I began serving the Adidam Mission in 1989, shortly after becoming Adi Da's devotee. I was very concerned about the future of Adidam, because Adi Da Himself was expressing concern about that. I went to sleep one night with that concern dominating my feeling, and I had an extraordinary dream that felt more real than ordinary dreams — more like a vision.

I was time travelling into the future, and stopping in every century to ask, "Have you heard of Adidam and Adi Da?" And in every century, I got the same reply: "Are you kidding? He's the biggest thing going!" And I was shown visions of huge, beautiful, auditorium-like places filled with hundreds or thousands of people, and huge images of Adi Da projected on screens up front.

I believe we have much work to do to manifest that future — the "timeline" shown in the dream — and this chapter will sketch some of that work. But that vision greatly reassured my heart, and energized my missionary work.

I never mentioned this particular dream to Adi Da, but I do think His reply to someone else who had a similar spiritual vision applies to my dream:

Something of interest: In January, 2026, channelers began reporting the coming of a new religion. This was a complete surprise to them, because, from their perspective, "religions" were things of the past, for people who did not yet realize they had the means within themselves to attain whatever they wanted spiritually. So to receive a spiritual communication of a coming new religion startled them, and didn't quite make sense to them! But they reported it anyway.

Adi Da has confirmed that almost all Spiritual Realizations could be Realized "on one's own". But not the complete Realization of the Divine — which is the Offering of Adidam. That requires the help of God, because the ego will not completely surrender itself by itself. It will only do so through being so attracted to the Divine (vis the direct relationship to the Divine enabled by Adidam) that it forgets itself in God. And that is what the Way of Adidam is all about.

Adi Da's overarching admonition for the Adidam Mission is, "Tell everyone I Am here." He is here for everyone, because God-Realization — awakening from the dream of limited existence — is the ultimate destiny of all beings, and the destiny He makes realizable through the Way of Adidam.

At the current time, however, the plain facts are these:

• There are eight billion people on the planet.
• Several thousand of them are Adi Da's devotees.
• The remaining 99.9999% are not.

So this chapter and the next two chapters are a deep dive into what form the Adidam Mission must take, in order for Adidam 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. As we will describe in the next chapter, some of what we must do is to further develop "the Adidam Mission as puja", helping devotees grow in practice to the point where they can serve as Instrumentality (and enable many more non-devotees to tangibly feel Adi Da in public occasions), and helping devotees make far more greater and more effective use of the Power of the Divine through the Devotional Prayer of Changes. Complementing our further development of miraculous means, we must also develop our conventional means in a much fuller way — providing "bridge education" to the world in the form of an Adidam Preparatory School — the subject of this chapter.

I mentioned in an earlier chapter that, when Adi Da invited me to leave academia (where I was a university professor and a world leader in my area of Artificial Intelligence) and serve His Work fulltime, the first Notes He gave me after I had settled in at the Mountain Of Attention (in the fall of 1994) were these ones:

Although I didn't understand it at the time, I would come to realize that He was telling me how to fulfill His Admonition, "Tell everyone I am here": we needed to educate the six billion (now eight billion). Education was the primary metaphor and modality for how to accomplish that incredible task. Other modalities (like marketing) could help, but they would play only a secondary role. The two primary modalities were puja (which I will describe in the next chapter) and education. As a professional educator, this was a viewpoint I could easily resonate with, embrace, and contribute to, in a manner capable of bearing fruit.

When I introduced the Web to Adi Da in early 1995, in the midst of a mammoth, four-hour meeting, we got into a deep discussion about education that I'll now try to summarize, because it is still very relevant, and the implications have yet to manifest in the Adidam Mission.[3]

The first key point we discussed (regarding why the number of devotees coming in wasn't greater) was that — because the primary communications of Adidam (and therefore any of the Adidam websites) are "The Divine is here in the human form of Adi Da" and "The Way to Realize the Divine is through a devotional relationship with Adi Da" — there is currently an inherent limit in the number of people who are able to directly and immediately respond to that message, rather than rejecting it out of hand (e.g., "Are you kidding?! Anyone claiming to be God must be a deluded megalomaniac!").

There is a huge and ever-growing number of people interested in "spirituality", often defecting from organized religion. But the vast majority of them (99.9999%, I suggested to Adi Da) would reject Adidam out of hand because of:

• widespread anti-Guruism — Fearmongering by the powerful, anti-cult movement[1] that any new religious movement with a Guru implies a cult and a cult leader.

