Adi Da and Adidam: Finding Adi Da: Finding the Divine In Person and Waking Up From the Dream

Finding Adi Da > Chris Tong

Finding the Divine In Person
and Waking Up From the Dream

Chris Tong

Chris Tong has been a devotee of Adi Da Samraj since 1989. He is one of the founders of this website. You can read his biographical information in the About Us section.

Finding the Divine in Person and Waking Up From the Dream is a personal introduction to Adidam — the secret, perfect Way of Real God and Unlimited Happiness from the beginning, that enables all of us to wake up from the mortal, limited dream of conditional existence. This book is also a personal introduction to Avatar Adi Da Samraj, the Incarnation of the Divine who has made the Way of Adidam possible by appearing here in Person (in human form).

This book has the following parts:

PROLOGUE — A taste of the blissful practice of Divine Communion in the Way of Adidam, and an invitation to the reader.
INTRODUCTION — Because of the immense frequency gap between ordinary beings and God, a Divine Incarnation is the only means that can make God completely accessible to ordinary beings. It took thousands of years of collective effort by the greatest Spiritual Realizers, but the means to enable a Divine Incarnation finally became available recently. The Divine instantly made use of that means, and appeared here in 1939 in the human form of Avatar Adi Da Samraj (aka Adi Da), and began His Divine Work of Awakening all beings from the dream of limited, mortal existence to the Divine State of Perfect, Eternal Happiness.
PART I. FINDING THE DIVINE IN PERSON (28 chapters) — 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 tell how Adi Da found me in 1957, when I was a baby (and He was 17 or 18), and drew me into relationship with the Divine in the decades that followed. 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. I call this Part, "Finding the Divine in Person". The Divine Source is not merely an impersonal Force, or Energy, or Consciousness. An important purpose of PART I is to introduce you to the actual Person that God is, by telling you stories about His Incarnation.
PART II. ADVENTURES WITH THE DEVOTIONAL PRAYER OF CHANGES (7 chapters) — The Devotional Prayer of Changes is a spiritual means Adi Da has given His devotees for making miraculous changes in the world by drawing directly on the Power of the Divine. In PART II, I tell of my adventures with using the Devotional Prayer of Changes to produce a diversity of useful miracles, including: developing the ability to heal ailing computers; curing prostate cancer; vanishing an $87,000 debt with the IRS (the U.S. tax collection agency); developing a facility for redirecting thunderstorms away from my house; and using the Prayer to get a song I wrote and sang to appear for half a day at the top of pop megastar Taylor Swift's personal YouTube page (which always only contains her own songs, except for my song, that one time), in front of Taylor and her 40 million YouTube followers.
PART III. SERVING THE ADIDAM MISSION (6 chapters) — Having received so many extraordinary spiritual gifts from Adi Da, I have always wanted to share them with the world and serve Adi Da's great work of liberating all beings. So in PART III, I tell of my service to the Adidam Mission (from 1989 to the present), whose purpose is to help all people become aware of and fully appreciate Adi Da's Offering of Divine Enlightenment — and help some of those appreciative people become Adi Da's devotees and take up the Way of Adidam, so they actually can Realize Divine Enlightenment. I describe my face-to-face missionary work on the East Coast of the United States (1989-1994); my creation and development of the early Adidam Web Mission, from 1994 to 1997; and the many mission experiments I’ve been involved in from 1994 to the present. I tell of introducing Adi Da to the Web, and an expansive, several hour conversation I had with Adi Da about how the Adidam Mission can reach everyone on the planet, through the creation of a well-designed Adidam Preparatory School. I'll consider how much more magical the Mission may become as the Divine Emerges ever more fully in this conditional universe — and ever more devotees become capable of invoking Adi Da so profoundly that interested non-devotees can feel Him at public events; and ever more devotees become capable of producing miracles through the Devotional Prayer of Changes. Finally, I'll conclude PART III by observing how Adidam can play a leading role in the development of the next stage of human civilization, in which science and spirituality share responsibility for revealing truth, and for innovating technologies (science-based, spirituality-based, and combinations of the two).
PART IV. WAKING UP FROM THE DREAM: A HARD SCHOOL BUT A HAPPY WAY OF LIFE (17 chapters) — With Adi Da's Appearance here, Awakening from the dream of mortal existence to the Divine State of Perfect, Eternal Happiness is now possible! But that does not mean it is easy. In fact, because it is associated with our ultimate and greatest destiny, practice of the Way of Adidam is the most challenging enterprise a human being can engage in. That is why I have created PART IV: to give you a sense for what practice is like. . . its details, its difficulties, and its joys. PART IV is also an invitation for you, the reader, to take up this practice! Challenging as it is, it bears fruit from the very beginning. Even the beginner's practice is Communion with the Divine — direct immersion in the Divine State of Eternal, Unlimited Happiness. As Adi Da puts it, "It is a hard school, but a Happy Way of life." Because the Way of Adidam is as Adi Da describes it — "never offered before, never heard of before, never practiced before" — the first few generations of practitioners of Adidam are truly pioneering something radically new. And for this reason, I end this book with key concepts in Adi Da's Teaching and insights and lessons from my own practice and the conversations I have had with hundreds of devotees about their practice over the years, having served in many cultural service positions, including head of cultural education at Adi Da Samrajashram; head of Worldwide Adidam Education; head of the Lay Renunciate Order; Adi Da's cultural sarvadhikari; and manager of several devotional groups. These concepts, insights, and lessons may be especially useful for better understanding the practice of the Way of Adidam by newcomers, and more fruitful practice of the Way of Adidam by beginning practitioners. No doubt these "pioneer concepts, insights, and lessons" will be greatly refined by thousands of other practitioners in the coming centuries. But the ones presented here are intended as a "starter kit". PART IV is full of practical guidance for fulfilling the Way of Adidam. Because of my professional background as a university professor and educator, I have a tremendous focus in this part on making sure readers actually understand what I’m trying to communicate, to the point where they can try it themselves if they are practitioners of the Way of Adidam. So there is a focus here on providing practical details.
EPILOGUE
APPENDICES
INDEX

