Perfect Dis-Entanglement:
Adi Da's Multi-Decade Process of
Understanding and Embracing
His Avataric Divine Work and Its Uniqueness

This is Part 7 of Chris Tong's fourteen-part article, A Framework for Exegesis: Understanding Adi Da's Word in Context.

1. The second stage of Adi Da's Unique Avataric Ordeal As Divine Heart-Master
2. How Adi Da's understanding of the Vedanta Temple events changed over time
3. Adi Da as Divine Incarnation: not omniscient, but the most extraordinary learner
4. How Adi Da's understanding of Ramana Maharshi's Realization changed over time
5. Adi Da's conclusion that "seventh stage Adept" is a one-time occurrence and function in the history of the universe
6. Ramana Maharshi: One further consideration

7.1. The second stage of Adi Da's Unique Avataric Ordeal As Divine Heart-Master

One of the key points about Adi Da's life as a human Incarnation of the Divine is that, even though He was born Enlightened — with the full Realization of His "Bright" Divine State — He was not born with full knowledge of the uniqueness of His Divine Incarnation and the nature of His Work to come as seventh stage Adept. He describes how little He knew about the Great Tradition of Spiritual Realizers even after His Divine Re-Awakening in September, 1970:

Throughout His years of working with devotees, Adi Da would repeatedly re-emphasize this point — that He was not simply born omniscient — in part, to cut into the naive "God ideas" of devotees (shared by most of the world's exoteric religious traditions) that suggest God is omniscient and omnipotent, and therefore an Incarnation of the Divine is omniscient and omnipotent. Repeatedly, Adi Da made it clear that neither God nor Divine Incarnations are omniscient or omnipotent. Here is just one example.

Anson Holley describes how in 1975 he observed Avatar Adi Da stumble into a table one day. And soon afterwards Anson also saw Him back a truck into a wall. Anson's faith was thrown into doubt. "How", he thought, "could a Master make such mistakes? He is supposed to be all-knowing. He should have known that the wall was there, and seen the table in front of Him." Finally, Anson asked Avatar Adi Da directly about the matter of His omniscience. Avatar Adi Da replied, "Omniscience is a lesser siddhi [spiritual power]. I prefer to be surprised!" And Anson realized that he was putting a false expectation on what a Realizer should be. It is Avatar Adi Da's Realization that is flawless, and His day-to-day life is a sacrifice, in which His Divinity shines through always, but not in the form of any particular behavior. His Demonstration of Enlightenment is His Freedom. James Steinberg, Divine Distraction

If one (mistakenly) presumes that God is omnipotent and omniscient, then by extension — by a mere snap of the omnipotent God's fingers, metaphorically speaking — an omniscient and omnipotent Incarnation of the Divine can be manifested, in fully developed human form, fully ready to function as Divine Guru. But this isn't even true in the stories associated with Christianity (the "God-man" tradition with which Westerners are most familiar).[1] According to that tradition, the incarnation of the Divine (Jesus of Nazareth) had to go through an arduous ordeal that took the first thirty years of his life (during which time, "Jesus grew in wisdom and stature" [Luke 2:52]) — in order to be fully knowledgeable about, and fully prepared to fulfill, his role as Divine Incarnation. And so it was for Adi Da.

One of the many interesting developments of that process of His growing awareness of His Own "Avataric Divine Status and Work" was Adi Da's growing understanding that certain phenomena and occurrences in His earlier life that He originally had presumed were generated "external" to Himself were actually generated by His Own Divine Presence.

We will study two examples of this:

• How Adi Da's understanding of the Vedanta Temple events changed over time
• How Adi Da's understanding of Ramana Maharshi's Realization changed over time

• Adi Da's conclusion that "seventh stage Adept" is a one-time occurrence and function in the history of the universe

7.2. How Adi Da's understanding of the Vedanta Temple events changed over time

In 1972 (in His autobiography, The Knee of Listening), Adi Da wrote this about His visiting the Vedanta Temple in Hollywood in 1970 [bolding is mine]:

Many years later, He would more fully understand this "unlikely" Appearance of the Divine Shakti in such an obscure temple in the United States in a completely different way [bolding is mine]:

As anyone who has spent significant time in Adi Da's Company knows, He is the master of discrimination. And so what might seem like a minor or insignificant discrepancy to the reader ("I had no idea how the Vedanta Society Temple ever became a seat of the Divine Shakti") would be something He would notice, remember, and consider — for years, if necessary — until He had resolved the discrepancy: even if the resolution ended up being a 180 degree turn from His original understanding . . . as in this case.

Even though this growing Awareness and clarification of the nature of His Own Divine Presence (and its effect on the events in His life and work) was a very real process that took decades, Adi Da had a clear intuition of where it was going, even from the very beginning, as illustrated by the following communication from 1974 — even then, He intuited that His Own State and Person was actually the Force behind the scenes, even when other Spiritual Realizers were involved. This included His relations with His Own "Gurus" [bolding is mine]:

That growing awareness that He Himself had been the Source of many of the events in His life that He had previously attributed to other Sources would account for many of the differences in how He described events in the 1970's versus how He described them in the 1990's and later.

One thing that becomes clear from looking at this process is that there is nothing obvious about it. It took an immense amount of time, consideration, and discrimination for Adi Da to clarify what was due to His Presence and what was due to something inherent in another being or place, in part, because the Divine is completely non-separate and all beings and places are arising in It.

7.3. Adi Da as Divine Incarnation: not omniscient, but the most extraordinary learner

A point worth noting: Many devotees seem to have a (largely unconscious) reluctance to acknowledge any kind of change in Adi Da's views over time — and apparently feel compelled to explain any "apparent change" with an explanation of the form: "He knew it all along, but just didn't tell us until later, for this or that good reason". There certainly was some measure of that. But there also were real shifts in Adi Da's view over time, based on His reconsideration or His learning something new: like the 180 degree shift in His view of the Divine Shakti in the Vedanta Temple that we have just described. The key thing for such devotees to understand is this: to say Adi Da changed certain of His views over time does not take away from Who He Is (the Incarnation of Real God) in the least. It just means that Real God is something other than what such devotees are (unconsciously) presuming. We all have to grow beyond Judeo-Christian notions of God as omnipotent, omniscient, etc. — precisely as Adi Da called us to do for decades.

Even as Adi Da worked for decades to grow us beyond such childish notions of God and God-Incarnations, He also tried to teach us what a God-Incarnation was actually like (in contrast with the traditional, mythological views) by His Own demonstration. Here are just four examples of Adi Da learning, or having His views evolve, rather than being omniscient (knowing everything already):

• His autobiography, The Knee Of Listening, is a record of an ongoing evolution in His views about what He was experiencing and the nature of God and Reality.
  
  
• In many places, Adi Da describes His arduous, long-term process of having to learn man: to discover how that human "problem" of suffering and mortality can be overcome, and how it would be possible for everyone to realize the supremely blissful and eternal state of Divine "Brightness" that He had known since birth (and before). Indeed, Adi Da's entire adult life before His Re-Awakening in 1970 can be characterized as a series of periods of "learning man": His time as a student at Columbia University; His time as a student at Stanford University; and then the learning that occurred in the company of His spiritual teachers.
  
  
• In many places (including The Dawn Horse Testament), Adi Da describes how (as "the second stage Of My unique Avataric Ordeal As the Divine Heart-Master") He had to go through a long-term "Avataric Ordeal" to realize, accept, and embrace His "Avataric Status and Work".
  
  
• His autobiography, The Knee Of Listening, also records more conventional learning processes — for example, Adi Da's gradual mastery of the craft of writing, starting with when He first began intentionally developing it at Columbia University. Adi Da writes, in The Knee Of Listening: "My lecture notebooks and my separate journals began to become long volumes of my own thinking. At first, they were mainly philosophical notes that developed from a kind of desperate and childish complaint into a more and more precise instrument of thought and feeling." In His later years, one can track a similar learning process in His developing of His craft of Image-Art making.
  
  

And so on. Every one of these learning processes involved Adi Da having to change or evolve His views over time.

Indeed, once we overcome our reluctance to talk about Adi Da as someone who learned (rather than being someone who was born omniscient), one of the perhaps most surprising (and least discussed) characteristics of "Adi Da as Divine Incarnation" is just how extraordinary a learner He was! This was in part because of His complete non-separation from whomever or whatever He was learning from (because of His Divine Realization), and His complete willingness (and ability) to submit entirely to whomever or whatever He could learn from.

I experienced this firsthand when I and a couple of other devotees gave Adi Da His first exposure to the Web in The Manner of Flowers (His residence at The Mountain Of Attention) in 1995. As His devotee and a former professor of Computer Science (I had just left academia in 1994), He invited me and the other devotees to give Him a two-hour presentation about the Web (which had just opened to the public in 1994) and the uses He and Adidam could make of it (including Internet Darshans, mission Work, serving the culture of Adidam, etc.); while doing so, I also took Him on a tour of the Web (such as it was in 1995), including the fledgling official Adidam site I had created.[4] During that time, He asked many questions. But what floored me was that — for that period of time — He completely submitted Himself to a learning process in which I was the "teacher". (It actually made me quite uncomfortable for a short while — that my Spiritual Master and Teacher was "submitting" to being taught by me in this way — until I surrendered my discomfort to Him.) There was no "ego" whatsoever on Adi Da's part — He submitted completely, and had not the slightest problem with asking questions that displayed how little He knew about the Web. But at the same time, He also was the fastest learner I have ever met — and, in my time as a university professor, I had taught thousands of undergraduate and graduate students. His questions got ever more discriminating over the course of the two hours. When the presentation was over, and He was walking out of the room with Ruchiradama Quandra Sukhapur, He turned to her and exclaimed, "Books are outdated!" (Fortunately for all of us, He didn't stop writing books, and would go on to write some of His greatest masterpieces years later.)