  It should be noted that this is a relatively recent historical development, only beginning a few years after Adi Da began His Work with devotees in 1972. From the time of Swami Vivekananda's original appearance in the United States (back in 1893 at the Parliament of Religions in Chicago), to the publication of Paramahansa Yogananda's very well-received Autobiography of a Yogi in 1946, to the Beatles' visit to the ashram of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in India in 1968, there was a generally positive response to and interest in Eastern spirituality and Gurus. It was only with a cascade of "bad apples", starting in the late 1970's (the massacre at the Peoples Temple in Jonestown in 1978, David Koresh in the Waco seige in 1993, etc.) that gave the anti-cult movement the ammunition it needed to instigate a widespread distrust of new religious movements, especially those associated with Gurus.

• a focus on spiritual materialism — in which most people interested in "spirituality" are not the slightest bit aware of, or interested in, Spiritual Realization and self-transcendence, but rather are "spiritual materialists", primarily wanting to figure out how to use spirituality as one more tool for enhancing their life of material fulfillment, etc. Spiritual materialism is a trend that has only grown with time, which is why such things as "the law of attraction" are often at the center of the "search" for most (so-called) "spiritual seekers".
  
  
• widespread ignorance about Spiritual Realization and human spiritual potential altogether — whose great potential is not merely an improvement in material life, but the ability to stably reside in a far more benign, greater-than-material dimension of Reality, including, ultimately, the Divine Domain (with its one Inhabitant, the Divine Person, and, consequently, its "entrance requirement" of complete self-transcendence).
  
  

  Adidam Ruchiradam — As It Truly Is — Is the Proclamation to all beings of the Breakthrough of the Divine "Bright" Spherical Self-Domain into the cosmic domain.

  Avatar Adi Da Samraj, Recognition of Me Is Liberation

  Adi Da agreed with this assessment. When I described "spiritual materialism", He nodded and said, "Their resort to spirituality is like using a Saligram [a sacred object] to crack nuts!" We talked about how the numbers confirmed these observations: 6 billion people on the planet (now up to 8 billion), but only a few thousand devotees.

  So in brief — all Adidam missionaries need to not only be able to communicate the great message of Adidam: that the Divine is here in person, enabling a God-Realizing Way of Perfect, Eternal Happiness. They also need to be able to step into someone else's shoes and have a deep, detailed understanding of why the vast majority of people on the planet would find the Adidam message to be ridiculous, unbelievable, very likely a scam, or at least only something believed by a group of deluded people. And that would be the immediate assessment of most people because of the various cultural forces and cultural programming I have just been describing (anti-Guruism, spiritual materialism, etc.). All that cultural programming pretty much guarantees that everyone will misunderstand the offering of Adidam — unless they are taken through a rigorous and comprehensive re-education process.

  The trouble with the world is not that people know too little; it's that they 'know' so many things that just aren't so.

  Mark Twain

  Recognize that unlearning is the highest form of learning.

  Rumi

  It's a strange predicament for a Mission to be in: to be able to communicate the greatest Spiritual Offering ever made, but to have next to no one ready to consider it possible! — largely because they're misunderstanding our communication, and are culturally programmed to do so. And even those who arrive at our doorstep, considering it possible, often still are being affected unconsciously and residually to some degree by all the cultural baggage I've outlined, since almost all of them were raised in just such a culture.

  It's a strange predicament, indeed! But that is exactly our challenge. And it points to the need for an extraordinary re-education process, capable of taking someone who is at least nominally a spiritual seeker, but in near absolute disbelief of (and intense reaction to) an offering like that of Adidam, and moving them to a place of open-hearted curiosity: "I now understand all the misconceptions I have had about what you are communicating. . . Can this actually be true?!" — with heart open enough that Adi Da can make His Revelation directly to their heart, and prove the Reality of His Offering to them directly. We need to take them through an extraordinary process of consideration, that moves both hearts and minds from:

  God is great. Unfortunately, for you, bullshit is greater!

  Avatar Adi Da Samraj
  "The Baptism of Immortal Happiness"
  The Dreaded Gom-Boo

  to a place where they can acknowledge something different: "Bullshit is great (and I now see all the ways it led me to all kinds of misconceptions about Adi Da and Adidam), but I now see that God is greater!" That's the place where recognition of Adi Da as the Divine can occur. Before they reached that place, they might read a leela (story) of someone recognizing Adi Da as the Divine, and automatically classify it as "hagiographic bullshit from a cult member". After reaching that place, they would fully understand and appreciate what such recognition was about, and the very words of such a story of recognition might be sufficient to move them to their own recognition of Adi Da as the Divine. The re-education process required is truly dramatic: a great conversion that frees heart and mind — transforming one's view of Adidam from a taboo choice to an extraordinarily great Spiritual Offering — preparing people for their real encounter with the Divine.

