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, as I'll describe in a moment.

Jackie Hogan and Chris Tong, serving the Adidam Mission as
the head missionary (me) and the mission manager (Jackie)
in the New England region of Adidam
(click image to enlarge)

My indispensible partner in "all things Mission" was Jackie Hogan, who served as the Mission Manager for the Adidam New England region while I was serving as its head missionary.

As I look back at that time, I'd say a simple way to describe my impact (with Jackie and the rest of the Mission team) on the New England Mission was to professonalize it in as many ways as I could during my time there: creating a monthly newsletter; building and growing a mailing list; keeping long-term statistics to chart (and report) our progress; and — perhaps most importantly — creating an ongoing series of attractive, engaging mission events (mostly, workshops) that helped both in drawing newcomers and in helping those who were already friends of Adidam deepen their relationship with Adi Da.

From 1989 through 1994, I put together many workshops, on specific topics, often inspired by a new talk, essay, or book from Beloved Adi Da. For example, when Adi Da gave a seminal talk on the subject of "Self-Understanding" on April 8, 1993, a couple of weeks later (making use of the video of the talk) I was offering a weekend-long workshop on "Self-Understanding" that, for many participants, was transformative, in that it enabled participants to completely immerse themselves in Adi Da — His Form, His Spiritual Transmission, His Teaching, etc. — for a couple of days.

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. Occasionally, I offered a workshop yet a third time, at the Washington, DC regional center in Potomac, Maryland (with the help of my good friend, John Vieira, who was the cultural service manager for the Adidam DC region).

Chris leading an intimate Adidam workshop in New York City
(click image to enlarge)

Chris leading an Adidam workshop in the Boston area
(click image to enlarge)

I did a lot of experimentation, and learned many lessons for doing an effective Adidam Mission. For example, I tried different venues — sometimes we were in large meeting spaces, where there could be a powerful collective invocation of Adi Da and a collective transformative energy among the participants; other times we were in small settings (like a devotee's apartment) that allowed for more intimate connection and exchange. Some workshops were for a couple of hours, while others lasted an entire day, and still others, an entire weekend.

Interestingly, the times I came to look forward to the most were the breaks between segments in the workshop. That was when participants could come up to me and speak to me personally and often privately.

During the workshop breaks
(click image to enlarge)

And it was during those breaks that I learned what I consider a key lesson — perhaps the key lesson — about the Adidam missionary process: when people have been associated with Adidam for an extended period of time (even years) but have not yet become devotees of Adi Da (despite the extraordinary Offering of Divine Enlightenment, and the Spiritual Revelations that often occur frequently once one begins to associate with Adi Da), the reason usually is because they have some unanswered "gut-level" question that keeps them sitting on the fence. Often during these workshop breaks, such a person would come up to me, rather shyly, and take their time exchanging pleasantries with me before they worked their way around to that question they hadn't yet dared to asked anybody, the one that was holding back their relationship with Adi Da.

During the workshop breaks
(click image to enlarge)

I would immediately recognize the signs when such a person began approaching me. I welcomed and invited it, because it was the very heart of my missionary work, the place where I could do the most good. I worked to set the person at ease, reassuring them they could say whatever they wanted to me. I patiently let the person take whatever time they needed to reveal the details of their inner conflict. And then I'd respond to their question (or occasionally, several questions) as clearly and simply as possible, and as fully as necessary.

What I discovered from years of such interactions might surprise you: there are literally hundreds of questions that stop people in their approach to Adi Da! Different questions for different people with different backgrounds and life experiences. Some you might laugh at, saying, "That question is holding someone up?" And yes, that question, however seemingly absurd or silly it might seem to one person, could be the bottleneck in another person's approach to Adi Da, tying their stomach in knots because of something in their personal history that is triggering a profound reaction in them.

I compiled a list of all these many questions for future use. Here is just a small sample. "Why does Adi Da keep changing His Name?" "Why does He live in Fiji, rather than making Himself publicly available like other teachers?" "Why does He make such outrageous claims, like 'I am the First, Last, and Only Seventh Stage Adept' or 'I am the Promised God-Man'?" "Is this or that rumor about His wild behavior with certain devotees true?" "How can someone who is supposed to be an Incarnation of the Divine be having sex with women?" "Why is a spiritual organization requiring members to contribute money?" "Why do we have to prostrate before Him when we come into His Company?" "My background is Christian, and, deep down the possibility of hell still terrifies me. I need to know that, with all that Spiritual Power, He is not, in reality, the devil, and if I become His devotee, I won't end up in hell." On and on and on and on. . .

