Scientific
Proof of the Existence of God Will Soon Be Announced by the White
House! An Appreciation by Robert K. Hall Adi Da talks sanely about real
sanity. His subject is always the same: a way of living this
human existence without fear and without obsession. He talks
about surrender to God as only one who has done so can, with
luminous clarity and ecstatic precision. But those are just
words. To appreciate the good fortune we all enjoy from his
being here on earth, one has to meet him in the heart as
well as in the mind. He is a man of God and he talks of a
way through the heart to direct experience of God. At times
his words appear out of the murk of human ignorance like
fireworks in a July night sky. It is hard not to hear
him! This is a difficult book. At times
the language soars to such esoteric subtlety that only
another adept could understand. In between the peaks of
ecstatic language, though, are long stretches of very
straight and shocking description of the human condition.
Adi Da reminds us that we are declining, out of fear, to
live our lives in harmony with the creative life force. He
points to our obvious failure to give up the fear of living
fully in the moment. Over and over he challenges us to give
up the contraction of fear around the heart so we can get on
with the creation of community among all people that is
based on loving contact with each other and with the
Divine. In our world of political chaos and
potential nuclear holocaust there must be many men and women
who are awake to the madness around us and ready to hear the
voice speaking in these discourses. I pray that this book
inspires them to expand in love and to become guides for the
millions who are still blinded by fear and mistrust. The
need for truth is urgent. Robert K. Hall, M.D. Co-founder, Lomi School and The
Gestalt Institute of San Francisco Scientific Proof – Table
of Contents Foreward: On Heroes and Cults
by Ken Wilber Knowledge is not democratic;
creativity is not egalitarian. I realize that sounds
contrary, but consider: When we want original, concise, and
brilliant insights into any field of knowledge, we almost
always go to the acknowledged masters of that field. In
physics, we look to Newton, then to Einstein, then
Heisenberg and Schroedinger and Wigner and Bohm. In biology,
we go to Lamarck and Darwin and Wallace, then Morgan and
Muller and Watson and Crick. In psychology, to Freud and
Adler and Jung and James and Piaget. And why not? Genius is
genius, and the more the better. Although that is what we do in
factconsult the geniusesI sometimes think we all
like to imagine, on the contrary, that enduring knowledge is
discoverable by all and sundry, that insight is democratic,
that you and I could produce the same truths given the right
opportunities. That is probably not the case, however, and
the practical fact is that humanity has always relied on,
and looked to, Heroesreal Heroes, men and women of
great genius, men and women who happen, for one reason or
another, to be able to see more, understand more, create
more, and know more, than you and I can at our present level
of evolution, or adaptation. People are always the philosophers
of their own levels of adaptation, andhow can we deny
it?some are more adapted to, and grounded in, the
Reality of Truth itself, whatever the particular field of
knowledge through which that Reality might express itself.
And those individuals, so grounded, have simply been in fact
the Heroes of times past and present. They were and are the
Heroes of the True, or the Good, or the Beautifuland
ultimately they are all simply the servants of our own
evolution. This does not mean that these
Heroesthe Einsteins and Darwins and Freuds and
Nagarjunashave a higher status than you and I, because
all people are equal in the eyes of Divine Mystery. But it
would be fair to say that they do serve a higher function:
seeing and communicating those truths that you and I cannot
or have not yet seen and understood, truths that are to you
and me only potentials And, I will soon argue, Ruchira
Avatar Adi Da Samraj is a Heroa quite extraordinary
Hero at that. Yet, in America (as well as the
world at large, I think), we have an awkward stance towards
Heroes. I mean real Heroesactual geniuses, men and
women of truly brilliant understanding. It is as if we all
wshed to deny that read Heroes could be among us,
sinceI suspectwe all hold out the dream that we,
that you and I, could and should be our own Heroes. To
acknowledge a real Hero seems to deny our own worth, and so
we are terribly suspicious and sometimes downrght
antagonistic towards any who might rise up, in these
democratc and egalitarian times, as a real Hero. Let our
“heroes” be movie stars, let them be astronauts looking for
rocks on dead moons,let them be tacky politicansbut
real Heroes? real above-the-crowd geniuses? Why, we seem to
say, they exist only in the past, far away from our own
hoped-for heroics. And especially religious Heroes,
Spiritual Masters, true Adepts in the Divine
Mysterylet them abound, we seem to say . . . but only
in the past, only yesterday. I cannot be the only one who
marvels at the fact that some forty million Americans
accept, as absolute truth, that miracles were performed in
the past, that someone way back when walked on water, healed
the sick by touch turned water into wine and fish into
feast, raised the dead, and healed the lame. Yet none of
those Americans would accept any of that if it happened now,
here, today. Oh, we all would like to think that we could
recognize one such as Christ if he returned. But the sad
historical fact is just the opposite: Weyou and
Ihave from the start rejected our true spiritual
Heroes when they walked among us, and, if history is any
guide, we would probably do the same thing today. It seems
that, while they are alive, real Spiritual Masters are met
with benign neglect (or worse). The fact is that Christ (or
Buddha or Moses) might already have returnedand been
summarily rejected. What evidence could we offer otherwise,
given our past performances? I do not want to sound moralizing or
condescending about thisI am in no position to do so.
