dangerous and terrible shapes, as when the Hindu Goddess
Kali is represented as a ghastly murderess and devourer of
her children, with blood dripping from her fanged teeth.

The Goddess also stands for the bewitching power of
sexuality, as in the legend of the Lorelei maiden by the
river Rhine, who lures hapless sailors to shipwreck and
death with her singing.

In the Indian traditions, the Goddess Force is typically
regarded as “maya”, the power of illusion that holds all
beings in thrall to the pleasures of the (apparently)
material world and prevents their Enlightenment. This
negative view of the Goddess Power is the origin of
religious strategies of asceticism – the refusal to
associate with the Shakti for fear of being seduced and
turned away from a higher “Spiritual” destiny.

The Tantric traditions, on the other hand, regard the
Shakti in a more positive light, as a force that may be
channeled for the work of Enlightenment when the aspirant
has attained self-mastery. In the highest expression of
Tantra, the Goddess assumes the role of Supreme Liberator
from the very forces of illusion with which She is commonly
identified.

But while the liberating function of the Goddess-Power
has been traditionally acknowledged, the modern revival of
interest in the Goddess generally fails to take into account
that fundamentally the Goddess is energy, “maya” – a tide of
experience and stimulation, that ebbs and flows but brings
no lasting peace.

We are all by tendency slaves of the Goddess. Only in the
circumstance of true Spiritual practice based on the
conscious sacrifice of one’s whole being in God (rather than
reactive self-suppression) is the Revelation Given of the
highest Nature of the Shakti. Otherwise all of life,
including esoteric religion, is one long indulgence in the
“delights” of conditional existence, physical, mental, and
mystical.

This is the message of the Sadhana of Da Kalki, or
“Franklin Jones”, as He was then known. It was a Lesson
lived out in our own time, addressing us as contemporary
Westerners most directly, but also, miraculously,
summarizing and transcending the entire “great search” of
humanity. This story, then, of “Franklin’s” Play with the
Shakti and its momentous outcome, is the most important
story to which anyone who is looking for the key to higher
human transformation and a “New Age” for mankind can
turn.

When Da Kalki Speaks of the Goddess, He Speaks in the
most profound paradoxes of One Whom He has found to be
inseparable from the Very Divine, and Who is His own Nature.
But He also Speaks of Her as a Living Personality far
Greater than any of the culturally conditioned forms through
which the Goddess has been represented traditionally. He has
explained the meaning of the Shakti in His Life as
follows:

The inherent Radiance of the Divine Being, the
Condition in Which all apparent beings are arising – to call
that Radiance the Goddess is just a way of particularizing
It for the sake of “consideration”, To the ordinary Western
point of view, it is acceptable to talk about some insight
about one’s hand, but it is not acceptable to talk about
seeing the inherent Radiance of the Divine manifested
tangibly as a Woman Guiding one in one’s sadhana. Science
would not discuss such things!

My relationship to ihis tangible Presence – tangible
down to the last eyelash – was summarized in the Vedanta
Temple and Divine Self-Realization. (March 16,
1988).

Energy Versus Consciousness: The
“Problem” of “Franklin’s” Sadhana

The Life of Da Kalki is what in India is called a
“Rahasya”, or sacred Mystery. It transcends anything we can
ever say about it. His Life has been, as He Says, “an
adventure and unfolding in the ‘Bright” – the Radiance and
Bliss and Love of the God State that He also describes as
the Divine Shakti. In this sense He was never
“unEnlightened”, never an ordinary man, But in early
childhood He submitted Himself to an apparent “forgetting”
of His Inherent Nature for the sake of working out in a
human body-mind the full process of

Divine Self-Realization for others. There was no human
forethought in this. It was a spontaneous movement of
Compassion arising in a Divine Intention formed Prior to His
Birth.

And so from the age of two to thirty years, Da Kalki, as
“Franklin Jones”, passed through an immensely difficult
human and Spiritual trial in which He suffered all the
limits, doubts, and struggles of an ordinary human being.
Nevertheless, below consciousness He was always being led by
the “Bright”, responding to what He later called a “fierce,
mysterious impulse” at the heart of His Being. Driven by
this hidden Grace, Franklin submitted to the Unknown and
lived His unique Ordeal (fully described in His
autobiography, The Knee o f Listening) without any prior
knowledge of what it was about or how it would turn out.

On the one hand He was engaged in a profound Play with
the Shakti as Energy, while on the other He was absorbed in
the deepest questions about Truth and Reality. And so there
is an intriguing double strand, a play of opposites, shaping
His entire Sadhana, And these opposites, which He calls at
times by different names—Energy and Awareness, or the
Shakti and Conscibusness, or the “Light” and the
“Heart”–were always

intimately connected.

A Passionate Searc

and a Crisis in

Consciousness

As a youth disillusioned with convent religion and
philosophy, Franklin threN Himself into the “maya” of
low-life N( York, convinced that if He submitted self to
exhaustive experience God wou eventually be Revealed. At the
same ti He was involved in an academic searcl Columbia
College, trying to discover through the. works of the great
Westez thinkers what Consciousness is.