  
  
  click image to enlarge

  As long as our focus is only on that very small number of people who (through great Grace) already have been relieved of all or most of the misconceptions and knee-jerk reactions we have described, and have been thus truly prepared by the process of their own lives for reception of the Adidam offering, Adidam will remain small.

  
  
  click image to enlarge

  I had been thinking about this for years, so during my conversation with Adi Da, I had some very succinct ways of summarizing how I thought we could change our numbers. I suggested a metaphor that Adi Da liked. The world (or wordly point of view) and Adidam were as though on opposite sides of a river (depicted in the above diagram). Given the (perhaps necessarily) limited way we presented Adidam itself ("The Divine is here in the human form of Adi Da" and "The Way to Realize the Divine is through a devotional relationship with Adi Da"), the only people who would arrive at our doorstep looking to learn more would be only those people who had, during the course of their life, somehow found a way to swim almost all the way across the river — through great Grace and/or sheer luck, getting all kinds of key lessons, including: overcoming their spiritual materialism, their anti-Guruism, their DIY-ism ("Do It Yourself"), their reactions to any negative materials about Adidam, etc. You can see those years of unstructured, organic pre-Adidam preparation in almost all the 50+ stories in the "Finding Adi Da" section of this website, for example.

  But people who were not fortunate enough to have had a life that happened to educate them out of all these misunderstandings simply would not be in a position to appreciate the offering of Adidam — and that was 99.9999% of humanity. Only a few thousand were finding their way across that river (from the world to Adidam) on their own.

  A TV commercial like a Coke or Pepsi ad is completely insufficient for providing a bridge across such a wide river. Coke and Pepsi ads make sense in a culture that has already completely embraced soft drinks, and the commercial is simply trying to get people to buy your soft drink. But brief ads are completely inadequate when your "product" is largely perceived as taboo in the culture. A movie like Conscious Light is an excellent resource for someone who has swum almost all the way across the river already, but it is inadequate for someone on the opposite side of the river.

  Just so, what we were offering in terms of courses, etc. (through the Laughing Man Institute / Adidam Academy) was like a little pier sticking out a little way into the river from the Adidam side. (See the diagram above.) It helped a little — but only a little, because deprogramming people out of all the things that keep them from appreciating the offering of Adidam requires years of very specific, carefully crafted and sequenced considerations (which I'll say more about in a bit), just like getting a college degree. And most of those considerations are not covered to the required breadth and depth in our Laughing Man Institute courses.

  The Mission has largely been operating from the pujarist's point of view — the Adidam Mission as Revelation, with Adi Da doing the core work; and the marketer's point of view — Adidam as "product", how to most effectively "sell" our "product", how to "clean up our reputation", etc. In the next chapter, I will write exetensively about the ways we can and must grow the Adidam Mission as puja.

  What I was adding to that as I spoke with Adi Da was a third modality: the educator's point of view, from someone with extensive experience in crafting a curriculum for, and designing courses for, a very challenging subject (Artificial Intelligence).

  "The Adidam Mission as puja" and "the Adidam Mission as marketing" have gotten us to where we are now. But the marketing viewpoint has limited use in the Adidam Mission because Adidam is nothing like a "quick product" sale — like "Coke or Pepsi?" — that a 30-second commercial (or an hour-long film, or even a couple of classes) can close the sale on, in a culture that already accepts and loves soft drinks. And the "Adidam Mission as puja" viewpoint can only really kick in with force after sufficient obstructions to Adi Da's Spiritual Transmission have been removed from a person to allow His Grace to reach the person's heart and do Its Great Work there. Re-education is how those obstructions are removed.

  From the educator's point of view, it requires several highly focused years of preparatory education that is largely aimed at systematically deprogramming people out of the many unconscious views that are causing them to unconsciously reject out of hand what they otherwise perceive as a "taboo product" (Adidam). We need to take the largely unstructured, largely random years of preparatory experience most devotees had before they were in a position to appreciate the offering of Adidam, and turn that into a consciously crafted educational system that greatly expedites the process for large numbers of people, and directs its outcome toward Adi Da and Adidam. In this way we could tap into the much, much larger group of people interested in spirituality.

  In order to really increase the number of people whose hearts and minds were in a place where they could truly appreciate the offering of Adidam (rather than misunderstand it and recoil from it, as though it were taboo), we would need to build a complete bridge from one side of the river to the other. In other words, a complete educational system that would walk people across the bridge, step by step — consideration by consideration — in the carefully crafted manner of good educational systems, not letting people move on to the next consideration (or next grade) until they had completed the previous one successfully.[2]

  Adi Da then told me how similar "sequencing" considerations had impacted both how He had structured His autobiography, The Knee Of Listening, and how He had organized the Melrose Ashram Bookstore (the initial center for the Adidam Mission).

