The Dreaded Gomboo or The Imaginary Disease That Religion Seeks To Cure.
A Collection of Essays and Talks on the “Direct” Process of Enlightenment.
By Da Free John.
Compiled and edited with an introduction and commentary by the Renunciate Hermitage Order.
The God Don’t Eat the People
By Annie Rogers ( 1983 )
Bhagavan Adi Da’s Hermitage Sanctuary in Kauai was a beautiful place until Tumomama 1 , the fierce aspect of the Divine as Goddess, cloaked in the guise of Hurricane Iwa, struck, exposed her fangs, stuck out her tongue, snorted, screamed, hissed, and blew out the Sanctuary.
The Sanctuary spreads gracefully across six acres of rolling lawn spotted in places with groupings of two or three beautiful old koa trees. The entire property is cloistered by a surrounding jungle and a natural barrier of very, very tall, old trees shrouded in vines. A sacred river cuts its ragged path through the jungle and rocks, and embraces one side of the property. From Grace Leans, the sacred banyan tree that marks the highest point on the property, one can look across the rolling lawn to the Heart-Master’s house, and beyond that past the river to open fields of sugarcane and the sacred mountain [Mt. Waiaileale] that is the wettest place in the world.
Despite the apparently peaceful look of the Sanctuary, it was once the site of ceremonial worship by the ancient Hawaiian warrior class. It had been shrouded by the evil forces of black magic. Bhagavan Adi Da has said many times that this very spot was the most evil place on Earth. But after years of Bhagavan’s Work on this property, it has been transformed into a place of Divine Force. Nevertheless, the Nature-Power associated with the place is wild and fierce. In honor of this Goddess-Force, Bhagavan renamed the Sanctuary “Tumomama,” which means “fierce woman.”
We were unsuspecting when we woke on the morning of November 23, 1982. It was windy outside, but we were used to this. Unusual weather has always been associated with our Beloved Adi Da’s Work. We had not yet heard about the approach of Hurricane Iwa! At 10:00 A.M., before Beloved came out of His quarters, Tom Closser phoned to tell us that a hurricane had suddenly developed in the Pacific and was heading straight for Kauai. The mayor had just closed all public buildings on the island. At noon, Tom phoned with another report: The hurricane was a bad one. We could feel her coming. We began to prepare.
The men were already busy all over the Sanctuary, tying things down, taping windows, covering screened areas in plastic, bracing trees, when Heart-Master Adi Da came out of his quarters at 12:30. Usually He sits in the gathering room for Darshan 2 at this hour. Today he stood in the kitchen, which was already becoming the communications center.
The first thing Beloved did was to ask for a storm report. The hurricane was still heading straight for Kauai and was expected to arrive in full force around 8:00 P.M. Wind velocities were expected to reach over 100 miles per hour!
Beloved’s attitude became very practical. Every precaution had to be taken to protect the property. He roamed about the house looking out the windows, sent messages to remind the men of things that had to be handled, made sure the generator had been readied (we would surely lose our electricity!), and thought of every possible detail that might be forgotten.
Outside, the wind was really picking up. Already it was howling. Leaves were ripping off the trees. They darkened the sky in a chaotic flight like a swarm of locusts. A light rain was being blown to earth. The men were beginning to have trouble maneuvering in the storm.
Inside, the chaos of Hurricane Iwa was beginning to invade the house. The lights went out. No electricity! Our intercom was no longer functioning, so we had no communication to Frog Mound, the building where most of the Renunciate Hermitage Order lives, or Unshaken, the building where the security and communications staff is centered. Daji Evam, one of the renunciates who lives at Frog Mound, sat in wet clothes on the floor in the pantry waiting to convey the Beloved’s messages to the outer realms.
Bhagavan Adi Da sat cross-legged on the low chair in the gathering room. Many members of the Renunciate Hermitage Order were already gathered around Him while others finished preparing to endure the hurricane. Suddenly we heard a loud crack, then a thud, and the house shook. Bhagavan walked to the kitchen window to see where the noise came from. Men were running around outside. We could see their mouths move as they yelled to one another, but we could not hear them over the roar of the wind. The large old lychee tree that stood outside the kitchen window had lost one of its main branches. The tree was sixty feet tall and sheltered perhaps half the house with a perfect umbrella of green glossy leaves. It was a monument on the property, stately and so perfect it looked like a painting. The fallen branch had grazed the house and lay on the driveway. Daji Udi ran into the kitchen dripping wet and told us we had to evacuate that end of the house. It looked like the tree was going to go, and if it did, it might smash the roof. We fled into another room to another window’s vantage point.
