FAQs about Adi Da & Adidam > The Need For a Spiritual Master

Why Great Spiritual Realization Requires
a Spiritual Master

Chris Tong, Ph.D.

This article explores why one needs a Spiritual Master (and more specifically, a Spiritual Transmission Master) for Spiritual Realization, and why one cannot "do it yourself".

1. The Need for a Spiritual Transmission Master — The difference between a momentary Revelation and a permanent Realization. Why a Spiritual Transmission Master — someone who literally transmits His or Her Spiritual Realization to others — is functionally necessary for Spiritual Realization.
   1. Having a Revelation allows us to talk about what kind of Revelations are possible altogether
      
   2. Many people have some kind of Spiritual Revelation
   3. Such Revelations tend to be relatively rare "million dollar moments", not permanent Realizations
   4. Sometimes even "apparently individual Revelations" are actually assisted by Spiritual Masters
   5. There are a variety of different "great Realizations" or unitive experiences of various kinds
   6. The difference between a Revelation and a Realization
   7. Revelation opens the door to the possibility of Realization
   8. Summary
      
      
2. The Need for a Devotional Relationship with a Spiritual Transmission Master — Why recognition, devotion, love, and surrender are necessary for Spiritual Realization to occur, in the context of a relationship with a Spiritual Transmission Master. Spiritual Realization as identity shift, in the context of relational submission to a Greater Identity. The common error of egoically converting the Master's Transmission into a self-centered experience in the body or the mind, which never Realizes anything greater than "self".
   COMING SOON.
   
   
3. Why No Self-Applied Technique is Capable of Realizing the Divine — Why the ego cannot Wake "itself" Up. Most Perfect God-Realization — complete Awakening from the dream — cannot be accomplished by "oneself". The Divine Itself accomplishes the process, and the process requires the complete transcendence and dissolution of the egoic self, through surrender to the Divine in Person.
   1. The "ego" can't Wake Up "itself". The "ego" can't wake up.
   2. Sixth stage methods are still ego-based
   3. Summary
      
      
4. Truth Is Always Already the Case, But the Spiritual Master is Still Required for Realizing the Truth — One of Adi Da's many major contributions to our understanding of Reality and the Great Tradition of the world's esoteric practices and schools was to identify and correct a flaw in logic that He referred to as the "Talking School" error. The logic goes as follows: Since Truth is already the case, there is no method one can fruitfully engage to "find" the Truth (including any process involving a Spiritual Master); therefore, what one should do instead is simply meditate on what is already the case (in some verbal form: for example, "I am That") until one Realizes It. In this section, we examine Adi Da's criticism of this logic, and why a deeper understanding actually confirms the absolute need for the Spiritual Master. Truth is always already the case. But egoity is also always already the case (hiding and obscuring the Truth), until fundamental self-understanding is Given, by Grace.
   
   
5. Where Our Resistance to Gurus Comes From — In this section, we explore the historical origins of anti-Guruism in Luther's Reformation and the longstanding view (by those in political authority) of genuine Spiritual Masters as revolutionaries capable of undermining society with their radical view of reality and the purpose of life.
   1. The potential corruptness of spiritual mediators
   2. Spiritual Masters as revolutionaries (COMING SOON)
   
   
6. Did Adi Da Himself Need a Spiritual Master? — Adi Da was the rarest kind of being: a Divine Incarnation. His body-mind was directly integrated with the Divine from birth. Even though He had human Spiritual Masters, His actual "Spiritual Master" during His period of "Re-Awakening" was the very Divine. His "life story" is that of the Divine Incarnating and Re-Awakening, and is not replicatable by ordinary human egos. But all of us, like Adi Da Himself, now have access to the very Divine as our Spiritual Master by virtue of Adi Da's Incarnation.