Columbia
Former nun that she was, my mother taught her children simple,
heart-felt devotion to God. Among other things, she would lead
our family in praying the rosary together. Our home was full of
books about the lives of the saints, and we had all the volumes
of the Catholic Encyclopedia, to familiarize ourselves (should
we so choose) with the fine points of Catholic theology. I also
served for several years at the local church as an altar boy.
I would carry that Catholic faith with me until I was a young
man, attending Columbia University in 1975 (like my father and
mother before me) — and the extensive and rigorous education process
there ripped that faith from me, leaving me in a profound crisis
of faith.
While at Columbia, 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 my childhood simplicity.
Adi Da's description of His time at Columbia University matched my
own experience there perfectly:
The
experience of study at Columbia was completely devastating.
I had never in my life encountered any kind of sophisticated
thought. But now I suddenly became aware of the literature
of the world. The mood at Columbia in those years was profoundly
solemn and critical. . . . Grayson Kirk, who was then president
of the University, introduced us to college life with a
serious speech about the rising problems of humanity. He
promised that Columbia would not teach us the answers, but
we would perhaps learn the questions. Altogether, he indicated
that Columbia would not make us Happy, but he promised that
we would learn how to think.
I was deeply impressed by his attitude, and that of the
entire formidable crowd of lecturing "thinkers",
talking (and otherwise in attendance) there. Immediately,
Columbia seemed like an emininently appropriate, and even
ideal, place in which to expand my doubts — but I was puzzled
that one of the highest institutions of learning could represent
itself as anything but the bearer of Truth. I soon learned
that the Truth was always in research in such places. They
are not institutions of Truth. They are marketplaces of
doubt.
I began to read the deposits of Western culture. And all
my idols lost their Power. To begin with, I learned that
the "Holy Christian Truth" was anything but the
real substance of Western civilization. There is a thesis
emphasized in all the little bits of thought generated in
a university education. In that thesis, the human being
is described as necessarily mortal, functionally conditioned,
and (at best) "creative" as a social animal. Also,
the universe is described as materially prior to conscious
life, and it is chronically understood without recourse
to religious or Spiritual propositions... Every book I read
and every course I took emphasized this thesis in some unique
fashion.
Avatar Adi Da Samraj, The
Knee Of Listening
|
That profound crisis of faith changed the course of my life,
and sent me searching in new directions. I ceased being a practicing
Catholic, and began instead to value and explore psychology as
a means for gaining self-knowledge: my unconscious motivations,
the reasons why I was not completely happy, and what I could do
about that.
On a practical (and karmic) level, I excelled in my academic
studies, following in my parents' footsteps. By now I also had
a string of "accomplishments" to add to my resume. In
sixth grade, I had placed third in a New England-wide public speaking
contest. As a high school junior, I had been awarded a research
grant from the state of New Jersey for new research into the origin
of life. As a sophomore at Columbia, I received the Professor
Van Amringe Prize for "best freshman or sophomore mathematics
student". As a junior, working during my summer break at
IBM's Thomas Watson Research Center, I developed a new algorithm
that was considered a breakthrough in the area of system stability.[1]
As a senior, I was the narrator of Columbia University's annual
Varsity Show, for which I was interviewed by New York City's Channel
5 News — and, for one evening (my "15 minutes of fame"!),
was recognized everywhere I went in Greenwich Village because
of a cover story and picture that had appeared in New York City's
"cultural" newspaper, The Village Voice.[2]
Chris at Columbia University, 1978
I graduated from Columbia summa cum laude with a 4.0 grade
point average and a degree in computer science in 1978. I then
moved to California to attend Stanford University for my graduate
studies, because it had a reputation for being the best graduate
school in the world in the area of computer science.
It all "made sense" on the level of the practical.
But on another level, it also was simply another sign of my Guru's
presence and influence in my life — a kind of "synchronicity"
or "psychophysical resonance", as I (unknowingly) followed in
His footsteps: becoming an altar boy at the local church (as He had been); winning an award in a major oratory contest for young people (as He had done); and attending the very same schools He had attended (Columbia,
then Stanford) eighteen years earlier.
Stanford
In contrast with the frenetic (and, at times, even harsh) urban
life of New York City, I experienced California as a great relief
— a place where I could relax psychically, and focus on personal
growth. Again, Adi Da's words about His own move from New York
City to Palo Alto, California, describe very well what I was feeling,
as I began my new life at Stanford University, and in northern
California altogether:
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the foothills above
the Stanford university campus
(click image to enlarge)
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My arrival in California was the most instantly healing
and supportive experience of a purely external kind that
I had yet enjoyed in my life. The sunlight was so deeply
radiant, the air so soft, and the hills and country all
around so dramatic and beautiful that I became marvelously
light and, in the most positive ordinary sense, happy. Since
that time, I have traveled many places in the world, but,
for me, the areas of northern California — with the incredible
mountains and forests of Yosemite, the dramatic coastline
of Big Sur, and the beautiful city of San Francisco — remain
equal to the most glorious physical environments on earth.
Avatar Adi Da Samraj, The
Knee Of Listening
|
Perhaps because the very psyche of the land supports and nurtures
it, California has a history of giving birth to new "personal growth"
movements and spiritual experiments. And so it was natural that,
while I was pursuing my graduate studies in computer science,
I also made time to explore human and spiritual potential. I participated
in an EST-like organization called Lifespring, whose "encounter
group" experiences [3] helped move
me beyond the limitations of ordinary psychology into a larger
view of reality, that included the possibility of "Enlightenment"
as the greatest human potential.
I started reading the literature
of Eastern spirituality, and began personally experimenting with
the notions I was reading about. I began having energy experiences
of various kinds. For the first time, I read about the Guru-devotee
relationship in the various spiritual traditions of the world;
and I experienced the tangible spiritual transmission of two Gurus:
Jiddu Krishnamurti, while reading one of his books; and the shaktipat
guru, Yogi Amrit Desai, as he drove past and looked at me (while I was on a brief retreat at his Kripalu retreat center in Massachusetts).
It was all excellent preparation for finding my Guru. I'll now describe some additional events in my life that helped prepare me for Avatar Adi Da.
Chapter 5
FOOTNOTES
Chapter 5