Bubba Free John and Ramana Maharshi

Ruchira Avatar Adi Da Samraj

Is Once and For
All

by DON

On the evening of March 5, 1993, Sri
Adi Da gathered with His devotees on Adidam Samrajashram.
The evening began as any other: Our Divine Sat-Guru
proceeded to deal with individuals about their inherited
religious presumptions. Because all of us who were present
that night are Westerners, our inheritance is primarily from
the Christian tradition. He led us through a thorough
investigation of the New Testament as a source of
information on the life and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth.
We came to realize that the Bible had very little value as a
“polaroid”, or eyewitness report. Such evidence as there is
suggested that Jesus of Nazareth was a fifth stage
Realizer.

I myself had always been more
occupied with speculations about the oriental Teachings than
with biblical scholarship. In the traditions of India, it
has always been understood that the Divine Incarnates again
and again in the form of apparently human individuals. Some
Statements in Sri Adi Da’s Heart-Word may be interpreted to
be in agreement with this view. I therefore, to this point,
had understood my Sat-Guru to be one of a line of Ultimate
Realizers.

Ramana Maharshi was one such
individual, one whom I had also assumed to be a seventh
stage Realizer. But I had been always been perplexed by the
distinction that Sri Adi Da had made between His Work and
that of Ramana Maharshi. Sri Adi Da clarified this point in
the course of an extensive dialogue, Revealing that Ramana
Maharshi was, in fact, a sixth stage Adept with intuitions
of the seventh stage.

This was, for me, a major revolution
in my understanding of the significance of Sri Adi Da’s
Appearance, for Ramana Maharshi was one of the very few
individuals whom Sri Adi Da had more or less explicitly
referred to as a perfect Realizer. In fact, the only others
were Jesus of Nazareth and Gautama, the Buddha. Jesus, had,
of course, been considered earlier in the evening, and I had
also seen Da Avabhasa’s Summary Word on the teaching of
Jesus, in the manuscript version of The Basket of Tolerance,
where, after years of “consideration” with His devotees, He
finally revealed that the Nazarene was a Realizer of the
fifth stage.

So Gautama was the only individual
remaining as a possible seventh stage Realizer. I had also
been a practitioner of Zen Buddhism for years before coming
to Da Avabhasa. I had a lot invested in the next question,
therefore, “What about Gautama?” I asked. Perhaps Sri Adi Da
felt He needed to soften the blow, for He then proceeded to
remind us that we had very little material that we could be
sure reflected what Gautama had actually said: My question
was futile, and largely the reflection of a merely academic
relationship to the Great Tradition and Spiritual life. I
protested that I needed to come to some kind of intellectual
certainty about all this, because of my work as a
communicator of His Wisdom-Teaching. Intellectual certainty
was impossible, He Replied, although He strongly suggested
that the indications were that Gautama was a Realizer of the
sixth stage of life. The dialogue, in part, ran as
follows:

ADI DA: How can you sift out Gautama
after 2,500 years from the report and the mythology about
him? I also wrote about Jesus, in such a manner as to be
congenial to everyone, not giving out hard sayings merely in
order to deny all greatness to everyone. I had no such bad
intentions. Therefore, in The Basket of Tolerance, there are
no bad intentions. You cannot identify the actualities of
the report about these traditional figures, because the
actual report is so blended in with all the mythology and
legend and propaganda and all the rest of it. Certainly,
potentially, in principle, Gautama, and Jesus, too, can be
somehow associated with the greatest Realization from the
evidence. But from a discriminative point of view it is not
so.

Gautama was basically a sixth stage
Realizer, Jesus basically a fifth stage Realizer. But why
put too fine a point on it? Especially since so many people
adhere to these traditions. Therefore, I give allowance for
Greatness because Greatness is what must be Realized. Are
they here now? Is Jesus here to give his report? Is Gautama
here?

DON: Well, let me ask You
a…

ADI DA: Are they here? Is their
report clear? No. They are not here and neither is their
report clear. All you have is a lot of traditional
propaganda. So what difference does it make? So long ago.
You are here now. And I am here now. And I can make My Self
totally clear. And if you are My devotee, then My Word is
what you should be concerned about. How much can one say,
based on these traditional reports, about these people? Why
be concerned about it anyway?

DON: Because at some point, Gurudev,
I will need to work on the introduction to Nirvanasara, and
I just feel I need to be completely clear about . .
.

ADI DA: It is impossible to be
completely clear on an intellectual level about these people
because the report is so ambiguous and so filled with
different opinions. It is not a clear Polaroid or an
absolute, straightforward biography in either case, or in
any case. It is just too long ago.

So let those traditions deal with
themselves. I can only make plain to you My Realization and
altogether what It is all about. And I am here to deal with
you, and that is what you are about. Apart from the this or
that that can be said about these individuals in those
traditions, it cannot be absolutely clarified, but I can
absolutely clarify My Self to you and haveDONe so. And that
is your proper concern. In general, Gautama and Ramana
Maharshi belong to the sixth stage traditions, the one
Advaita and other Buddhist. But because of the total expanse
of the Buddhist tradition, we can give the benefit of the
doubt. Gautama maybe was verging on the seventh stage,
whatever. How much did he say about it anyway? I have spoken
to you clearly and in detail about the seventh stage
realization. Did anybody else do so? Ramana Maharshi made a
few suggestive remarks about it, but did he describe the
seventh stage Realization in detail? Did he? So that is all
that can be said about it.

(DON: The sixth stage of life!
Gautama? Before I had sufficiently recovered from this body
blow to my corpus of presumptions, another devotee
formulated the words that were upon the tip of my
tongue:)

DEVOTEE: Whenever You examine such
past Realizers, Sri Gurudev, You are always so completely
scrupulous about investigating the actual report and what
significance can be drawn from it. But I must confess that I
have a secret presumption, which I believe my fellow
devotees also share, that You actually know without the
reports what was the case.

