Donald Webley and Adi Da Samraj – September 23, 2004
“When I speak of transmission masters in the yogic sense, however, I’m speaking of individuals who are adept at using energy transmission as a means for accomplishing yogic purposes that have to do with the process associated with one or the other of the stages of life. So, it’s not simply a matter of whether there’s energy emanating from someone; it’s a matter of whether it’s effective as a yogic transmission for a yogic purpose.” – Adi Da Samraj
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DONALD WEBLEY: Divine Beloved Lord, I love You. I bow at Your Divine Feet. I am overcome with gratitude with the opportunity to address a question to You. My Lord, by Your Divine Grace, it has been made completely clear to me that you are Unique; Your Birth is Unique; Your Dharma is Unique. And that’s our communication. Your Dharma in the public must be done in a fashion that conforms to Your Unique Statement.
My Beloved Ishta, when You first made the Revelation that You are the first, the last, and the only Seventh Stage Adept, I believe I asked You whether we should communicate this fully and openly to the public, and You gave an Answer that was at the time surprising to Me, but which I now understand.
You gave an answer, Beloved Lord, that I didn’t fully understand in the moment, but which is now completely clear. You said “you must speak of Me in those terms or else many people will not come to Me otherwise”. And the reason, Beloved Lord, I now understand that all beings inhere in You. You meditate all beings. It is only our function as Your missionaries to tell everyone that You are Incarnate. For this reason, my Lord, it is necessary for us to say the Divine Person walks in man form; the Divine Person is here, inviting all into relationship with You.
Beloved Ishta, I have two perplexities which I would like to lay at Your Divine Feet.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: What about the rest of them? [Laughter] You’re not going to get anywhere just dealing with two. [Laughter]
DONALD: My Lord, this evening, and at other times, and elsewhere in Your Literature, You have emphasized the discontinuity between the spiritual transmissions of the fifth stage of life and the sixth stage transmission, and specifically relative to the transmission in the schools of Buddhism.You have said that the sixth stage tradition, the sixth stage elements of those schools are fundamentally separate from the sixth stage elements.
I have a question relative to the Vajrayana tradition. There are numerous reports in the literature of the Vajrayana tradition of miraculous phenomena associated with individuals whom one would assume to be practicing in the sixth stage fashion. And, and in fact, I have, myself, witnessed miraculous phenomena with an individual who, it would appear, was a practitioner of the sixth stage school in Tibetan Buddhism.
My question is, what is a right understanding? How is one to make sense of this? Is there something that I’m not understanding about this?
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, you’re not talking about anyone or anything in particular, so you’ll have to particularize it.
DONALD: Well, there are two uh, apart from the Literature, the two things that are within my own experience are, I went to the Vajrayana Crown Ceremony that the sixteenth Karmapa performed in 1980, and ..
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, you certainly can’t describe him as a sixth stage practitioner.
DONALD: Oh, he is not?
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Right.
DONALD: Is that what You’re saying, my Lord?
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes.
DONALD: Well, in that case, it’s quite simple.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: I mean if he was schooled in practices, and of course, he was professionally schooled to play a role in that tradition also. But, in terms of the practices he engaged, they were not strictly sixth stage. They were a variety of kinds, but generally speaking, you could see them relative to the fourth, the fifth, and the sixth stages of life, as well as disciplines that belong to the ordinary life level of the first three stages of life.
So, the Vajrayana tradition as an experience of practices and so forth, covers a wide variety of associations with stages of life, so called, as I’ve described them. So, you cannot say that this particular individual was simply a sixth stage practitioner. He was a practitioner within the larger context of the Vajrayana.
DONALD: Yes, my Lord.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: So, if there were any phenomena that you witnessed, and they were genuine, you can’t say they appeared paradoxically because he was a sixth stage teacher, because he wasn’t, in any exclusive sense, a sixth stage teacher.
DONALD: Yes, my Lord. I imagine that the other example I would cite, that is the same response. Zong Rinpoche was one of the tutors of the Dalai Lama, performed a miraculous healing on my younger daughter, Radha’s sister.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: What was his name?
DONALD:… and I assumed he was a sixth stage practitioner, but I imagine I was simply in error based on what You just said about the Karmapa.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes. What was the man’s name?
DONALD: Thabje Zong Rinpoche.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Spell it.