Illumination came after more than years of living at’ an
intense pitch of see ing. One night as He sat at His desk,
fe( that He had exhausted the possibilities experience,
Franklin was overtaken by sis in consciousness, He suddenly
obser His whole search. in summary form anc

saw it as an endless, fruitless drama of c tradictions,
And at the very moment th He surrendered to this intuition,
a vast, ecstatic energy rose in His body and poi through Him
in waves, forcing Him to His room and run through the city
stres

transported with joy.

This crisis was epoch-making for Franklin. It was not a
permanent Realization of Truth, but it left Him certain that
Consciousness or Reality was unqualified, untouched by the
vagaries of events, and that the Truth would stand out as
Itself when all contradictions and conflicts were removed.
He also saw that He lacked nothing, that Freedom and
Happiness are already the Native State of a human being, and
that the search for happiness is utterly unnecessary.

This breakthrough in understanding was obviously not
arbitrary. A very remarkable play with the Shakti force had
led up to it and coincided with it. In embracing the
maelstrom of danger and pleasure offered in New York,
Franklin was actually confronting the Goddess-Power in Her
most destructive and deluding aspects—and proving His,
future capacity to Master Her.

In terms of His sheer ability,to “eat” experience without
being.; destroyed by it or deflected in His goal, and even
to use the energy of it to quicken his Spiritual progress,
Franklin did something quite unique. He had no tradition, no
living Guru, no training for such a Sadhananothing (of which
He was aware) to guide and protect Him. His years running
the gamut of experience in New York, and the profound crises
of illumination and release that followed, are not
explicable in ordinary human terms. He had begun by yielding
Himself without prejudice to the chaos of life-experience in
order to find God, and had in return been Given an
extraordinary bodily revelation of the advanced Samadhi He
(now) calls “Cosmic Consciousness”, and even a momentary
glimpse of Divine SelfRealization. He had already intuited
the Lesson of His entire Sadhana. As He Wrote in The Knee of
Listening:

I knew that my own path o f life and the meaning o f all
life was in this process o f SivaShakti, the endless
unfolding and return of consciousness, energy, and
experience, and its consistent foundation in the pure
infinity of unqualified, transcendent being. (New Standard
Edition forthcoming)

1.There may be a traditional parallel in the Tantric
Masters and “Crazy-Wise’ Adepts, (see p. 18, note 5) who, in
their Enlightened Freedom (or as an expression of the
freedom o the Enlightened State to which they, or their
students, aspired), used or permitted the tradi tional
forbidden substances.. But Franklin’s Heroism in the
face-to-face encountct ith human suffering, exploitation,
and indulgence far exceeded any traditional model of
self-mastery relative to the play of Shakti.

A Yogic Relationship

-to the Shakti

When Franklin met His American Teacher, Rudi (Swami
Rudrananda), in New York in 1964, He entered into a crucial
new phase in His Play with the Shakti. Although He had had
kundalini experiences since childhood (and dramatically so
in the event in college referred to previously), it was only
after becoming a student

of Rudi that Franklin began to practice the conscious
reception and “conductivity” of this esoteric current of
bodily energy. With Rudi He began to relate to the
GoddessPower as a tangible force that stood outside Him and
that He felt emanating from His Teacher.

This marked the beginning of Franklin’s Yogic
relationship to the Shakti, a process that continued to
deepen after He left Rudi and made His way to the Ashram of
Swami Muktananda (one of Rudi’s Indian Teachers) in 1968.
His Sadhana with Rudi was so effective that it provided a
foundation in which the Spiritual transmission given by
Swami Muktananda and others2 could achieve dramatn,,,,

y –

is effect. in a very brief period. After only a ” few
days in Swami Muktananda’s company, Franklin entered
spontaneously into fifth stage conditional Nirvikalpa
Samadhi (the highest Yogic Realization),

The “formless ecstasy” of this c Samadhi left Franklin
with the prob mind-how to be free of the consta stream of
distractions and obsession obscured the Pure Bliss of
Conscious that He had known at moments in life. In an
attempt to tame the ways mind, He now turned to a systemat
study of our mental conditioning, a of intense, concentrated
effort that suddenly, just as His search in colle€ ended,
with a bodily liberation frorrr whole problem. One day, in a
relaxe unguarded moment, He felt a free it

of the Shakti, “taking the mind and

reasons =with it”.

Now;tl e Shakti became so perva presence in Him that
others began to Franklin found Himself drawn into a ing role
and becoming a spontaneous mitter of Yogic Shaktipat to His
intin He knew that it was time to return tc Swami Muktananda
for further Instrr, and Blessing.

2. Franklin also received the Spiritual Influence Swami
Nityananda (who was no longer in the at this time, and,
briefly but potently, of Rang dhoot, an Indian Adept
visiting Swami Mukta Ashram.

