Empowered Places and Things > Introduction

Introduction:
Empowered Places and Things in Adidam

Leroy Stilwell

Leroy Stilwell has been a devotee of Adi Da Samraj since 1976. He is one of the founders of this website. You can read his biographical information in the About Us section.

1. The Empowered Places and Things of Adidam: A Direct Communication of the Spiritual Reality

“Holy places” and “holy things” have been the object of myth-making and sensationalism for millennia. If we were to make a comprehensive list of such places and things, it would probably run to book length. To get a feeling for it, here are just a few of the items on such a list: relics, pilgrimage sites, mysterious locations, sacred locations, places of power, sacred articles, temples, scepters, swords, chalices, crosses, stones, statues, lingams*, saligrams*, stupas*, padukas*, magic wands and magic staffs, sacred trees, and crystal balls.

[*Sacred objects from the Hindu and Tibetan Buddhist traditions.]

So what of all this is actually real? Or, to put it more precisely, which of these places and things actually do assist us in contacting the greater-than-material dimensions of Reality? It is beyond the scope of this section to examine all the claims there are about such things. Instead, the focus of this section will be on what we are in a position to write about firsthand:

We hope that our stories will succeed in communicating to you that there really are Spiritual dimensions to Reality; and that there really are places and objects Spiritually Empowered so that they serve as a means for connecting with that Spiritual Reality. We hope you will also come away with a sense for the genuine Mystery that is Reality altogether.

Within Adidam, the primary “Empowered Object” is Adi Da’s bodily human form. In a manner somewhat like a candle lighting other candles, or tuning forks spontaneously vibrating in resonance with each other, Adi Da’s bodily human form serves (directly or indirectly) as the means through which all the other Sacred Places and Objects in Adidam have been Empowered.

The primary “Empowered Places” are Adi Da’s Hermitages and Sanctuaries. Most of the stories in this section take place at one of these Hermitages or Sanctuaries, or at one of the “Holy Sites” on a particular Hermitage or Sanctuary. Some stories illustrate Adi Da’s Spiritual Empowerment of sacred objects and ceremonies in Adidam. Taken altogether, these Hermitages, Sanctuaries, and other Empowered places and objects are a profound gift from Adi Da Samraj to the world; they serve as means for helping to Reveal to people the true and full nature of Reality. For that reason, we hope that you have the opportunity to visit one or more of these Sacred places yourself.

2. The Principle of Empowerment in Adidam: Adi Da Samraj Himself

Spiritual Masters come in many forms, with differing degrees of Realization, and consequently different kinds of Revelatory Power (depending on the nature of their own Realization). Elsewhere on this site, we study just who Adi Da is, in Spiritual and Transcendental terms. Having a sense for Who Adi Da is allows us to make better sense of what precisely “Empowerment” in Adidam means.

By way of an example, certain Masters transmit energy of one kind or another. For example, a Chi Gong Master may transmit chi, while a Kundalini Master may activate the energy of the kundalini circuit of the body. Such Masters may be able to empower places and objects in such a way that, if you come near or hold those objects, or visit those places, you too will have some kind of experience of that same energy. Whether you feel anything, or what you feel will to some significant degree depend on your own openness and sensitivity — however consciously, naturally, or spontaneously that came to be.

In contrast, Adi Da Samraj is a human Avataric Incarnation of the Divine, and consequently a Spiritual Transmission Master of the fullest kind. He Transmits not only energy, but Himself as Divine Person. For this reason, objects and places Empowered by Adi Da are extraordinary, even among all holy objects and places, because Adi Da Himself — the very Divine — can be directly “contacted” and Revealed through them.

Again, as with Empowered objects and places of any kind, whether you feel anything, or what you feel, and how you interpret it, will, to some significant degree, depend on your own openness and sensitivity, as well as your human and spiritual maturity and experience.

In the more precise and technical language used by Adi Da, He describes His Transcendental Spiritual Transmission as “Reality Revealing Itself”. His essential communication via His Person and Agency is the present “radical” Realization of non-“difference” (or no-separation). When one is sufficiently open to It, Adi Da’s Transcendental Force of Transmission conforms the being to Reality Itself, and dissolves the illusion of separate self. However, until then, one principally perceives its effects (in the body-mind and in the world) and interprets it with the limited mind, rather than being moved to the utter ecstasy of undifferentiated Identification with Conscious Love-Bliss-Light Itself.

In Adi Da's Own Words:

The Principle of Empowerment in Adidam — by Leroy Stilwell and Laura deBaun.

3. The Larger Purpose of Spiritual Empowerment in Adidam

Avatar Adi Da has made it part of His Work to establish such Empowered Places and Objects as vehicles to extend His Blessing and Transcendental Spiritual Transmission beyond the lifetime of His human body. They are intended to serve this purpose, along with Adi Da’s Divine Image Art and His Written Word. So, for instance, in 2500, long after Adi Da’s human lifetime, a person interested in practicing the Way of Adidam will be able to draw upon all of these Empowered Means to do so, and they will be able to do this in the context of his community of devotees.

4. More About Adi Da’s Spiritual Empowerment of Objects and Places

As you will read in our stories, Spiritual Empowerment in Adidam occurs because a place or object has already been infused with Adi Da’s Spiritual Transmission: either because He has deliberately infused it, or because such infusion has occurred naturally in the course of Adi Da somehow relating to that place or object. (Avatar Adi Da describes how His Transcendental Spiritual Transmission is happening all the time.) Many traditions describe how the Spiritual Master gives his or her Spiritual Transmission through his or her touch, glance, word, or thought.

Places where Avatar Adi Da lives and spends time literally become permeated with His Spiritual Transmission. It is common for people (whether or not they are Adi Da's devotees) to notice an almost palpable (if not literally so) difference in the feeling or air in Avatar Adi Da’s personal environments and the places He has Empowered. Even as one approaches an Empowered Holy Site, one can begin to feel Its Influence.

Avatar Adi Da’s Transcendental Spiritual Transmission is inherent in Who He Is, and It is also Responsively Evoked through devotion and surrender. Such feeling sensitivity to Avatar Adi Da’s Transcendental Spiritual Transmission is the ground to all the stories in this section of our website. How directly one receives His Transmission, what experiences one may have in devotional and (eventually) Spiritual Communion with Adi Da — these are complex matters of practice and personal differences. The stories in this section reflect many levels and varieties of such differences. The constant, however, is Avatar Adi Da’s Transcendental Spiritual Influence.

Anyone, devotees and non-devotees alike, may have experiences that reflect Adi Da being literally Present. For example, you will read a story of how a devotee witnesses an “ordinary” photo of Avatar Adi Da suddenly becoming “alive”. On another occasion, at our Sanctuary in Hawaii, a woman devotee was attending to a chair and foot pillow regularly used by Adi Da (Adi Da was in Fiji at the time). She had cleaned the chair and was now placing the pillow on the ground where it would go in front of the chair. As she finished placing the pillow, it was as if Adi Da had then physically come in, sat down and placed His feet on the pillow. She saw the pillow being pressed to the floor as impressions of His feet appeared.

Adi Da has encouraged devotees who have such experiences to be inspired by them — not for their own sake, but in order to enter into even deeper Communion with Him.

To enter into relationship with Adi Da is to enter into a remarkable relationship with Reality Itself, lived in deepest humanly-felt intimacy with the Divine Person. And in the fullness of that intimacy with Adi Da as Divine Person, one is drawn beyond all separateness and difference into the Onliness that Is Adi Da’s State: Infinite Love-Bliss-Light, Consciousness Itself, that Very One That Is Un-differentiated Reality Itself, That Is, in fact, Him.

The Spirit and Spiritual in Adidam — by Leroy Stilwell and Laura deBaun.