PROLOGUE

To enter into Divine Communion and disappear in Happiness
is my daily spiritual practice.
In Divine Communion,
the bliss of the Beloved fills my head. . .
often glowing in the head's center like
an electric heating element,
often dripping down like nectar
from the Eternal Sun infinitely above,
often causing the head to bow.
The happiness of the Beloved fills my heart, and
radiates outward as love in all directions,
blessing the world.
My whole body is vibrating with God.
My whole body is breathed by God.
My self is dissolved in God,
the Beloved of my heart!

INTRODUCTION

Because of the immense frequency gap between ordinary beings and God, a Divine Incarnation is the only means that can make God completely accessible to ordinary beings. It took thousands of years of collective effort by the greatest Spiritual Realizers, but the means to enable a Divine Incarnation finally became available recently. The Divine instantly made use of that means, and appeared here in 1939 in the human form of Avatar Adi Da Samraj (aka Adi Da), and began the Divine Work of of Awakening all beings from the dream of limited, mortal existence to the Divine State of Perfect, Eternal Happiness.

The Secret, Perfect Way of Real God and Unlimited Happiness From the Beginning

Enabling Access to the Divine Domain Via a Divine Incarnation

The Divine Incarnation of Adi Da

The Divine Does the Primary Work in Awakening Us

The Pyramid of Spiritual Options

A Book Filled With Wonders and What Is More Than Wonderful

PART I. FINDING THE DIVINE IN PERSON (28 CHAPTERS)

PART I of this book is the story of my relationship with my Beloved Spiritual Master, Adi Da Samraj, human incarnation of the Divine. I tell how Adi Da found me in 1957, when I was a baby, and drew me into relationship with the Divine in the decades that followed. 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. I call this Part, "Finding the Divine in Person". The Divine Source is not merely an impersonal Force, or Energy, or Consciousness. An important purpose of PART I is to introduce you to the actual Person that God is, by telling you stories about His Incarnation.

PART I is organized as follows:

1. My Earliest Darshan

Any story of my relationship with Adi Da must begin with the earliest time He Graced me with His Darshan. It was the fall of 1957. I was only a few months old, and Adi Da was 17 or 18 — he was taking an undergraduate math class with my mother, who was a professor at Columbia University.

2. The Happiest Moment of My Early Life

The happiest moment of my early life occurred in 1970 (when I was thirteen). One day, an overwhelming Revelation of the inherent Happiness of Reality washed over me. It would only be years later that I would make the connection that the day I had that Revelation — September 10, 1970 — was the day my Spiritual Master, Adi Da Samraj, re-Awakened to Divine Enlightenment.

3. "You Become My Devotee in Your Past As Well As in the Present"

One of the most curious things about the story I've been telling is how Adi Da appears in it from the very beginning and then ongoing, even long before I "knew" of Him or became His devotee. He attended the class my mother was teaching at Columbia University; I first met Him in His human form when I was just a baby. Then, when I was thirteen, He gifted me with His Revelation of Perfect Happiness on the day of His Divine Re-Awakening (September 10, 1970). Now I'll tell the story of how I ended up going to the same university He went to: Columbia University.