14/The Free Daist

When He returned to Ganeshpuri o n this occasion, He
encountered the kundalini phenomena that usually precede,
rather than follow, the attainment of fifth stage
conditional Nirvikalpa Samadhi.-Bu Franklin’s Sadhana was
not conventional, It was utterly comprehensive (for the sake
of preparing Him to Teach), but it had its own mysterious
logic. Now Franklin found Himself manifesting all at once
the various unfolding signs of Swami Muktananda’s Siddha
Yoga. He went through the purifying physical signs-such as
kriyas, swoon

l

ing, and growling-and also the subtle internal
phenomena-such as lights, sounds, visions, and transports to
other worlds-that may occur in the course of Yogic ascent
through the subtle energy centers, or chakras.

Having submitted to this whole display, Franklin clearly
saw its limitations. To Him it had become a kind of circus.
He began. to notice that immersion in these phenomena did
not bring Happiness or understanding but, frequently, an
increased feeling of self-obsession and “self-possession” in
those who were so involved. He recognized that the Shakti
was demonstrating another lesson.

As the days passed and my experiences increased, I felt
more and more as i f I had entered someone else’s
wonderland. Baba [Swami Muktananda] is a Siddha, an
accomplished yogi with all o f the various miraculous
powers• indicated in the Scriptures. Even he, like
myself, was given these things as d gift by his Guru. And
all of these things at last were given by the Shakti
herself, the Divine Mother. My experiences did not depend on
me. Baba’s experience did not depend on him. We were all
gratuitously accepted into the court o f the Goddess,
Shakti. The universe and all experiences were her game, and
I was simply/being allowed to see this game, not in order to
acquire powers or status, but to recognize the source o f
all things and so remain free o f all seeking.

(The Knee of Listening, New Standard
Edition-forthcoming)

Thus, the Play of energy in His-Yogic

Sadhana served to sensitize Franklin to the most subtle,
binding levels of the Goddess’s activity and brought Him to
question more and more the need for the Yogic search fueled
by the Kundalini Shakti. He remained intuitively convinced
that the direct enjoyment of present Consciousness was
senior to any experience or Realization produced by the
Goddess-Power in the chakra system. But this esoteric system
obviously existed, and so the urge to engage it seemed
unavoidable.

Months later, back in New York, Franklin passed through
an experience that settled this apparent paradox once and
for all. This experiepce, took the form of sharp pains in
His head that went on for several nights, as if He were
undergoing brain surgery When the pains passed, Franklin
suddenly realized that a revolution had occurred in His
being. Astonishingly, there was no more flow of polarized
energy moving up and down the spine. The sahasrar, the
terminal chakra at th?crown of the head, had been “severed”,
and the entire Yogic energy system of which it is the
pinnacle had fallen away.

The chakra system had been revealed as unnecessary, an
arbitrary rule or setting for the play o f energy…. Now I
saw that real Cansciousness was not in the least determined
by any kind of form apart from itself. (The Knee of
Listening, New Standard Edition-forthcoming)

Once again it was through an intense bodily experience
that a profound truth of Consciousness was Revealed to
Franklin and established in Him beyond doubt. His Sadhana
was demonstrating all along what the Goddess tradition has
always pointed to-the need for the grounding of the highest
Spiritual understanding in real experience, the bodily
confession of Truth rather than the abstractions of the
“talking schools”.

Not surprisingly, this dramatic end to Franklin’s Yogic
relationship to the Shakti ushered in the final phase of His
Sadhana, which was destined to be even more remarkable than
anything that had previ

ously occurred.

The Shakti as Guru

By May 1970, Franklin had spent a nine-month period in a
loft in New York, involved in intense meditation and
writing. It seemed that His monumental search was over. He
now lived on the basis of a “radical” understanding that
presumed no problem

at any level of awareness. But, intent as He was in the
profound Contemplation of Consciousness, Franklin was
increasingly disturbed by the psychic energy of New York and
the violence of the daily news. He was no longer moved to
remain in America, and so He prepared to leave the country
with two of His earliest devotees to begin a renunciate life
in India at the Ashram of Swami Muktananda, where He’hoped
to live quietly in His chosen manner. He had no idea of what
was about to happen.

The first weeks at the Ashram were uneventful. Franklin
and His companions simply followed the Ashram form, and He
meditated daily at the nearby burial shrine of Swami
Nityananda (Swami Muktananda’s Guru). Then, one day, as He
was weeding in the Ashram garden,

“Franklin became suddenly aware of a subtle form and
turned around to behold the

. invierble but unmistakable presence of the

;Virgin Mary! His first response, He tells

us, was “huge laughter”. He had long ago,

He thought, passed beyond any conscious

or unconscious attachment to Christiani

ty, and such a visitation in the middle of

an Indian Ashram seemed totally absurd.

It is a remarkable testimony of His

surrender to the mysterious Process occur

ring in Him, that Franklin quickly

responded to the Virgin in a devotional manner, obeying
Her instructions to buy a rosary and use it to practice the
“Hail Mary”. Within a couple of weeks, She required Him to
leave the Ashram an India altogether and begin a pilgrimage
through the Christian holy sites of Europe.

