Ripples in the Deep of Feeling

Bill Somers

Bill Somers has been a resident of Adi Da Samrajashram for several years. He was a principal clarinetist in a symphony orchestra before he left the world of professional music to serve Adi Da. Among other functions, he has served Adi Da as a cultural server and retreat manager on Naitauba.

This story is excerpted from the article of the same name in Adi Da Samrajashram Magazine, Volume One, Number One (pp. 79 - 82).

	Adi Da attended by Bill Somers, 1998

Sitting in the Silver Hall is the most extraordinary circumstance I have experienced in this life. To be with Avatar Adi Da in that concentrated pure place is to leave the world and be immersed in His Divine Transcendental Spiritual Presence. . .

[Adi Da Samraj] did everything possible to Establish the Silver Hall process of deepest Communion with His Divine State . . .

In the time after His Divine Mahasamadhi, the Force of His Divine Transcendental Spiritual Presence and the Revelation of His State of Infinite Radiant "Brightness" is as powerful as it was when He Sat with us there in His physical Form. Beloved Adi Da Instructed that the Silver Hall Sittings should never stop, and thus they will continue forever.

The following are accounts of four recent occasions of my sittings in the Silver Hall.

The Revelation of Beloved Adi Da that occurred in the Sitting was an overwhelming Force of Love that undermined the knot of separateness-making, and captivated the heart in His Embrace of Light. In Beloved's Divine Place of Light there are no words, no mind, no comprehending. Beloved Adi Da was suddenly emerging in and as me, Breathing me, Living me. I felt myself to be like a sphere. The top of my head felt open to a Radiance from Above. The body was full with the Transcendental Spiritual Presence of Beloved Adi Da, the heart was alive with the feeling of unity with His Non-conditional State of Being.

I felt a continuously deep and overwhelming Fullness of Beloved's Divine "Brightness". It seemed I was opened at the root of the being, prior to everything arising, gone in the Beholding of Avatar Adi Da. I felt Him taking over the body and mind, Revealing that His Divine Transcendental Spiritual Presence Is all that is. His Divine Transcendental Spiritual Presence resonated at a depth and with a force that was like a tidal wave drowning the being. I felt immense gratitude to my Heart-Master, and uttered words of praise from my heart. There was a steady deep infusion of His Divine Presence such that the sense of the separate self receded into the distance. The Descent of His Divine Presence into the head and heart was forceful and undeniable. There was a continuous renewal of deep devotional Communion with Beloved. The joy and freedom in it was utterly disarming.

As soon as the Sitting began, I was released of mind. The thinking mechanism was disengaged by the Presence of the Master, the identification with a separate self that gives rise to thought was not happening. My conscious awareness became like a blank slate, opened up to the feeling of the Infinite State of Beloved. There was no concern for the inability to think. There was a natural simple turning to Beloved over and over, and a heavy downward pressure into the head that remains there as I write. I felt relieved of the reference point of social personality, the incapacity to pull together the social being. The thickness of the Divine Bliss was felt to be pouring down into the being, and I felt saturated with the Transcendental Spiritual Presence of Beloved Adi Da. When thoughts began to bubble up again, the mechanisms of seeking sometimes arose to try to stop the thinking. The obvious futility of the mechanisms was laughable, as I saw how the body and mind are programmed to curl in on self, opposed to availability to the Radiance of His Transcendental Spiritual Transmission.

As soon as I sat down, it felt like the Master was there to meet me in place. He instantaneously Surrounded and Pervaded the body and mind from Above, as if His Divine Transcendental Spiritual Presence was a thick, watery blanket on top of the head. It felt remarkable that He was immediately Present, and with such force. There was deep heart-happiness that He was so readily Present. At one point, there was a visible, tangible sense of a light beam of Transcendental Spiritual Transmission from Beloved going straight into the heart. It was a Blissful Manifestation of His Divine Current of Love. I swooned in ecstasy in the Radiance of His Light. It was an extremely powerful and direct Communication of His State. It felt that there was no self in it, deep in the heart. It felt that there was an undoing, complete Radiance. His Revelation of the Divine Current of Reality allowed me to recognize everything as already being in Him. The turning to Beloved Adi Da was felt to simply keep me in place, in tune with that Radiant, "Bright" Reality. I felt Beloved Adi Da reinforcing inherent ecstasy, the joy of Beholding and being in devotional Communion with Him. The moments of not abiding in that position of being in Beloved seem like just ripples in the deep of feeling His overwhelming Infinite Stillness. All of this is deeply heart-breaking.

After sitting in the Silver Hall for four years with Beloved Adi Da and serving the participation of devotees here and retreatants from all over the world, I have to say that the Silver Hall process is now more mysterious to me than ever before. In Beholding Bhagavan's Revelation of Himself in the Silver Hall, it is completely beyond any words or thoughts, completely beyond the sense of having an experience about Him. He just simply Is What Is, and that is only known now and now.

 

This story appears in sections:
Spiritual Transmission and
Practical Lessons in the Way of Adidam