Choosing a College

Harvard

Princeton

Columbia

A Psychophysical Resonance with Adi Da

4. A Crisis of Faith

As an undergraduate student at Columbia University, I was exposed to a great variety of new influences — the ones considered most influential in shaping "Western civilization"... from the ancient Greek writers, to Hobbes, Hegel, Darwin, Marx, and Freud. While a few of these sources (for example, St. Augustine and Dante) were religious, most were materialistic in their philosophy and secular in their focus, and the fact that all of these new viewpoints seemed to have a grain of truth to them shattered the religious simplicity of my childhood.

5. A Greater-Than-Material Universe

Almost every story you read about how devotees found Adi Da includes events in their early life (before becoming Adi Da's devotee) that demonstrated to them that there was more to reality than just the material universe as it is conventionally understood. At some point before they became a devotee, each person became open (to some degree) to the greater-than-material universe. I'll now describe a few of those transformational events in my life, a veritable potpourri that includes telekinesis, astral projection, cessation of breathing, a UFO encounter, contact with ghosts, angels, and other non-material beings, and an expanded consciousness that saved my life.

6. The Psycho-Physical Universe: A Closer Look

In the last chapter, I relayed some personal experiences showing different facets of the greater-than-material universe we live in. A recent experience got me reflecting on the nature of the universe that underlies all those stories. So first I'll share that experience — a magical synchronicity that was engineered by a dreamlike, psycho-physical universe with a wicked sense of humor! Then I'll spend the rest of this chapter exploring how such an event could occur (introducing some useful concepts), before proceeding with the rest of my story.

NOT YET COMPLETED

7. Finding My Guru

In 1983, I was working toward my Ph.D. at Stanford University. Adi Da's books were in the spiritual literature section of virtually every bookstore in northern California. Through that Graceful means, I was able to find and read His book, The Dreaded Gom-Boo. 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! The time between 1983 (when I discovered Adi Da's teaching) and 1989 (when I became His devotee) was a period of intensive preparation for me. I studied Adi Da's teaching in depth. And a lot of what He wrote about was being shown to me in my life. In retrospect, it was obviously His Grace (flowing to me because I was placing my attention on Him and His Word) that was granting me these revelations. I'll next talk about four of the subjects in Adi Da's teaching that were revealed in my actual life during this final period of preparation: feeling without limitation, the Great Questions, positive disillusionment, and synchronicity.

8. Feeling Without Limitation

After getting my Ph.D., I became a professor of Computer Science (specializing in Artificial Intelligence) at Rutgers University in New Jersey, in 1984. I spent the next few years preparing to become Adi Da's devotee. I studied His teaching in depth. And a lot of what He wrote about was being revealed to me during this time. In this section, I'll tell how His teaching about "feeling without limitation" demonstrated itself in my life.

9. Considering the Great Questions and Being Walked Up a Hill

NOT YET COMPLETED.

Fundamental Questions: Philosophy, Koans, and the Great Questions
Allow Yourself To Be Breathed
Self-Understanding and the Spontaneous Movement of Being Walked Up a Hill
“Let Me Live You”

10. Positive Disillusionment

To actually become Adi Da's devotee and fully take up the Way of Adidam, one also has to go through a process Adi Da calls "positive disillusionment". We are born here with karmic patterns, forces, and programs that powerfully drive us to continue in our ordinary destiny, lifetime after lifetime. In order to participate in a Greater Destiny, we must not only find the Guru, who makes such a Greater Destiny available; we must also become dis-illusioned with our ordinary destiny and whatever keeps attracting (and binding) us to it. I remember a particular moment which epitomized that process of positive disillusionment in my own life.

11. The Summer of Synchronicity

In the summer of 1989, Adi Da Gracefully gave me an extraordinary Revelation about the nature of Reality as a Unity that transcends the apparent split between the subjective and the objective. . . through numerous, amazing occurrences of synchronicity.

12. Becoming Adi Da's Devotee: The Eternal Relationship

At last, at the end of the summer in 1989, I became Adi Da's devotee, in a formal initiation ceremony in New York City (Brooklyn) in which I felt His Spiritual Force crashing down on my head and through my body with great power.

13. Feeling With the Heart

The practitioner of the Way of Adidam regularly makes use of a primary instrument or 'muscle': the capability to feel with the heart. I write about how this capability developed in my case. This capability would soon be put to good use, as I describe in the next chapter.

14. The Devotee Feeds the Guru, and the Guru Feeds the Devotee

In July, 1991, I thought I was going on a ten-day retreat at the Mountain Of Attention Sanctuary (in Northern California) — my first such retreat at one of Adidam's Empowered Sanctuaries. Little did I know what was really in store for me! After my retreat at the Mountain Of Attention, I would be headed for Adi Da Samrajashram, the Fijian island of Naitauba, to be in my Guru's physical company.