The Heart-Master, instead of offering his protective gaze to the lychee tree, stood for a long while regarding Grace Leans. Grace Leans is the banyan tree that Beloved Himself had empowered by putting holy ash and flowers beneath its roots when the tree was placed into the ground in 1981. We all hoped the Sanctuary’s holy tree would survive the storm!
Crack! We heard it again above the roar of the wind, and then a thud as another section of the Iychee tree fell to the ground. Within a few minutes the entire tree was wrecked. Only a three-foot stub remained standing. The tree lay in pieces on the driveway.
Beloved called for the renunciate children to come from their Brahmacharya school nearby. 3 He asked everyone in the support group 4 to come from their home about five miles away and to stay at the Sanctuary until the storm was over. The children were wet and excited and fearful when they arrived. They kissed Beloved and then sat close to Him.
The wind was picking up speed rapidly, shrieking now. It was too dangerous for the men to work outside any longer. More trees came down. Besides the Iychee tree we mourned, we had lost three paperbark eucalyptus trees, the tallest trees on the main part of the property. From Beloved’s library window we could see them Iying on the ground like fallen giants. Daji Udi reported that many more trees were down.
After hearing the damage report, Bhagavan’s mood changed. He became playful, almost as if he was enjoying the tumult of the storm. In a lull, Bhagavan looked outside and said to the storm, “Go, Tumo, come on, Tumo. You call this a storm, Baby? Show us your cheeks. I wouldn’t even have bothered if this was all I was going to do. Big deal!” 5
The winds were now steady at 50 miles per hour, and gusting to 75 or more. When the group of devotees arrived from the support house, they were wet and shaken and had a wild tale to tell Beloved. Heather Lupa recounts the story:
I was among the group of eight or so people who were trying to reach the Sanctuary, at Beloved’s urgent request and graceful invitation, before the storm worsened. It was the most harrowing experience of my life. It was very much like what I would imagine a war would be.
When we found we could drive no farther, we stopped at one of the houses along the road, thinking that we would be able to phone the Sanctuary, just to let everyone know we were all right and to ask what the tree situation” looked like closer to the Sanctuary. The young couple who took us into their home—we must have been a sight as all eight of us climbed out of one car had been boarding up their windows to protect them from the winds. Across the width of their large sliding glass door the man had nailed a narrow strip of wood about an inch and a half thick. We had made our phone call and were relieved that Frank Marrero and Mark Travis were going to drive as far as they could to meet us.
We thanked the couple and started on our way again. I was one of the last to leave. When I looked ahead at the others, they were screaming and running toward the car. Not knowing why they were screaming, I simply began to run. In my excitement I ran at full speed right into the board across the door. The board caught me across the neck, and I choked. The blow was incredibly painful, but I forgot it as I saw what was causing the others’ excitement. The force of the wind had peeled a tin roof off a building. The huge piece of corrugated tin was flying right toward us. Some of the group, fearing decapitation, flattened themselves on the muddy ground. Others ran for the car. The flying roof barely missed our car, and Crane Kirkbride was just able to hide behind a metal fence before the tin was hurled against the railings. It blew away, and we were momentarily safe.
We began on foot toward the Sanctuary. We were literally running for our lives! Huge trees had fallen across the road—so wide that their fallen trunks lay about four feet high. Their branches stuck out in every direction like broken arms, and it often took us five minutes to pass one tree. Already many of these huge trees lay along the road, and many more were crashing down around us. We could very easily have been killed.
Live electrical cables whipped free in the wind. The rain pounded, the wind was driving, there was mud everywhere, and all the while we were trying to carry bags of supplies for our Thanksgiving dinner! What a sight we were laughing and screaming and absolutely terrified but knowing that Beloved had asked us to come to the Sanctuary for a reason, and we couldn’t think of any place in the world we would rather be than in his Company. We were driven by our strong urge to be with him!