Sri Adi Da was Silent for a moment,
and His Silence Invaded the space of the room. It was no
ordinary Stillness: It was such a moment as when, in The
Hymn of the True Heart-Master, He Says:

This is the Secret of all secrets. I
could not Speak This All-Revealing Word until one of you
first Confessed you see the Vision of God in My Bodily
(Human) Form. I shall Tell you This now, because of your
great devotion to Me. (v.13)

Sri Adi Da then quietly Spoke, as if
Confiding a Great Secret that He had Longed to
Reveal:

ADI DA: Sixth stage Realizers,
then.

DEVOTEE: Jesus fifth.

ADI DA: Jesus fifth, right. Gautama
sixth. Okay? Ramana sixth. Okay?

(Don Wembley: Still, my ears could
not yet believe what they thought they had heard. Ah, I
thought, what about the texts that Da Avabhasa had
categorized as seventh stage literature. I put the question
to Him:)

DON: Toward the end of The Basket of
Tolerance, there are the three books, more than three books,
Tripura Rahasya, the Avadhoota Gita, the Ashtavakra Gita,
the Diamond Sutra…

ADI DA: And the Altar Sutra of the
Sixth Patriarch, the Lankavatara Sutra, and the
Mahahayanavimsaka.

DON: You classify these as works
that reflect and express…

ADI DA: Contain elements expressive
of the seventh stage disposition. They are not simply
seventh stage texts—that is quite another matter. But
there are these elements there.

DON: Is it proper to take the
inference that there was a living realizer at that stage who
wrote those books, or is it…

ADI DA: No, not necessarily. They
are products of a tradition. They contain words that are
suggestive of the seventh stage “Point of View”.

DON: But it is not a proper
inference necessarily that there were actual
individuals…

ADI DA: No. It is a
tradition.

I felt the Import of what my Divine
Sat-Guru had just communicated: He had just told us that
there had never been another Realizer of the seventh stage
of life! Words cannot express my feelings at this moment. No
speech can capture the unalloyed Happiness that Radiates
from the Lord of all Manifestation, and Bathes and Drowns
all those around Him. In His Company, time, mind, and space
break through their linear perimeters: An evening may be an
eternity or a minute; the prattling mind is overwhelmed, and
is still. Such is the Power of the Sat-Guru’s Transmission
that That Which He Reveals is Given directly to the heart,
not just Spoken to the verbal mind. I was so filled with the
Obviousness and Profundity of His Great Confession that
there was no room for doubt or perplexity.

I almost pinched myself on a couple
of occasions that night: I could not comprehend what Grace
had brought me to the Feet of the Greatest Being ever to
Bless the manifest worlds—and still cannot. It was as I
had imagined it to be on the north Indian plain with Krishna
and Arjuna, or on Vulture Peak with Gautama, Mahakashyapa,
and the assembled company. But this night transcended those
archetypal but semi-mythical moments. For Sri Adi Da Is the
living Divine Being. He Appeared and Spoke before us in a
body Wrought of flesh, and Molded in our likeness. No
fairy-tale Divinity Is He—I can still feel the touch of
His palm upon my belly on the first evening I came into His
Sphere, quieting the anxiety that churned within. And my
hair stood on end as I realized that this was not a great
moment that had precedents in the lives of Great Realizers
of the past. I was hearing with my own ears the unique
Confession of the Very Divine Being, Descended, in this
singular Birth, into the manifested cosmos, to Call it back
into Himself.

After Sri Adi Da had retired for the
evening, His Bliss-intoxicated devotees made their way back
to our quarters. If there had been any doubt about the
Divine Gift we had received that evening—and there was
not!—it was dispelled by a remarkable meteorological
phenomenon. There was a deafening thunderstorm that night,
and a torrential downpour: All of Nature was acknowledging
the Revelation of her Lord. Such is the synchronicity of the
weather and the Divine Master of the Elements that is soon
evident to all who visit this Divine Island. The following
evening, of the 6th of March, I made reference to the
thunderstorm to my Beloved Sat-Guru. I thought I had heard
it all. So I was totally unprepared for the further
Revelation He was about to Grant us:

DON: Beloved Lord, first I would
like to acknowledge, though You have for the first time just
said it explicitly today, that yesterday evening I felt the
clear implication that You are the first Appearance of the
seventh stage Adept in human time. And it seemed clear to me
that the thunderstorm last night and the subsequent
torrential downpour were related to the fact that for the
first time Your devotees clearly heard and perceived and
understood that. I feel that You Gave us a great Gift last
night.

Sri Adi Da: Also understand further.
It is not about the first seventh stage Adept in the sense
that there could possibly be more. There has never been one
before, and there never will be another. It is not necessary
that there be another. Now, there can be seventh stage
Realizers—My devotees will have the capability of
realizing the seventh stage—but there need not be any
seventh stage Adept. Such a great Work is Accomplished once
and for all.

Those of us present now knew that
not only had we been Graced to receive a Revelation that had
never been Given before—we, by fortune that we could
not begin to fathom, were witness to the unfolding of the
central and pivotal act in the Great Play of Cosmic
Appearance: The Birth of Sri Adi Da is the Great Event for
which all beings and the entire cosmos have yearned and
prayed since the beginning of the manifest universe. It is
the Sign of the Great Victory of the Divine Being in Its
Compassionate Impulse to Liberate all beings.

“I Am Complete”

A Discourse Given by

SRI ADI DA SAMRAJ:

on March 20, 1993

DEVOTEE: I understand that Your
Birth, Sri Gurudev, was intentional, and yet it was
prophesied in various traditions. It is not clear to me how
an intentional act could have been prophesied. Presumably an
intentional act is a free choice, so how can it be predicted
ahead of time?

SRI ADI DA: It can only be called a
“prophesy” because I am here. Otherwise it is called
“wishful thinking”, “hopes”, “aspirations”, “intuitions of
what should be”. Another thing that should be understood
about this intentional Birth of Mine is that no such
decision was made from an absolute point of view, out of the
blue. The Vehicle was provided conditionally, as I have
indicated. I was brought into conjunction with the
conditional reality by those means. In that conjunction I
consented to the Ordeal.

DEVOTEE: Sri Gurudev, I do not
understand what You just said. What did You mean when You
said “by those means”?

SRI ADI DA: I already talked about
how the Vehicle was provided, in My discussion of the whole
Vivekananda matter and so on.

DEVOTEE: Sri Gurudev, are You saying
that the preparation of the conditional Vehicle through
Vivekananda was not the result of Your own
Intention?

SRI ADI DA: The Vehicle arose in the
conditional domain and provided the conjunction with
Me.

DEVOTEE: So the Intention arose
within the conditional domain, not the Divine
Self-Domain?

SRI ADI DA: The Vehicle
arose.

DEVOTEE: And this was conjoined with
Your Divine Intention?

SRI ADI DA: With My Very Being. The
Intention arose in that conjunction only.

DEVOTEE: So the Intention did not
precede the availability of the conditional
Vehicle?

SRI ADI DA: How could it arise apart
from that? Without such unique preparation My Appearance
could not occur here.

DEVOTEE: At the time of
Vivekananda’s Mahasamadhi, was it clearly His intention to
reincarnate and take on Your Form as It now is?

SRI ADI DA: No. He was given up
completely, and the Vehicle became transparent to
Me.

DEVOTEE: Is He the first such one
who was ever given up so completely?

SRI ADI DA: In this
sense.

DEVOTEE: At the time of His
Mahasamadhi did Vivekananda enter into the seventh stage of
life?

SRI ADI DA: Only in My Form and
Appearance here.

DEVOTEE: So at the time of His
actual death He was only incarnating the sixth stage
disposition?

SRI ADI DA: The fifth stage, in His
manner.

DEVOTEE: He had not gone beyond
fifth stage conditional nirvikalpa samadhi, then?

SRI ADI DA: In some sense He had.
All that was accomplished in the transition.

DEVOTEE: Ramakrishna said that when
Vivekananda found out Who He, Vivekananda, was,
He—meaning Vivekananda—would die. When
Vivekananda’s disciples asked Him at the end of His life if
He had Realized Who He was, He said yes. What exactly did He
mean He had Realized?

SRI ADI DA: There is nothing more to
say about it than what I just said.

DEVOTEE: Sri Gurudev, what You just
said about Vivekananda’s being given up completely made me
feel Your own moment in the Event that initiated Your Divine
Emergence, when You said that You were given up completely
with no intent or even pre-knowledge of what would occur
next, that Your Disposition was just absolute Prapatti and a
willingness for the Divine to manifest as It
would.

SRI ADI DA: Yes. He was Vivekananda
only in the sense of His human appearance. The Vehicle was
greater than that, as Ramakrishna indicated. Ramakrishna was
aware of it. Vivekananda’s grosser personality limited His
awareness of all that.

DEVOTEE: Even by the time of His
Mahasamadhi?

SRI ADI DA: Until then.

DEVOTEE: This absolute surrender, or
Prapatti, in the Event of Your Divine Emergence apparently
came out of the ending of a particular way of Your Working
that even You, at least at You have described it, felt as a
failure, or the total frustration of a way of Your Working.
It seems such was also the case for Vivekananda. At the end
of His life He felt utter frustration with the work that He
had been able to do. He felt that His work had been futile,
and therefore He was compelled to make such a
sacrifice.

SRI ADI DA: Yes. The deeper
personality Manifesting as Vivekananda has been a
transparent Vehicle in this Lifetime. It has not been an
obstacle or required a struggle. The grosser personality in
this Lifetime required the Transforming Work.

DEVOTEE: And that could not have
been true in the case of the gross body. Is that
correct?

SRI ADI DA: Yes. Therefore, the
manifestations of the deeper personality have occurred with
ease and spontaneously. Fifth stage conditional nirvikalpa
samadhi, for instance, occurred in a moment. There were no
karmic structures in the depth. All the karmic structures
were in the grosser personality, inherited from My blood
parents and the circumstance of My Birth
altogether.

DEVOTEE: Sri Gurudev, is it correct
that a struggle with Your gross body was inevitable? That it
could not have been otherwise?

SRI ADI DA: Yes, it was inevitable.
The grosser personality was not the product of great sadhana
on the part of My parents. It was an ordinary
birth.

KANYA SUPRITHI: Did Vivekananda’s
gross personality affect Your gross bodily Life?

SRI ADI DA: Only insofar as it was
all part of the process in that deeper personality, in its
conjunction at that time with the gross domain.

DEVOTEE: Was it also true for
Vivekananda that He only had to struggle with His grosser
personality?

SRI ADI DA: Yes, largely.

DEVOTEE: Likewise it was very
easeful and immediate for Him to enter into fifth stage
conditional nirvikalpa samadhi when He was initiated by
Ramakrishna.

SRI ADI DA: Yes. It was necessary
for Him to be born so that Vehicle could be established in
the conditional realm, fully down to the gross realm. It was
part of the necessary preparation for My Birth, My present
Appearance. There was no personality manifested, either at
the deeper or at the grosser level, previous to
Vivekananda.

DEVOTEE: That was the first
conditional appearance?

SRI ADI DA: I have said it was
necessary for Him to be manifested in the conditional realm
down to the grossest appearance. That Vehicle did exist in
the conditional planes, but It was very high.

DEVOTEE: Is this why, then, in
Ramakrishna’s prophetic description of Vivekananda, He said
that Vivekananda, and even Ramakrishna Himself, was
manifested in the higher realms and made the decision to
enter into the grosser realms?