15. Club Rat

On July 6, 1992, Adi Da led a gathering He called "Club Rat", a most unusual evening! During Club Rat, He used music to open my heart.

16. "No Pity For Him!"

One night, in December 1992, at Adi Da Samrajashram, Adi Da Gracefully and permanently relieved me of all self-pity. I learned many lessons from that miraculous, karma-dissolving gift.

17. Handling Unfinished Business and Learning How To Disappear

And now a story of healing and growth that unfolded in my life over a quarter of a century. I place this chapter here in my sequence of chapters because the story completed in 1993. I present it like a play, in three acts. The story began in 1967 when I was 10 years old, with an incident that left a deep, psychic scar in me (Act 1). Much healing would occur during another period in 1980 (Act 2). And, in 1993, the story would come full circle 26 years after it began (Act 3), and bring closure in a most magical, synchronistic way, completing the healing of that psychic scar through Adi Da's Grace and His instructions in a conversation He had with me. Adi Da has always emphasized the importance of handling all unfinished psychic business, and this story illustrates that principle.

18. Dancing For Happiness Without Thinking

I went on retreat to Adi Da Samrajashram in late 1993. One of the female devotees on retreat started to act out in a rather dramatic way: she told Adi Da she wanted to "fuck every man on the island". Adi Da spontaneously created a "teachable moment" out of her dramatization, by calling for some man to dance with this woman, but without thoughts of sex — indeed, without any thought whatsoever, simply Happy in Him, and dancing for Happiness only. Here's what happened!

19. Restored To Perfect Happiness

One night when I was with Adi Da at Adi Da Samrajashram, I suddenly had a terrible vision, the fabrication of "doubt-mind": all I could see was a roomful of apparent cult members, all following their apparently megalomanical leader. And then a miracle occurred: Adi Da revealed Himself to Me to be the Divine. The disturbing vision vanished in an instant, and all my doubts were dissolved in Adi Da's Divine State of Perfect Happiness.

20. Passing Adi Da's Tests and Educating the Entire World

One of the most challenging transitions I have ever undergone was — in response to Adi Da's personal invitation — the transition (in 1994) from a more conventional, worldly life (as a university professor and world leader in Artificial Intelligence, and as someone with a wonderful, loving intimate partner) to a life dedicated to, and concentrated in, serving my Spiritual Master's Divine Work. After I had settled in at the Mountain Of Attention Sanctuary, Adi Da acknowledged that I was "passing His tests", even at the same time He revealed His larger purpose for me: "Does he know that he is now responsible for the education of the six billion?"

21. Working With Adi Da and the Lay Renunciate Order

In late 1996, Adi Da sent Notes to me and a fellow devotee, Ed Rahsman. At the time, Ed and I were both serving Adi Da’s Work while living at the Mountain Of Attention. In His Notes, Adi Da said that He felt we were two of His strongest devotees, and, for that reason, He was making us the co-heads of His Lay Renunciate Order (aka LRO).

Experiments With the Practice of Adidam

So far, PART I of this book has proceeded largely in chronological order. We have gotten to 1996 in this chapter. However, the next chapter — Chapter 25 — jumps forward in time to 2010 and 2019. That’s because most of my story between 1997 and the present is about my recent service to the Adidam Mission — and so you can read about it in PART III (Serving the Adidam Mission), Chapter 3. (Note, however, that that will jump you into the middle of the story of my service to the Adidam Mission. If you want to read the full story starting in 1989, read all of PART III.) We will now close out PART I with a couple more chapters that fit best here in PART I.

22. Composing the Music for The Mummery Book

In January, 1995, while on retreat at Adi Da Samrajashram, I was asked to compose the music for a performance of Adi Da's The Mummery Book — and Adi Da would be in the audience. I had four hours of music to compose, and only four days to do it! Here is the story of how that was accomplished. I also describe how, at one point, Adi Da read my mind and in so doing, set my heart free, with the surgical precision that comes from being the Heart-Master of His devotees.

23. "Upon This Rock, I Will Build My Church"

A personal story (from September, 1996) about the importance of recognition of Adi Da as the Divine to the survival and flourishing of Adidam — how a moment of great crisis and impasse with our Beloved Guru was completely dissolved and turned around by a Grace-given moment of recognition of Him.