In this way I received a very personal lesson about "Divine Incarnation as not omniscient, but the most extraordinary learner". And from that time on, I had no problem with acknowledging that His views could (and did) change or evolve over time, through His extraordinary learning process. That He was God didn't relieve Him of the arduous requirement (and long-term process) of learning everything He needed to learn (about humankind, about the world, about Himself, about His Own Divine Guru function and its uniqueness, etc.) in order to establish the Way of Adidam in perpetuity, for the sake of all beings.

So, as we have just seen, Adi Da's understanding of the Vedanta Temple was one such change in His views over time. And as we will explore in the next section, His view on Ramana Maharshi's Realization was another.

7.4. How Adi Da's understanding of Ramana Maharshi's Realization changed over time

In section 7.2, we described a principle in Adi Da's life and work: that His Presence was the actual active Agent in many events He had previously attributed to other agents. Once this principle has been understood, earlier recounts of His life and work can be clarified (with the benefit of 20-20 hindsight).

For example, this principle greatly clarifies Adi Da's communications about Ramana Maharshi over the years, which have been a major source of confusion for some of His readers. Adi Da (then "Bubba Free John") originally visited Ramana Maharshi's tomb in India in 1973. He later spoke about that experience while visiting India again in 1977 (from "Like Meeting Your Twin Brother", Vision Mound Magazine, Vol. 1 No. 5, 1977):

At that time, Adi Da spoke about Ramana Maharshi in "seventh stage" terms (associated with the regeneration of Amrita Nadi from the right side of the heart to the sahasrar infinitely above the head) — based on His experience in Ramana Maharshi's tomb. The following is from an account by devotee Jerry Sheinfeld, who accompanied Adi Da on His trip [bolding is mine]:

shrine built above Ramana Maharshi's tomb

Adi Da makes a similar point in this talk from September, 1977:

But even back then, Adi Da noticed discrepancies in a simple view of Maharshi as both seventh stage Realizer and Adept like Himself. For instance, Maharshi never mentioned anything about the four-stage process (Divine Transfiguration, Divine Transformation, Divine Indifference, and Divine Translation) associated with the life of a seventh stage Realizer. And consistent with that, Adi Da pointed out that Ramana Maharshi had not demonstrated all the developments of the seventh stage of life while alive. He writes about this apparent dichotomy (referring to Himself in the third person as "Bubba") in the following essay from 1977:

So even as early as 1977, He already was aware of a discrepancy between what He had been presuming was Ramana Maharshi's seventh stage Realization (based on His experience in Ramana's tomb), and the actual details of Ramana Maharshi's life, which did not reflect the four-stage process that Adi Da knew spontaneously unfolds in the life of a seventh stage Realizer. It is important to add that, when Adi Da originally visited Ramana's tomb in 1973, He had not yet identified and articulated the four-stage process associated with the seventh stage of life. It would take a couple more years of His observing and experiencing the unfolding of that process in His Own case (in the stages of Divine Transfiguration and Divine Transformation) before He would make a general statement about that process being an inherent part of the lives of all seventh stage Realizers. So at the time He originally visited Ramana's tomb (1973), He did not yet even have the basis for seeing a discrepancy, and so at the time, there was no reason for Him to qualify or question what He had experienced in Ramana's tomb in any way.

"Evidence of the four-phase process within the seventh stage Realizer's human lifetime" would later become a standard measure Adi Da would use to assess Realizers in the Great Tradition. To suggest a historical Realizer was a seventh stage Realizer would not only require the Realizer to make statements about the nature of Reality, or the nature of his or her own Realization, that were philosophically resonant with the seventh stage viewpoint; their human life would also have to show the evidence of the Realization — the evidence of Divine Transfiguration, Divine Transformation, Divine Indifference, and Divine Translation. They would have to not only "talk the talk", but also "walk the walk", so to speak. To distinguish the two, Adi Da would call sacred texts that "talked the seventh-stage talk" but where there was no accompanying evidence or description of a seventh-stage human lifetime "premonitorily seventh stage texts":

As illustrated by the earlier cited quote, "[Ramana Maharshi] did not, while alive, pass fully into the Transfiguration stage via the regeneration of Amrita Nadi", Adi Da's initial attempt to resolve the discrepancy in the case of Ramana (between Adi Da's experience in Ramana's tomb and the absence of the signs of the four-stage process in Ramana's life) was to suggest that Ramana Maharshi had Realized the seventh stage, but the subsequent four-stage process had somehow gotten "stuck" in Ramana's case, not ever really entering the first phase of the seventh stage of "Divine Transfiguration". In esoteric terms, it would be as though, in the regeneration of Amrita Nadi, the Force had indeed risen from the heart to the sahasrar infinitely above the head, but then had gotten "stuck" up there, never descending into the human body, and producing the inevitable four-stage process that a human body-mind goes through when that Force descends.