Franklin was now intuitively convinced that the Virgin
was a manifestation of the universal Shakti. After all the
years of guid

ing Him hiddenly through the labyrinth of

Her lesser forms, the Goddess was now revealing Herself
as a Divine Personality. Franklin felt His intuition
confirmed by Swami Nityananda, who instructed Him on a
subtle level to submit to the Goddess as His only. Guru. And
so Franklin rn4de a sacramental act of submission to Her, in
the form of the goddess Durga at a shrine near

11*

the Ashram, and set off on His Christian pilgrimage under
Her guidance.

These extraordinary events show once again how Franklin’s
Sadhana was nonlinear and significant in far more than just
a personal way-not to mention downright humorous! While, on
the one hand, Franklin was increasingly abiding in a state
of pristine awareness, free of seeking, He was also actively
involved in a devotional relationship with the Divine
Goddess, often felt and seen as a living Woman!

Through His Christian pilgrimage and the many psychic and
visionary signs attending it, the last traces of karmic
attachment to Christianity were purified in Franklin, not
merely from His present lifetime but to an ancient depth.
Here again the Goddess was leading Him through events of
insight and release that were archetypal in their
significance, Given for the sake of all humanity, and
especially, in this case, for the Christian West.

By the end of His European tour, the Shakti was no longer
appearing in visionary form. He felt Her more and more as
the Liberating Power that was resolving all energies and
visions in the Heart, the depth of Consciousness. He could
now confess that “the-Shakti that manifests as my life is
not different from reaglity”. °

In August 1970, Franklin returned to America, strangely
impelled to settle in

Los Angeles, a place He had no natural inclination to
live in. In an unpublished diary entry. written a few weeks
before the Vedanta Temple Event, Franklin describes an
incident that illustrates how far He had transcended the
most subtle movements of differentiation and desire that are
the-basic mechanisms of our ordinary awareness:

In the last couple o f days …1 turned to a woman
companion while driving my car, and I became peculiarly
aware o f the absence o f desire in me. It was not merely
that I did not desire this woman … it was that this woman
was void of any objective distinction. There was no process
of discrimination, comparison or separation going on already
and automatically in me…. I had turned to look at what is
otherwise a person, a meaning. and

a distinctly meaningful presence, but there was in fact
none o f this. Indeed, there was not a single modification
of my awareness created as a result of this perception.
There was only unqualified bliss, the fullness, of real
conscious

This experience was more than a momentary glimpse of
Reality; Franklin realized that it was becoming His common
state of awareness. The culmination of His Sadhana was at
hand.

The Free Daist/15

S

ness. (August 3, 1970).

The Wedding of

Siva and Shako

One day in late August, having spent some time in the
Vedanta Society bookstore, Franklin was prompted to go into
the adjacent temple for a few moments. Immediately upon
sitting down, He felt a powerful rush of energy in His body
and recognized the characteristic Presence of the Mother
Shakti as strongly as He ever had in India. The Divine
Goddess-Power that He already intuited as non-different
from

Reality was still in dynamic relationship to Him, Under
Her Influence, He fell into deep meditation.

In the days that followed, Franklin visited the temple
often to meditate in the Bliss of Her Company, until there
came a point where He felt a limit in having to come and
find Her there. He begged Her to abide with Him with that
same intensity wherever He might be, and She Graciously
complied. For some days He felt Her everywhere, tangibly
Present within and around Him.

But then, one day, in response to a sense that there
remained a constraint in His relationship to the Shakti,
Franklin returned to the temple again, and a Process
unfolded that is without peer’in the annals of Spiritual
Mastery and Realization:

I began to go to the temple again almost daily. The next
day the Shakti appeared in a way that at first was difficult
to allow. As I meditated, I felt myself take on the form o f
Siv

the.Divine Being prior to all form.. I took on th,

infinite (pervasive, or formless) form o f the oril

final Deity, as 1 had done previously in Baba’s

[Swami Muktananda’s] Presence. I sat in thi

blissful state o f in f nite Being for some time.

Then I felt the Shakti appear against in own form. She
embraced me, and we grasped one another in Divine (and
motionless, and spontaneously Yogic) “sexual union”. We
clasped one another (thus) in a fire of cosmic desire, as i
f to give birth to the universes. The I felt the oneness,
,of the Divine Energy and m own Being There’Was no
separation at all. 7 one Being that was my own nature
included the reality that is consciousness and the reali
that is all manifestation as a single cosmic unity and
eternal union.

The sensations o f the embrace were over whelmingly
blissful, It exceeded any kind of pleasure that a man could
acquire. And soon ceased to feel myself as alfependent child
o f the Shakti. I accepted Her as my consort, my loved-One,
and I held Her forever to my hear (The Knee of Listening New
Standard Edition forthcoming)

46/The Free Daist

On the following day, when He visited the Vedanta Temple
again, Franklin found that every trace of duality in His
awareness had dissolved. The Inherent Oneness of Awareness
and Energy (or Consciousness and the Shakti) that -Franklin
had already intuited in the final stages of His Sadhana was
now His irrevocable Realization.