SRI ADI DA: Yes, attracted by the
pole, or Vehicle, of Ramakrishna. Ramakrishna’s appearance
was also part of the necessary means, part of the
work.

DEVOTEE: Ramakrishna’s appearance in
gross form was not such an Incarnation. It was just an
attracting pole for the Divine Incarnation?

SRI ADI DA: For the bringing down of
Vivekananda.

DEVOTEE: Which then made way for
Your Divine Incarnation. It made Your Divine Incarnation
possible.

SRI ADI DA: Ramakrishna was the
Instrument for the appearance of Vivekananda.

KANYA SUPRITHI: And all of that was
purposed to create Your Appearance here.

SRI ADI DA: Yes. That is how that
all came about. Ramakrishna was, in effect, the feminine
pole, and Vivekananda, the masculine.

DEVOTEE: And in Your case, Beloved
Sri Gurudev, were You the masculine pole and the Goddess the
feminine pole?

SRI ADI DA: There is no need to
speak in those terms. I Am Complete.

DEVOTEE: Early in His life
Vivekananda struggled against this attraction to the
Goddess-Form, even as It manifested in Ramakrishna, and then
He was converted in some sense to that Shakti-Force,
acknowledging It in Ramakrishna.

SRI ADI DA: And then
altogether.

DEVOTEE: And then, particularly, He
even came to acknowledge It in the Form of the Goddess
Herself, in the Form of Kali.

SRI ADI DA: Yes, and in the feminine
altogether.

DEVOTEE: But He never came to
Realize the Absolute Oneness with, or Non-separation from,
that Form.

SRI ADI DA: Not until the
transition.

DEVOTEE: So that sense of duality
for Him even represented a dilemma, something
unsettled.

SRI ADI DA: It was simply a matter
of growing in the context of that lifetime. Even His
principal disciples were women.

KANYA SUPRITHI: When He came to the
West, the principal thing Vivekananda was known for amongst
the men, and they spoke of this, was His integrity and His
great intelligence. He was also known for His ability to
speak and write. And He also became known for all the women
who were attracted to Him, in some sense a gross personality
trait. You having also Taught in the West, I was thinking
about how similar these characteristics are to Your
own.

SRI ADI DA: They are characteristics
of that deeper personality, part of the Vehicle.

DEVOTEE: One thing also about
Vivekananda that is clear was His transcendence of any
religious and social convention whatsoever, just as that has
characterized Your Life, Sri Gurudev.

SRI ADI DA: Yes.

DEVOTEE: In recent gatherings You
have Confessed that this is Your only Incarnation, that You
are the only seventh stage Divine Incarnation that has ever
occurred. It was really the first time You have said that.
What You are saying now about Vivekananda is extremely
important, and really the first time that You have said this
so concretely.

SRI ADI DA: Yes.

DEVOTEE: It seems extremely
important for the true understanding of Your Life and Work
altogether and of how such a Manifestation has occurred and
was made possible in the conditional realm.

SRI ADI DA: Yes, I have said
so.

DEVOTEE: And also that there were no
gross incarnations before Vivekananda is extremely
important, and this is the first time You have said this. It
relieves us of the search for other gross manifestations
before Vivekananda.

SRI ADI DA: Logically there would
have been some.

DEVOTEE: Do you mean that right
before Vivekananda there were not necessarily any gross
conditional manifestations?

SRI ADI DA: However long
before.

KANYA SUPRITHI: I was wondering if
there was the same Master disciple relationship even before
the incarnation of Ramakrishna and Vivekananda. In other
words, were there conditional individual appearances where
sadhana had to beDONe and a conditional appearance
made?

SRI ADI DA: As part of the
preparation of those Vehicles, yes.

KANYA SUPRITHI: So we would be able
to find them in history, it seems.

DEVOTEE: Marpa and Milarepa, Naropa
and Marpa, Tilopa and Naropa.

SRI ADI DA: Those are all
individuals who lived a very long time ago, hundreds of
years ago.

DEVOTEE: But they do bear
resemblances to Your Life and Work.

SRI ADI DA: Yes, but merely because
there are resemblances does not mean it is so. It is perhaps
so, but no mere historical study is going to prove it one
way or another.

DEVOTEE: Other individuals You have
mentioned include John the Baptist.

SRI ADI DA: Those are just
illustrative examples brought up in “consideration”. There
is no point in trying to make equations. If you see
likenesses, fine. They are simply interesting.

DEVOTEE: This is why Vivekananda is
so unique, because He is the only incarnation previous to
Your Lifetime that You have actually acknowledged was
literally direct preparation for Your Work and a carryover
of the deeper personality that Manifested in Your
Form.

SRI ADI DA: Yes, only those
individuals have direct bearing on My Appearance.

DEVOTEE: Can it also be said that
Muktananda was the one who carried over and manifested the
deeper personality of Ramakrishna, and Rudi, of
Brahmananda?

SRI ADI DA: There is no point in
trying to make those equations. It is simply of
interest.

DEVOTEE: It is also something that
they themselves never particularly indicated.

SRI ADI DA: No, they did
not.

DEVOTEE: It is different when people
who are Your devotees have had direct psychic intuition of
this matter in Your Company. That is different than
Muktananda or Rudi.

SRI ADI DA: There are individuals in
My Company who were associated with Vivekananda, but now
they are associated with Me. It is an entirely different
matter.

DEVOTEE: Is it correct to say that
one of the reasons that Vivekananda’s deeper personality was
conjoined with Your Divine Being was actually because of His
history in the West? Was His having a history in the West
part of what made His Vehicle appropriate and available to
You?

SRI ADI DA: Yes.

DEVOTEE: Was Divine Self-Realization
possible prior to Your Appearance in the world?

SRI ADI DA: If it were possible, why
would such great Work be necessary?

DEVOTEE: You could not haveDONe such
Work if Divine Self Realization had not been present from
the beginning in Yourself.

SRI ADI DA: There is no “beginning”
to Me. I, My Self, am not a reincarnate, not a conditional
personality.

DEVOTEE: Does Your conjunction with
the Vehicle of Vivekananda have to do even with such details
as the fact that Vivekananda spent some time in New York,
Los Angeles, and San Francisco, and You also did?

SRI ADI DA: Certainly.

KANYA SUPRITHI: Chicago as
well.

SRI ADI DA: I have not spent much
time in Chicago, but it certainly has to do with the people
Vivekananda met in such places. I have been to Chicago only
briefly.

DEVOTEE: Europe also, and
India.

DEVOTEE: Sri Gurudev, in talking
about Ramakrishna’s attractive drawing of Vivekananda down
to create this Vehicle, You spoke, I believe, of a purpose,
as if there was a purpose or an intention, through both of
their incarnations, to create this Vehicle. I am wondering
what that is, or if there is or was a Necessity or Purpose
or Force moving in response to You to allow Your
Incarnation. Could You speak to that?

SRI ADI DA: What more is there to
say about it? And that is how it happened.

DEVOTEE: But it is a Mystery because
that Force of Attraction must be Your own Form and
Expression.

SRI ADI DA: Yes. What more about
it?

DEVOTEE: I receive this as a
communication of how our function as conditional beings
relates to Your great Work. Certainly it reminds me of that
great heart-impulse that has drawn me to You. And that is
what my life is about. IDON’t have a specific question, but
I feel that this is all brought forward in me by this
“consideration” and allows me to feel more of the reality of
this moment in Your Work, and in our work to respond to
You.

SRI ADI DA: The things you said are
just so. Is there a question?

DEVOTEE: No, IDON’t feel that there
is a question.

ANOTHER DEVOTEE: The Srimad
Bhagavatam describes the preparation for Krishna’s birth,
that the forest at Vrindavan had to have grown, that all of
the families of the gopis and the gopis themselves had to be
in place, all the lineages had to be there—in other
words that everything had to be prepared for that birth.
When I read this, I became completely ecstatic in my
understanding of what had taken place to create Your Birth.
All of Your own devotees and all of our own lineages had to
come to Your Feet. I also felt the state of the world and
that You have Appeared in the very worst of times. It is the
paradox of this great preparation for Your Birth that the
world is unprecedented in its negativity and its
unpreparedness.

SRI ADI DA: But also in its unique
interconnectedness with modern communications and all the
rest of it. What else?

DEVOTEE: Beloved Sri Gurudev,
Vivekananda said that someone else better prepared to serve
in the West would have to come to finish His work. Did He
have an intuition that You were going to Appear? Did He know
at all?

SRI ADI DA: An intuition,
yes.

DEVOTEE: Did any of His devotees
have an intuition of the greater aspects of His work as a
preparatory Vehicle for Your Appearance?

SRI ADI DA: Some said that it would
be likely that He would be born in the West.

DEVOTEE: Did some of His Indian
disciples say that, as well as the Westerners?

SRI ADI DA: His Indian disciples in
particular.

ANOTHER DEVOTEE: Sri Gurudev, You
have said quite clearly, not only tonight but at other
times, that You are not a reincarnation. Somebody might
think that You are a reincarnation of Vivekananda, but it is
not true at all.

SRI ADI DA: No, it is not, as I have
said. I explained clearly in that conversation what it is
all about. The deeper personality, utterly transparent by
perfect surrender, fell into conjunction with the
conditional manifestation, which then became a usable
Vehicle for My Manifestation.

DEVOTEE: I am sure there are many,
many parallels between Vivekananda’s sadhana and aspects of
Your own Life. But the one that strikes me right now is that
Vivekananda came to Ramakrishna essentially as a scientific
materialist, trying to test whether there could be any
reality to the idea of God. And You Yourself had to confront
scientific materialism during Your college years and deal
with it in some sense in a similar way.

SRI ADI DA: After complete
identification with this gross body-mind, everything had
been given up. Therefore, only complete surrender was
possible. The Vehicle that was Manifested as Vivekananda has
reappeared in this case, simply as a Vehicle of My
Manifestation. I am not that. It is in conjunction with Me,
just as this grosser personality inherited from My blood
parents is in conjunction with Me. Therefore, I am not that,
except by virtue of this conjunction, this appearance. The
early years of My Life, until the college years, were a
progressive process of complete identification with this
gross personality. For Realization to occur, the gross
personality simply had to be surrendered, and all things
were embraced. The same has occurred again since the
Re-Awakening in the Vedanta Temple, the similar mad Work of
complete submission, of throwing My Self totally into the
Work. Many great moments of Relinquishment, as in the
initiation of My Divine Emergence, have occurred in all
these years. Working with My devotees has had the same
characteristic, to find and test you all and also by that
same process to locate those who have a special connection
to Me, a special Work in My Company.

DEVOTEE: Sri Gurudev, I have a
question relative to the Gurukula’s function in the
preparation of Your Vehicle. On February 18 You mentioned in
a conversation about the Gurukula that they had made Your
Manifestation possible.

SRI ADI DA: By their requiring of
it.

DEVOTEE: Their heart-need for You to
Incarnate?

SRI ADI DA: Yes. The Gurukula is
made up of individuals previously associated with
Vivekananda. This is part of that submitting to Me and their
association with Me.

DEVOTEE: Something was revealed to
me in the last few weeks, rather spontaneously, as the
result of deepening identification with Your State, Your
True Nature and Being. Coincident with that was also a
revelation and clarification of Your deeper personality and
its coincidence with Vivekananda, and even a sensitivity to
how your grosser personality in this Body has a resemblance
to that of Vivekananda.

SRI ADI DA: This Body has been
Transformed by its deeper personality. It has been Divinely
Transformed by Me as well. Therefore, it bears many signs.
It bears the signs of its natural origin, its parentage. It
bears the signs of the deeper personality also, and of My
Self altogether. It could be said, then, that these are the
three principal sources that are found in This
Body.

