The Hole in the Universe:
The Sacred Empowerment of Red Sitting Man

I will never forget the night of the consecration of the fire site called Red Sitting Man at the Mountain Of Attention. It was the beginning of my real intimacy with Avatar Adi Da as the Divine Person. In the evening, a small group of us accompanied our Beloved Guru up the narrow, steep path that leads to the fire site. I walked behind Him to escort and serve Him during the ceremony. We rounded a bend in the path, and, beyond a large lone pine tree, I saw Red Sitting Man. The site was awesome in the twilight, a wide trough etched by Nature out of the stark white stone of the hillside. The fire pit lay at the foot of the trough. Above, the stone rose to a slightly flattened mound — which was to be our Beloved Guru's seat.

Beloved Adi Da walked to His seat above the fire and sat down. Those in attendance sat on either side of Him in a "U" around the fire pit.

From the moment that the fire was lighted, Beloved Adi Da did not move for perhaps an hour and a half. He sat upright in a perfect lotus posture. He wore a red cap, a yellow shawl, and blue cotton pants. As it grew darker, the colors of His clothes faded, and He became only a silhouette against the moonlit sky, but His face reflected the glow from the fire. His open eyes reflected the flames. I gazed at Him almost constantly through the entire occasion, and I never saw Him blink. He simply sat and stared into the fire with complete stillness and intensity.

For a while, I sat looking back and forth from my Beloved Guru's glowing face to the fire beneath us. As I sat there in His Company, I became aware of the world in a totally new way, a way I had never noticed before. It was as though there were a "Hole in the universe", as Beloved Adi Da describes it, a Hole through the world itself, and on the other side was the Great Being, the Great One. This One was Revealed to me that evening as a Person, a Great Personality, something that tangible, that present, that conscious — Consciousness Itself. Suddenly I knew and understood so many things that Beloved Adi Da had said. This was the Prior Condition He had always spoken about — the Radiant Divine Being. I knew It as the Divine Person.

This was the beginning of my recognition that Beloved Adi Da is that Divine Being, that there is no difference between Him and the Divine Person, between Him and the utter transcending of this world, that He is the window, the "Hole in the universe". I knew that Beloved Adi Da does not have to be active. He does not have to look at me. He does not have to speak to me. He does not have to deal with me or Teach me or Instruct me or do anything to me.