No doubt, Adi Da was considering the possibility that perhaps there were cases of seventh-stage Realizers that didn't look exactly like His Own case, in which the Force descended into His body-mind almost immediately after His Re-Awakening. However, we can say in retrospect (because He would arrive at a different reconciliation in 1993), that Adi Da must not have been satisfied with this way of resolving the discrepancy. Ultimately, the picture would make more esoteric sense if in fact in Ramana's case, Amrita Nadi had not regenerated from the heart to the crown in the first place: in other words, the picture would make much more sense if Ramana was in fact not a seventh stage Realizer, after all.

But then how to account for that experience in Ramana's tomb?

As we saw earlier, Adi Da's original puzzlement about how an obscure temple in Hollywood could be such a powerful seat of the Divine Shakti led Him ultimately to realize that He Himself had brought the Divine Presence there. A similar kind of 180 degree shift in how to interpret what had happened in Ramana's tomb would resolve the discrepancy in the case of Ramana. Devotee Don Webley writes of his conversation with Adi Da about this on March 5, 1993 (the first time Adi Da made this point to the entire gathering of devotees):

We could add many other differences between Adi Da's life story and Ramana's. For example, Adi Da's life story begins with a description of His Divine "Bright" State, reflecting that He was born already Enlightened:

Even as a baby, I remember only crawling around inquisitively with a boundless Feeling of Joy, Light, and Freedom in the middle of my head that was bathed in Energy moving unobstructed in a Circle — down from above, all the way down, then up, all the way up, and around again — and always Shining from my heart. It was an Expanding Sphere of Joy from the heart. And I was a Radiant Form — the Source of Energy, Love-Bliss, and Light in the midst of a world that is entirely Energy, Love-Bliss, and Light. I was the Power of Reality, a direct Enjoyment and Communication of the One Reality. I was the Heart Itself, Who Lightens the mind and all things. Avatar Adi Da Samraj, The Knee Of Listening

In contrast — prior to his Realization at the age of 16, Ramana's early life had its own unusual signs, but they all are suggestive of someone who has Realized (or is about to Realize) the sixth stage of life [bolding mine]:

Ramana was largely disinterested in school and absent-minded during work. He had a marked inclination towards introspection and self-analysis. He used to ask fundamental questions about identity, such as the question "who am I?". He was always seeking to find the answer to the mystery of his own identity and origins. One peculiar aspect of Ramana's personality was his ability to sleep soundly. He could be beaten or carried from one place to another while asleep, and would not wake up. He was sometimes jokingly called "Kumbhakarna" after a figure in the Ramayana who slept soundly for months. A Short Biography of Ramana Maharshi

Adi Da has indicated that the "deep sleep" state and the sixth stage Realization of the Witness-Consciousness are very close (the "deep sleep" state is the third state and the Witness-Consciousness is the fourth state or "turiya") — so it would not be surprising for a person who had Realized the former to transition to the Realization of the latter. But Adi Da has also indicated that neither of these states is the seventh stage Realization, and both must be transcended in order to Realize the seventh stage Realization:

The seventh stage of life Demonstration . . . is beyond all. It is beyond inwardness and egoity, or the deep sleep state of the ego, or self-contraction. It is beyond "turiya", the in-dwelling Witness, Prior to waking, dreaming, and sleeping — Consciousness Itself, yes, but set apart from objects and attention itself. The seventh stage Realization is Beyond that. Avatar Adi Da Samraj "What Do You Like About Sleep?", Drifted in the Deeper Land

Sleep is not Transcendental Divine Self-Realization, nor is it the Way to it. The shapeless and deep "causal" presumption of separateness remains, and all the "subtle" and "gross" sheaths are also hidden (and merely, or nearly, "speechless") in mere sleep. Thus, dreaming and waking follow sleep, just as every kind of experience returns after death. Even the ego of sleep must be transcended in Consciousness Itself. Sleep is rest in the inherent Bliss of the Transcendental Divine Self, but with a most subtle contraction (of latent mind, or body-mind) into separateness, or non-Awakeness, or the apparent diminishment (or non-Awareness) of Freedom and Bliss. The heart on the right is not fully penetrated in mere sleep, nor is the "Aham Sphurana" entered by sleep itself. The essence of mind persists, although latently, in deep sleep. Only equally (and more) persistent "sadhana", or real and effective practice of the Way, to the degree of Full Awakening to Consciousness Itself and spontaneous "Recognition" of all conditional arising, Releases and "Outshines" the mind and all conditional or apparent forms. The Transcendental Divine Self is "touched" in deep sleep, but It may likewise be "touched" in the dreaming and waking states, via meditation and the Process of Transcendental Awakening. Only persistence in the transcendence of attention, or self contraction, allows the direct and Perfect Realization of the Always Fully Awake and Transcendental Divine Self, or Consciousness Itself. . . When the self-contraction (in its root-form, which is attention) is transcended in the Realization of Native or Inherent identification with Consciousness Itself (Prior to the body-mind), the Truth of Consciousness Itself becomes Inherently Obvious. And, thereafter, even if conditions apparently arise (whether in the waking, the dreaming, or the sleeping state), they are Inherently "Recognizable" as transparent, or merely apparent, and non-binding modifications of the Divine Self-Radiance of Consciousness Itself. Avatar Adi Da Samraj "Seventh Stage", The Illusion Of Relatedness

