Adi Da and Adidam: Finding Adi Da: He Is Alive

It is not uncommon for devotees of Adi Da to have subtle experiences of Him before they contact Him in waking life. Some have dreams, others visions, some experience a curious synchronicity of events and circumstances that eventually draw them to their Guru. And, of course, many simply pick up a book of Adi Da's or see His photograph or are taken to a lecture by a friend. In reality, all such contacts are equally extraordinary, equally momentous — the meeting of Guru and devotee is always a miracle, a moment that changes one's life — and destiny — forever. In the story that follows, Lyn Hart, an administrator and businesswoman, tells of being contacted and Instructed by Avatar Adi Da over a period of years before she had any idea that He is alive in this world.

Lyn Urquhart Lyn: My early life was spent in a very disciplined religious environment. My father was a physician, and we were Christian missionaries. As a young person, I was very drawn to the religious life of my church and embraced it without reservation. But even in my childhood and early adolescence and again in my early twenties, I had experiences that were not accounted for in the doctrines of my church — experiences of precognition, vivid recollections of what seemed to me to be past lifetimes, out-of-body experiences, and experiences of bilocation, or appearing to others to be in two different places at once.

As I grew older, all of this was accompanied by the surfacing of all my repressed sexuality and the need to explore all the dimensions of experience that had not been a part of my upbringing.

I began to feel more and more uncomfortable with the inconsistencies between what I had been taught as a young person and what my experience of life actually was. It was at this point that an event took place that validated my experience from a different perspective and put me into a genuine crisis. I was working in a large university medical center, where I was also in charge of the "code" team, responsible for attempting to resuscitate patients who had clinically died. On this day, I had gone to check-in on an elderly woman whom we had successfully resuscitated a few days before. As I entered the room, she said, "I know you. You were there the day I died." She then proceeded to tell me, in great detail, the process of being out of her body and what she had observed in that hospital room and in an adjacent room while she was "dead". I could no longer deny the reality of my own subtle experiences.

With great sadness, I began separating myself from my church. I began to study everything I could find on Yoga and Theosophy. I was driven to experience everything I could — I abandoned the vegetarian diet of my church, drank alcohol, explored sex, traveled, and invested myself in scientific studies and various humanitarian efforts.

At age 28, I went out into the wilderness to spend a few months in complete seclusion. On this pilgrimage, I had an experience in which I had no sense of body, no sense of ego, no feeling of being separate — only bliss, only light. This drove me to try to repeat the experience, but nothing I could do could recapture this bliss. I began to despair. Nothing in life measured up. Nothing had any meaning for me.

In my early thirties, I began again to experiment with trying to control my out-of-body experiences. I became absorbed in the task of leaving and returning to the body at will. It was at the point where I felt that I was really beginning to do well that I first heard the voice. "So you can go in and out", it said. The clear implication was that my accomplishments were of no significance or relevance! I was instructed by the voice that I should not put my attention on these experiences, but that I should learn to live in the body instead, and that I would be given further instruction when the time was right.

I moved to the country, got involved in designing and building energy self-sufficient dwellings, learned carpentry and plumbing, and did a lot of manual labor. For several years, there was no voice.

Then in 1986, a subtle being again appeared to me — now with a face but without a voice. I could not tell if this being was male or female. The hair was long and the feeling was somehow neither male nor female although the eyebrows were very heavy and the hairline receded. This being was introduced to me as my Teacher, but I never assumed that this being was alive on the physical plane.

Then, in 1988, another — or I thought it was another — Teacher contacted me. He was a powerful figure with a bald head and a big belly. His voice was the same voice I had heard several years before. For weeks at a time now, I would be awake all night receiving his instruction and experiencing painful revelations about my lovelessness and self-obsession.

In 1989, I began to see a Reichian therapist to work on the basic "knot" I felt at the core of my being. I had noticed that she had an altar with a small photograph of her Guru in the room where we worked. Though I avoided looking too closely, I was intrigued, because she did not seem like the "type" to have a Guru. She occasionally spoke to me about her Guru, but I was careful not to ask too many questions because I was not "into" Gurus. Then, in September of 1990, having just experienced another period of intensive "instruction" from my Teacher, I entered another period of great frustration and reevaluation of my life.

I confessed my feelings to my body worker, who offered to loan me a book by her Teacher. It was a tattered, much-read paperback — but every time I touched it, my heart would swell and I felt a great peace. When I got home I read the first chapter, but, instead of finding more peace, I was completely offended! How could any person presume such authority? I put the book down and tried to put it out of my mind, but instead I paced about the house, finding it very disturbing that I was so disturbed! I started reading again. The more I read, the more the battle raged within me. My mind was totally offended, but my heart was inexplicably drawn to this Wisdom. I finished the book at about one in the morning, and then I walked around outside until dawn.

By the morning, it was clear that my heart was winning. I now looked forward to borrowing a different book each week. I was hooked. In fact, I was in love.

The fourth book she loaned me had pictures of the author. I was completely astonished at what I saw. It was my Teacher! I was stunned. I was overcome with joy and gratitude. I also knew that this discovery would now require great changes in my life. I was excited — and I was scared.

In the next four months, I read twenty of Beloved Adi Da's books. And, of course, I discovered that the slender-faced, long-haired being whose gender I had been unable to determine was also Adi Da Samraj — exactly as He had looked in 1986 after a several-month fast — exactly at the time I had subtle contact with Him.

Now I thought about Him all the time. My dreams were full of Him. I knew I had to see Him in person. To do that, I had to become a formal student and part of the Adidam community and qualify to go on retreat to Adi Da Samrajashram, the island where my Beloved Heart-Master resides in the Fijian Islands. I was not "into" community or “joining” any groups, but then I had not been "into" Gurus, either. Things can change. I became a formal devotee of Adi Da Samraj, and, within a year I was finally on my way to Adi Da Samrajashram.

On the evening after I and my fellow retreatants arrived, we all walked out to Beloved Adi Da's Residence — or actually to a Meditation Hall just outside His residential compound. I was very excited and a little apprehensive as we sat there waiting for the appointed time. I could hardly sit still, the air seemed so charged. As Adi Da Samraj approached the Hall, I could feel the room becoming more and more energized. The energy became so great that I thought something in my head was going to split apart. And just when I thought I could not bear it a moment longer, He walked through the door. Something in me felt as if it did painfully split apart in that instant. Then there was perfect calm and quiet. The room itself was not quiet at all, with devotees calling out their praise and love to their Guru, but to me it was perfect peace and quietness.

Whenever I was with Adi Da Samraj, my mind became quiet and without thought. There were no ordinary emotions. There was just this deep peace and connectedness and the absence of all unhappiness and even all movement in the mind or emotions. I wasn't "trying" to do or not do anything. It just happened.

In the six weeks that I spent at Adi Da Samrajashram, I received so much. Time loses its meaning, and lessons that might ordinarily take years, or even lifetimes, can occur in a few weeks or a few moments. I noticed that in Beloved Adi Da's physical presence, all of my tendencies were exaggerated just as during those earlier times in my life when He had been instructing me subtly.