Extraordinary Evidence > Other Entities and Realms > Initiation in Another Realm

Initiation in Another Realm

Alicia Aguilar

Alicia Aguilar has been a devotee of Avatar Adi Da since March 1983. She has a 22-year old daughter whom she conceived and raised in the community of Adi Da’s devotees. Alicia is herself a gifted healer.

I was born and raised in the Philippines, and lived in England for eight and a half years before I came to America. I grew up as a Catholic and never missed even a day of going church, every day. Even though my family was Catholic, my father was the traditional village healer. He was a very calm and kind, helpful person. People called him Amang (Father) Owel (short for Villaruel, his first name). I remember wanting to learn the ways of healing that my father practiced, but I was afraid of the power and forces that I felt he dealt with. And he did mention that there was none of us seven children who were brave enough to learn. However, one day as I came home from work, I heard this beautiful tiny voice singing classical tunes. My father was visiting and the voice was coming from just inside the apartment door. As I opened the door, there was my three-month old daughter in her crib just having finished singing. My father turned to see me, surprised. He looked at me and said, “One can even teach birds to sing!” It was clear he had found someone to teach after all!

Even as an adult, before I went to work, I went to church and prayed to God. I thought I was really, really suffering of boredom and loneliness. Even though in England I was able to surround myself with my Filipino friends, I still felt unhappy. All I did was work, sleep and eat. Eat-work-sleep. For my vacations I went to different places, different countries, and would feel temporarily happy, but, I still felt empty in my heart. And, I said to myself, ”This life is useless”, and I felt that God is not listening that I am not happy. I am questioning “Why? Is there a purpose in this life that I could not find?”

In June 1982, I went to accompany a friend to America on vacation. We went to Los Angeles, California; Houston, Texas; back to Los Angeles; then to San Jose, California. Through my Filipino friends in San Jose, I met this Caucasian guy, Michael. He was an ex-seminarian, and so during our first meeting we talked about religion, because we were both from Catholic families. (My aunt was a nun and we were very, very close. We were very strict Catholics. We never missed Holy Rosary Angelus at 6 in the evening. Wherever we were, we ran to come home to do the rosary at 6 o’clock. Every day.)

Anyway, Michael came over and said, “I have a book for you”. It was The Knee of Listening. It had a silver cover with a photograph of a man smiling. I told Michael, “It’s a good picture,” and in return I gave him a little pamphlet of Mother Mary. It was around 11 pm when Michael left. I began preparing to go to bed and was looking at the picture on the book’s cover.

I begin to talk to the book. “Michael said that a lot of people like you. Who are you that a lot of people like you? You don’t look like Elvis Presley”. I said, “Elvis Presley is good looking and a lot of people like him!” And I put the book on the couch next to the bed. It was now almost midnight and I was drowsy — like on the edge of sleeping and still awake.

Suddenly I saw this fire on top of the book. It was shaped like a tongue. I said to myself, “Oh my God!” I think I am hallucinating because I don’t know where the fire is coming from. I said to myself. “Look, it’s on the book! On top of the book!” So I got up and I looked at the book and then I turned it over and tried not to look at the book, but I couldn’t help but look out the corner of my eye. So I turned back and I said, “Oh my God, there’s the fire!” Then I said to myself, “This is a voodoo! THIS IS A VOODOO! My God! There is a voodoo in this book! This book is alive. This book is a voodoo because this book is alive."

My head felt like it was getting bigger . . . my heart was pounding. I’m kind of scared and excited at the same time. And so I turned my head around the other way and tried to sleep, and to not think about the book or touch it. I hadn’t even opened the book! I had just looked at the picture!

Adi Da So, I turn over to go to sleep. Immediately, it feels like I am being sucked into a trance or dream, and I find myself in the house of my grandmother where lived as a young girl. (My parents lived in a village on a small isolated island, three hours by boat from my grandmother. My father oversaw the fishery there. My grandmother lived near the city, so I lived with her so I could go to school.) There, at the top of the stairs I see this man with a cane. At my grandmother’s house there are about 15 steps all the way up from the ground to the 2^nd floor, and I was on the bottom. The man standing with a cane is wearing a beanie-type hat and there are two men standing beside him. The man with the cane looked like the man on the cover of the book [Avatar Adi Da], but only older. I didn’t recognize the other two men. I said to myself, “What is this! I own this house! Why is he the one who is on the top and I am on the bottom! And who are these men!" And then I said, “Okay,” and started to go slowly up the steps of the stairs. The man at the top started slowly coming down the stairs. I notice the man has no hair. I said, “Oh! A bald head and no hair.” Both the other men with him were also bald.

We met in the middle of the stairs. He then stretched out his hand and with his thumb he put oil on my forehead, between my eyes. Inside of my heart and my head I was screaming, “No! I am not dying yet! Don’t do that!” I was so afraid, because this reminded me of Catholicism’s extreme unction — when people are on the edge of dying and the priest puts oil on the forehead. It is similar when the baby is being baptised, the priest puts oil and water on the baby’s forehead.

Adi Da Then, all the men disappeared and I found myself at my father’s and mother’s house on the island where they lived. I am inside the house, in the living room of my mother’s and father’s house where I used to sleep. Then I saw myself with my legs crossed. I said, “What am I doing?” And then I saw this man again — he was by himself this time — sitting in the air, levitating, with his legs crossed with his hands on top of his knees. He was telling me over and over again that I don’t understand. And I said to myself, “Who is this man who acquired the place where I was born and where I grew up? It’s like I own the house but he is the (master) of the house!”

Then I said to myself, “This is different!” And I woke up!

When I looked at the book again, there was no fire anymore. But I was left wanting to find out about this attraction people felt toward this man and my own curiosity to find out more about him.

From that time on, then, I kept having dreams of communities, and people. And eventually I came to meet many of them, and then meet Adi Da himself. I became a formal devotee of Adi Da in March, 1983.

I never told anyone about this until maybe nine years after it happened. The person I told reminded me that putting the thumb on the forehead between the eyes is a traditional anointing of the ajna chakra done in spiritual initiations in many yogic spiritual traditions. I did not know that at the time I was first given The Knee of Listening and had this experience. I also learned later that Adi Da would do this when He personally initiated a devotee.

[Editors' note: Alicia had only just that day for the first time heard of Avatar Adi Da and seen a photograph of Him. It was a photo of Him as a young man from the cover of The Knee of Listening. After the time of this story, in mid-March 1983, Adi Da went to Fiji with a small group of devotees. During that time, on April 3, 1983, Adi Da had his head shaved as a traditional sign of renunciation. The other men traveling with Him also had shaven heads at the time. It was a period of intense consideration of initiation into advanced esoteric spiritual practice.]