But when we arrived at the Sanctuary at last, I found that the pain in my neck was much worse. It was very difficult to swallow, and I had a huge bruise on the front of my neck.
Heather did not mention her wounded neck to Beloved, but after all the stories had been told, the Heart-Master asked if there had been any injuries. Heather told him about running into the board. She said she was in great pain and having trouble swallowing and breathing. Adi Da motioned her to come up to his chair. He examined her neck. There was a huge, dark bruise across her throat. Beloved placed his hand on her throat and held it there as he asked her many detailed questions about her injury. How did she get it? Where did it hurt? What did it feel like?
Heather continues:
It seemed as he questioned me that he was calling my attention to the injury, but remarkably my attention was being removed from it. The whole time he spoke, he kept his hand on my neck, and my attention was so gracefully moved from the neck, the problem, the pain, and the inability to swallow, to him. It was a time of meditation. There was so much love and energy communicated by Beloved in those few minutes that I could only try to be coherent in answering his questions and receive his Blessing in whatever way I could. But the mood of the moment was for me profound meditation.
As he held his hand on me, the pain subsided. I could swallow painlessly and my breathing was normal. I bowed to the Bhagavan Adi Da in gratitude. My husband, Neil, looked at the bruise afterward, and all but a little speck of it was gone! Bhagavan Adi Da had healed me.
By this time the storm was awesome. The sky was dark, not only with flying leaves, but now even with branches of trees and all kinds of debris. They swirled and twisted, rose and fell, helplessly through the air. To walk even a few steps outside was a battle. Life itself seemed fragle in the hurricane’s power. We looked out across the river and watched as denuded trees were ravaged by the wind. Loud cracks sounded constantly and then white scars showed where limbs had broken off.
Tumomama. The Great Woman shows Herself in a benign form at The Mountain of Attention Sanctuary 6 , but here she was Tumomama, fierce woman. “She is a growling, murderous, fanged, bloodthirsty bitch,” Adi Da had recently told us. Although we did not know her intimately, he had told us a lot about her in recent days and we knew who she was and what she was about:
I have seen the Goddess here in the form that she is showing in this place. She is nothing like a friendly, motherly type. She is a very strange person. That is why I call this place Tumomama, which means fierce woman. And I have seen her on many occasions here. She is dark-skinned, long-limbed, emaciated with long, wild mussed-up hair, a crazy face, a very weird sense of humor, and very playful, even painfully playful in some sense. She creates much discomfort. At times she wears a strange, dead expression. At other times her face is wild and weird and bloodthirsty, with strange teeth and a very fierce and frightening look.
The Living God is a wild, indescribable character, a living personality, and I have seen Her many times in this form I just described to you. I saw Her dead, too, I saw Her as a corpse. Death and change are what She is about and what this world is about. She is what this world is about because She demands sacrifice. She is completely indifferent to the survival of creatures!
As we looked out at her devastating and threatening force, we all felt the truth of what Bhagavan Adi Da had said.
Adi Da stood up and walked to the large sliding glass doors that open to a patio on the edge of the jungle. He looked down upon the sacred river. The river, which everyone who lives at the Sanctuary recognizes as a form of the Goddess, was wildness itself. We could see the river well, because the jungle and trees that usually hide it had been torn away by the wind. It was swollen, much wider than usual. The water, which is usually clear and inviting, was muddy and churning, boiling and chaotic. The rock platform known as “Strong Knees”, which normally rises twelve feet above the river, was completely covered by the raging water.
There was a lull in the storm. Bhagavan, with His hands on His hips in a challenging pose, said, “Do it, Tumo!” in a taunting voice. And She responded! In the next moment the wind struck back more fiercely than ever. This happened over and over. He would talk to Her, threaten Her, tease, taunt Her, and the wind would respond. Tumomama and Bhagavan Adi Da were having a conversation. We could literally feel their intimacy, feel Her response to Him.