The great moment of Realization in Ramana's life story was associated with profound fear of death, and Ramana allowing that to happen:

Adi Da's Own life story has a similar moment:

But Adi Da identified the Realization that accompanied that passage through fear and that degree of "ego-death" as Jnana Samadhi, the Realization of the sixth stage of life, not the seventh. And His Own Process of Re-Awakening would continue until the seventh stage Realization was fully Restored.

Another reason why Ramana Maharshi could not have been a seventh stage Realizer is a functional reason, based on Adi Da's descriptions of how such a Realization occurs: you can't transition from the sixth stage of life (which Ramana's early life signs reflected) to the seventh stage of life without the help of a seventh-stage Adept, and there was no evidence of Ramana having a seventh-stage Guru (incarnate or otherwise). The only other way you can be a seventh stage Realizer is by being born a seventh stage Realizer by virtue of being a Divine Incarnation — and there was no evidence of that in Ramana's life.

So why did Adi Da say Ramana Maharshi was "seventh stage" in the 1970's (based on what seemed to Him to be an actual demonstration of the seventh stage Realization in Ramana's tomb), but then later conclude that Ramana was sixth stage in the 1990's, and write more specifically in 2004, "[Ramana Maharshi's] Realization and Demonstration, although sometimes apparently philosophically sympathetic with the seventh stage 'Point of View', did not actually Achieve the seventh stage Characteristic and Completeness"?

This is an important question, because a common misinterpretation of the several passages about Ramana Maharshi I've cited above — see here, for example — is that Adi Da "demoted" other Spiritual Realizers like Ramana Maharshi, Jesus, Gautama Buddha, etc. over time (having originally referred to them as seventh-stage Realizers in the 1970's), for the egoic reason of "promoting Himself". But in fact, what we are describing here is Adi Da's ruthlessly honest process of exploring what the actual facts are — and His coming to the unavoidable conclusion that His function and appearance as seventh stage Adept is unique in the Great Tradition. For His part, He would have been perfectly happy to have discovered that there were seventh stage "Avatars all over the yard, you know!", as He once humorously put it [3]. Indeed, His purpose in visiting Ramana's tomb was to find the corroboration of His seventh stage Realization that another seventh stage Realizer would represent. (And at that time, He thought that was what He had found in Ramana Maharshi.) So He would have been delighted to discover a longstanding tradition of seventh stage Realizers, of which He was the latest — and for many years, He wrote in just those terms. But in the end, that was not what He found, after a consideration that spanned more than two decades.

One facet of Adi Da's change in describing the Realizations of some of the most well-known Spiritual Masters is described by James Steinberg:

Beginning in the the 1990's, Adi Da Revealed that His Own Revelation is Unique and unprecedented . . . Adi Da told us that He did not “change His tune” or His Teaching in Revealing this, but that in the earliest years He was intent upon showing similarities and correspondences [with other Spiritual Masters and traditions], and therefore did not make this critique at that time. He felt that we had not sufficiently Recognized Him, or Understood Him, and therefore we simply would not be able to receive it. And so this was only Revealed in the 1990's, when Adi Da at last felt that such Recognition was present.

And indeed, when one reads talks and essays of that kind from the 1970's, one can feel Adi Da "stretching" a bit to re-interpret the words and actions of, say, Jesus of Nazareth as "seventh stage".[5]

This "intention to show similarities and correspondences" certainly was one dimension of Adi Da's descriptions of Ramana Maharshi as well in the 1970's. But with Ramana Maharshi (unlike Jesus and Gautama Buddha), there is the additional matter of Adi Da having visited Ramana's tomb, and having described His direct experience of Ramana's seventh stage demonstration there. So with Ramana, the matter is a little more complicated.

