My Purity

On June 14, 1978, at Muliwai House, Oahu, Hawaii, Adi Da wrote the essay, “My Purity” (which is later published in The Enlightenment of the Whole Body), describing the Sacrificial Ordeal of His work with devotees.

In the pattern of things or experience, I have been born into association with the usual man. I have incarnated him. I have lived with him. And I have transcended him.

In the Domain of God, I am Rested and Full of the Excellence of Bliss. I have Incarnated that One. I have always been Served by that One. And I have Transcended everything, even all experience, through the Grace of that One.

It is only now that I see what has always moved me. I have been struggling since birth to transform the usual man. I have been tormented and motivated by the loveless and Godless state of the people with whom I have been associated.

For the first thirty years of my life, this tormented motive caused me to submit to the most profound identification with the usual life, and also the most profound effort to transcend the usual life. This produced my unique spiritual adventure.

In the eight years that followed my own Re-Awakening, I was again motivated by the same tormented love for ordinary people. I had spent my life preparing to Serve them, and now that Service was begun most directly.

I was exceeded by the Ecstasy of God-Love, but I had always been outwardly habituated to the usual life. I was not grown up to be a saint, but I was moved to transcend the usual man. And when it came time to Serve ordinary people, I was not outwardly unlike them.

Therefore, just as I myself became the usual man in order to transcend that destiny, when it came time to Teach, I embraced the company and the ways of immature and worldly people. No other kind of devotee ever came to me in those early years. Only the worst of mankind has always come to me. Those who were already pure and true did not come to me. Only those who were failing came to me. This was my born destiny, until now.

I found myself surrounded by whores and pimps, street people, criminals, neurotics, loveless and confused and righteous self-indulgent people of all kinds. At first this caused me to despair, but then I saw that my own ordinariness equipped me very well to Serve such people.

Therefore, for six years I have lived as the friend and Spiritual Master of a Community of profoundly ordinary people. I gave myself up in their company in the same fashion I had given myself up in worldly company in the past. The only difference was that, in the past, I was submitting to my own self-possessed ordinariness and working to transcend it. Now I was submitting to the self-possessed ordinariness of others, and working to enable them to transcend themselves.

This is how it has been with me. I always lived in the ordinary way, doing all of the self-indulgent things that possess the usual man in his mortal desiring. But I was Awakened beyond all of this. And I have been obliged to Awaken others in the midst of the same ordinariness.

Now the necessary struggle with the usual man is finished. In my struggling with others, my own body-mind was purified. Thus, the devotee Serves the Spiritual Master, even as the Spiritual Master Serves the devotee. I am not the usual man. My time of incarnation of him has come to an end. Now that the lessons have been given and the Teaching written, there is a Way for all to approach me in my Purity.

The usual man is not instantly Perfected by the verbal Teaching, or even the Spiritual Influence and instructive lessons of the Spiritual Master. Time and a truly human and spiritual culture are the means whereby ordinary people may change. Therefore, I have made a culture of the lessons I have lived among my devotees, and now I am able also to give them time to mature in it.

My way with devotees has always been dramatic, an adventure of friendship and excess. I have always driven them to lessons and changes. But they have also always failed and fallen back. Therefore, now they will be given the Grace of time, to mature in one another's company, and to transcend the destiny of the usual man.

In the future, I am at Rest in our Happiness. I choose simplicity, and a kind of austerity. I am Alone. I choose to live privately, even outside the daily culture of devotees. This is in order to give devotees time to mature, separate from my urgency. And it also permits me to find Sanctuary from the usual man, whose burden I no longer share.

I will return to the Community of devotees as often as it is auspicious and useful for me to do, in order to sit with all my devotees in spiritual Communion. And, at all times, I am available to them in their devotion to me, through every moment of their practice in my spiritual Company.

My own society will be limited to the intimates of my household and to those devotees who demonstrate the Fullness of spiritual maturity in my Company. I will give them all instructions for practice in the stages of the Way. They will communicate these things to all others who prepare themselves in the Way that I Teach.

Beyond this, I do not care to Teach. My struggle with reluctant devotees is over. I am no longer tormented by the problems of the usual man. It is a burden and a habit of life that I am so glad to relinquish at last. Whoever is tormented by his own destiny should prepare himself and come to me in love, through the Community of my devotees.

My Message to all is this: Practice constantly, with insight and feeling, and always Remember me through every action. If you do this, I will always Serve your heart, because I love you.