DONALD: T h a b j e, which is a title, and then his name was Zong, Z o n g.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes, well, the same thing applies. The Vajrayana tradition is one of those traditions within the historical tradition, the larger tradition of Buddhism, that is a rather synthetic tradition, made up of elements from many different kinds of influences, including from the Indian yogis who weren’t all Buddhists, or even Buddhists, generally speaking, as well as old schools that were already in Tibet before Buddhism even had an influence there. So, it’s a very peculiar tradition that arose under very particular historical circumstances. In fact, there are numerous schools or tradition of schools within it. And they appear within the larger tradition of Mahayana so they don’t have the characteristics of the Hinayana, generally speaking, at all, and they cover a wide range of influences, and therefore, modes of instruction, modes of practice, and individuals go through schooling and retreats and initiations, and on and on, that cover a very wide range of possibilities. And they’re not simply instructed in what you would identify, what I would identify as a strictly sixth stage form of instruction. The Buddhism behind it is not Hinayana anyway. It is Mayahana, which is filled with, itself, apart from the Vajrayana, all kinds of influences that are outside the compass of the Hinayana, which is a rather strictly a sixth stage school, as it is at least historically reported.
And it portrays Gautama as a sixth stage teacher who did, of course, in the history of his wanderings, become associated with various teachers, just as I did. And they taught different modes of practice and philosophies of practice, and he tried them. He had experinces there, and found them to be insufficient, according to the traditions, he found them insufficient based on his sense of what was required ultimately. So, he went on to the next teacher, and so on. And his own teaching, as conveyed through the Hinayana tradition is basically a sixth stage teaching, even though there were influences in his life, and experiences and teachings and practices earlier on, that were not only of the sixth stage variety, but covered other modes of instruction that could be described in terms of the fifth stage of life or even the fourth stage of life, and so on. So, his background was actually rather complex. His teaching, as conveyed through the Hinayana was rather strictly and exclusively a variety of sixth stage teaching.
The Mahayana tradition is expanded beyond that, and takes on many forms, just as it appeared and developed in many countries in conjunction with many kinds of already previously existing traditions, and outside of India, generally speaking, developed, generally, outside of India, as did the Vajrayana, although, the Vajrayana tradition, because Tibet was so close to India, actually was very much influenced, again, by Indian teachers, and Indian teachers, in fact, went outside of India and brought modes of the Mahayana elsewhere.
And those traditions contained also varieties, all the Mahayana traditions are different, or there are many different kinds and varieties of traditions within the Mahayana, including the specific teachings of the Vajrayana, which is found in Tibet and a few other countries nearby. An the sixth stage characteristics of the Hinayana are not strictly upheld in the Mahayana. There are other modes of teaching, and yet there are some traditions within the Mahayana that are very strictly characterized by the sixth stage disposition, such as, the Ch’an or Zen tradition, for instance, which generally speaking, can be seen as a sixth stage tradition.
There are the modes of practice that are very much fourth stage teachings.
There are temple teachings, popular teachings for ordinary people that include forms of devotion, forms of temple practice and so forth. There are various yogic practices, visualization practices, all kinds of things that you would never hear conveyed within the Hinayana schools.
And the Vajrayana tradition or schools then have many levels of instruction within them, as the Mahayana does generally, and they added to it peculiarities of tradition that came from the Bon tradition, which was already in Tibet before Buddhism came, and from India, by various people going back and forth to India from Tibet and back to Tibet again, or people coming from India to Tibet and passing on teachings to people there.
So, it’s a very complex tradition for this reason, and Buddhism, as a totality is quite complex. And the Hinayana, for instance, generally speaking, would declare the most of the rest of it in the Mahayana, heretical, or at least much of it would be declared heretical, or not true to the original teaching and so forth. So, there are many opposing factions within Buddhism based on differences of instruction and philosophy associated with the various stages of life. They didn’t understand things in terms of the stages of life or the totality of the esoteric anatomy. Nor did they understand egoity in the radical sense.
DONALD: That was Your Divine Gift, my Lord. It was not possible before Your Birth.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: It didn’t happen. And that’s a fact.
DONALD: Yes, my Lord. Divine Ishta…
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: So, what miracles did you see?
DONALD: My daughter was, in the first month or six weeks of her life, she slept 23 1/2 hours, literally, a day. And the remaining half hour, she was only half conscious. It was clear that she was tenuously associated with the body.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: So, she inherited this tendancy from you, I gather. [Laughter]
DONALD: Yes, my Lord. That is true.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: And what about it?
DONALD: We visited…Suzanne, my then wife and I, visited some friends of ours, some friends of mine, actually, who were Tibetans. They had, Zong Rinpoche was being hosted by them.