With the benefit of 20-20 hindsight, however, we can piece together what must have happened. Given His clear communication (in the 1990's and later) that Ramana Maharshi was a sixth stage Realizer, Adi Da must have reconsidered His original assessment of the experience in Ramana Maharshi's tomb as a seventh stage demonstration of Ramana Maharshi's Realization. He must have concluded that — as with the Vedanta Temple — His original interpretation was incorrect (even though He never specifically mentioned that reassessment to devotees — preferring devotees to "draw Him out" with questions based on their own readiness to receive what He had to say). But, given that a seventh stage demonstration did indeed take place in Maharshi's tomb, it also seems certain that (as with the Vedanta Temple) Adi Da must have come to understand that it was His Own Presence and Realization (not Ramana's) that was the Source of the "seventh stage demonstration" — since there simply was no other possible Source of seventh stage demonstration available in that tomb, other than Ramana Maharshi or Himself. If it wasn't Maharshi's demonstration, then it had to be Adi Da's.

Even Adi Da's original description of the experience makes it clear to the reader that, in such extraordinary meetings "between" sixth and/or seventh stage beings (each with profound Realizations of non-separateness, and one of whom had no physical body), it is very difficult to separate out (or "dis-entangle") "who's who" and "who is doing what" — just as it took a while to sift out His Own Presence as the true Source of the Spiritual potency of the Vedanta Temple (while He was there), rather than something associated with the temple itself or its history (from "Like Meeting Your Twin Brother", Vision Mound Magazine, Vol. 1 No. 5, 1977):

* * *

The "detective work" we've been laying out in this section has been long and involved, so let's take a step back now and recap:

It was Adi Da's ruthlessly honest process of exploring what the actual facts are, and His increasingly clearer picture of what the seventh stage of life looked like in anyone who is a seventh-stage Realizer (the necessarily accompanying four-phase process, the need for a seventh-stage Adept to have enabled one to transition to the seventh stage unless one is a Divine Incarnation, etc.) that led to His change in view about Ramana Maharshi's Realization over the years.

He had the experience in Ramana's tomb in 1973, which He interpreted at the time to be a demonstration of Ramana's seventh stage Realization. But even as early as 1977, He had noticed the discrepancy between this view (that Ramana was a seventh-stage Realizer) and the fact that Ramana's human life did not show the signs of the seventh-stage process that inevitably follows seventh-stage Realization, as the Force, after rising from the heart to the sahasrar, continues down into the body-mind and produces obvious and clear changes and signs. At first He considered the possibility that Ramana Maharshi was a seventh stage Realizer, and the Force had risen from the heart to the sahasrar (as His experience in Ramana's tomb seemed to corroborate), but had then gotten "stuck", not descending into the body-mind and inevitably producing the signs of Divine Transfiguration, Divine Transformation, Divine Indifference, and Divine Translation. But finally, He reached the esoterically simpler and more satisfactory account: the Force must not have risen from the heart to the sahasrar after all — in other words, Ramana must not have been a seventh-stage Realizer. That left only one other explanation for Adi Da's experience in Ramana's tomb: it was Adi Da's Own demonstration of awakened Amrita Nadi that He was experiencing in that tomb, but which He had originally attributed to Ramana, just as He had originally attributed the Presence in the Vedanta Temple to something other than Himself.

Such evolutions in view are to be expected in an extraordinarily complex learning process that clarified subjects never before explored or detailed in the history of the Great Tradition.

7.5. Adi Da's conclusion that "seventh stage Adept" is a one-time occurrence and function in the history of the universe

Adi Da's consideration of His Own Uniqueness reached its culmination not just in His not finding any seventh stage predecessors in His exploration of the Great Tradition to date; but in also realizing that He wasn't going to find any seventh stage predecessors no matter how long He looked, because there was a functional reason why there could only be one seventh stage Adept:

In short: seventh stage Realization of the Divine is functionally impossible without the Divine Itself entering into conditional existence (via an Incarnation) and creating a "hole in the universe" that bridges the otherwise insurmountable "barrier" between conditional existence and Unconditional Existence [bold ours]:

Once such a Divine Incarnation has accomplished that work, no future seventh stage Adept would be necessary, because the work has already been done. Not only would such a seventh stage Adept not be necessary, but such an Adept cannot appear, because a Divine Incarnation is only manifested on the basis of need. And once such a Divine Incarnation has accomplished that work, all beings can realize the seventh stage of life — but not before.

So if you are Adi Da, a seventh stage Adept, and you have just created this "hole in the universe" linking conditional existence with the Divine Domain, and you have come to the understanding I have just described about the Unique Function of the seventh stage Adept, then you know you are not going to find any seventh stage predecessors when you search the history of the Great Tradition, because — for functional reasons — there can't have been any seventh stage Realizers before you yourself opened — for the first time and for all time — that "hole in the universe".

So, to summarize: Saying there is only one seventh stage Adept in the history of the universe is just another way of saying the Emergence of the Divine into the conditional universe was a one-time breakthrough — once it has happened (by means of a specific Adept, Adi Da) — it need not and cannot happen again, because the breakthrough has already occurred: the Divine is already here.

