Question:
Hasn't Adi Da said a few times that by the year
2000, He will be recognized by the world as the messiah (or something to that
affect)? If so, why has this not happened?
Chris
Tong: One of the things Adi Da has taught about "prophecies"
is that there is no such thing per se as "seeing the future", because the future
is not a fixed thing. It is constantly in flux, and can always be changed. You
can see a trend, and the trend can become more and more certain over time, in
which case your pointing out the trend will start looking more and more like a
prophecy. But it is equally possible that you can see a vision of “the
future”, and speak ecstatically about it. Particularly
if it is a positive vision, your very speaking it can help inspire its future
actuality. But then in between when you had that vision and when the vision was
seen as coming to pass, other forces intervene, and the vision doesn't manifest
after all.
James
Steinberg: I never heard Adi Da Samraj
use the word “messiah”. He has ecstatically sometimes talked about how the
whole world will feel Him and His Work. He gave one ecstatic talk in 1984 like
that called “Mark My Words”. But it is not like that was a “legal” promise, or
even a full-fledged “prediction”. It was a statement of how it should be and could
be if things went well and right and appropriately and so forth. This
is a similar question to why there aren't so many devotees. I still hope that
the world will come to recognize Adi Da more fully during His Lifetime and partake
of His Wisdom and Blessing. But how many knew of Jesus of Galilee at his death?
It is not a sign of His lack of Greatness, for me that is clear. It is more a
sign of how things are working out, and is also a reflection on the closemindedness
of the world.
Brian
O’Mahony: No, that is not a right understanding of what Adi Da said. First
of all, He never uses terms like "messiah", because that is not the nature of
His Work as Avatar. He told His devotees in the 1980's that, if they were to practice
with great seriousness and discipline, they would be the seed of a transformation
in the world that would begin to show real signs by the end of the millennium,
both in terms of the state of the world and in terms of the world’s recognition
and response to Him as the Divine Avatar. Unfortunately, His devotees struggled
instead to embrace the Way with that level of seriousness that would have produced
such great results. That this is so is an unfortunate fact. However, Adi Da remains
entirely undaunted by this. He labors 24 hours a day to bring about this transformation
in His devotees that would produce such great results in the world.
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