It is just that the issue of real Spiritual Masters is so
complicated, so touchy, so sensitive, so complexand I
only want to set the problem in the strongest possible terms
so as to point out what is involved. We seem to have mixed
emotions about Heroes in any field, but we become almost
hysterical in our reactions to spiritual Heroes. The point
is this: All true spiritual Heroes are, while alive, by and
large rejected, shunned, denied, or worse (consider the
horrendous fates of Giordano Bruno, al-Hallaj, Christ,
Eckhart). But while all true spiritual Heroes are initially
shunned, not all those shunned are true spiritual Heroes.
And weyou and Iwill simply have to try to decide
who is a Divinely empowered Master, and who is a fraud, or,
at best, whose realizaton is incomplete. This problem has today reached a
critical point with the events of Jonestown and the growth
of so many apparently strange cults. The world at large now
looks with even more terrified suspicion upon any movement
that appears “cultic”that is, any group, large or
small, centered around a “heroic” or “charismatic”
leader. “Cult” is the new anathema; cult is
the new terror. But here again we face the same dilemma: All
truthful and beneficial causes are initially “cultic,” but
not all cults are either truthful or beneficial. Examine any
major historical phenomenon, and you will find it is cultic:
headed by a Hero surrounded by devotees. This is not
necessarily bad. How could the American Revolution have
survived Valley Forge without the herofigure of George
Washington and his cultic followers? Where would modern
psychiatry be without Freud and his slavishly cultic
disciples? Or on the religious side: Christ and his cult of
disciples, Buddha and his cult of monks, Krishna and his
cult of devotees. Could we seriously wish that none of those
cults ever existed? Politics is cultic; religion is
cultic; philosophy is cultic; even science is
culticand cults, in the broadest sense, simply
represent groups of those who acknowledge and try to follow
in the steps of the Heroes of a particular field of
endeavor. But, as I saidand it is worth repeating one
last timewhile all truth is initially cultic, not all
cults are truthful. We in the West have a long list of cults
and their Heroes that we generally think are harmful:
Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, and, closer to home, many of the
new “cultic religions” that enslave rather than enlighten.
But please notice: What makes these movements deplorable is
not the fact that they are “cults,” nor the fact that they
have “heroes,” but the fact that they are based on ideas or
principles that reasonable men and women would eventually
agree are erroneous or immoral or even heinous. But whatever
you think about moral or immoral heroes, can you start to
see how extremely tricky is the problem of followers, of
truth, of heroes, of cults? And so: Adi Da is a Hero and Adi Da
is surrounded by devotees. What, then, are we to make of
this spiritual Hero? Realize that we cannot reject him
simply because he is viewed as a Hero. And realize that we
cannot reject him simply because he has dedicated followers.
