When He returned to the Mountain Of Attention, Avatar Adi Da began to instruct a few devotees in puja, the ancient practice of invoking the Divine by actively worshipping and anointing images of the Deity, using natural elements such as water, oil, and ash. The principal object of esoteric worship, He explained, is the Spiritual Master’s human Form, the body of the Guru. Because the Guru has Realized God, he or she reveals the Divine and grants the Divine Blessing in a uniquely potent way.

Avatar Adi Da communicated the esoteric fullness of puja on the Guru’s Form one evening at Bright Behind Me, which was then His residence at the Mountain Of Attention. He sat motionless in a room in the house, while devotees waved flaming lamps in large circles around His body, accompanied by an ecstatic explosion of drums, rattles, cymbals, and tambourines. Outside, on the porch, there were more devotees — circumambulating the house, chanting, and beholding the Form of their Beloved Guru through the windows. Light and sound and movement swirled around Avatar Adi Da while He sat Silent and Radiant, His Divine Love-Bliss enveloping everyone.

That night, Avatar Adi Da established the ceremonial worship of His Divine Form, in the lives of His devotees. And, thereafter, bodily-expressed devotion, worship, and praise of Avatar Adi Da as the Living Divine Person became a part of devotees’ daily lives. Regardless of the location of His human Body — and even after His physical passing — this Puja can always be done, using a photographic (or otherwise artistically rendered) representation of Avatar Adi Da.

Part of Avatar Adi Da’s Work to establish this process of acculturation to the sacred and right Spiritual relationship to Him was His establishment of particular places at the Mountain Of Attention Sanctuary as holy sites, specifically Empowered by Him. He indicated to His devotees that these special places should become temples, places in which to associate ecstatically with His Spiritual Presence. And He explained that, by devotees rightly serving these places of Power and constantly Invoking Him there, His Blessing of all beings would be magnified.

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