It was 4:30 P.M. Bhagavan Adi Da asked for another storm report. We listened to the radio. Only one station was still broadcasting. The winds were supposed to begin to build at 6:00 P.M. At 9:00 P.M. they would reach their peak and stay strong until midnight. At midnight the eye of the storm was expected to pass right over the Sanctuary. At 3:00 in the morning the storm would begin to decrease. At their peak, the winds would be 100 miles per hour, gusting to 120.
A soberness came across the room. We had already lost many, many trees on the Sanctuary and the report indicated that the wind would nearly double in velocity! Everyone was struck by the possibility of real disaster. This no longer was a game. Our neighbor’s roof had already been blown off. Would anything be left standing when it was over?
We were quiet for several minutes. The Heart-Master gazed at some distant point outside the window, his eyes wide, his attention obviously elsewhere. In a moment his joking mood returned. “Do you all want to see real destruction? One hundred mile an hour winds and roofs coming off and all the rest of it?”
“No!” It was unanimous.
“All right, then,” Adi Da said. He got up abruptly and went to the Hermitage library. He was gone for a while. It was unusual that he would leave in the midst of a gathering. Bhagavan Adi Da returned with a book of poems by Ramprasad, 7 written as worship to Kali, the “terrifying” Hindu Goddess of death.
Bhagavan seemed almost meditative. Even with the deafening roar outside, there was a sense of quiet in the room. He began to read:
O Mother, who really
Knows Your magic?
You’re a crazy girl.
Driving us all crazy with these tricks.
No one knows anyone else
In a world of Your illusions.
Kali’s tricks are so deft,
We act on what we see.
And what suffering
All because of a crazy girl!
Who knows
What She truly is?
Ramprasad says: If She decides
To be kind, this misery will pass. ( 8 )
Bhagavan Adi Da read poem after poem. We listened attentively. At one point a large branch from a tree crashed into the patio beside us. Anyone who had been beneath it would have been killed. Then the wind grabbed it again and hurled it into the jungle. Adi Da paid no attention. He just kept reading those poems to the Goddess.
It was getting dark outside. Finally the Bhagavan Adi Da closed the book and set it on the floor next to his chair. He had finished reading Ramprasad. “She has done it,” he said. “We have seen the worst of it now.” According to all weather reports, we were still hours away from the full force of the storm. But as Master Da spoke, the gathering sensed that the worst was over. “She ruins you and then she wants to be worshipped. Do it, Tumo!”
“It’s a wonderful puja 9 , Beloved.”
“You’ve done it again, Beloved!”
There was an obvious relief in the room.
“The bloody bitch,” Adi Da said. “A pool of Nature, a dark pool of Nature, Nature itself, which seems temporarily to be about birthing and surviving and enjoying. But the work of Nature is obliteration, death, dissolution, as we are witnessing here today. This storm is the great picture. This is life capsulized. Life is obliteration, not birth and survival and glorification. It is death! The Goddess is the sign of Nature, the word of Nature, the Person of Nature, Kali, the bloody Goddess with long teeth and blood pouring out of her mouth. You poor men are deceived by Nature.”
After Bhagavan returned the poetry book to his library, his mood was light. We decided to have a hurricane party. Beers were passed around. “Let the wild rumpus start!” Adi Da said. We began a celebration that was to last for several days. That night we danced and we talked and we sang by candlelight, and afterward everyone slept on the floor in Beloved’s house. There were perhaps thirty-five people. Even the meditation halls were covered with blankets and bodies.
The next morning everyone took a walk with Bhagavan to survey the damage. The Sanctuary was in ruins. Debris covered the property. A fence had been blown away. The main trees on the property were down. There was little foliage left on the plants, and what was left was in shreds. The barrier of trees that had surrounded and secluded the property was bald, and about half of those trees were down. Yesterday flowers had bloomed all over the Sanctuary. Today the flowers were gone—not one was left anywhere. Grace Leans, however, had not only survived but looked almost untouched. It still had its leaves!
Bhagavan Adi Da said that everything was in shock. The grass and all the plants and trees were giving off a very disturbed, psychic vibration. We could all feel it. Everything seemed disturbed and strange and unreal. What had once been a paradisiacal Sanctuary was in a shambles.
