Finding
Adi Da > Chris Tong > Part II (Adventures with the Devotional Prayer of Changes) > Chapter 1
1. A Facility for Healing Computers
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| This is part II, chapter 1 of Chris Tong's story, Finding the Divine in Person and Waking Up From the Dream. | |
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During the period from spring, 1996 through summer, 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. When a computer would start
malfunctioning, I'd intensely engage in
the
Devotional Prayer Of Changes. As part of that Prayer, I'd be communing spiritually with Adi Da,
and I would include the "ailing" computer very intimately in that spiritual communion: I'd literally envision extending
the "sphere" or "aura" of
Adi Da's Radiance to include the computer as well as me. And, more often than not,
the computer would "get better" without me doing anything more! — although I also got really good at diagnosing
and fixing computers in more conventional ways (for those occasional times when the "healing siddhi" alone wasn't sufficient).
Over the years, this skill developed to the point where, often, I just had to walk up to a computer that was "misbehaving" (feeling to it with love as I approached it), and it would start working fine again. I can't tell you the number of times (in the decades since then) that my intimate partner Mary has had troubles with her computer, and I'd walk up, try to do what she could not get the computer to do, and it suddenly would work perfectly for me, without the slightest hitch!
A humorous thought: perhaps this is the final phase in my training as a "computer scientist" — something I couldn't learn in the universities. . .
In retrospect, I can look back to when Adi Da originally required us to "heal" the computers, and realize that — of course! — He would not have placed that requirement on us without also granting us the Grace and the capability to do so. He did this in many areas, for example, requiring some devotees to be in charge of "good weather" — again, no doubt, He gave those devotees the capability to "make it so" even as He gave them the requirement.
* * *
So Adi Da's Transmission can fry computers. But I experienced the very opposite whenever I received His Transmission: it always felt like a Conscious Force, exquisitely aware of the human vehicle that was receiving it, and never "overloading" that vehicle. Adi Da refers to the Divine Person as "Conscious Light" or "Living Light":
Only the Living
Light That Is,
can Fly—
and Fly to all — from
'The All' That Is
Above.
In contrast, a chiropractor friend of mine once hooked me up to an energy device, and I instantly felt (in comparison with Adi Da's Transmission) how unconscious and insensitive the machine was to my human vehicle, simply putting out a fixed energy (and level of energy) independent of the receiving vehicle.
Computers, like all things, are "conscious" in the sense of being a modification of Consciousness (like all beings and things) and in the sense of being sensitive, relational, and responsive (to a certain degree, in certain ways). But they are not built like living beings.
I remember discussing this subject with some of my Artificial Intelligence colleagues, after studying Adi Da's Teaching for a number of years. A presumption among some AI researchers is that consciousness will "appear" (as an emergent property) in an AI when, at some point, the AI gets complex enough. My response to that: the primary reason we aren't going to create an AI that is conscious like you and me has nothing to do with the sophistication or complexity of the AI's programming. It has to do with the fact that conscious beings have a hierarchical structure, existing in multiple dimensions of reality. Each of us has a causal body (in the causal dimension), an astral body (in the astral dimension), an etheric body (in the etheric dimension), and a physical body (in the physical dimension). That entire "body-mind complex" is rooted in the Divine Consciousness, which is the source of consciousness "in" the body-mind. And we all have tiny organisms that transfer, mediate, and step down "consciousness" between the bodies.[1] Constructing an AI that is truly conscious would require constructing an artificial causal body, astral body, etheric body, and physical body, and hooking them all together in a manner similar to how our own bodies are integrated.
Of particular relevance: living beings are built to be able to receive and conduct transmissions (without being "fried" by the transmission).
A universal process of "tuning in" exists which all human beings are involved in, at an invisible level. Even the physical mechanisms, the complex organisms of body in mind, are involved in this process. The gross-physical aspects of the human body-mind-complex function very much like transmitter-receivers. The gross-physical body is a living bio-form. It has the capability to operate in a field of energy, to transfer energies and to be in sympathy, therefore, with fields of energy that exist beyond the physical body. The body does not have any independent existence. It is not enclosed upon itself. Did not arise on its own. There is no seed inside it that brought the body into existence.
Likewise, every other dimension of the human being is not "inside", but is simply a modification of a universal pattern. The brain and the nervous system are merely transmitter-receiver mechanisms. There are ways of participating in a universal field that is, simultaneously, material and energetic and psychic [i.e., physical, etheric, and astral]. And, if the "self"-knot is given up, the physical body will flow with the great force, through the great elemental field in which it exists, and will be much healthier and freer.
Because computers are not built like living beings, Adi Da's unmediated Transmission was capable of frying them — in a way that it would not and could not fry a human or animal vehicle, both because of the Consciousness of His Force, and the inbuilt infrastructure in a conscious being that helps it receive and modulate such a Transmission. But human devotees can compensate for the lack of the proper "reception" infrastructure in computers. Through conscious intention, we can serve as an intermediary of Adi Da's Transmission, and "step it down" and modulate it in such a way that it is a purely positive force on the computer (something like the "step down transformers" that serve a similar purpose in the electrical grid, mediating electrical flow between power station and home). I may have been serving a function like that when I "healed" computers. But it was more than "stepping down" His Transmission; it was as though I was helping them adapt to His Transmission, because I'd usually only need to do it once with a particular computer, and it would be fine from then on, on its own.
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In researching this part of my story, I couldn't find any other accounts of people who could "heal" computers; but, curiously, I did find numerous accounts of people who have a negative impact on computers (or electronics in general).[2] It is my sense that much of the effect of human beings on computers and electronics (positive or negative) is occurring in the etheric dimension, via energy fields. For this reason, we can relate it to other phenomena and capabilities that are perhaps more familiar, including people who do Chi-Gong healing (like my friend, fellow devotee, and Chi-Gong Master, Jane Yang); devotees' approach to health in general as instructed by Adi Da (see the book, Conductivity Healing); people who have "green thumbs" (or "brown thumbs") relative to growing plants; etc.
FOOTNOTES
| [1] | Adi Da has (briefly) described the "connections"
between the various "bodies" or "functional
sheaths" in His autobiography, The
Knee Of Listening:
. . . now all of these things — the forms, the levels of functional being and conditional identity (including the physical body, and even all the functional sheaths, and all the conditional realms, and all conditional experiences) — stood within the Radiant Sphere of my own Presence, and I understood and inherently (and Divinely) Self-Recognized them all, without recourse to them (as if they were "outside" my own Self-Nature), and without recourse to any sense of self-separateness (as a limited subjective identity in apparent relationship to them) . . . I was able to see subtle mechanisms within these bodies (or functional sheaths) and perceive the relations of various forms and currents of energy beyond the physical. I saw the tiny organisms by which energy and conditional awareness are transferred and communicated between the various levels of existence. |
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| [2] | Here are some examples of people having a negative impact on computers:
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