  With The Knee Of Listening, Adi Da knew He was writing for people who had minimal understanding of the greater-than-material Reality, and all its possible destinies. He knew they would be more easily fascinated by the lesser spiritual possibilities, so He had to address those first, both their fascination and their limitations, before He could introduce the real punchline of the book: all of those fascinating, conditional destinies were limited and ego-based. Only Perfect Awakening from conditional existence altogether was complete Freedom. (He only arrived at that point in Chapter 16 of The Knee Of Listening. Many of the preceding chapters were explorations and criticism of the lesser possible destinies.)

  In this book, I have had to confront a most difficult means of instruction. I have had to fully illustrate my course of life, even in order to demonstrate the factuality of the extraordinary phenomena that mankind is presently in the habit of denying. But, in the end, in order to speak the Truth, I have also had to argue against the Ultimacy of many of the very things I have proven in my life.

  Avatar Adi Da Samraj
  "The Way Becomes Conscious", The Knee Of Listening

  Adi Da went on to say how He organized the Melrose Ashram Bookstore in a similar fashion. He put all the books about lesser spiritual possibilities out front, because they were what would attract people into the store. But the real offering was in the back of the store: Him — and the "Spiritual center" where He would sit with devotees. So the very architecture of the store was designed to invite and serve a progressive movement over time from front to back.[4] This movement was served by His Blessing-Force, which they were receiving simply by being in the store (whether they were aware of it or not). Adi Da made a very similar point about the Melrose Ashram Bookstore in an early talk (given in the Bookstore):

  In the building where we are now, we have the "movie house" (our bookstore) out in the front, with all of the best traditional literature, the very best "pornography". In other words, we do not carry junk! People who have become interested, who have left their homes, who are wandering around trying to find something a little jazzier, who have done a little reading, these people see the bookstore. All of the traditional motivations gather them up, and they come in to look at the books. While they browse, they see a couple of signs about our Spiritual center [in the back]. And after a while they begin to feel a little itching in the back of the head [Adi Da's Spiritual Transmission]. It is a very unusual movie house.

  Avatar Adi Da Samraj
  "The Avon Lady", in My "Bright" Word

  I talked with Adi Da about how, as an educator, I had developed undergraduate and graduate courses myself, from scratch, and had a tremendous respect for the folks who had come up with the concept of the K through 12 system, which supplanted the "little red schoolhouse" model of the earlier "prairie" days, where everyone, regardless of their background, was thrown into the same classroom, and education was completely chaotic, and not a circumstance that could be sensitive to the needs of the individual student. I suggested that that's what we were currently doing in our Adidam education: throwing everything at everybody all at once (which would often be like giving a calculus class to a kindergarden-level student), and it pushed too many buttons and triggers all at once in most people. Adi Da nodded as I was saying all of this, and strongly encouraged me to develop a "bridge curriculum" that would be analogous to K-12: the grade levels (and associated education) in the "bridge curriculum", to help move people step by step — in the right order — from the worldly side of the river to the Adidam side.

  We then talked about how that bridge level education process might very well need to be associated (at least in name) with a non-Adidam organization, because people on the worldly (anti-Guru) side of the river would be too suspicious of an educational offering from an organization that was all about the Guru and Guru devotion. I mentioned how I had been raised a Catholic, and that there were literally thousands of organizations supporting Catholics and Catholicism but that were not officially part of the Vatican (the official Catholic Church) and not created by the Vatican, but by interested Catholics, e.g. these ones. I said the only reason such non-Adidam organizations — that helped or supported Adidam or Adidam practitioners or people interested in Adidam — had not yet come into existence was because we were just at the very beginning of our creating our tradition. We were short on human resources, and most devotees were not yet considering what would be required in the long term to truly grow significantly. Adi Da strongly agreed with this point!

  As you can see, it was an incredible conversation. We were considering the details of what would actually be required to "Tell everyone I'm here", and the ways the Web could serve that. It was a natural subject to come up, considering we were talking about a completely new medium for the Mission (the Web), that, at least in principle, could reach everybody. And so the conversation was in some sense light years in advance of where our Mission actually was at at the time, and indeed remains in advance of where our Mission is even now, given the overarching bottom-line observation: a sangha size of only a few thousand (out of the eight billion we need to reach).

  The major points we converged on in that conversation still remain true:

  • If we want to get not just a few thousand devotees, but hundreds of thousands or millions of devotees (a necessary milestone on the way to eight billion), we need to build that complete educational bridge between the world and Adidam — that Adidam Preparatory School — and carefully craft its grade levels.
  • And most likely, those of us creating it would have to house it in the context of a non-Adidam educational organization, that sends its best "graduates" on to Adidam.