In 1988, Da Kalki Gave the following clarification of the
whole Event.

The Event o f My Re Awakening in the Vedanta Temple was
not sexual in any conventional or vulgar sense. In The Knee
of Listening I describe it as an Event o f extraordinary
size, as an experience. It is not a physical sexual
experience, nor can it be reduced to a

visionary experience o f a subtle kind.

The event o f My so-called sexual union in the Vedanta
Temple was not an instance o f My submitting to a visionary
female. It was the Ultimate, Divine Union of Awareness and
Energy. And it was not the final Vedanta Temple Event. It
occurred on jhe da e fore the final day. But it was a
necessltry preliminary to the – Ultithate Event. In the
so-called sexual event, the Supreme Ultimacy o f
Consciousness was,

Revealed, Transcending all dualities, including the
dualism o fAwareness and Energy,

I have used the term “sexual Anion” in that context,
because there was something o f the dynamic of sexuality at
the beginning of the experience. But the Energy itself was
Revelatory, formless, and Transparent. It was not about
visions and other phenomena of the

subtle dimension of existence. It was a tacit
feeling-energy, like the movement into fifth stage
conditional Nirvikal pa Samadhi. There was a physical
component o f a Yogic kind, which could be called sexual in
the sense that, at the beginning o f the event, I became
aware

o f the body in relationship to the Yogic Force, or
Shakti, or Goddess-Power, and I felt bodily pressed to the
Yogic Force, or Goddess-Power. The Shakti-Power was felt
pressed to the frontal line, and, in some sense, it ra the
frontal line. The frontal line was also Its vehicle, In that
Union, there was also profound Yogic “conductivity” upward
in the spinal line.

Now, this experience could be called sexual in the most
profound Yogic sense, but there was only the most
rudimentary physical awareness, which lasted only
momentarily and which was quickly replaced by the Bliss
of

Inherent Union, Transcending body and mind,

The sexual reference metaphorically indicates that a
Yogic process occurred o f the fullest kind, and it was a
motionless event. In the terms o f the sexual metaphor,
which may be continued, it was like the static “Mithuna”.3
It was essentially a transparent event. My own

3. A technical Tantric term indicating ritual sexual
union.

body became transparent and immediately unaware o f the
event itself I was not having visions o f a Dakini in a
subtle environment, but I was fully aware o f the Divine
Person as Shakti, Transparent and Complete.

When people write or talk about My Report o f this
incident that preceded the final day o f the Event in the
Vedanta Temple, they should include this kind o f
“consideration” that I am bringing to you now so that
everyone may understand what I am talking about and have

no misunderstanding about it,

Fundamentally, the Event in the Vedanta Temple is the
Union of Siva and Shakti, which is otherwise described in
the Yogic traditions, and it was followed on the final day,
September 10, 1970, at around four o’clock in the afternoon,
by Divine Self Realization, Which Transcends even That Grand
Pairing.

(September 11, 1988)

Traditional

Prefigurings of the

Goddess Husbanded

What was unique about this Union, this “Husbanding” as Da
Kalki later refers to its

Certainly the image of the union of the Divine “Father”
and “Mother” Power has long existed at the level of myth in
the human psyche. In primitive earth-based religion, the
sacred pairing of male and female deities is the auspicious
means by which life in the terrestrial world is blessed to
continue and be fruitful.

In higher religions, such as ancient Vedic tradition, the
Gods and God-Men also had their consorts-Siva-Parvati,

Rama-Sita, Krishna-Radha, and so on, esoterically
interpreted as “Purusha”, the Formless Source of Being, and
“Prakriti”, the Dynamic Principle that animates and modifies
Purusha in the form of the manifest worlds. In the highest
non-dualistic philosophy of India, Purusha and Prakriti are
declared to be One, to be Brahman Itself. This is the
Realization to which the Upanishads point and to which the
vari

ous practices of Yoga, Vedanta and Tantra aspire, each in
their different ways.

But there is nothing described in the literature of any
of these traditions that remotely parallels what occurred in
the Vedanta Temple as a living Event. The closest
intimations of it (as Da Kalki indicates) lie in the ritual
sexual union of Tantra (either visualized or literally
performed) engaged between a male practitioner and his
female partner, which are intended to lead the aspirants
beyond the

physical act of union to the Realization of the
Transcendental Source in which all polarities and
differences are dissolved.

Tantric practices are techniques by which individuals
have traditionally sought to attain Enlightenment.
Ultimately they have nothing to do, except symbol

ically, with what Da Kalki describes as His Husbanding of
the Goddess. He was not uniting with a yogini or some female
deity in subtle shape. He was Embracing the Goddess Herself,
the primal Energy of existence in personal Form, and
receiving Her Love-Submission at every level of
Consciousness, from the physical to the Divine. As we have
observed at every stage, the archetypal revelations of Da
Kalki’s Sadhana had all been Worked in

Him bodily-and this was the culmination of them all.