7.6. Ramana Maharshi: One further consideration

At this point, having understood the principle that Adi Da's Presence was the actual active Agent in many events He had previously attributed to other agents; and having understood His "seventh stage Adept" function as the unique Means for serving the transition to the seventh stage of life, I would love to have asked Adi Da one further question about Ramana Maharshi:

"Is the fullest understanding of Your visit to Ramana Maharshi's tomb this: that You helped him make the transition to the seventh stage of life right then and there? And that the regeneration of Amrita Nadi You experienced (and originally interpreted as Ramana's long-established seventh stage Realization demonstrating Itself) was in fact Ramana Maharshi demonstrating the seventh stage Realization for the first time because Your Grace had granted him that Ultimate Realization in that very moment?"

We most likely will never learn the answer. . . But I still can't help wondering! If the seventh stage Adept, Adi Da, "linked up" with the sixth stage Ramana at Ramana's tomb, what would have been the impact of that meeting on Ramana's own Realization? Perhaps Adi Da's original assessment — that He was confirming the seventh stage Realization in another Realizer — was indeed correct after all . . . but only "freshly minted" in that moment. And for those of us familiar with how Adi Da only tended to reveal such profound matters in response to devotees' readiness, it would not be too surprising to us that He never mentioned this.

[1]		The deeper theological problem here is the conventional religious tradition of associating "omniscience" and "omnipotence" with the Divine in the first place (stemming from viewing of God as the "Creator" of the universe and "in charge" of it). But in fact, a God that is simultaneously omniscient, omnipotent, and all-good is theologically inconsistent with the world as we know it — and gives rise to questions like, "How can an all-good God that is also all-powerful and all-knowing allow beings to suffer?" Each religion's answer to this question is called its theodicy. Various religious traditions have come up with complex rationalizations (from "God giving free will to human beings and then testing whether they will choose Him" to "original sin"). And many people have rejected the existence of God altogether (becoming atheists) based on such glaring theological inconsistencies or complex rationalizations. As the philosopher, Richard Swinburne, put it: "most theists need a theodicy, [they need] an account of reasons why God might allow evil to occur. Without a theodicy, evil counts against the existence of God." But one doesn't have to reject God to resolve the theological conundrum. One just has to reject God-ideas that require God to be all-good and omnipotent and omniscient. One way we sometimes resolve this (in our moments of greatest despair and suffering) is to shake our fists at "God" — continuing to presume God is omniscient and omnipotent, but feeling that God obviously can't be all-good, since a God that cared about me wouldn't abandon me to such suffering, or unjustly send me to hell for eternity, as punishment for the behavior of a few years. We might call this resolution of the theological inconsistency the "sadist God" resolution: God is omniscient and omnipotent, but is not all-good. Consideration of a "sadist God" is what often turns people into atheists. (For who would choose to believe in that kind of a God? "There is no God" is more preferable as a belief than "God exists and is a sadist".) But we can resolve the theological conundrum without resorting to either atheism or "God as sadist". In the "theology" of Adidam, God is all-good — entirely purposed toward the liberation of all beings; but God is neither omniscient nor omnipotent, and that is why there can be God and human suffering at the same time, without a seeming contradiction or the need for a complex rationalization. God is the Source of the universe — the Consciousness in which it is arising — but God is not "in charge" of it. In a theology like Adidam's, a Divine Incarnation is a rare — even unique — occurrence in the history of the universe, not something that can be commanded to happen in any moment by an omnipotent Divine. It can occur when the very rare, right circumstances come along in the history of the universe that enable a Divine Incarnation; and it does occur because God is all-good, and is impulsed to serving the liberation of all beings, not through omnipotence, but through the profound sacrifice that is the human lifetime of such a Divine Incarnation. Through such a Divine Incarnation, the Divine can serve the liberation of all beings, and enable all beings to Realize the Divine. In contrast, many of the traditional religions have a strange "marriage" of an abstract theology (a God that is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good) and a human mythology (e.g., of a specific God-Man and the stories associated with the lifetime of that God-Man) where the theology and the mythology don't quite "fit together". For example: if God is all-powerful and all-good, why the need for a God-Man who goes through a complex sacrificial process? An all-powerful God could just eliminate all human suffering and all evil in an instant; and an all-good God would. Indeed, a God who is both all-powerful and all-good would not even allow human suffering and evil into His universe in the first place. If we believe in an all-good God that wants all beings in heaven, then if that God is also all-powerful, He would simply place all beings in heaven from the start, rather than putting them through the less-than-heavenly ordeal that we all experience.
[2]		This passage is still in the current edition of The Knee of Listening but without additional contextualization, so an article like the one you are reading is essential to distinguish Adi Da's understanding of the Vedanta Temple back in the 1970's from His later understanding.
