FAQs about Adi Da & Adidam > Numbers and Value > Seventh Stage Realizers

The Number of Seventh Stage Realizers

Question: How is it that after so many years of Adi Da's Teaching and work with His devotees, there aren't any seventh stage realizers among Adi Da's devotees? Weren't other teachers such as the Buddha, Nisargadatta, or Ramana Maharshi much more successful in bringing their disciples to their level of Spiritual Realization?

Chris Tong: I don’t think we’re in any position to say anything about a Realizer from thousands of years ago (Gautama Buddha) and whether He liberated souls, let alone how many. What most scholars would agree on is that there are a lot of myths about the Buddha mixed in with what may have been factually true of the historical Buddha. So, for instance, there are traditional texts that say things like — the Buddha said such and such and, as a result, so and so was "enlightened" on the spot. But those same traditional texts also say things like: Immediately after the Buddha was born, He took seven steps and proclaimed, "I am the best in the world". Did that actually, literally happen? I tend to doubt it. So can we always take what these texts say literally? I don't believe so.

As for contemporary Realizers, the seventh stage Realization is a qualitatively different Realization than any of the Realizations of the first six stages. Adi Da making that Realization possible in principle for others doesn’t say anything about how hard or easy the process of Realization will turn out to be. Although it is actually rather difficult to measure the Realizations of the devotees of Ramana Maharshi (or Nisargadatta, who didn’t take on devotees formally), there would be nothing inconsistent about saying it could take a few years for someone to attain the sixth stage Realization of Self-Realization with the grace of Ramana Maharshi, but then take lifetimes to Realize the seventh stage Realization of Adi Da.

I should add that Adi Da Himself has specifically criticized this “body count” approach to measuring the “worth” of a tradition. See, for example, this quote where Adi Da points out that established religions like Catholicism are not held to any such standard (i.e., that most Catholics would have to be saints in order to "spiritually authenticate" Catholicism). Adi Da has pointed out that, traditionally, only a few in every generation have sufficient impulse to actually realize anything great spiritually.

To put it in more familiar terms, and pick up on Adi Da's "school" metaphor, relatively few people get Ph.D.'s in physics. That's not because the graduate physics programs are terrible! It's because very few people have what it takes to make it through the program and get their Ph.D.

It may be that, for most practitioners, because of their egoic liabilities, the full virtue of the Way of Adidam will only be demonstrated over a period of several lifetimes. Divine Enlightenment (the seventh stage Realization) is something that can take lifetimes to Realize. But, as Adi Da points out, it is far better to begin to cooperate with the process (by becoming a practitioner of the Way), than to continue to flat out resist one's Enlightenment (by just living a conventional life). Even if one doesn't Realize God in this lifetime, real growth in the Way of Adidam does carry over from lifetime to lifetime. Better to awaken in ten lifetimes than one million!

Brian O’Mahony: This is an understandable question, but the subject is even more paradoxical than the question suggests. The presumption underlying this question is that Enlightenment is a "something" or a "state" to attain and each of us is a "someone" who can "achieve" Enlightenment. As Adi Da has said on so many occasions, Truth is Always Already the Case, and there is no separate self, no “person” to be liberated, only the Divine Self, which is self-Existing and self-Radiant Conscious Light, our true nature and condition, the true “self” of all. Adi Da’s Work is to liberate all from the presumption of separateness, mortality, limitation, suffering, self. So, the “one” to be liberated does not exist in Reality, and when the transition to the seventh stage of life occurs, that “one” will be long gone!

Yes, there is a progressive process through which all the aspects of "separate self" are understood and transcended, as Adi Da’s Teaching so perfectly and brilliantly Reveals. That is a profound ordeal, however. Adi Da once likened it to what it would take for an amoeba to develop into a human being. The patterning of egoic presumption and separation and separativeness in each of us and in us as a collective has great force. And Adi Da has made it clear that the early stages of the practice of Adidam, where the practitioner grows beyond the most obvious patterns of bondage (in the areas of money, food, and sex), are the most difficult. Why? Because most of us are identified with the body and are in great fear of losing the body. What we discover is that only Grace can free us from such identification, and it takes time for the lifetimes of patterning to be undone in each of us.

You mention the Buddha. There is an oft-repeated story of Gautama Buddha, in disguise, once encountering two monks of whom he asked the question “how many more lifetimes do you think it will take for you to achieve perfect Liberation?” The first monk said “one hundred lifetimes” and the Buddha nodded in apparent agreement. The second monk said “ten thousand lifetimes” and the Buddha Liberated him on the spot because his extraordinary humility was a sign of his profound preparation and readiness for that Gift of Liberation. Adi Da has been Teaching for only a few decades! Who can truly predict how long it will take.

James Steinberg: Interesting question. Well I actually don’t know of any Realizers around most Teachers. Who was actually Enlightened by Nisargadatta or Ramana Maharshi? There are many devotees that are called “Enlightened” but they are not in the terms that Adi Da would use.