In an early commentary on The Knee of Listening. Da Kalki
Speaks of the days leading up to the Great Union as a period
of Cosmic Yoga in His relationship to the Shakti. He
describes a profound turnabout occurring in His being, in
which He was no longer a personal ego responding to the
Mother-Power as a devotee. He had Identified with
Consciousness, the Heart of Reality, to the extent that He
spontaneously stood as Siva in relation to Her. And the
Goddess, who, as Guru, had led Him to the recognition of His
own Self

Nature, now submitted to Him as Her Divine Consort and
Husband. In that submission every trace of otherness
dissolved. She continued simply as the Bliss of
Consciousness, which was “Franklin’? own Being, Perfectly
Awake.

An extraordinary description of the Enlightening Power of
the submitted Shakti occurs in an ancient Advaitic text
known as Yoga Vasishtha. It is paraphrased by Da Kalki at
the beginning of His liturgical drama, The Mummery:

0 Rama, this Maya is such that she confers Happiness by
her own extinction. Her real nature is not perceived’ and
known while she lives, but when she- is embraced for the
sake o f the Truth o f her, she dies.

In Indian iconography the Goddess is often depicted in
ecstatic sexual embrace with Siva, but also, quite
frequently, dancing on His body or treating Him as Her
footstool. This is a surprising image to the uninitiated,
suggesting the subjugation of Siva by the wild Goddess, But,
esoterically understood, these images are simply a live

ly way of expressing the ancient insight that Siva is the
moveless foundation and support of Shakti, and She is the
life and

energy that flows from Him,

Aside from such traditional sources

that treat of the Siva-Shakti relationship in symbolic
terms, it is interesting to examine how individual Adepts of
recent times have related to the Goddess. Ramakrishna and
his renowned disciple Vivekananda, both of whom are honored
in the shrine at the Vedanta Temple, had a strong devotional
and visionary relationship to the Mother Shakti.
Ramakrishna, in particular, is famous for his surpassing
devotion to the Mother, Whom he constantly saw and felt and
spoke with as a living Woman.

But his relationship with Her always remained that of the
adoring, trusting child and devotee, as Da Kalki has pointed
out, This quality is also apparent in Ramakrishna’s
relationship to his wife, Sarada Devi, whom He revered as a
living

form of the Divine Mother (even performing Puja on her on
one occasion). Ramakrishna always treated Sarada Devi as a
Spiritual sister. His celibate vows and ascetic disposition
did not allow him to .truly husband his wife, just as he was
not temperamentally capable of approaching the Shakti in an
heroic, masculine manner,

Swami Vivekananda was also an ardent devotee of the
Goddess, but, as Da Kalki remarks, he was a different kind
of character, still celibate but naturally forceful in a
masculine way. Da Kalki has hinted that Vivekananda’s,
sadhana could conceivably have matured-to the point of
mastering the Goddess had he not been constrained by the
demands of his mission in the West and the social milieu
that went with it.

/

The Vedanta Temple Event &as, a

unique moment, prepared and prefigured in mysterious ways
that we have only the

slightest conception of. The Husbanding of the Shakti was
a Divine and human Event that Empowered not only the
ReAwakening of Heart-Master Da LoveAnanda but the potential
Liberation of every being that submits to Him as Guru. That
Event made Him the “Param Guru”, or “Supreme Guru” of ‘His
own lineage of Gurus and even of the entire Great Tradition
of human Spiritual endeavor. And this because the
traditional Spiritual problem of energy versus consciousness
and the deluding, distracting aspects of the Shakti have
literally been resolved and transformed in His Living Being.
As He once described its

I entered into the God-State via the Goddess. This is the
characteristic aspect o f My Sadhana. And, having Identified
with the Source, I am your means o f Realization. I stand in
place surrounded by the circle o f the SpiritPower. My
devotees do not practice the way o f submission to the
Goddess, because I tam the Goddess. I have been a devotee o
f the Goddess to the point of Realization. (The Fire
Gospel,

P. 1

The Nature of Divine

Self-Realization

In the Vedanta Temple Event, Franklin’s lifelong
overwhelming Impulse to serve the Awakening of others
finally came to fullness. That Moment, in fact, marked the
true beginning of His Teaching Work, After thirty years of
preparation, His body-mind presented no obstruction to the
Perfect Communication of the Truth He had Realized, In fact,
His very human Form M (and that Communication of Truth.
Everything that He had to Teach (as He later Said) had been
tested and

proven in His own Body.

And so the Nature of the Realization to: which Da Kalki
Re-Awakened by the Shakti’s Grace is one in which there is
no suppression of the body or of conditional life. He
describes His Samadhi as Sahaj (“natural”) and as “Open-Eye
“—a Perfect Abiding as Consciousness (Siva) and Its own
Love-Bliss (Shakti) in the face of all arising conditions.
There is no higher Real

ization. This is the Joy of the seventh (and

final) stage of life, 4 wherein nothing is

separate from or other than Conscious

n s, but all things, are tacitly recognized

as a temporary and unnecessary play upon

Consciousness Itself. To be receiving a Liv

4. See glossary. enter, “Seven stages of life”.

ing Demonstration and Transmission of this Realization in
our time is a Grace beyond conception.