The next few days were an adventure. We had no water for three days, and the electrical power was out for more than a week. A generator gave us minimal electricity. We bathed and washed our hair in the ice-cold water of the sacred river. The support group lived on the Sanctuary for three days. They had nowhere to go. At their house (and it would have been a struggle to get there on foot since the roads were covered with fallen trees) there was neither electricity nor water nor food. Even if they had been able to get into town, the markets weren’t open.
But our time together was a Grace. Although we had already spent three months together, gathering frequently with Bhagavan , having meetings, discussing his lilas 10 , never had we felt so intimate, so loving, or so dependent on one another.
Because of our Beloved’s insistence on self-sufficiency, and because of our sense of community, also insisted upon by Beloved , we managed quite well. We had food, we had water to drink, and we had one another.
November 25, two days after the storm, was certainly the most oddly humorous Thanksgiving we’ve ever had with Beloved. The island had been devastated by the storm. Iwa was the worst storm in twenty-three years—over $225 million in damage. Many hotels and houses were destroyed. Thousands of people on the island were homeless and living in churches and schools, but the spirit of community they were forced to enjoy gave them something to be thankful for on the holiday. As for us, because of Bhagavan’s Presence and Teaching, we celebrated. The support group was homeless. Outside everything was wrecked. Inside we had a Thanksgiving feast. Many of our neighbors were not so fortunate. We went around to all of them, offering the Thanksgiving turkeys we had received as gifts.
We all knew Bhagavan had dealt with the storm. We had felt his puja when he read the poems. We had seen his conversation with the storm. And even the newspapers declared it was a miracle that no one had been killed.
David Forsythe, head of the “Forsythe Committee” for investigating and documenting unusual phenomena within the Communion, gave the following report, which corroborates what we already knew was true:
Sometime after the storm, I was able to make contact with meteorologists in the U.S. Weather Service who are responsible for tracking and predicting the behavior of hurricanes and other tropical storms.
Hurricane Iwa, as it moved toward Kauai, seems to have suddenly accelerated in its course, moving along its path at speeds of over 40 miles per hour, whereas hurricanes usually move at about 17 miles per hour. It went through changes in shape and structure that normally occur only as a hurricane grows old and passes out of the tropics. The reports and photographs I studied showed that Hurricane Iwa began to pick up speed right at the hour the Heart-Master began to talk to Tumo and do his puja! These changes reduced the time that Kauai was subjected to the pounding of wind and surf and undoubtedly prevented greater devastation and damage to the island.
On Thanksgiving Bhagavan Adi Da finally told us what he had done with the storm. “Of course I did not create the storm, but I could have worked to divert it if you had told me about it earlier. When you did tell me about it, I worked on it. I talked to the storm, and it responded. I told her to get her ass out, and the poems by Ramprasad, who was a devotee of Kali, made her lose a little face.” Bhagavan acknowledged that “it was a miracle.”
At the same time he warned us that we could not lose the vision we had seen. “Such force will inevitably create devastation in this world. Everything we generally find attractive in this Sanctuary was destroyed. This same force, this force of Nature will ultimately destroy everything that we find attractive. This is a part of life.”
Thanksgiving Day turned into Thanksgiving night. We sang and danced together. Opera, Simon and Garfunkel, rock music, and reggae. Beloved animated everyone and everything in the room from his chair. He danced, he coached us to sing, he quipped, he roared, he mused, and finally in an ecstatic moment, he gave us a final message about the destiny all men face who are born in the realm of Nature and about the Realization that transcends the play of Nature, or the Mother-Power. As a popular reggae song beat through the room, he spontaneously put to song the lesson of the hurricane.
She eat those folks when they don’t meditate.
When they don’t meditate then, She eat them.
She eat them alive when they don’t meditate.
If you don’t meditate, She put you on a mashed potato.
Oh! You get a fever. If you don’t love Her, you get hot.
Oh yeah! You burn up your fatty. Burn your toes to crisp.
Oh, your ears. Oh, your ears. They look like pig knuckles.
She eat them right then.
Oh! Oh! Ah! Ah! The whole damn thing, She eat.
No respect of Her persons.
Everybody!
She eat everybody!
O Mother we worship you for so many thousands of years.
All we get is this trouble, all this eating, all this disturbance
All this disturbance. What is the use of all this worship?
It’s better to be eaten! Give up your worship! Ah yes.
This Goddess She going to love you a lot.
Stand firm. Stand firm. She eat your foot.
She eat your knee. She eat your leg, your thighs.
She eat your palms, eat your belly out.
Ah yes! Right up your solar plexus. Whoop!
I love it. The whole damn thing, She love it.
You’re all as good as dead. She going to get you.
Mark my words. You’d better love Her.
Love to be eaten by the Lady.
Mark my words. No meditation, just digestion.
Any moment now, She’s gonna eat you alive.
You’re going to feel Her anyway.
She gonna make you feel Her.
She gonna love to eat you.
Ah! The war in the forehead.
Ah! The war in the poor head.
The war between the eyes, between the ears.
Ah! The two hemispheres, they don’t like one another.
Ah! Each hand, they want to kill each other.
Ah! The feet, they want to stomp on one another.
The one thing you got, between your legs. That’s the only one thing you got.
You don’t need that!
Why you so lively with the sexing side?
You are poor people.
You don’t eat it the Mother, she’ll eat it.
Ah! She’s nibbling on my elbow.
Yes, what a Mother. Oh!
Ah the Woman eat you, but I eat the Woman.
I have no fear of the Woman. I take care of the Woman, you take care of me.
Ah! What a silly Lady. She’s so ugly, so ugly. Hey, such an ugly Lady. Ah! This bloody tooth.
Ah! This is so silly.
Ah! You are all so unconcerned.
You never saw this Woman.
You never saw me in my big place.
If I can eat the Lady that eats you,
I don’t think you need to worry about the Lady.
I think you need to worry about me!
I be eating you next, baby!
I may be eating you right now!
I could eat the Andrew. 11
I could eat the Tricky. I eat the Bodha! I’ll eat Donut. Ah! And I’ll eat David, and eat Udi there, ‘cept Bill. Ah! I’ll eat Groot, no sweat! I eat everybody. Ah! The Lupa. Ya, I’ll ask for our universe.
Ah! The Crane. I try the suppository! No good. I eat him anyway. Ah! There’s nothing but the ladies left. They all think they are super-power lady, you know. All they do is move the hips, and you are altogether fascinated. I eat them in one gulp. I got the very big teeth, babies. You never seen no one babble at my feet. I would love to sink these teeth into these flesh hairs.12
Let’s nobody remember, I’m not going to remember either. I don’t know why I love you! But I love you! You may not care, I eat you alive, and devour your pleasures. But I cannot treat you brute-ally. Well, I consort in your poorness. Ah! So what. I’m going to eat your bodies. Ah! No fixed time for your poor lives, only eating. Pupupup, Joanne sandwich! Judith’s flesh, you see.
Ah, no breading, no sorrow, just eat these, just eat these people, just eat those people. The God eats the people. Oh, no! The God don’t eat the people! That’s what I was telling you about, the God don’t eat the people! Ah! The Nature eat the people. I have to say, the God don’t eat the people. The God looooove the people! Ah! Nature eat the God, too. Ah! We all get eaten sooner or later. Ah, so what! To hell with Nature! Just remember, babies: The God . . . loves the people. All right! Eh! Ah! Uh! Oh! I don’t know what I do. I don’t know why I do it. Ah! The poor soul love the God!13
I’m going to distract Mother Nature, And all of you are going to slip out. That’s my Plan. That’s what I gonna do. I’m gonna do it, I’m already doing it! So, you take advantage of it. You betcha, she’s occupied with me right now. You know what I’m talkie’ about, don’t ye? That’s my sadhana. 12 And that’s been no damn plan at all.
The rest of it is just results. Fortunately, I intervened. I’m going to distract Mother Nature. While I do it, you beat it out of here. And I’ll be right behind ye.
This is the only Plan there is!
HURRICANE IWA. This close-up satellite photo of Hurricane lwa was taken at 2:15 P.M. on November 23, 1982. It was the last photo taken before the satellite relay station on Kauai was destroyed by the hurricane. The dotted line shows Iwa’s path. The black dots indicate where the center of the storm was at various times that day.
