Finding
Adi Da > Chris Tong > Part I (Finding the Divine in Person) > Overview
I. Finding the Divine in Person:
Overview
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| This is Part I, Overview of Chris Tong's book, Finding the Divine In Person and Waking Up From the Dream. | |
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PART I of this book is the story of my relationship with the human incarnation of the Divine — my Beloved Spiritual Master, Adi Da Samraj. I call this Part, "Finding the Divine in Person". All religions and spiritual traditions have concepts and opinions about what God as a Person might be like, what qualities such an Infinite Being might have. On the one end of the spectrum are notions of God as a kind of bland, featureless "Ground of Being", associated with abstract properties and principles that "God" must fulfill, as inferred by theologians: omniscience, omnipotence, etc. A more recent view is that the Divine Source is an impersonal Force, or Energy, or Consciousness. On the other end of the spectrum are colorful characterizations, combining extraordinary powers with very human qualities (including what we might now think of as character flaws) — like the often wrathful God of the Old Testament, or the Gods of Greek, Roman, or Norse mythology, who were clearly projections of ourselves onto an Olympic-sized stage. Somewhere in between on the spectrum of ideas about the Person that is God is "the Great Spirit", the conception of native peoples who practice animism and have a degree of genuine sensitivity to the invisible beings that surround us all the time; they conceived of the Divine as the "Great Spirit", a super-sized version of the lesser spirits with whom they had tangible interactions.
But what is God really like, as a Person? As Adi Da has clarified, the Divine is not merely a nebulous "soup" or abstract "Ground of Being", or a set of functions; the Divine is a tangible Person with describable qualities. And Adi Da, as human incarnation of that Divine Person, manifested those qualities in His human person and life:
And the time after My Divine Avataric Lifetime will not be the time of My absence (because My bodily human Form is not here) — but, rather, the time after My Divine Avataric Lifetime will be the Eternal Time of My Omni-Presence, My Always Being Present. I will not be physically Present in bodily (human) Form — but, nevertheless, I Am the Same Person.
Do you see the way I Am? You see My Manner, My Disposition, My Humor, My sometimes Sympathetic Sorrow, My Quickness, My Disposition to Intervene, My Gentleness, My Hardness, My Power-Foot, My Beauty-Foot? You see all these Qualities. These Are the Qualities of My Omni-Presence also, My Eternal Presence.
So I am Exhibiting My Eternal Personality to you, by Showing It, in some basic terms, in your likeness, through a human Form. But, in those days of My physical Passing, This Same Personality will be experienced by you, in your bodily (human) form or in the bodily (human) form of My any devotee.
My devotees will Find Me. My devotees will be Experiencing Me in this fashion, remarkably. But, as now, you do not have to wait till the Passing of This bodily (human) Form to have it be so. It is so right now.
Devotees who are not at the moment in My physical Company Experience Me just this way. So why not at the time of My physical Passing?
I Am Who I Am, the Very Person. Therefore, by All I Do, by All My Appearance here, I Am Showing you the Qualities of the Divine Person. . . . And they will continue after My physical Lifetime. I will Be Present exactly as I Am now.
So an important purpose of PART I is to introduce you to the actual Person that God is, by telling you stories about His Incarnation.
Not surprisingly, a story about a relationship with the Very Divine in human form is bound to be unusual in all kinds of ways! My story is filled with miracles and wonders, amazing synchronicities, many moments of Divine Happiness, many expressions of Divine Love, many events that reveal and confirm Who Adi Da is and reveal truths about the nature of Reality, and much human and spiritual growth through Adi Da's Grace.
Let me give you a taste of just how unusual the story you are about to read is.
I was born in 1957. When I was a young man in my early twenties, I began a spiritual search that would lead me to discover Adi Da in a bookstore in Palo Alto, California, in 1983. I found one of His books, and was blown away by what He wrote about the nature of Reality and His detailed description of our greatest possible potential (which was far greater than I had ever imagined). This was what I had been groping for, in the dark, for years — but had only been finding little grains of "truth" here and there, which I had tried to piece together, like a jigsaw puzzle, into a meaningful portrait of the nature of reality. Suddenly, here was the entire Truth, given all at once! In 1989, I became Adi Da's devotee, and began practicing the Way of Adidam. And that was how I understood the story of my relationship with Adi Da, for several years. But as I would discover later, it turns out that I had already met Adi Da when I was just a baby, in 1957! And many events that occurred in my life between 1957 and 1983 would suggest that I was already connected to Adi Da in a very profound way, and was meant to become His devotee. As I said. . . I have a very unusual story to tell! Now let me tell you that story in full. PART I is organized as follows:
