Celebrations > the Divine Avataric Conception

Da Ratri:
The Holy Day of
the Bodily (Human) Conception
of the Divine Person

Adi Da with his parents


Avatar Adi Da Samraj acknowledged February 18, 1939 to be the date when His Divine Avataric bodily (human) Vehicle was conceived — eight and a half months previous to His Birth on November 3, 1939. This date is in synchrony with a unique confluence of several events occurring on February 18:

  •   Shiva Ratri
     
    Traditional Shiva Ratri portrait.
    Compare with the picture of Adi Da and His parents, above.
    (click to enlarge)
    The traditional Hindu religious festival of Maha Shiva Ratri (the celebration of the marriage of Shiva and Parvati — "the night of Lord Shiva, when He Himself was created by His Own Divine Grace") fell on February 18 in 1939, the year of Avatar Adi Da's birth. On that day, the great Indian saint and Sat-Guru, Upasani Baba, made a remarkable, spontaneous prophecy of the appearance of an Avatar in the West. (See below.)

  • Avatar Adi Da's father was born on February 18, 1910.

  • Ramakrishna was born on February 18, 1836. (Avatar Adi Da identified Ramakrishna, together with Swami Vivekananda, as His Deeper-Personality Vehicle.)

On February 18, 1939, about six months before the outbreak of World War II, the great Indian saint and Sat-Guru, Upasani Baba (1870 - 1941), received an important visitor to his ashram, the Shankaracharya of Jyotir Math, for the Hindu feast of Siva Ratri. The Shankaracharya was greatly delighted at the religious life of Upasani Baba's Ashram and as a token of his full satisfaction with the life and activities of Upasani Baba's kanyas, he presented several of them with religious books. He had long talks with Baba on religion, the present chaotic condition of the Hindu Dharma (and of religion in the world altogether), and the need for its reform, and he expressed his regret that holy men were helpless to advance its cause. He saw only one solution to this sorry state of affairs — a great Divine intervention, in the form of an Avatar. Only such an event, he felt, could re-establish true Spiritual life.

Upasani Baba
Upasani Baba