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For more on Sri Adi Da and the Goddess; see Shiva-Shakti.
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Notes
1. “Tumomama” means “fierce woman.” Traditionally the Goddess has at times been characterized by her all-consuming, all-devouring nature. However, we need to appreciate the fierceness of the Goddess in a spiritual light. The word comes from the Tibetan:
“The meaning of the word gtum-mo. The syllable gtum (‘fierce’) signifies the direct overcoming of all that is not conducive to enlightenment, that is, all that has to be given up; the syllable mo (‘mother’) indicates motherhood as producing spontaneously all the good in virtues, that is, all that has to be attained . . .
‘The ultimate one is gtum-mo in the true sense of the word. It is gtum because it dispels the darkness of unawareness and mo because it is the mother who bears (her child) awareness as the noetic act.” (Herbert V. Guenther, trans., The Life and Teaching of Naropa [London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1963] , p. 59)
The fierce aspect of the Goddess has been valued highly by those most intent in their quest for spiritual freedom. The Goddess is not merely a metaphor, symbol, or superstition. For the Adept the Goddess is real, and to not observe, understand, and transcend Her is to remain bound to a life of suffering and delusion. In the Hindu tradition, the fierce aspect of the Goddess is represented by Kali, and the taming of Kali in the Indian Tantric tradition is said to be a most dangerous course of spiritual practice, but one that carries the possibility of liberation in a single lifetime, if the difficult path can be completed.
“Kali is tamed in Tantric sadhana by another kind of hero—the adept who willingly meets her on her own terms and in her own sanctuary, who confronts her in the dead of night in the cremation ground. In confronting the terrible, black goddess, the adept confronts the ‘forbidden’ dimensions of reality by partaking of them. He puts the spotlight, as it were, on those darker, murkier dimensions of his own being. He lets the ghosts and frightening monsters of his instinctual subconscious being emerge into the light, where they are aired, studied, consciously accepted, and hence stripped of their power to bind him. He conquers these hidden monsters by ritually forcing himself to end that instinctual, perpetual censorship that insists on blinding him to the realities of death and pain. By meditating on Kali in the cremation ground, by surrounding himself with the dead in the place of death, he overcomes the crippling fear that is the real wrath of the Goddess. He wins Her boon of fearlessness by confronting Her heroically in a rirual context that insists on an acceptance of the forbidden.” (David R. Kinsly, The Sword and the Flute [Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1975] , pp. 147.)
2. “Darshan” is literally “seeing”, or “sight or vision of”. The term commonly implies the spontaneous blessings granted by the Adept or Spiritual Master and the Radiant Divine Being. The Adept gives his blessings by allowing himself to be seen, meditated upon, or known.
3. “Brahmacharya” is a Sanskrit word meaning literally “conduct in consonance with Brahman or the Truth.” In the Hindu spiritual traditions, it has widely been equated with the lifelong practice of intentional or motivated celibacy by spiritual aspirants. But this Sanskrit term originally referred to the student stage of life, generally conceived to occupy the first twenty-five years of life. During those years, the growing individual (or brahmacharin) was formally trained in the Way and Truth of existence. This period generally involved strict celibacy until marriage, or entrance into the householder’s stage of life. Over time, the term “brahmacharya” has become synonymous with celibacy itself, even though the ancient practice of brahmacharya encompassed all of the common areas of life, induding academic studies, music, art, diet, work, the Scriptures and so forth.
4. The Renunciate Hermitage is served by a small community of practitioners, called the “support group,” who live nearby.
5. Adi Da’s ecstatic speech about the Goddess Tumomama is an expression of his uncommon subtle-psychic capacity. Although uncommon, there are sufficient reports of Adepts whose involvement with the Universal Life-Energy, the Mother-Shakti, or Spirit-Power is so profound and constant that the Spirit-Power manifests as a living personality. The well-known Indian Saint Sri Ramakrishna, for example, while serving as a temple priest, was once accused of insanity for feeding a cat the consecrated food intended as an offering. He explained to his devotees that:
“The Divine Mother revealed to me in the Kali temple that it was She who had become everything. She showed me that everything was full of Consciousness. The image was Consciousness, the altar was Consciousness, the water-vessels were Consciousness, the door-sill was Consciousness, the
marble floor was Consciousness—all was Consciousness I found everything inside the room soaked, as it were, in Bliss—the Bliss of God. I saw a wicked man in front of the Kali temple; but in him also I saw the power of the Divine Morher vibrating. That was why I fed a cat with the food that was to be offered to the Divine Mother. I clearly perceved that all this was the Divine Mother—even the cat.” (The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, trans. Swami Nikhilananda [New York: Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, 1977] , p. 15) .