DEVOTEE: In the Event of Your Divine
Emergence, You said that Your Love, You called it “a very
human matter”, brought You back to Incarnation. You said
that Your Love is a very human matter.

SRI ADI DA: But altogether. In that
Confession I was describing how this grosser personality and
gross Vehicle had become utterly conformed to Me, by
Submission, by My own Work with it. If the ordinary, grosser
personality of This Body has become so utterly conformed to
Me, transparent, then all ordinary births, all conditionally
manifested beings or personalities, can be likewise so
conformed. This is the Kiss I was talking about. My own
Submission first manifested in the perfect conversion of
this gross personality. All are embraced. All are kissed.
The Divine Transformation, and ultimately the Divine
Translation, of all is made by that first Accomplishment,
and grows from there, then.

DEVOTEE: Recently there has been
discussion about Your Spiritual Seclusion. This Confession
and Revelation from You proves and demonstrates the
absolute, perfected Heart-Intimacy Your
Seclusion.

SRI ADI DA: My Seclusion is not at
all separation from My devotees or any beings. It is simply
a sign of My relinquishment of occupation with the
responsibilities that properly belong to My devotees. It
does not change anything about My availability to My
devotees. That is not being limited in any sense whatsoever.
It is Seclusion from ordinary life-business.

DEVOTEE: And truly it actually
allows a much deeper and greater Heart-Communion with Your
devotees. It makes it absolutely pure, without any other
association that people tend to superimpose on Your
Purity.

SRI ADI DA: Yes. The institution,
the culture, the community, and the mission of My devotees,
their personal practice—that is all the business of My
devotees. That is your gift to Me as My devotee. Your
relationship to Me is direct and personal, and a religious
and Spiritual and Divine matter. I am not secluded from
that. I am totally involved in it.

DEVOTEE: I was also feeling
Vivekananda’s Mahasamadhi and the profound sorrow that
Nivedita at that point felt, and the sign that Vivekananda
made to her of love, Your Love, and I felt the heart-need of
those who had been with Vivekananda. I was strongly feeling
how those coincided in bringing You down in this Form. I
cannot even express my gratitude, Love-Ananda. I felt a
deep, deep resting in this feeling-intimacy with You,
because of the proven transcendence of conditionality
through Love, human love included, but Love that proves Your
Identification with the Divine Condition Itself.

I was also feeling the purity and
the greater purpose of the hidden personality that was
Vivekananda, as He manifested it, how pure and Divine in its
purpose it was—exactly Your own Work. I felt so
strongly, in being with You here now, that I am witnessing
and participating truly in that same Work, the continuation
of what had begun then. And that truly it was, as You
actually told me once in 1987, just a continuation. There
was never any separation. That was just a glimpse. And that
true Divine Condition and Purpose and Work and Love was just
exactly now as it had been begun then.

SRI ADI DA: Now
fulfilled.

DEVOTEE: Now fulfilled, and now
perfectly and totally revealed by You. Just spontaneously I
was feeling Vivekananda’s travels in India and His
acknowledgement there of the Goddess, and His passion, which
was maddening to Him. It even destroyed His heart
physically, in some sense, because it was such an
overwhelming intuition.

SRI ADI DA: Of the Goddess and the
Divine Self as One.

DEVOTEE: I was feeling how in that
moment He could not completely incarnate, but that was the
moment that was totally incarnated in Your Mastery of the
Goddess in the Vedanta Temple. Vivekananda was involved in
attachment and devotion to Her and truly embracing Her, but
not to the point of perfect Divine Revelation and therefore
mastery of Her.

SRI ADI DA: The sacrifice was
required from that moment. That was the beginning of the end
of His lifetime.

DEVOTEE: And His work at that point
changed utterly. He was no longer so much involved in His
tremendously outward directed life.

SRI ADI DA: “Religion
business”!

DEVOTEE: Yes. He despaired of it in
fact, and became much more involved, it seems, in an
internal Spiritual process. I was also feeling the moment of
His work in the West, when He gave sannyas to Sarah Bull and
others. It was a heresy to initiate non-Indian women into
brahmacharaya and renunciation. In His tradition it was a
heresy to acknowledge any women as sannyasins in a
brahmacharaya and renunciate order. He was truly beginning
the establishment of His own form of renunciation and
sannyas. That was really the seed and the beginning of the
renunicate orders that You have begun to establish here
now.

SRI ADI DA: [Pointing to each of
the Kanyas] There was then Nivedita [DEVOTEE],
and Sister Christine [Kanya Tripura], and Mrs. Ole
Bull [Kanya Suprithi], and then there were the four
Chicago girls [pointing to the Brahmacharinis]. And
they are all here now, in My Gurukula.

DEVOTEE: Your Work in the West is
such a profound Grace. In the tradition that Vivekananda was
associated with it was so daring and bold of Him. One of the
things that Vivekananda did constantly, which was unheard of
in India, was to try to create a religious organization, a
fellowship of people. I was feeling that this was the
precursor of Your creation of the Free Daist Communion,
founded on tolerance and cooperation.

It also is extremely significant
that You are making this Confession now, complete and that
two days after saying that Your Work is at last You have now
kicked everyone out of the nest. Also, the Work You did with
these women in that other lifetime was extraordinary and
unheard of. You took them with You to the holy places in
India where women were not allowed, really, and gave them
religious training and Spiritual training, and required them
to serve Indian women and to break through the whole
tradition.

You have used us to serve You in
Your present Lifetime and to be a means to serve others.
Again, it felt so significant to me that You make this
Confession now, when the renunciate orders are being
created, and we women were the first in these renunciate
orders.