I now had a very good feeling for why Avatar Adi Da began so many of His gatherings with devotees by asking, "Are there any questions?" As He explained, a person's questions were the particular outer expression of that person's self-contraction, and they revealed where the person was stuck — in his or her practice, as a devotee; or — in this case — in his or her approach, as a potential devotee.

* * *

Why so many questions? Beloved Adi Da used to regularly ask those of us serving His Mission: "I've given you the greatest possible Offering (Divine Enlightenment). Why aren't you bringing Me a greater response from the world?"

I think, at the time, many of us serving the Mission took His question as rhetorical, and, in response, would just work that much harder at what we already were doing. But as I reflect back on it these many years later, I now believe He was asking a serious question, and expecting us to provide Him with a serious answer, that ultimately would suggest a different way of doing the Mission. And I believe the beginning of an answer to His question is this: By its very nature as the greatest possible Offering, Adidam is also the one that raises the greatest number of questions, and also the one that requires the most of a person (ultimately, the sacrifice of one's entire "separate self" in God). And as the well-known scientist, Carl Sagan, used to put it: "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."

I'll say much more about this a couple of chapters from now, when I focus on the future of the Adidam Mission.

* * *

But now back to the people approaching me with questions, during the workshop breaks.

The most important thing I learned was this: the reason they were coming to me was not to get into an argument with me,[1] but because they wanted me to answer their question, so they could be relieved of their doubt! Each such person's heart had already been touched by Beloved Adi Da. That's why they were there. That's why they kept returning. They wanted so much to respond to Him with all their heart, but this question was not allowing them to let go and fully respond to their Heart-Master. The Ocean was falling on them, but because of this question, they were only able to hold up a thimble, and so a thimbleful of the Ocean was all they were able to receive, so long as that question still contracted them and possessed them. It was indeed a possession, and it could persist even for the rest of their life, if unaddressed. And, because it was a possession, whether they knew it or not, they wanted me to exorcise them of that question.

And so, understanding this, I did my best to do just that. In so many instances, while invoking Adi Da's Presence and drawing upon His Wisdom, the person's doubt was addressed (by my reply) and dissolved (by Adi Da's Grace), sufficiently to allow that person to release the question, climb down off the fence, and move on in his or her relationship with Adi Da. This, in turn, would allow them to more fully receive Adi Da's Revelation of Who He is, and, for many, enable them to become His devotee at last.

We certainly need to bring Adi Da to people, so He can do His Work of Spiritual Transmission and Revelation. But we also need to actively and compassionately find and relieve them of those doubts and questions that otherwise will keep them sitting on the fence indefinitely, in a (usually low key and mostly unconscious) internal conflict — heart drawn to Beloved Adi Da, but gut tied in a knot. That is our work (aided by Adi Da's Grace): assisting the individual in removing or dissolving the obstacles that are preventing Adi Da from doing His Work of Revelation.

To restate the key lesson I got: It is not that addressing their questions causes them to become a devotee. Their questions were armoring they were wearing that was preventing them from receiving Adi Da's Transmission of Himself, to the point where recognition of Him as the Divine occurred. When they cease to be possessed by the questions, that allows them to be immersed in Adi Da instead, and that degree of openness and receptivity is what then allows Him to Reveal Himself to them. And that Revelation is what allows them to become His devotee.

This experience, repeated over and over again with so many people interested in Adi Da and Adidam, profoundly shaped my thinking about the kinds of materials we needed to make available to interested people to really make a difference in their approach to Adi Da. The World Wide Web would provide an excellent repository for such material (and allow us to reach many more people than individuals like myself engaged in face-to-face conversations could ever have), as I'll elaborate in the next chapter. And my years of face-to-face missionary work were excellent preparation for the Adidam Web Mission, because they showed me exactly what materials needed to be out there on the Web: they needed to address all of those hundreds of questions that kept people from growing in their relationship with Adi Da.

Part III, Chapter 2

FOOTNOTES

Part III, Chapter 2