As we walked into the room, he grabbed Alisa, and held her, looked at her very fiercely for several minutes, and then and handed her back to us without a word, and she was a different child from that moment on. She was awake a normal period of time, and normally associated with the body. It was like night and day.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: And you were supposing he was a sixth stage teacher for what reason?
DONALD: I was supposing he was a sixth stage teacher because of his association with the Galupa (sp?) tradition, which is, as I understood it, largely oriented toward the sixth stage of life and sixth stage practices.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Is that the Dalai Lama’s tradition?
DONALD: Yes.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, that’s not true. It isn’t in any sense rather exclusively associated with the sixth stage tradition nor any of the other schools.
DONALD: I now understand that based on Your Divine Instruction, my Lord.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: They basically all cover the span of all of the first six stages of life in one mode or another, and do training in practices that certainly are not what you would call exclusively sixth stage, and involve uses of energy, energy yoga, in fact, make a lot of use of that kind of practice, as at least a stage in the course of potential development of someone. And that involves focusing energy using techniques of mind, imagination, esoteric presumptions about centers of the body, and so forth, and various physical health exercies that involve directing energies in the body and healing practices, and on and on. So, it is by no means limited to the sixth stage at all. In fact, none of the Vajrayana traditions or schools are. They call cover, essentially, the full range of the first six stages of life.
Now, they do have some sixth stage teachings in them, generally speaking, those are highly specialized, considered very advanced and so forth. You can read about them now rather readily. There are books available that speak quite openly in terms of the sixth stage teachings and philosophy within the Vajrayana schools. But in times past, this was very secret teaching, so it wasn’t the average teaching given to monks or people seriously practicing within the Vajrayana schools. It was given to those who were advanced and at an advanced stage in their practice.
Now, you can receive these kinds of teachings at a weekend seminar in America, you see. There are none of the pre conditions for it. And you might imagine then that some teachings were typically given in Tibet just because somebody liked that particular philosophical point of view and walked into the Dalai Lama’s office and said “Give me your sixth stage instruction.”
That’s not how it worked, you see. So, it’s not surprising that someone would show some healing energy evidence in a situation such as you described and be part of that Vajrayana tradition.
DONALD: Yes, my Lord.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: What else did you see? Tell us the other miracle. What other miracle did you see?
DONALD: That was the only miracle that I witnessed.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: You said you saw miracles. Now you just got one.
DONALD: The other thing that I witnessed, it wasn’t a miracle. It was simply that in the Karmapa’s, during the course of the Vajrayana Crown Ceremony, I tangibly felt yogic energy being transmitted. It was not a miracle. The other miracles that I referred to…
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: People may think there’s nothing miraculous about yogic energy being transmitted, but I think it’s rather remarkable. And then you all take it for granted and make nothing about it, as though, oh well, it’s just a transmission of energy, and all the guy did was put a hat on, so what’s the big deal. Miracles are something like turning a rabbit into an owl, or something like that, or flying around the room.
People don’t think of spiritual transmission as being miraculous. They don’t even seem to think it’s extraordinary, and therefore they minimize their sensitivity to it and their ability to use it or discriminate between kinds of energy, and so it just rolls over them like water over a duck’s back, and nothing comes of it.
DONALD: Yes, my Lord. That was my error. I thank You for Your Instruction.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: So, you actually experienced something super normal, which is miraculous enough, and what good did it do you?
DONALD: Nothing whatsoever, my Lord.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well.
DONALD: My Beloved, I wanted just to continue further and ask You whether there were any…I know that You have said that, in general, the fifth stage and sixth stage traditions are independent, and the sixth stage traditions do not contain, do not involve spiritual transmission. I would like to ask, and I fully understand, my Lord.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: When I said that, I mentioned that the Vajrayana tradition is one in which there is a kind of synchronitism between many traditions. It’s kind of a sythesis of many traditions associated with the complex of sixth stages of life and that’s one of the characteristics of the Vajrayana tradition. That doesn’t mean there’s necessarily spiritual transmission involved, but there are certainly practices that cover the six stages of life. Not everybody receives all the practices. You go to different teachers at different times, you get another mode of transmission in the form of verbal instruction and a ceremony and so forth, and there’s a presumed empowerment or blessing of some kind, but there’s not necessarily anything that you would call shaktipat or spiritual transmission that actually advances a process, a particular kind of yogic process.