Rather, we must look to his teaching, look to his life, look
to his example, look to his message. We would not deny such
“due process” even to a common criminal, so let us not
deprive our potential Heroes of at least equal
courtesy. What, then, do we find? Let me offer
a personal opinion. I have put forward four or five books
and some thirty-odd articles devoted to a synthesis of
Eastern and Western religion and psychology. Freud and Jung
and Adler, Piaget and James and Sartre, Hinduism and
Buddhism and Taoism, Christianity and Islam and ZenI
have spent my life studying these systems, profoundly
sympathetic with their concerns, sincerely interested in
their insights. I myself am no hero, but I honestly think
that, by now, I can at least recognize genius, real genius
when it comes my way. And my opinion is that we have, in
the person of Adi Da Samraj, a Spiritual Master and
religious genius of the ultimate degree. I assure you I do
not mean that lightly. I am not tossing out highpowered
phrases to “hype” the works of Adi Da. I am simply offering
to you my own considered opinion: Adi Da’s teaching is, I
believe, unsurpassed by that of any other spiritual Hero, of
any period, of any place, of any time, of any
persuasion. I would hope that I would not make
such a bold-faced statement without being able to support
it. And so, consider: If you survey carefully the world’s
great and enduring religions, you tend to understand that,
taken as a whole, the great spiritual paths announce four or
five major themes. Islam is based on the truth of only-God;
Christianity, on the truth of only-Love; Buddhism is based
on the truth of no-self and no-seeking; Judaism, on the
truth of the Divine as formless and imageless Creative Power
and Mystery; Hinduism, on the truth of formless absorption
in the unmanifest; Christian mysticism centers on the
descent or reception of the ‘Holy Spirit”; and Taoism
grounds itself in “Eternal Flux.” From a slightly different angle, the
great world religions can be divided into three major
classes. The first is the “path of yogis”the path of
hatha and kundalini yoga, which deals with all the
“energies” leading up to the highest centers in the core of
the brain. The second is the “path of saints”the path
of subtle halos of light and sound secreted within and
beyond the higher brain centers, the path of realizations
apparently beyond gross mortality. The third is the “path of
sages”the path of formless absorption and meditation
in the causal realms of consciousness itself, the realms of
only-God, beyond manifestation and beyond any form of the
subject-object dualism. And here is my point: The teaching
of Adi Da includes, even down to the minutest of details,
every one of those five major themes and every step of those
three major paths. I personally have found that not one
significant item of any of the great religions is left out
of Adi Da’s teachings. Not one. And it is not just that
these points are all included in his teaching: They are
discussed by Adi Da with such brilliance that one can only
conclude that he understands them better than their
originators. One cannot help but reflect on why
Adi Da’s teaching is so balanced and basically complete. I
think one of the reasons is that Adi Da himself has tested,
and passed through, all of the major paths as we discussed
briefly above. Although born natively predisposed as the
Ultimate Transcendental Consciousness, he himself underwent
years of discipline in and re-adaptation to perfect Ecstasy
in God, an evolutionary discipline that, because of its
completeness’ seems destined to be revolutionary as well. He
spent years in the disciplines of the “path of the yogis,”
under the acknowledged teacher known as Rudi (Albert Rudolph
or Swami Rudrananda). He spent years in the “path of the
saints,” meeting and then surpassing the well-known Master
of the subtle realm named Swami Muktananda. Beyond those
stages, he “met,” “saw,” absolutely acknowledged, and
gracefully bowed to such transcendentally awakened saints
and sages as Swami Nityananda and Sri Ramana Maharshi. At
the summit of those paths, he seemed then to stand complete,
possessed of a teaching and pointing a way that included and
transcended all through which he has himself
passed. Perhaps you will disagree with my
intepretation of Adi Da’s life. But I think you would ae
least have to agree that his intellectual brilliance and
moral fortitude mark him as a true Heroa beneficent
hero, a good hero. Disagree with him if you want; fail to be
moved by him if you choosebut please do not toss him
off as a “weird cult hero.” Besides, Adi Da himself has
spoken out so often against “cultic hero worship” that it
would be very odd to overlook his own thoughts on the
matter. From the start, in fact, cultic hero
worship is precisely what Adi Da has tried to expose and
argue againse. And he was doing this years before the
present-day national hysteria about “cures” and
“hero-frauds.” And he has spoken out not just against the
cures of so-called spiritual masters, but againse cultic
allegiance in any ultimate form: scientific, political,
religious. Six years ago, as but one example, he was already
explaining that “the cult of this world is based on the
principle of Narcissus, of separated and separative
existence, and the search for changes of state, for
happiness. All of the cultic ways are strategic searches to
satisfy individuals by providing them with various kinds of
fulfillment, or inner harmony, or vision, or blissfulness,
or salvation, or liberation, or whatever. But the truth is
that there is no such one to be fulfilled. Therefore, it is
the fundamental responsibility of all to continually undo
the practice of the cult. Such a cultic existence has no
fundamental value at all. Not only hasn’t it any value, it
is an absolutely negative influence in the life of
persons.” Adi Da acknowledges that certain
(truthful) cults have an intermediate functionas we
said, all truths tend initially to be cultic/heroic, so why
press it? However, as Adi Da puts it, “The negative tendency
in cultism is the tendency to forget that mere enthusiastic
association with an object, an idea [whether of a new
scientific discovery or of an evangelical revival], a
person [a hero-figure] or whatever, is basically a
superficial or ‘beginner’s’ state of mind. All mere
enthusiasm, or belief, or ritualized consciousness is at the
novice level of human existence, and if it persists beyond
its appropriate term [emphasis added], ie becomes an
expression of either childish or adolescent neurosis.” Such
has been Adi Da’s stance from the start, and such remains
his stance today. In this book he states
unequivocallyand probably for the thousandth
time”I don’t believe there is stupidity, delusion, and
casual ill-will manifested anywhere more than in the domains
of religion and spiritual cultism.” Ah, we may say, Adi Da speaks
against other cultsfrom science to religionbut
what about his own? Does he not encourage his own cult of
Heroism? Does he not also ask and claim followers? Is he not
himself the perfect example of the new cult Hero? Those are harsh questions, but I
think they are ultimately fair, and so deserve a fair
answer. First of all, Adi Da, like any genius, is and will
forever be surrounded by a group of followers. There is no
way to avoid that, and no reason toany more than we
would want to prevent Jung and Adler and Rank and Jones from
gravitating towards Freud. Eventually, Freud was wildly
praised by Jones and wildly denounced by Rankso what?
When we judge Freud, let us look to Freud, and not hold him
responsible for the vicissitudes, often irrational, of his
followers. But more importantly, we have the
whole example and teaching of Adi Da himself to those who
would be his followers. And nowhere is he more critical of
the “cultic” attitude than he is towards those who surround
him. This is a short foreword, and so I will not inundate
you with supporting quotes. But make no mistake about this
affair: I have never heard Adi Da criticize anyone as
forcefully as he does those who would approach him
chronically from the childish stance of trying to win the
favor of the “cultic hero.” Look at his writings, and you
will find the constantly repeated argument that those who
see him as a personal, cultic hero do not see him at all,
but are merely involved in narcissistic self-love and “movie
star” fantasy-hallucinations about their relationship to
him. I have seen no other Spiritual Master take that
anti-cultic stance from the start so consistently, so
forcefully. Fortunately, I do not need to document that
pointAdi Da’s writings are in print, dated from the
start, and thus what he has been saying for the last seven
years can only be taken more seriouslynot less
seriouslyin light of the recent “cult disasters” and
belated national panic about “cults” in general and
“hero-frauds” in particular. The last thing I would say is this:
Perhaps your approach to Da Free John will not be that of a
pure devotee; perhaps it will not even be that of a helpful
“friend” of his work. But it is becoming quite obvious that
no one in the fields of psychology, religion, philosophy, or
sociology can afford not to be at least a student of Adi Da
Samraj. At least confront the teaching; at least study what
he has to say; at least consider his argument. Since he is
indeed a true Heroan authentic and supremely
enlightened Spiritual Masterplease make use of him
while he is alive, while he can serve you in direct, living
relationship. Do not repeat the past mistake of denying such
a Spiritual Master while he walks among us. Do not meet him
with benign neglect. Do not wait until decades or centuries
after his death to acknowledge what he is. As a simple
start, study his written teaching. And I think that if you
will work carefully through even one of Adi Da’s books, you
will find you have been taken apart and put back together
again in a form that will be only Mystery to you, only
Release in God, only Radiance in the Divine, and only Joy in
the obviousness of it all. Ken Wilber