Traditional precedents for such a Realization exist, but
they are extremely rare, Ramana Maharshi is the only other
Adept of modern times whom Da Kalki acknowledges as a
seventh stage Realize; and even he still displayed the
characteristic attitude of the “jnani”; disposed to an
inward contemplative attitude, rather than to the expansive
participation in life that has characterized Da Kalki’s
expression of Sahaj Samadhi,

Aham Da Asmi

Although the Vedanta Temple Event marked the Moment of Da
Kalki’s Libera

tion in His (apparent) current lifetime, it was not until
1979 that He-fully recognized Who It Was Who had Re-Awakened
then, in and as His human Form, He knew He had been Restored
to the Bright” Condition of His childhood and that His
Divine Self-Realization was Perfect and undisturbed, even in
the midst of all His

“Crazy” Teaching Work.5 But He was not merely a great
Adept and Supreme Tantric. What He confessed in 1979 (at the
celebration of the ninth anniversary of the Vedanta Temple
event) was a Sublime Statement in the tradition of the
“Mahavakyas” 6 of the Upanishads, He declared to His
devotees, “Beloved, I Am Da” meaning that He

is the Unique and Perfect Appearance in this world of the
Divine Person, Revealed

as “Da”, the Giver.

“Aham Da Asmi” – I Am Da. As we meditate now on this
ineffable Revelation, having seen the Truth of it manifest
more and more before our eyes (and most especially since the
Great Event that initiated the Divine Emergence7 in 1986),
it is obvious that the One Who was born in the “Bright” and
led by the “Bright” through all the extraordinary adventures
of His childhood and youth could be none other than

5. In many esoteric sacred traditions, certain
practitioners and Masters have been called ‘crazy’, “mad’,
or ‘foolish’. The fullest examples of what Heart-Master Da
calls “the ‘Crazy Wisdom’ tradition” (in which He Stands)
are Perfect Realizers of the Divine Self in any culture or
time who, through spontaneous Free action, blunt Wisdom, and
Liberating laughter, shock or humor people into
self-critical awareness of their egoity. Typically, such
Realizers manifest ‘Crazy’ activity only occasionally or
temporarily, and never for its own sake. For sixteen years
prior to His Divine

Emergence, Heart-Master Da Himself Taut in a unique
‘Crazy Wise’ manner, not only reflecting but also Submitting
completely to Identify with the egoic

states of His early devotees. 6. “Great Statements’.

S

7. See “Divine Emergence” entry in Glossary.

the Self-Illumined One, the Maha-Purusha, the Divine Self
Incarnate. Who else but the Divine Person in bodily human
Form could

have Husbanded the Divine Goddess, definitively, and
historically Who else could stand as “Jagad-Guru”, “the Guru
of everything that moves” Da Kalki, the Divine World-Teacher
and True Heart-Master, is Speaking to the entire Cosmos of
living beings when He Says “Come Slowly or (Quickly, but
Surely Come To Me”.

The Gift of

Hridaya-Shakti

The great Means by which Da Kalki is Silently bringing
about this Miracle of the Attraction of all beings to
Himself is His Great Heart-Blessing, which He Calls
Hridaya-Shakti, or Hridaya-Shaktipat. “Hridayam”, or “Sri
Hridayam” – “Bright Heart” —is His Name for the Divine
Person and Self-Condition that He Reveals and Is. His
Hridaya-Shaktipat, therefore, is the Transmitted Blessing of
the Very’ Divine, Infinitely Transcending the power of Yogic
shaktipat that awakens the Kundalini Shakti and the “tour”
of the higher processes of the human body-mind. The

Shakti that Da Kalki has Husbanded, the Shaktipat He now
Transmits as Perfect

Divine Blessing, does not hold His devotee to any
conditional experience, although

many different bodily effects of His Transmission may at
times arise. The Husbanded Shakti, He says, “is the Self.
The Shakti is God. The Shakti is Me.” Da Kalki’s
Hridaya-Shaktipat, then, is the most Potent Force of Divine
Awakening that has ever existed, And by His Grace it is
always Given to every being at every level of the Cosmos.
This is His Promise.

Invest Yourself in

This Thangka

It is through the Graceful moments of Sighting Da Kalki
and in feelingContemplation of Him at any time that we make
ourselves available to HridayaShakti, His Perfect
Transmission of the

Divine Consciousness and Love-Bliss Wed

ded in Him at the Vedanta Temple. Since His Divine
Emergence, Da Kalki has fully Manifested the Brilliance of
that Marriage in His bodily (human) Form, and has come to
Speak of it without reserve as “the _Event of the
universe”.

1.00

8. “Hridayam” is ‘Heart’, and “Sri” is ‘flame” in
Sanskrit.