24. A Brief Residence on the Holy Island of Naitauba

In June, 1996, Adi Da decided to return to Adi Da Samrajashram in Fiji. I write about the interesting, mysterious interchanges with Adi Da that led to my being sent to live on Adi Da Samrajashram, and that then led to my leaving the island several months later to be at the Mounain Of Attention instead. I also tell of a profound dream I had while living on the island, that led Adi Da to change the name of the core practice of the Way of Adidam from "Ishta-Guru Bhakti Yoga" to "Ruchira Avatara Bhakti Yoga".

25. "The Way That I Teach"

As the incarnation of the Divine Person, Who is the Source of the entire conditional universe, and Who is animating the entire universe in every moment, Adi Da had the extraordinary ability to literally become any one of us in any moment, get a perfect reading on that person's internal state, and then reflect some aspect of that internal state back to the person using His Own body to animate it (enabling His body to become, in effect, a behavioral mirror by which the devotee can see himself) — which can profoundly help serve that person's self-understanding. In this chapter, I give some examples of Adi Da using that extraordinary ability to become me.

26. Lulu's Back In Town

My dear cat friend Lulu was a great being, appearing in a little body, bringing us great joy very often. In this section, I tell of some extraordinary events that occurred after her passing in 2019, including her reincarnation.

27. More Moments With Avatar Adi Da

Further memories of my times with Adi Da.

"Pour Some Liquor Down the Keyboardist's Throat!"

NOT YET COMPLETED

28. Surrendered at the Divine Heart-Master's Feet

I will end Part I of my book with the most sacred event of my life, which took place on December 24, 1994 (the eve of Danavira Mela): the extraordinary Grace of holding Adi Da's Feet (traditionally considered the most sacred part of the Spiritual Transmission Master's body) for half an hour, at the end of which I disappeared.

PART II. ADVENTURES WITH THE DEVOTIONAL PRAYER OF CHANGES (7 CHAPTERS)

In the INTRODUCTION to this book, I estimated that 95% of all spiritual seekers are spiritual materialists: they "use" spirituality and spiritual resources (the Law of Attraction, prayer, etc.) for non-spiritual (material) ends: better relationships; improved health; more wealth, power, or fame; etc. But because their focus is exclusively material, their gains are largely lost at the time of the death of their physical body. In contrast, the focus of the remaining 5% of spiritual seekers is a Spiritual Realization capable of persisting beyond death: a greater connection with a greater-than-material dimension or the ability to stably reside in one of those greater-than-material dimensions. In the Way of Adidam, the ultimate end is God-Realization: the complete Awakening from all limited dimensions, even spiritual ones, into the Source Dimension: the Divine Domain.

The Devotional Prayer of Changes is an extraordinary gift given to devotees by Adi Da, enabling us to make use of His Divine Power to make miraculous changes (including ones that better our material lives, like the Law of Attraction) in the dream that is the universe, even as our spiritual practice focuses on Waking Up from the dream altogether.

My own adventures with using the Devotional Prayer of Changes to produce miracles will be the focus of the first six chapters in PART II of this book. I'll write about:

The final chapter in this Part will summarize some of the lessons learned about how to engage this Prayer effectively.

1. A Facility for Healing Computers

During the period from 1995 through 1997, I was a member of the Dasya Mandala, Adi Da's "travelling party", that accompanied Him wherever He went. During that time, we travelled to Hawaii, Naitaiba, the East Coast of the United States, and the Mountain Of Attention. One thing I became aware of rather quickly, during this extended time in Adi Da's physical Company, was that computers around Him seemed to go on the fritz very often. He Himself confirmed that this was so, but at the same time, He also required us (those travelling with Him) to compensate for it! And so that was how I began developing an unusual "siddhi" (spiritual power) for "healing" computers.

2. Curing Prostate Cancer

In December, 2016, I learned that I had prostate cancer. Discovering I had "cancer" (the word itself is terrifying, and has all kinds of negative associations) really put me through it — facing my mortality, experiencing my fear of death very fully, etc. I had friends who had died of prostate cancer. But the news also immediately led me to explore alternative health modalities for addressing the cancer, as well as surgical removal of my prostate. When a recurrence of the cancer occurred two years after surgery, I started engaging the Devotional Prayer of Changes very intensively.

3. Stopping a Bout of Sudden Aging

NOT YET COMPLETED

4. Dissolving an $87,000 Debt with the IRS

NOT YET COMPLETED

5. A Facility for Redirecting and Dissipating Thunderstorms

NOT YET COMPLETED

6. Getting My Music on Taylor Swift's YouTube Page In Front of Her 40 Million Followers (and Her)

I've been a singer and songwriter since I was 17. In this chapter, I describe how I engaged the Devotional Prayer of Changes for "high-powered musical connections". The startling result of this prayer was that, in November, 2020, one of my songs ending up for half a day at the top of Taylor Swift's personal YouTube page (which always only contains her songs, except for that one time), in front of Taylor and her 40 million YouTube followers. I end this chapter with some thoughts on how the right pop song could greatly serve the Adidam Mission.