For the sake of better understanding Adi Da’s relationship to the Goddess Tumomama, it is useful to point out that there are two basic attitudes presumed in relationship to the Universal Life-Energy, the Mother-Shakti, Spirit-Power, or Goddess. The ascetical schools often develop a negative association with the Goddess-Power, naming Her “Maya,” “Cosmic Veiling Power,” or the Creative Force of the universe. Everything created by Maya is subject to a bewildering and unfathomable display of appearance, change, and disappearance. Association with manifest existence thus causes the individual soul to become deluded, trapped in the illusion of appearances, and thus bound to the subject-object, or egoic, consciousness. The second and more radical understanding attained by the Adepts is the Realization of the Universal Life-Energy, the Mother-Power, or Maha-Shakti, as the Liberating Power. Master Da’s ecstatic references to “the Great Woman” should be understood in these transcendental terms. The Adept recognizes Her as the Servant or Consort of the Divine Person, the Maha-Purusha , Siva, the Pure Consciousness of Eternal Bliss.
“The Living God is always Present. The Living God is a wild, indescribable Character, a Person ultimately without qualities and without differences. But in the Play of Nature, God is evident as a Living Personality. Everything that arises in Nature, not all of which is beautiful, sublime, or desirable, is evidence of that Personality. The Play of Nature is a kind of Madness that is not comprehensible to the ego, which seeks its own survival and the survival of the things to which it wants to attach itself. Nature is a Great Sacrifice, a Fire Sacrifice, a Sacrifice of selves, not merely a place of selves who should be permitted to live forever.”— The Fire Gospel.
6. The Mountain of Attention is a Renunciate Sanctuary and Meditation Retreat of Adidam in Lake County, California.
7. Ramprasad (1718-75) was an Indian Saint whose devotion to the Goodess Kali is reflected in the many poems and songs of devotion he composed throughout his life, His inspirational writings, still sung today, were favorites of Sri Ramakrishna, who was also a devotee of Kali.
8. Ramprasad Sen, Grace and Mercy in Her Wild Hair: Selected Poems to the Mother Goddess, translated by Leonard Nathan and Clinton Seely (Boulder, Colo.: Great Eastern Book Co., 1982), p. 40. (see above Ramprasad page)
9 Puja is ritual worship, traditionally performed by priests, in which offerings are made to the Divine and the Grace of God is petitioned and received. This offering or yielding to the Divine and receiving of Divine Grace is the principle of God-Communion. In true spiritual practice every action must become this puja. In the case of an Adept such as Sri Adi Da Samraj, all action is inherently and spontaneously a form of puja or active sacrifice to and in the Divine. In some instances, such as Bhagavan’s magical transformation of the hurricane, the Adept performs a very visible—if sometimes paradoxical or incomprehensible—ritual of activities whereby the Divine Influence is forcefully brought to bear on the course of human and natural events and destinies.
10. Literally meaning “play,” lila is used here to refer to stories about the Divine Play of the Adept.
11. Adi Da refers to the devotees who had witnessed the storm and who now sat clapping and swaying to His song: Andrew Johnson, Charles Seage, Daji Bodha, Mark Travis, David Forsythe Daji Udi, Bill Roesler, Tom Closser, Neil Lupa, Crane Kirkbride, Joanne Mied, Judith Mazur. He calIs many of them by the affectionate and humorous names He had given them.
12 Right or true action appropriate to real or spiritual life. The term commonly or traditionally refers to practices directed toward the goal of spiritual and religious attainment. Adi Da uses the term without the implication of a goal, to mean appropriate action generated not as a means to Truth but on the basis of prior understanding and Divine Realization.
The Dreaded Gom-Boo – Table of Contents