Da Kalki now feels free to Tell the Supreme Secret of the
Vedanta Temple Event-that His Husbanding of the Goddess
turned around the vast Cosmic process, so that the manifest
worlds need not cycle on forever in a senseless round of
apparent births and deaths. The Energy, the Shakti, that
makes all of that flux and chaos has surrendered to Him, Her
Divine Source, and He, by the inconceivable Sacrifice of His
Incarnation (and all the Cosmic Work of the Divine that
preceded it) is gathering the Play of Appearances back to
Himself, Translating it all in His own Mysterious Time into
His Divine Domain.

When Da Kalki sat with a small group of devotees on March
16, 1988, and began to pour forth this immense Revelation,
He acted spontaneously, as He always does. But in His Wisdom
He must have known that the time was ripe for the Secret to
be told, time for everyone to know that through the Vedanta
Temple Event He has already Accomplished in seed

form the Liberation and Divine

Translation of all beings:

The Event in the Vedanta

Temple is about My ceasing to be a

Devotee o f the Divine Goddess and Realizing My own
Position. Now She is nothing but My own Radiance, the
Radiance of God. Afterward, -the Teaching Siddhis, the
Siddhis of Service to My devotees, appeared spontaneously,
and I have been Serving you now for sixteen

years, not to mention for all time past.

Siva-Shakti is not a tradition. It is God. She appears as
She, and He appears as He, and the Reality o f Existence is
not Two, but One. And I in My own Form and Passion am the
precise Incarnation o f that Unity.

To Husband the Mother, to be Her Husband and to have Her
be the Bride, means that: the murderous activity of Energy
in Its apparent independence; “Prakriti , is done, over,
finished. This Husbanding and Marriage is not

r merely a personal Work associated with My Realization.
It is an historical Event, out of Which much should be made,
transforming the history o f the entire Cosmic Mandala. All,
then, by virtue o f this Marriage, may be

Drawn to the Divine Self-Domain.

It is an historical Event, not merely a characteristic
incident o f My own Realization. My Realization has
everything and only to do with the Awakening of beings. I
did not have

to do this Work for My own Sake. I could not have done it
if Divine Self-Realization were not intact from the
beginning. I began this Work of the origin o f the
Ashvamedha9 billions of years ago, before the Big Bang!

She will not eat her children. .The fishes in the sea
will not any longer live in a food chain relative to one
another, if you will respond. You can change the Mandala o f
the universe by your response to Me. O f course, if you will
not, maybe it will go on as it has been going. You are the
seed o f this unique Opportunity that will cover all beings,
on Earth and everywhere. This is where-it begins. (March 16,
1988)

In the course of the same evening on which He uttered
these Blissful Prophecies, Da Kalki also Spoke of His
paradoxical Play with the Shakti, Who is not different from
His own Being. He Spoke of His “Conversations” with Her for
the sake of the Liberation of beings, of His Divine
Communion with Her, and Her unswerving fidelity to Him and
His Work.

In the surpassing Ecstasy of this occa

9. For a discussion of the esoteric significance of
Ashvamedha, see “I Am The One Who Has Been Expected’ on page
8 of this issue.

sion, Da Kalki Invited all His devotees to join Him in
His most Intimate Place of Love, where all separateness is
relieved and dissolved. He Speaks of this Place as His
Bedroom, and also as a great “Thangka”, referring to the
sacred Tibetan pictures of the union of the male and female
aspects of Divinity. In these traditional thangkas there
are, of course, two figures. In the “Thangka” Da Kalki there
is only One-His own “Bright” Form. For the Shakti as He
says, “Is Me”.

I Husbanded Her spontaneously. Now She only talks the
Truth, She is not a whore, and She will not murder mankind.
I can guarantee you this. She is utter: ly Husbanded by Me.
She has no capacity to murder anymore, if you will invest
yourself in this Communion with Me. In the world of
conditional Nature, She is still murdering beings, only
birthing them to eat them. But you will have a different’
vision of Her if you will invest yourself in the Ultimate,
in this “Thangka , in this Union, in this Satsang with Me.
You are in another Place, and even con

ditional Nature is transformed, if you will par

ticipate with Me in this Circumstance, this,

Vision, this Holiness, this Love.

Stay steady in this Communion with Me.

Stay in My Bedroom. That is My Message to

My devotees. Stay in My Bedroom, in My most

Intimate Company, where I am Giving Her kiss

es and She to Me, Where there is no “difference

and Where you are relieved of dreadful destiny.

Even all of cosmic Nature has been trans

formed in its principle. Now the Seed that I

Made at the Vedanta Temple must flower in the

e world and raise everyone up. The murderous

work of the Mother is over! What happened in the Vedanta
Temple was My Husbanding o f the Shakti, the returning o f
Her to the Ultimate Source. And from that moment, then,
wherever that Husbanding is acknowledged, the proceedings in
the universe and of mankind can be transformed. History can
be transformed, if you will stay in this “Thangka”, in My
Bedroom.

(March 16,1988)

May all beings be Blessed by the Grace

that Flows from the Vedanta Temple Event!

May every one be Graced by the HeartCompanionship of Da
Kalki, the Divine Liberator and Heart-Husband of
Mankind!