7. Lessons Learned

NOT YET COMPLETED

PART III. SERVING THE ADIDAM MISSION (6 CHAPTERS)

A major part of a devotee's practice of the Way of Adidam is finding an effective way to serve Adi Da's great Work of Liberating and Enlightening all beings. Much of my service has been in assisting the Adidam Mission, whose purpose is to help all people become aware of and fully appreciate Adi Da's Offering of Divine Enlightenment — and help some of those appreciative people become Adi Da's devotees and take up the Way of Adidam, so they actually can Realize Divine Enlightenment. So the Adidam Mission, and my service to the Adidam Mission, will be the focus of the six chapters in PART III of this book.

The first three chapters of PART III summarize my work and explorations in the Adidam Mission to date (from 1989 to the present):

Then in the remaining three chapters, I'll explore the future of the Adidam Mission:

1. Lessons From the Face-To-Face Mission (1989-1994)

From the time I became Adi Da's devotee (in August, 1989) to when I moved to the Mountain Of Attention (in late 1994), I threw myself into serving the Adidam Mission through face-to-face missionary work. During that time, I was still a professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey. There was a small Adidam community in New York City, but a larger community in the Boston area. I began associating regularly with the Adidam New England community, making the four-hour drive, up and back, each weekend. While this was rather grueling, it also allowed me to expand the geographical area of the Mission work I was doing. From 1989 through 1994, I put together many workshops. One benefit of my commuting back and forth between Massachusetts and New Jersey was that I could try out a workshop in Massachusetts on the weekend; and then offer a refined version of the same workshop in New York City, the next weekend.

Face-To-Face Missionary Service: 1989-1994

Are There Any Questions?

2. Creating and Developing the Early Adidam Web Mission (1994-1997)

I became aware of the Web in 1993. At the time, I was still a professor of Computer Science (specializing in Artificial Intelligence) at Rutgers University in New Jersey. At that point, the Web had only been in existence for a couple of years, and there were only about two thousand websites in existence in the entire world. But I instantly grasped the immense potential of websites for communicating Adi Da's Offering to the entire world.

The World Wide Web

Search Engine Optimization and a Humorous Website Development

Presenting the Web to Adi Da

Bringing Adidam to the Webmasters

More Websites

The First "Live" Internet Darshan

3. New Doors Open (1997-present)

In early 1997, my computer stopped working. For the next three months, I worked off of borrowed computers and the generosity of devotee friends. My colleagues in the Adidam Institution assured me they'd find the resources to purchase a new computer. But the financial needs associated with creating a new spiritual tradition are immense, and cover many different areas. And so, three months went by, and I still was without a computer. This was a difficult challenge — here I was, the head of Adi Da's Web Mission, and I had no computer!

4. How To "Tell Everyone I Am Here" — Re-Educating the Eight Billion

Adi Da's overarching admonition for the Adidam Mission is: "Tell everyone I Am here." He is here for everyone, because God-Realization — completely awakening from the dream of limited existence — is the ultimate destiny of all beings (whether they awaken in a few years or take billions of years to awaken), and it is the destiny He makes realizable and accessible through the Way of Adidam. This chapter and the next two are a deep dive into what form the Adidam Mission must take, in order to actually have a chance at reaching enough of those eight billion to move from being a spiritual tradition still struggling for survival to an established, respected, self-sustaining spiritual tradition, with several hundred thousand to several million members.

