Spontaneously and almost
immediately after His Re-Awakening to the “Bright”,
Avatar Adi Da’s Teaching-Work with others began. Extraordinarily,
when He would sit for meditation, He no longer would experience
mind-forms (thoughts, experiences, and feelings) from His
own Life and psyche. Rather, He would experience the mind-forms
of others, and He found that He was "meditating"
them. Several other remarkable Siddhis (Divine Powers) Awakened
in Him by which to Instruct others. Many people naturally
came to Him seeking Instruction, and in 1972 He formally opened
an Ashram in Los Angeles, which He named "Shree Hridayam
Satsang". Thus, in 1972, Avatar Adi Da Samraj embarked
upon the second great Purpose of His Incarnation—the
Process of “Teaching Man”.
When He began to Teach others, Avatar Adi Da Samraj simply
made Himself available to all who were willing to enter into
the living Process of Real-God-Realization in His Company—a
Process Which He summarized as the relationship to Him, rather
than any method or technique of Spiritual attainment. Through
that relationship (an extraordinary human and Spiritual intimacy), Avatar
Adi Da Samraj perfectly embraced each of His devotees, using
every kind of skillful means to Awaken them to the Truth that
the separate, un-Enlightened self—with all its fear,
anxieties, and fruitless seeking for Happiness—is self-imposed
suffering, a contraction of the being (which He calls “the
self-contraction”). Happiness, He Revealed, cannot be
attained through any kind of search, because It is “Always
Already the Case”. And He Offered the practice of heart-Communion
with Him as the means of going beyond the self-contraction
and thereby Realizing Real Happiness.
In His lifelong process of Revealing the “Bright”,
Avatar Adi Da Samraj has gone to the depths of the human condition.
He spent decades submitted to the lives of His devotees, freely
Teaching them face to face. By that means, confronted with
every human quality and egoic tendency, He Gave form to His
Divine Teaching in its universal scope.
 During
the years of “Teaching Man”, Adi Da Samraj engaged in
a demonstration of Divine Instruction that the world had never seen
before. He took His devotees through a Divinely Inspired exploration
of every aspect of human, religious, Spiritual, and Divine existence.
He was so completely Free, so Alive in the ecstatic Realization
of God, that He could Submit Himself completely to His devotees
in order to Instruct them "where they were at" with the
Purpose of examining and Liberating them from every aspect of their
bondage. He constantly asked His devotees, in the midst of every
activity, “What is Truth?” How should one live one's
life in terms of work and money, relationships and family, diet
and exercise, and spiritual practice in order to serve the Realization
of Real God, Truth and Reality?
On an occasion in the mid-1980's, late in the
evening, Avatar Adi Da Samraj made this extraordinary Revelation
of the paradoxical and marvelous history of His past Incarnations
in the East and His Compassionate decision to be born in the West:
"Because
of My unique Disposition, I agreed to be born in the West,
having been, for so much time in My Service to humanity, not
a Westerner, but born in the East as a Hindu. I was Impulsed
to Serve beings in the West especially, and all beings ultimately.
Therefore, I agreed to this Birth, and was made in this particular
form to Serve everyone, and to suffer all the limitations
of ordinariness. So I was born, and I did My Work. This Person
standing before you, Serving you, a traditional Realizer,
even a celibate, was wedded to the Eastern culture for centuries,
and then assumed responsibility to be Submitted by Birth--not
merely to get on an airplane, but by Birth to be Submitted--to
Westerners, even to be polluted by the association, to Submit
to it, to Serve them in all ways necessary for the sake of
their Enlightenment, their Realization, to do it all without
the least withdrawal. Therefore, I had to Realize the Tantric
disposition of Submission to do the Great Work with those
who traditionally or in times past have been excluded from
the Great Affair. This is My unique Impulse, to not exclude
them, to not exclude you. Even by My Birth I had to embrace
great suffering in order to Serve you. Who knows how long
this life will last? But that is the reality of My situation.
Whoever you say I might have been in times past, I am not
anyone but you." --Avatar Adi Da Samraj,
The Love-Ananda Gita |
The lessons learned from Avatar Adi Da's Teaching years were
not the result of abstract philosophy. Instead, they were
proved through real experimentation in life by His devotees.
It was a profoundly serious, but joyously humorous and free
experiment, Guided by Avatar Adi Da's Divinely Enlightened
perspective. Many Leelas (Divinely Instructive Stories) emerged
that show the fruitlessness of seeking for experience (high
or low) and the direct means by which modern men and women
can live a life dedicated to God-Realizing Spiritual practice
in concrete relationship to the Divine. These Leelas remain
a Sacred Legacy of this Avatar Adi Da’s Play with ordinary
men and women that will be treasured for millennia as a guide
to Spiritual life and a complement to the more formal Wisdom-Instruction
that Sri Adi Da has Revealed. |