So, having been encouraged by Adi Da, I set about the creation of such a vehicle for bridge education. In my notes from that time on, I gave that educational organization the working title, "The Institute for Real God". It would take me another five years or so (until about 2000) for me to make the required conceptual breakthrough of figuring out what the "grade levels" should be for the world/Adidam "bridge" curriculum, based on "prerequisite" relationships between subjects. In K-12 math education, an example of such prerequisite relationships is: you need to learn about numbers before you can learn about simple operations on numbers like addition and subtraction; those then precede learning multiplication and division; which precede learning algebra and geometry; which precede learning trigonometry; which precede learning calculus.

A world/Adidam "bridge" curriculum must "build" — as it passes through grade levels — in a similar way, taking into account prerequisite relationships among topics.

To turn this around: in our current "little red schoolhouse" model, someone could be expressing doubt in Adi Da (perhaps because of something they read on a negative website); but that doubt of Adi Da could actually be resting on a deeper doubt about all Gurus and Gurucentric spiritual ways; and that in turn could be resting on a lack of direct experience with the greater-than-material Reality, and therefore a lack of serious appreciation for all the potential human destinies that were greater than mere materialistic fulfillment (and which were why a Guru is needed). You couldn't just address their doubt about Adi Da. You'd have to uncover the whole iceberg of doubts, for which "doubt of Adi Da" was just the tip of the iceberg — and re-educate them at every level, to truly set them free to fully appreciate the offering of Adidam.

click image to enlarge

The most difficult "nut" to crack in the creation of an Adidam preparatory school was how to tease apart and group all the different doubts, triggers, misconceptions, etc. that people have into "grade levels", so that more primary issues like the existence of God are studied in an earlier grade than issues that build on that (like "The Promised God-Man Is Here").

By 2000, the grade level sequence for The Institute for Real God had crystallized for me, into a three-year "Adidam preparatory school" that stepped through the questions: WHY? WHAT? and WHICH? These grades are what comprise the bridge that crosses the river from the worldly view of spirituality to the Adidam view:

Grade 1: Spiritual Life — WHY Spiritual Practice? In Grade 1, we focus on the extensive body of evidence for the reality of greater-than-material dimensions, near-death and after-death experiences, evidence for reincarnation, evidence for God, etc. We introduce the concept of Spiritual Realization, and explore it as an answer for the universal problem of mortality. We introduce and criticize spiritual materialism (which does not address mortality and whose gains are almost entirely lost with the death of the physical body). Guest speakers could speak personally on a wide variety of greater-than-material experiences. For example, an earlier chapter in this book was completely devoted to just such a "Grade 1" presentation, where I recount my own experiences of 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.

Grade 2: Spiritual Fundamentals — WHAT Is Spiritual Practice? In Grade 2, we explore spiritual practice in a general way, and particularly explore how it must address (and transform) every aspect of human life and experience to actually be consequential (i.e. result in Spiritual Realization). We introduce the concept of a Spiritual Transmission Master, and the necessity for the help of a Spiritual Transmission Master to attain any great Spiritual Realization. Graduation from Grade 2 / Entrance into Grade 3 requires:

• a personal acknowledgement of the challenge of spiritual practice, but an expressed interest in spiritual practice, even so.
• a personal acknowledgement of a release of reactivity toward Spiritual Masters (now that one fully understands who they are, how they work and serve Spiritual Realization, why a devotional relationship is necessary for the process to work, etc.)

Grade 3: Comparative Spirituality — WHICH Spiritual Practice? In Grade 3, we explore in detail the world's spiritual traditions, their associated spiritual practices and spiritual Realizations. This grade's education draws extensively upon Adi Da's "seven stages" framework and The Basket Of Tolerance. Indeed, if the Dawn Horse Press ever did develop a "Basket Of Tolerance" website (something that is in the works), it might be possible to integrate it with the Grade 3 educational process. This grade also introduces (and sets apart) the seventh stage Realization, Adi Da, and Adidam. Graduation from Grade 3 / Entrance into Grade 4 requires:

• an express interest in Adi Da and Adidam, out of all the spiritual traditions we have explored.

Grade 4. Adidam — This is essentially the current offering of the Adidam Mission, including the LMI courses.