5. The Miraculous Mission and the Divine Emergence

Most people who become Adi Da's devotees have been raised in a Western materialistic culture which does very little in the way of teaching real Spiritual sensitivity: familiarity and intimacy with the actual Spiritual Reality. So when life Gracefully (and often suddenly) enters them into the stream of real Spirituality around Adi Da, the sheer "magic" of Spiritual existence becomes impossible to deny any longer, because the signs of it are everywhere in one's now tangibly Spiritual life, in the Company of a genuine Divine Incarnation. However, because of the complete novelty that genuine Spiritual life is for most new devotees, one is often like a child in a new world, not sure what is possible or impossible, with no personal experience of the laws of the Spiritual Reality. In such a situation, it is easy for neophytes to unconsciously entertain views about "the magic of Spirituality" that are in fact too extreme, like "everything will proceed as though by magic; I just need to get out of the way." And one can think this sort of thing in any of the contexts of Spiritual life around Adi Da: the practice will proceed entirely by magic; the Adidam Mission will grow and reach everybody entirely by magic; etc. Now there is some truth to this, but much more discimination must be brought to bear. In this chapter, based on everything I've learned since I became a devotee and started serving the Adidam Mission in 1989, I write about the unique, miraculous nature of the Adidam Mission, carefully laying out what kind of "magic" it is, and what kind of "magic" it is not at the current time. Finally, in the last section ("The Adidam Mission and the Divine Emergence"), understanding that the picture I am painting here is just a snapshot in a moment of time (at the very beginning of the history of the Adidam Mission), I'll take a peek into the future, and consider how much more magical the Mission may become as the Divine Emerges ever more fully in this conditional universe — and ever more devotees become capable of invoking Adi Da so profoundly that interested non-devotees can feel Him at public events; and ever more devotees become capable of producing miracles through the Devotional Prayer of Changes.

6. Something New Must Emerge: The Next Stage of Human Civilization

I'll conclude PART III with a brief review of the history of human civilization, concluding that the time is ripe for a civilizational inversion. I'll explore how Adidam can play a leading role in the development of the next stage of human civilization, in which science and spirituality share responsibility for revealing truth, and for innovating technologies (science-based, spiritual, and a combination of the two) that help bring us into greater alignment with Reality Itself, and which (secondarily) give us more power over conditional existence, both material and greater-than-material.

PART IV. WAKING UP FROM THE DREAM: A HARD SCHOOL BUT A HAPPY WAY OF LIFE (17 CHAPTERS)

PART I and PART II of this book were full of stories of wondrous events and interactions and ecstatic states of being that were made possible by being in Avatar Adi Da Samraj's Divine Company both during His human lifetime and after. Such stories are truly amazing! And most of these were a direct consequence of my practice of the Way of Adidam. For this reason, what is amazing and moving in a different way are stories of fruitful practice, where you read of useful concepts, lessons learned, and capabilities developed along the way that contributed to fruitful practice of the Way of Adidam. These stories are meant to be inspirational, to move you to want to engage this practice yourself!

The Way of Adidam offers the greatest possible Realization and destiny: Divine Realization, the complete Awakening from the dream of conditional existence to the Unconditional, Eternal State of Divine Happiness. For this reason, practice of the Way of Adidam is the most challenging enterprise a human being can engage in. That is why we have created PART IV — to give you a sense for what practice is like: its details, its difficulties, and its joys. PART IV is also an invitation for you, the reader, to take up this practice! Challenging as it is, it bears fruit from the very beginning. As Adi Da has described it: "It is a Seventh Stage Way from the beginning." Even the beginner's practice is Communion with the Divine — Communion with the State of Eternal, Unlimited Happiness. Adi Da puts it this way: "It is a hard school, but a Happy Way of life."

Because the Way of Adidam is as Adi Da describes it — "never offered before, never heard of before, never practiced before" — the first few generations of practitioners of Adidam are truly pioneering something radically new. And for this reason, PART IV of this book will focus on and viscerally illustrate (through stories and personal examples) key concepts in Adi Da's Teaching and insights and lessons from my own practice and the conversations I have had with hundreds of devotees about their practice over the years, having served in many cultural service positions, including head of cultural education at Adi Da Samrajashram; head of Worldwide Adidam Education; head of the Lay Renunciate Order; Adi Da's cultural sarvadhikari; and manager of several devotional groups. These concepts, insights, and lessons may be especially useful for better understanding the practice of the Way of Adidam by newcomers, and more fruitful practice of the Way of Adidam by beginning practitioners. No doubt these "pioneer concepts, insights, and lessons" will be greatly refined by thousands of other practitioners in the coming centuries. But the ones presented here are intended as a "starter kit".

PART IV is full of practical guidance for fulfilling the Way of Adidam. Because of my professional background as a university professor and educator, I have a tremendous focus in this PART on making sure readers actually understand what I’m trying to communicate, to the point where they can try it themselves if they are practitioners of the Way of Adidam. So my focus is on providing practical details.

Much of PART IV is still in development. Many sections have yet to be written, while many other sections are drafts, with notes to myself. Despite the incompleteness, I am making PART IV available even in this form because it already contains material that can be of significant help to current practitioners of the Way of Adidam.

PART IV is organized as follows:

PART IV A. INTRODUCTION (2 CHAPTERS)

1. Waking Up From the Dream

On June 22, 1972, Adi Da gave one of his earliest and most useful metaphors for the process of Divine Enlightenment in His talk, "The Gorilla Sermon", as a process of Waking Up. Some key points: You can be immersed in the dream. Or you can be immersed in the Waking State. You Wake Up from the dream of conditional existence by being much more immersed in the Waking State than in the dream. A primary purpose of the disciplines in the Way of Adidam is to cut into one's immersion in, distraction by, and addiction to the dream — diminishing the dream's power to delude.