But, generally speaking, more typically, schools of practice can be seen in terms of a dominant orientation, at any rate, toward one or another stage of life, and may include, possibly, some kind of practices or associations from the stages previous to that dominant orientation.
Even in complex traditions where there are many kinds of influences all mixed together and made into a complex school of instruction, you can still identify every part of it if you use the tool I’ve Given you. It doesn’t change anything about it because the Vajrayana has various kinds of instruction that correspond to different stages of life. You can still identify every part of it in terms of the seven stages of life and in terms of the psycho physical anatomy that I have indicated.
So, even where there are some number of stages of life, one way or another represented within any tradition, you can still identify the different parts. That’s the usefulness of this descriptive tool I’ve given you. Some schools are very much black and white, just one thing or the other. Traditions, generally speaking, are more complex than that, but they usually stop at some point, so that they have a dominant emphasis ultimately. And that’s one stage of life or another.
Historical traditions, though, that have gone on for a long time are often accumulative, and they adapt to various situations over time and develop modes of instruction, different patterns, sub schools, and so forth, which sometimes then unite with one another eventually or become philosophically combined somehow or other. So many historical traditions have a complexity based on different modes of the stages of life being strung together. But you can identify every part of it if you know how to use the tool of understanding the esoteric anatomy that is at the basis of philosophy, you see, all instruction, all traditions, all evidence, all experiences. No matter what it is, it can be understood in terms of the description I’ve given you of the psycho physical anatomy of the human being and the stages of life manifested by human beings as such.
DONALD: Therefore, my Lord, the synchronitism and synthesis in the tradition, various traditions, not withstanding, is it a correct understanding that previous to Your Appearance here, no individual sixth stage realizer taught in a manner and with a method that was founded on a true spiritual base? No individual sixth stage master was also a transmission master in the fullest sense?
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: It depends on many factors, and it depends on what you mean by a transmission master, you see. Holy men or women generally have an energy about them that you would call spiritual. That doesn’t make them transmission masters, per se. And that doesn’t mean that what you might feel as spiritual emanating from them effectively works a yogic process of some kind.
So, when people would, for instance, sit with Ramana Maharshi, they would describe feeling a certian kind of peace. And he said, yes, that’s how you can tell you’re in the presence of a true jnani, this feeling of peace that he would clearly describe as a kind of transmission or a result of being in the presence, spiritually effective presence of some teacher or other. So, that’s a kind of transmission, of course.
Even totally unenlightened fools emanate energy. Frogs emanate energy. This electronic machine, this telephone on the table next to Me, is emanating energy. Everything emanates energy, so in that sense, everything and everyone is transmitting and transmitting energy in one form or another, one mode of energy or another.
When I speak of transmission masters in the yogic sense, however, I’m speaking of individuals who are adept at using energy transmission as a means for accomplishing yogic purposes that have to do with the process associated with one or the other of the stages of life. So, it’s not simply a matter of whether there’s energy emanating from someone, it’s a matter of whether it’s effective as a yogic transmission for a yogic purpose.
DONALD: Yes, my Lord.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: So, the energy that was felt in the company of Ramana Maharshi was a transmission. It wasn’t something that he declared he was doing intentionally. But he acknowledged that people must have been feeling something of this. And he didn’t suggest you should come into my company in order to have visions or that he was going to do anything to make people have visions. He never mentioned the blue pearl once in his life in anything I’ve ever heard that was an utterance of his. There’s not any indication that he ever he experienced it. He never told people who asked him, “How can you tell you’re in the presence of a genuine spiritual master or a Realizer or whatever?” He never told them because you would receive shaktipat and have yogic phenomena occur spontaneously. He never said that, and generally speaking, basically, it never happened in his company, but people did feel peaceful and felt that that was the result of an emanation, an energy, a characteristic that he was radiating.
A man named Frank Humphries was an early visitor to Maharshi, wrote a little booklet. I think he saw him around the World War One period. He described Maharshi as a corpse that was radiating terrifically. So, he was indicating about that that he felt some kind of emanation.
There are many presumed teachers who communicate techniques and who are playing characters of one kind or another, and honorable people or whatever, however you might want to describe them, or even not so, but you can spend some time in their company and feel no more than somebody would feel if they were sitting with you, for instance. [Laughter]
So, you could say that there was something unusual about Maharshi compared to some other teachers. You can spend time in the company of you know, the countless Hinayana instructors in Burma, Myanmar now, or Thailand, or whatever and never have any experience or feeling like there’s some kind of
spiritual radiation affecting you. But you will receive discourses and instructions.
So the fact that there were some kind of feeling that people experienced in Maharshi’s company suggest a radiation. It didn’t do anything other than feel peaceful. It in that sense was conducive to a meditative attitude and even to practicing the kind of self enquiry that he recommended. It didn’t make it happen automatically or make realization happen by virtue of that energy itself. But there was certainly some kind of, there’s evidence that there was some kind of felt energy, and therefore, some kind of transmission from him. So, there are certainly experiences like that that have around all kinds of individuals, particularly, rather saintly characters or yogically proficient characters who work with energies, and so on. There’s any number of kinds of individuals in whose company you might feel some kind of energy. And the fact that you can is remarkable, but on the other hand, it doesn’t mean that the individual is a transmitter in the sense of being and someone who works with energy or by means of the transmission of energy to generate phenomena of a yogic kind relative to one or another of stages of life, or make the process go to the point of completion. Some people just have a quality…
[Phone line drops.]
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: So, some people simply have a quality in their energy of their person that makes people feel good or peaceful. It doesn’t even mean then that they’re masters or realizers, because everyone emanates energy.
DONALD: Yes, my Lord.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: So, it’s not a sign of being a master or a realizer simply that there’s some kind of energy that could be felt, but there are all kinds of energies, and some energies function in yogic terms and others do not. And some are signs of holiness or evidence of realization of some kind or other, and some are just signs of a natural force, a personality quality that has an aura about it that makes people feel one thing or another, including, feel terrible. I can’t imagine, for instance, sitting in a room with Hitler and feeling good. So, there are qualities in people who are negative that could also be felt. And there are places that could be felt negatively or positively. So, the fact that energies are felt is not really something that should be regarded to be in every case, some kind of ultimacy showing itself. The natural round of things is full of energies which can be felt if you are sensitive, and so practitioners and realizers of all degrees, and types and schools and stages of life manifest energy like everybody else. And it is likely that they will manifest energy in a stronger or more pure sense, at least. At least stronger and more pure than your average individual who is of stronger egoic inclination and double minded, and bound up in gross, subtle, and causal knots, like a human pretzel.
DONALD: Yes, my Lord.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: So, if you understand it in this sense, well Ramana Maharshi was a transmitter then, you see. But if you understand the traditions in terms of
is there a spiritual process in evidence, in the traditions, that works in the fourth stage of life and leads to the fifth, then leads to the sixth, and then leads to the seventh. No, not that. Nothing to do with the seventh, and no direct connection between the fifth and the sixth as a presumed process that begins in the fifth, fulfills the fifth and leads into the sixth, and fulfills the sixth. There is no tradition of that particular kind. There are separate traditions, even in the Vajrayana that relate to the fifth stage of life and the sixth, even though they’re taught within the same school. And,
what is strictly the sixth stage mode of instruction is not associated with something like kundalini yoga that becomes Hinayana meditation or ultimate realization in the terms of the Tibetan philosophy.
DONALD: Yes, my Lord.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: But there are schools that teach fifth stage practices, and then those who become proficient in it may then be given sixth stage type of instruction, because they have prepared a foundation for it. But, for the most part, the fifth stage instructions and the process within the schools associated with them do not involve spiritual transmission in the sense of shaktipat in the kundalini schools. You’re basically given instructions that involve something you do on your own body mind through acts of concentration and various other psycho physical exercises.
DONALD: Yes, my Lord.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: But there certainly are people who transmit energies in all the schools, even in the world of exoteric religion or out in the ordinary world. There are healers out there who may associate themselves in some way or other with some particular religion, but they are really functioning in a more universal context with directed energy. And, you find such people everywhere in all traditions.
So, even in the case where your daughter was affected positively in terms of her health condition, that was not in and of itself, an indication that the person who apparently served that healing was a realizer or otherwise a practitioner in terms of any particular stage of life at all.
DONALD: Yes, my Lord. And this daughter of mine was healed by You, about three years ago, after a car accident. I wrote to You and explained that she had an injury which suggested to the physicians that her spleen was ruptured.
And You sent her Love and Blessings, and next time they looked, the spleen was fine. You are the Great One, my Lord. I will always be grateful to You for healing my daughter.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Tcha.
So, is that it with your verbiage for now?
DONALD: Yes, my Lord. I think that is entirely sufficient.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Ah, so do I.
DONALD: Thank You, my Lord. I bow at Your Divine Feet in love and gratitude.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Tcha.