There are three obvious uses of an Adidam preparatory school, once it exists:

• Have a spiritual seeker start at the beginning, and complete the entire multi-grade curriculum. This is ideal for young people, and even anyone who has very limited spiritual knowledge and awareness.
• Place the spiritual seeker at the appropriate starting "grade level", identify which classes they need to take (they might not need every course in every remaining grade), and then have them engaged that custom-designed curriculum. The placement process would be very proactive, learning many key things about a person's background (their religious/spiritual upbringing and history, their oedipal patterning, the culture they were raised in, their key questions about Adi Da and Adidam, etc.) in order to custom-design the best possible education (set of considerations) for them. There are placement tests widely in use these days for addressing precisely this issue of placing a person at the appropriate grade level (e.g., foreign students moving to another country with a different educational system) and studying these can give us further ideas for how to do grade placement in our own case.
• Have all Adidam missionaries take all the courses and graduate from the program themselves. Every interested person who makes it to our doorstep still tends to have issues holding back the cultivation of their relationship to Adi Da. While sending such people to a full-fledged preparatory school is always an option, they may not always need anything so rigorous. If, through the missionary's own training, he or she recognizes the issues and misunderstandings the interested person is being stymied by, a focused conversation on those issues may be sufficient. (It was sufficient, many times, when I was doing face-to-face missionary work. But that was because I was already familiar with most of the issues. So that's why missionaries should receive this kind of training, so they can spot and address each interested person's outstanding issues.) Or a recommendation to take a single course focused on a single issue (rather than an entire curriculum) might be sufficient.

As just a very simple illustration, just consider one leading communication of our Mission: "The Promised God-Man is here." If someone doesn't even acknowledge a greater-than-material reality (i.e., they haven't gone through Grade 1 yet), then "God" is in doubt, so such a person would find a communication like "The Promised God-Man is here" utterly absurd. If someone is interested in spirituality, acknowledges the existence of God, but is committed to a "do it yourself" New Age approach to spirituality and reacts to the notion of having a "Spiritual Master" (i.e., they haven't gone through Grade 2 yet), then they will react to the notion of a "God-Man". If someone appreciates Spiritual Masters, but is offended by the notion that they're not all "equal", and that one could compare them and the Realizations they offer (in other words, they haven't gone through Grade 3 yet), they will react to the notion of a PROMISED God-Man. This simple example shows why the communication of Adidam (Grade 4) must be preceded by Grade 1, 2, and 3 education to truly have a chance with a lot of "spiritual seekers", who otherwise will have all kinds of uninspected, knee-jerk reactions to Adidam.

Conversely, you can see how graduates of an Adidam preparatory school, that have undergone the considerations of Grades 1, 2, and 3, are going to be completely ready for — and, moreover, appreciative of — a communication like: "The Promised God-Man is here".

So developing and offering this educational system — first, in the form of a website with online education, but perhaps followed by brick and mortar versions — is one of my major goals in serving the Adidam Mission, and the fulfillment of what Adi Da and I talked about in that 1995 meeting.

The courses I am describing are more than just sources of information or introduction to new concepts, like, say a calculus class or a course on nuclear physics. These courses are helping people re-understand something they are programmed to view as "taboo", and instead view it as something of great value. So, because many of these courses will address issues that constitute emotional blockages or reactions for people, these courses often necessarily must have a psychotherapeutic component and a psychotherapeutic value. Such a course must take the participant through a process of consideration, that ultimately dissolves the emotional blockage or reaction so that — from then on — the person is "exorcised" from that issue's power to possess them, and emotionally liberated from that issue's power to cause them to contract. In "Adidam terms", they have to reach a point where the reaction can be set aside enough, or the blockage can be dissolved enough to allow Adi Da's Revelation to penetrate their heart.

It is also the case that, even as these courses examine the historical development of such trends as DIY-ism and anti-authoritarianism (from the Reformation in the sixteenth century through to the present) at the collective level of civilization, a parallel, personal exploration of the participant's oedipal patterning, etc. is often useful because societal movements like anti-authoritarianism often resonate most with people who have certain types of oedipal patterns (e.g., an abusive parent). To be truly free of such patterns, and be able to freely make life choices that such patterning would otherwise react against and prohibit, we need to examine these patterns at both the historical/societal level and the individual/personal level. For example, a comprehensive consideration of anti-authoritarianism will certainly acknowledge a true virtue in "questioning authority"; civilization truly took a step forward when it threw off the shackles of authoritarian monarchs, as well as church-states ruled by all too human leaders. But a comprehensive consideration of anti-authoritarianism will also acknowledge a true virtue in organizing one's life around a genuine spiritual authority — once such a genuine spiritual authority has been found — rather than remaining petulantly adolescent and permanently, rigidly resistant to submitting to any authority whatsoever. . . not for any good reason, but just because "that's who I am" (as a character, for oedipal reasons).

So, at the "big picture" level, our aim for the entire re-education process is to take people who are being triggered by, and reacting negatively to, this or that communication of Adi Da and Adidam, and transform them to the point where, not only are they no longer being triggered, but they are actively appreciating the offering of Adi Da and Adidam. This is entirely about getting them to finally see and feel the offering of Adidam truly as it is, without all the misconceptions, cultural biases, oedipal lenses, etc. being projected onto it.

