FAQs about Adi Da & Adidam > Adi Da's Teaching Over Time > The Term, "Avatar"

The Term, "Avatar"

So what's confusing is how Adi Da now refers to Himself as "Avatar Adi Da" and an "Avataric Incarnation of the Divine". Does this still square with what He wrote way back then?

Chris Tong: There's a wonderful passage where Adi Da directly answers this question:

DEVOTEE: That is why You have said that You will be “incarnated countlessly” through Your devotees. ADI DA: Yes. I Am the Avatar of One. Therefore, I am not merely the Avatar Coming to every one, but, ultimately, the Avatar Who Is every one. I am not each and every one in their presumption of separateness. There Is Only Me — but, in their ego-forgetting devotion to Me, I am Manifested As all. Avatar Adi Da Samraj "I Am The Avatar Of One", in He-And-She Is Me

So each one "is the Avatar" — the Divine Manifested As all — only if that person has transcended his or her egoity in Adi Da. It's just another way Adi Da used to refer to His Divine Emergence here, eventually through all beings. So the core of the quote the questioner provides is this passage (bold is mine):

Therefore, the Guru is not the Avatar in that exclusive sense. Mankind is the Avatar. I am his Heart. When the Avatar realizes his true Nature and Condition, when he realizes me, he will cease to be hidden. He and this Community of which I speak will become one and the same at last. Avatar Adi Da Samraj

and the key to understanding its full meaning are the words in bold, especially: when he realizes me — the way by which "Mankind is the Avatar" is fulfilled is by each person Realizing the Divine through Adi Da. Adi Da is only the beginning of that Divine Emergence in its fullness, and the very Means by which that Emergence possible. He is the "Heart" of that Avataric Emergence, that crossing down of the Divine to here, because people Realize the Divine — and manifest the Avatar — through Him.

When Adi Da said:

But people want the Guru to be the Avatar. They want that exclusive God image, whereas God doesn't exist in the exclusive sense.

He wasn't critiquing the concept of "Avatar" (although He was clarifying it). He was very specifically critiquing religions that make the Spiritual Master the Divine, but disallow anyone else from Realizing the Divine. The role of Jesus in Christianity is the Guru as God, the Guru as Avatar, in that exclusive sense. Only Jesus is God; no one else can Realize God. The quote from Adi Da is criticizing cosmologies or belief systems like Christianity that suggest no one else can Realize God. At best, they can "commune with God" in Heaven. Adi Da has instead always communicated that there is only God; therefore, all beings can Realize God; therefore the Guru cannot be God or "the Avatar" in any exclusive sense.

Thus Adi Da's communication about "mankind as the Avatar" was an all-inclusive communication: all beings can Realize the Divine! But it was absolutely not the communication: all of us can realize the Divine on our own, because "we're all Avatars". That everyone has the potential for God-Realization doesn't in any way diminish Adi Da's unique functional role in enabling that to happen in each one's case. That is why He doesn't just say: "Mankind is the Avatar." He necessarily adds: "when he realizes me" — making it clear that there is no difference in what He was communicating then (in 1974) and what He is communicating now. "Every one is the Avatar" is only part of Adi Da's communication. The fuller statement is: "I am the Avatar Who Is every one."

Unlike Christianity, the Way of Adidam from its beginning has been about enabling all beings to Realize the Divine. Thus, Adi Da's communication of the Way has never been about the Guru as Avatar in the exclusive sense.

The second dimension of Adi Da's Communication of "Mankind as the Avatar" is that His Own Enlightenment of others proceeds on the basis of His Realization, "There is only God". Since there is only God, He sees all His apparently separate devotees as God, and He "meditates" them as God. Adi Da Emerges as them — and that is how they become Enlightened:

Nothing in [the devotee] is one with God. So the Divine Activity is generated to make that person one with God. The Divine does the Yoga. The Divine Assumes His Oneness with the devotee. He does not create means, methods to be generated in dilemma, experiential paths by which to realize that Oneness — He simply Establishes It. Avatar Adi Da Samraj, "The Divine Does the Yoga"

This is how Mankind becomes the Avatar: by the Divine already Realizing Mankind to be the Avatar, and simply Establishing it. The more devotees cooperate with that Intent and Force (which is what the Way of Adidam is all about), the more they Realize the Divine, and the more all Mankind manifests as the Avatar. That process of Divine Emergence finally results in the Divine Translation of the entire universe.

Brian O’Mahony: "Does this still square with what He wrote way back then?" Well, it does, actually! Remember that “Avatar” is a function, not an ego or an individual, but a process of the Emergence of the Divine into conditional reality. When Adi Da says He is the Avatar, He is referring to this unique function. He is not referring to Himself in an egoic sense or in the sense of a being an individual. He is referring to Himself in the unconditional sense — the Divine Sense, as the Self-Existing and Self-Radiant Divine Reality appearing in and as the bodily (human) form of Adi Da Samraj. It is important to study His Teaching with great care to understand this. (I recommend “First Word” which is at the beginning of all His Source Texts – He wrote it specifically to clarify this point, and that is why He calls the Essay “Do Not Misunderstand Me……”) He is making no exclusive claims for Himself as ego. He is speaking as the Divine Person. I think you would have to concede that if the Divine Person chose to Reveal Himself through a human agent, or Avatar, He would have to identify that Avatar as His unique agent. How otherwise would He distinguish between His own Avataric vehicle and everyone or everything else that is (apparently) not That?

And throughout His Teaching Work, Adi Da has Declared that His community would eventually represent a gathering of devotees mature enough and transparent enough to Him that they would collectively serve as Instruments for His Avataric Appearance. That is specifically His intention in creating the Ruchira Sannyasin Order. They would be the core of the gathering, or community, of Adidam, serving collectively as such Instrumentality. The language in this regard has changed from His earliest statements, but the meaning is the same.

James Steinberg: Yes, this word Avatar is an interesting one. I understand Avatar to mean the function of Helping and Serving others with the Divine Blessing and Transformative Power — not for any self-serving purpose, not to work anything out, but with Divine Compassion.

Adi Da Samraj, only as a physical body, is not the Avatar. The Avatar is the Very One that has Incarnated through the body of Franklin Jones, and the deeper personality vehicle that was associated with Swami Vivekananda and Ramakrishna, but that truly is prior to all of this and is the Very One.