2. Living the Lesson of Life: Communion Hall Practice in the Way of Adidam

What distinguishes devotees of Adi Da from most other spiritual practitioners is that they have direct access to the Divine, and therefore, direct access to unconditional, unlimited Happiness. The first demonstration of this is in what I call "Communion Hall practice". At a certain early stage in their development of practicing the Way of Adidam, no matter what state a devotee is in, he or she can walk into the Communion Hall, practice Communion with the Divine through Adi Da, and, with great consistency, walk out of the hall after some period of time feeling Happy. (And the consistency and the degree of Happiness both increase as the devotee's practice matures.) In contrast with this direct approach of being Happy through immersion in the Ocean of Happiness, all attempts to indirectly "become happy" by changing circumstances (relationships, money, sex, jobs, meditation techniques, etc.) produce only a trickle of happiness (at best) that is temporary and conditional. This chapter explores the actual nature of Happiness, which is the basis for the Way of Adidam.

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PART IV B. MOVING BEYOND THE BEGINNER'S PLATEAU IN PRACTICE (4 CHAPTERS)

1. The Beginner's Plateau in Practice

Beginning practitioners of the Way of Adidam often reach a plateau in their practice, and then do not grow significantly for years. In this chapter, we explore that plateau in greater detail, and we focus on four elements of practice that are key to moving beyond that plateau:

a practice that is increasingly more moment-to-moment — moments of non-practice are not neutral; they actively undermine progress
an increasingly more whole bodily practice
an increasingly deeper surrender of the whole body to the Divine — transforming what would otherwise be merely the bodily experience of an organism into a gesture toward transcendence of body identification.
a practice that has grown enough to start benefitting from certain key advantages — like an increasing intensity of Happiness; an increasing sense of freedom from the binding effects of conditional existence; and more

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2. MORE! MORE! Beyond the Presumption of Unfruitful Practice

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3. Breathe Me and Feel Me In all your Parts: Filling the Cup

DESCRIPTION COMING SOON.

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4. Conclusion: Nothing Inherent in You Is Holding You Back From Infinity

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PART IV C. FURTHER ELEMENTS OF MOVING BEYOND THE BEGINNER'S PLATEAU (11 CHAPTERS)

1. Benefits of Growth In Practice

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2. Greater Intensity of Happiness: "God-Communion Is the Primary Bodily Pleasure"

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3. Greater Awareness of the Divine as a Non-Separate Dimension: Ordinary "Translation"

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4. Transcending the self-Contraction: From Graceful Release to self-Understanding

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5. Setting Aside the Conceptual Mind

Because, through Avatar Adi Da's Grace, I did develop the capability to set aside the conceptual mind (a key development in the listening/hearing process), I'll "pass the Prasad", and say a little more about this, to emphasize that it is very possible (especially for devotees of Adi Da), and to encourage others to do the same.

6. Integration: Full Maturity in the Third Stage of Life

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The Pseudo-Integration of the Social Persona
Integration Via the Higher Faculties
Integration Via Whole Bodily Happiness: "Come To Me When You Are Already Happy"

7. Turning Every Moment into God-Communion

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8. The Bangles of the Goddess: The Trap of the Lesser Samadhis

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9. "What Is Your Conclusion About Reality?": Transforming Your Belief and Value Systems

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PART IV D. CONSCIOUSNESS, GOD-REALIZATION, AND THE PERFECT PRACTICE OF ADIDAM (2 CHAPTERS)

1. Whole Bodily Practice and the Identity-Shifting Function of Whole Bodily Surrender

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2. Primary Identity Shifts in the Way of Adidam

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EPILOGUE

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APPENDICES

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Appendix 1. Kinds of Divine Incarnation

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Appendix 2. The 3D-5D Framework of Spiritual Evolution and Adi Da's Seven Stages of Life Franework

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Appendix 3. Milestones in Adi Da's Seventh Stage Process and Their Impact on the Practice of Adidam

Key Milestones:

start of Teaching Years: 1972 — submission mode of work with devotees. Largely required His one-on-one work with devotees.
Divine Self-Emergence: January 11, 1985 — His re-integration with the body down to the toes enabled Him to become the Murti and the Way to be based on contemplating Him .
Ruchiradam Event: April 12, 2000 — enabled the Way of Adidam Ruchiradam based on Divine Recognition

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INDEX

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