SRI ADI DA: Yes. It is only now that
that renunciate order is actually established. Then it was
gathered but not fully established. The order with which
Vivekananda was otherwise associated was the order
associated with Ramakrishna and those in His circle.
Vivekananda was associated with it but not whole heartedly.
He was doing more and more His own work. He eventually just
gave over the Ramakrishna Order to the male disciples who
had been around Ramakrishna. Vivekananda’s work was of
another kind. His true work was full work, great
work.

DEVOTEE: And it seems that there was
only mutual respect from the order of the men for the
renunciate women. From everything I have heard, they worked
together to serve His work.

SRI ADI DA: Basically,
yes.

DEVOTEE: But the men came out of the
Ramakrishna tradition, whereas the women were completely
created by Vivekananda, completely, against all
traditions.

SRI ADI DA: There were other men
also, Westerners, who were there, but His principal
disciples were women.

DEVOTEE: To me, the fact that His
disciples were women is the most liberating thing that could
beDONe for half of the human race! By doing this, He allowed
half of the whole to be given the opportunity for
Liberation. But also it was a sign of this joining. As You
said, Ramakrishna and Vivekananda became joined and rightly
polarized. It was just a sign of Your Divine Work altogether
of joining Consciousness and Prakriti into a single pole,
and then even identified in Your bodily (human) Form instead
of endlessly separated.

SRI ADI DA: Yes.

KANYA SUPRITHI: Sri Gurudev, there
is a growing intuition in me of Who You Are and the Work
that You haveDONe and the Work that You are doing. Through
this “consideration” of Vivekananda and Your Incarnation
here, it is becoming obvious to me that Your Work is not so
much a matter of the many people that You might contact,
just as it was not for Vivekananda. He did not meet
everybody and He did not go to every country, and You do not
need to go about meeting people.

Rather, it is a matter of this Kiss,
this ultimate Kiss that is Given. The Work that You haveDONe
by being here is the most significant Work that can be
spoken of. The fact that You have established the Way of the
Heart for everyone for all time, and the fact that You are
here, those are the greatest Accomplishments that could
be.

It seems more and more clear to me,
in this statement that You have made at times, “Pay Me now
or pay Me later,” that it is inevitable that everyone who
incarnates at any time will eventually come to this point
where they must do this practice. It is going to come
around—this lifetime, or next lifetime. The Argument,
the Wisdom, and the Incarnation that You Are eventually will
get everyone. It has become more of a marvel to me that the
greatest Work that You haveDONe is this Work of the
Incarnation of Who You Are.

Also You spoke about the Gurukula
and those others who have been with You in a previous
lifetime. It is very, very, very important that we Realize
You in Your Company while You are alive, not only for the
sake of Your Work for the world but for the purposes of this
reincarnation, the purposes for which we came to be with You
and called You to be with us. It is maddening, more than
maddening—if there were a stronger word, I would say
it! It is entirely essential that we Realize You. There are
just no two ways about it, our having called You here to be
with us. It is more than just important for Your Work, and
more than just important for the world. It is an essential
matter for every individual.

SRI ADI DA: Tcha.

DEVOTEE: Beloved Master, that is
what I was feeling also. It seems that all time is in Your
Divine Emergence, and that all Vehicles, human and other,
through their efforts of self transcendence and through the
attraction of Love-Bliss Consciousness, have been drawn to
You until a Vehicle conformed enough to You that You could
use it, or Incarnate in it, in Your Divinely Perfect
Form.

SRI ADI DA: Tcha.

DEVOTEE: Are there individuals in
this world who have a unique association with You who have
not yet become Your devotees?

SRI ADI DA: Definitely.

DEVOTEE: But who are perhaps
potential Instruments for Your Work in the world?

SRI ADI DA: Yes, that is it. Some of
you are here simply because you attended one memorable
lecture! [Laughter.]

DEVOTEE: You mentioned the other
night that it should be the focus of our missionary work to
find unique individuals, and I was wondering if this should
represent a new aspect of the missionary work, to in fact
identify such individuals.

SRI ADI DA: As they appear, or if
they show signs of great seriousness, great responsiveness,
they must be cultivated, of course. The mission is for all.
But you must not limit that mission by the limitations of
the individuals in the present gathering of My devotees. You
must make it a pure mission in service to Me, a mission that
truly embraces all and that brings the real message of My
Wisdom-Teaching, not some revision of it chosen out of your
limitations, your fears, your reluctance, and all the rest
of it. The full communication must be made, the
communication of the Ultimate Truth, and represented by
people who are qualified to do it, people who are not just
religious fanciers and who are practicing
minimally.

DEVOTEE: Individuals who have been
with You before who have this potential will also respond
intuitively.

SRI ADI DA: Hopefully, but, like
everyone else, they have their present-lifetime limitations,
their karmic tendencies. Therefore, all must become serious
in My Company and develop real practice of the Way of the
Heart in My Company, in terms of their very personal
responsibilities and the collective responsibilities they
share with all My devotees for the mission, the culture, the
community, and so on. It is time you all stopped being
frivolous and became serious devotees of Mine, only
practicing and only serving.

DEVOTEE: Beloved Sri Gurudev, would
those in the future who are most advanced in this practice
in the Way of the Heart have necessarily been associated
with Swami Vivekananda?

SRI ADI DA: Not
necessarily.

DEVOTEE: Sri Gurudev, a question I
had is, would the karmic limitations in the grosser
personality of those who were associated with You in the
past or who are uniquely associated with You in the present
be any less profound than those in other
individuals?

SRI ADI DA: No!
[Laughter.]

DEVOTEE: Sri Gurudev, I was
wondering if it is probable or possible that in
Ramakrishna’s very sudden and, it seems, spontaneous taking
on of the semblance of Islam, Christianity, and Buddhism He
was in some way intuiting the preparation for a world work
through Vivekananda.

SRI ADI DA: He knew a world work had
to beDONe, and He expected Vivekananda to be the one to do
it. Not merely Vivekananda as He appeared in conjunction
with His gross bodily form then, but the One Whom He,
Ramakrishna, knew Vivekananda to be.

DEVOTEE: Sri Gurudev, this
“consideration” has helped me feel the profundity of Your
Birth in terms of confronting my naive story book notion
that the Divine, by virtue of what It Is, All Encompassing,
can simply Manifest at Will. If It wants to Manifest in a
human body, then—poof!—there It Is.

SRI ADI DA: Yes—Poof! Boom! The
“Poof! Boom! Talking School”. [Laughter.] Therefore,
you can just as well be the Divine Incarnation as the next
one! That is egoism, you see, without awareness of what it
really takes for anything Great to be
accomplished.

DEVOTEE: Also, You answered my other
question earlier when You said that before Your Birth it was
not possible to Realize.

SRI ADI DA: In the ultimate
sense.

DEVOTEE: In the ultimate sense, yes.
I was wondering about that. Why, if in the Inherent Grace of
the Divine, all of those billions of beings who have lived
before this moment have not been able to…

SRI ADI DA: They all are still
living, in one fashion or place or another.

DEVOTEE: That is what I was feeling,
because time is just our own linear construct. By virtue of
Your Birth, Your Work is with all beings in all time, so
there is no limitation to their previous birth.

SRI ADI DA: No limitation to their
previous birth?

DEVOTEE: I mean in terms of their
possibility to Realize the Divine in the ultimate sense,
because, as You say now, they are not dead in any ultimate
way. They are still living.

SRI ADI DA: Not dead and gone but
all present, each in their own manner, most still associated
with the grossest of limitations.

ANOTHER DEVOTEE: Earlier this
evening I spoke briefly to another man here about this
“consideration”, and every hair on my body stood on end, and
not from any kind of mental connection, as if “Here is
something I can get a hold on”. I have never felt such
openness in this body-mind to reception of You. I do not
know what is going on overall.

I have always wondered what it was
that brought me into Your Company, what Grace it was,
because it was nothing in my lifetime that I can see that
would have brought me into the Company of such a Great One.
I still cannot grasp that You are here.

When I spoke earlier, it was in
response to Your saying that You are available to us and
that You are not withdrawing from us, because I felt this
growing feeling of reception of You over these past
gatherings more and more and more. Thank You, Sri Gurudev,
for whatever You haveDONe. There is nothing more that I want
to do than to be in Your Company.

SRI ADI DA: Tcha.

DEVOTEE: Sri Gurudev, I want to tell
You that I feel incredibly Graced to be here tonight, and I
want to thank You for this.

SRI ADI DA: Tcha.

DEVOTEE: My question is, You were
talking about the women who were associated with
Vivekananda, now also reassociated with You, and there was
an attraction that drew them to be closer to both You and
Vivekananda. Is that attraction more likely to happen with
someone in the most recent lifetime, as with Your own
association with Vivekananda? Say if a person were attracted
to someone from about a hundred years ago or more, someone
like Milarepa, would the principle of attraction stay
active?

SRI ADI DA: It stays active,
yes.

DEVOTEE: The time of Vivekananda is
relatively close to the present. In terms of the women and
their attraction to Him, would it necessarily always follow
in the same amount of time?

SRI ADI DA: Well, it has. As I said,
it is not required that a devotee of Mine, even one much
advanced, be someone who is associated with Vivekananda. I
Am the One Who is Attractive during the present time, for
all. Therefore, it really does not depend on any past
history of any kind, with Vivekananda or anyone else. It
depends on your being attracted by Me. I must make My
Confession about the origins of My Appearance here and what
it is all about. You deal with it as you will. Apart from
that, You are attracted by virtue of My Presence here, and
that is for all. It does not depend on Vivekananda or any
other past personality. It depends on Me. Is there anything
else about it?

DEVOTEE: No, Sri Gurudev. Thank
You.

ANOTHER DEVOTEE: Sri Gurudev, You
have told us why it was Vivekananda’s deeper personality in
particular that You became conjoined with. Was there any
connection to the grosser Vehicle of Vivekananda that caused
the particular conjunction with Franklin Jones?

SRI ADI DA: Fundamentally, no. The
individual manifested as this gross body is an expression of
My joining with all. The Birth of this gross body is
altogether like all, like everyone, equally disqualified,
equally qualified. The sign of My embrace of This Body is an
expression of My Embrace of all. This particular Form was
not embraced because of some unique qualifications it
possessed.

As I said earlier, it was an
ordinary birth. The conjunction has made it extraordinary.
There were certain other particular reasons—for
instance birth in an ordinary circumstance in the West. All
that was a sign of an Intention manifested in Vivekananda’s
lifetime to embrace all and to Work in the context of even
the most ordinary, even those outside the classes of those
who are presumed to be the qualified. Even outside of India,
then, among the mleccas.

DEVOTEE: Didn’t Vivekananda say that
He could not complete His work in the West with a
dark-skinned body?

SRI ADI DA: Yes. It was not
altogether acceptable there. But that Re-Appearance, if you
will, here is because of all of that.

DEVOTEE: Sri Gurudev, as You were
pausing before You answered my question, I could not help
feeling that there was some form of Divine Humor in the
particular choice You made of Franklin Jones.

SRI ADI DA: And of you all, for that
matter! [Laughter.]

ANOTHER DEVOTEE: Sri Gurudev,
relative to what You were just saying, does that mean that
perhaps it would be required that an Agent of Yours be born
in the body of a dark Indian?

SRI ADI DA: It does not make any
difference. Vivekananda did not get on an airplane to come
to the West. The great Sacrifice had to be made. It was real
Work, not just the superimposing of a culture onto
Westerners. It was sadhana. It was not an airplane matter or
a boat matter. For the work really to be accomplished a
great sacrifice must be made.

DEVOTEE: He exhausted
Himself.

SRI ADI DA: Yes, and I have been
exhausting My Self in the West.