COMING SOON

click image to enlarge

The above pyramid (which first appeared in the Introduction to this book) is my diagram for how "spiritual seekers" break out into different spiritual categories. If I had to estimate how many spiritual seekers were in the different layers of the pyramid, my guess would be:

• about 95% of spiritual seekers are in the lower red area titled "Spiritual Materialism". They have some minimal awareness of spirituality, but they are "spiritual consumers", who look at spirituality as just one more means for helping them materialistically fulfill themselves. Where it used to be prayers like, "Please God, give me a better job, a better intimate, better health, etc." now it is using spiritual means like "the law of attraction" to (often more effectively) accomplish the same.
  
  
• about 4.9999% are in the blue area and upper red area. Unlike the Spiritual materialists, tgese spiritual seekers are interested in spiritual growth. Thry are aware that spirituality offers far greater human potentials than just a better material life. They are aware that there are greater-than-material dimensions, and that, through spiritual practice, we can shift our residence to those far more benign dimensions (either temporarily, while still alive here, or permanently, after death), or at least raise our frequency in this dimension.
  
  Here it is essential that our educational process not only look backwards — in the way The Basket Of Tolerance does — to the long established religious and spiritual traditions. The great majority of people currently in the blue and upper red layer are associating with a completely different stream of spirituality, whose sources are ETs, angels, channelers, etc., that is completely absent from our current Adidam Mission communications. Our educational offering must show that we are completely aware of all these forms of contemporary education and spiritual resources, and bring Adi Da's discriminative framework to it, e.g., identifying "ascension" in its fullest sense (a popular goal of ETs and angels) with stages 4-5 of Adi Da's seven stages framework. We must show our awareness of "3D-5D ascension", a very popular offering by ETs and angels these days, aimed not at a complete shift into a higher dimension, but a raising of frequency that allows spiritual seekers to grow into some of the attributes more typical of higher dimensions (like "unity consciousness") even while still residing here in the physical dimension — a kind of "heaven on earth" possibility. And we must be completely familiar with all the concepts and possibilities that are commonly communicated within this spiritual offering, including: light codes and light language, soul contracts, timelines and timeline jumping, types of ETs (Arcturians, Greys, Pleiadians, Sirians, etc.), types of angels (archangels, guardian angels, etc.), spirit guides, higher self, etc.
  
  
• Only a few thousand (.0001%) have found their way to the top layer of the pyramid, even though it offers the greatest possible human destiny, because of all the cultural misconceptions we have described, which create powerful emotional blockages for most people.
  
  
• I have mentioned, in earlier chapters (in my face-to-face missionary work and my discussion about the Adi Da Up Close website), the importance of creating a repository of FAQs — answers to the most frequent questions that halt people in their approach to Adi Da. The way I look at such a repository is that it is very important and useful, but it is an interim measure, a kind of "poor man's version" of The Institute For Real God, the full-fledged preparatory school I have been describing in this chapter.

Until an Adidam preparatory school is in place, and is effective to the degree that the percentages start to change, we will have the following relatively unsatisfactory situation:

• The great Offering being communicated by our Adidam materials (books, CDs, websites, etc.) will be rightly understood by less than 1% of spiritual seekers.
• About 5% of spiritual seekers will have some idea of what is being communicated, but will also misunderstand a lot, and consequently generally will have a mixed reaction.
• About 95% of spiritual seekers will completely misinterpret the offering of Adidam in a negative way, have strong negative reactions, and have no interest whatsoever in learning more about Adi Da and Adidam.

As I bring this Part of my book — on the Adidam Mission — to a close, I am led to reflect again on Adi Da's question to the Mission (which I mentioned in the first chapter of this Part): "I've given you the greatest possible Message (Divine Enlightenment), and the greatest possible Offering (the Way of Adidam, for Realizing Divine Enlightenment). Why aren't you bringing Me a greater response from the world?" While the incredible variety of reactions triggered by the Communication of Adidam can complicate and confuse our attempt to answer Adi Da's question, I believe the answer can be put very succinctly and clearly, in much the same way Adi Da made His extraordinary Communication (above) about suffering: all the varieties of reaction people suffer in response to the Communication of Adidam can be reduced to misunderstanding.