[3]		From the talk, "I Will Do Everything", in The Way That I Teach.
[4]		Because I was a professor of Computer Science at a major university (Rutgers University), I had been using the Internet for years, and was aware of the Web as soon as it came into existence. The Web's enormous potential — in general, and for Adidam in particular — was immediately obvious. (If one's purpose is to serve the liberation of all beings, what better tool could there be than the Web, for making large numbers of people aware of an opportunity like the Way of Adidam?) So I immediately began creating a website for Adidam, and it went online as one of the earliest websites in 1994, winning several awards, which greatly pleased Adi Da.
[5]		As suggested by passages like this one: The more public Teaching of Jesus is associated with the moral exotericism and animistic terrestrialism of the Emanationist religion of the first three stages of life. And he is also often quoted or depicted in the terms of traditional formulations that affirm the dualistic ideal of evolutionary soul-culture (or the fourth to fifth stage views of traditional Emanationism, which are concerned with mystical soul-travel, or ascent through the cosmic hierarchy to the "Throne" or "Heaven" of God). But Jesus' ultimate Confession of the Realization of his oneness with the "Father", or the Spiritual and Transcendental Divine Being, implies free and utter transcendence of the point of view and conventional independence of body, mind, self, and soul. By virtue of that Confession, we may consider Jesus of Nazareth to be an Adept in the seventh stage of life, an Advocate of the point of view of Emanationist Non-Dualism, and thus, in Truth, an Enlightened "Buddha", "Boddhisattva", "Jnani", "Jivanmukta", or "Mahasiddha", Occupied with Transcendental Wisdom in the midst of a traditional culture of animistic spiritualism and Emanationist monotheism. If we do not thus presume Jesus to have been a "Completed" or seventh stage Adept, the only alternative assessment that is also possibly legitimate is a spiritually less auspicious one, based on the evidence that suggests he was merely a typical figure in the moral and mystical traditions of the first five stages of life. According to that view, it is to be presumed that Jesus advocated the basically animistic doctrine that life is a struggle with unholy or daemonic "spirits" (which produce the symptoms of "sin", or denial of God's Help, in the form of disease, doubt, violence, hypocrisy, fear, anger, sorrow, defeat, and so forth). In that context, Jesus offered the "Holy Spirit" of God to believers (or those who would renounce "sin", or willful possession by negative spirits, and exercise the impulse of faith, or the will to be possessed by the Holy Spirit) as the means of salvation from the negative destinies that develop from daemonic possession. To be sure, this interpretation of Jesus is certainly a correct reflection of the general setting of his Work. The question is whether or not his Teaching, or at least his Realization, exceeded the limits of animism and monotheistic Emanationism in the context of the first five stages of life. I would say there is a basis (in the "Confessions" or self-descriptions of Jesus) for affirming that Jesus had himself entered into the Realization of the seventh stage of life, and there is some indication in the New Testament that he may have Taught the Non-Dualistic Wisdom to at least a few others (such as Nicodemus). In any case, Jesus of Nazareth has historically been more mythologized than remembered. And he has been blatantly transformed into a symbol for justifying worldly activity and social or political power, whereas he was a Spiritual Master who passionately called his hearers to repent of all wordly ambitions and follow him into the Mysterious Domain of Divine Being. Avatar Adi Da Samraj "The Spiritual Advaitism of Jesus of Nazareth", Nirvanasara Adi Da would later introduce a clear principle for assessing the Realization of a Realizer: a philosophical statement made by the Realizer that is sympathetic with the seventh stage view is not sufficient evidence that the Realizer was a seventh stage Realizer. The human lifetime of that Realizer would also have to demonstrate the seventh stage process that unfolded as a result of the regeneration of Amrita Nadi: Divine Transfiguration; Divine Transformation; Divine Indifference; and Divine Translation. So the statement by Jesus to which Adi Da alludes here ("I and the Father are one." - John 10:30) is not sufficient evidence, and the rest of Jesus' life (to the extent that we can know its historical details with any accuracy, two thousand years later) does not illustrate the seventh-stage life process. There is one apparent moment of "Transfiguration": "After six days Jesus took with him Peter, James and John the brother of James, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. There he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light." (Matthew, 17:1-2) But there are no other demonstrations of Transfiguration, or of the other three phases — Transformation, Indifference, or Translation — of the seventh stage of life process. Adi Da has indicated that certain fourth-to-fifth stage Realizers can have moments of bodily illumination, and gives the example of Swami Prakashananda: Yet another devotee of Baba Muktananda, named Swami Prakashananda — Who did not Function as My Spiritual Master (and Who, like Rudi, was not a fully developed Siddha-Guru — but, rather, a very much advanced fourth-to-fifth stage Siddha-Yogi) — once (spontaneously, in 1969) Showed Me (in His own bodily human Form) the fifth stage Signs of Spiritual Transfiguration of the physical body. Avatar Adi Da Samraj "I (Alone) Am The Adidam Revelation", The Knee Of Listening