I am reminded of the many near-death experiences where, for one Graceful moment, the whole universe falls away (even one's own body and one's sense of being a separate self) and people experience the Presence of God. No one in that moment says "I'd rather return to earth and pursue money, food, and sex!" No one says "I have this or that urgent obligation that requires me to return to earth!" No one. To a person, they all would stay forever in the Presence of God if they had a choice about it.[5]

The Communication of Adidam is like that. When understood rightly, it is an invitation to be in the Presence of God, now and forever. Coupled with Adi Da's ongoing Blessing and Revelatory Power, the Communication of His Offering of Divine Communion and, ultimately, God-Realization, is not something anyone would refuse — unless they were mis-understanding that Offering. (This includes the misunderstanding: "I intellectually understand everything you are saying; I just don't believe such an offering is possible!" That's where we have to amplify the power of the Revelation, as described in the next chapter.)

So the job of the Adidam Mission, then, is to re-educate people so comprehensively and profoundly that they cannot possibly misunderstand the offering. Then (and only then) will it become "an offer they can't refuse". And this must be done, one person at a time, ferreting out and lovingly addressing each person's particular set of misunderstandings. That is our part of the division of labor. The rest is Adi Da's Work of bringing that great Offering to life, by Revealing Himself as the Divine Person to that person. And our doing our part is what enables Him to do His part.

Part III, Chapter 5

FOOTNOTES

[1]		Not entirely surprisingly, the "anti-cult movement" is largely funded by the efforts of groups associated with mainstream religions.
[2]		When I was child, we would often visit our relatives in Brooklyn. On our way there and back, we'd pass by the George Washington Bridge and the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. I'd look up in awe at these huge magnificent structures, and that awe gave rise to the only dream I had for what I would become when I grew up: a bridge builder! Little did I know the way in which that dream would manifest. . .
[3]		I don't have a transcript of our conversation, because it took place in the front hall of Adi Da's residence, the Manner Of Flowers, which was not set up for audio recordings at the time. But most of what we talked about is burnt into my memory and so the recollections I'm recalling here are very clear.
[4]		In addition to the sequencing of chapters in The Knee Of Listening and the architecture of the Melrose Ashram Bookstore, Adi Da's development of His Image-Art served a similar "bridging" purpose. He wanted to reach a broader range of people, using the medium of art. He did that by presenting Himself as "Adi Da Samraj" (not "Avatar Adi Da Samraj"), artist rather than Spiritual Master, and getting His Art Works exhibited in premier exhibitions like the Venice Biennale. Of course His ultimate intent was the same: to draw people to Him, in this case, using the Transcendental Spiritual Agency provided (non-verbally) by His Image-Art. So the whole "architecture" was similar to the architecture of the Melrose Bookstore: a more conventional "outer temple" (the Venice Biennale was like the "spiritual attractions" section of the Melrose Bookstore, serving to attract people into the "outer temple"), but the same "inner temple", based on recognition of Him as the Divine; and a progressive movement of people from the outer temple to the inner temple over time. Adi Da's Image-Art also provided a means for people to receive Adi Da's Spiritual Transmission non-verbally, thus sidestepping all the verbal communications (e.g., "Adi Da is an Incarnation of the Divine") that tend to trigger fierce reactions in people, that end up obstructing the reception of Adi Da's Transmission. Adi Da presenting His Wisdom relative to world peace (epitomized in His book, Not-Two Is Peace) was similar. He chose the "outer temple" persona of "World-Friend" rather than "Avatar". While the wisdom He was communicating was valuable, essential wisdom for world peace in itself, He also was setting up the possibility of a similar, potential progression in recognition, from the "outer temple" (of respect and appreciation for the wisdom of "World-Friend Adi Da") to the "inner temple" (of recognition of Avatar Adi Da as the Divine). We can see a similar "architecture" during His "Teaching Years" period as "Bubba Free John" — when "Bubba", the human friend of devotees, was the "outer temple" persona that He used to draw devotees into the "inner temple" over time. So Avatar Adi Da has been artfully constructing many different kinds of "bridges to God" over the course of His Work with the world, and an Adidam preparatory school is one more such bridge.
[5]		I am drawing this not only from my studies of the literature on near-death experiences, but also from a conversation with my mother about a near-death experience she had had while in the hospital. I told her I had been concerned that her very strong focus on caring for her children might keep her from being able to stay in the Presence of the Divine after death. I was very surprised when she said, "When I was in front of God, I was not thinking about any of you! I had no desire to leave God's Presence ever!" But then she went on to describe how she was told that it was not her time yet, and she had business to handle back on earth. This is a common report from near-death experiences — and of course it coincides with the fact that they are "near death" rather than "death" experiences! It usually is an external projection (in the form of an "it's not your time" conversation, for example) of what is actually an internal limit: their own karmic patterning is keeping them from staying in the Presence of God. The only people who are ready to stay in the Presence of God after death are those who were doing so while alive. Such people are pre-adapted to that circumstance of Divine Communion.

Part III, Chapter 5