Sacred
History > 1957 > An Infinity of
a Very Different Kind
An Infinity of a Very Different Kind
Chris Tong
My
mother was a true pioneer. After spending ten years in a Catholic
convent as a nun, she decided that it wasn't truly the spiritual
life she had longed for . . . she hadn't found God there, just
a group of well-intentioned but rather ordinary women, and the
egos that tend to butt up against each other whenever communal
living is attempted. So she left the convent and entered the graduate
program in mathematics at Columbia University in New York City,
where she met — and then married — my father, who was a brilliant
young professor of mathematics there.[1]
With his help, she completed her Ph.D. and became the first woman
professor of mathematics at Columbia University in the late 1950's.
Her
specialty, which she taught undergraduate students in her classes,
was "transfinite numbers" — the study of different kinds
of infinities.[2] Little did she know
that an Infinity of a very different kind would enter her classroom!
Many years later, after I became Adi Da's devotee, I told my
mother about Him. I showed her some of His books and showed her
pictures of Him. She recognized Him immediately! She told me that,
in her Autumn 1957 class, she had had a student named Franklin
Jones, who stood out in her memory because, after class, He
would always be down at the front of the classroom with a crowd
of students gathered around Him.[3]
Thirty-one years later (in 1988), Franklin — Adi Da — would give
a talk ("One More Monkey") that drew upon this curious notion
of "different kinds of infinities" that my mother had
taught. And, as was His way, He turned it into a profound lesson
about Spiritual Realization.[4]
I was born in June, 1957, while my mother was teaching at Columbia.
She would sometimes take me with her into class during my first
year of life, which was rather unusual for the time — but, as
I said, my mother was a true pioneer. Adi Da began His studies
at Columbia in September, 1957 and took her class that autumn. When I asked her about it years
later, my mother said she certainly would have brought me into
the class He took with her.
So, even though I cannot remember it directly (and even though
I will never know the full nature of its impact on my life and
its course), any story about my relationship with my Guru must
begin with the earliest time He Graced me with His Darshan!
He would have been 17 (and then 18 on November 3) during that
Autumn 1957 class.[5]
* * *
POSTCRIPT: After having been in the convent
for a decade, searching for God, my mother had the great Grace
of teaching an entire course with Adi Da — the Very Divine,
incarnate in human form — in her classroom. She would again
receive Adi Da's Blessing through me and my wife, Mary, as His
devotees — something Adi Da has described is the case for the
families and friends of all His devotees. During my mother's life,
even though she had a spiritual sensitivity to Adi Da, her strong
belief in Catholicism kept her from acknowledging Him as the Divine.
But when my mother passed in 2009, Mary (who helped spiritually link
my mother with Adi Da, after my mother's death) had a clear, unshakeable
vision, and the most extraordinary meditation she had ever had, in Plain Talk Chapel at the Mountain Of Attention. Even though the actual meditation hall was dark,
in her vision (which lasted an hour and a half, and prevented her from moving),
the room was filled with brilliant White Light. The White Light was shining from Avatar Adi Da.
She saw my mother kneeling at Adi Da's feet, smiling, extraordinarily happy, radiant in His Light.
My mother was looking up at Him
in rapture, her arms outstretched toward Him, the recognition of the Divine shining in her face,
her lifelong search for God finally coming to rest in Him.
The Way of Adidam is a Way of relationship, a Way of mutual gift-giving.
My mother had given Adi Da a gift, in the form of some of humankind's
greatest concepts of infinity. . . And, in the end, she gave Him her
heart as well. And Adi Da, in turn, gave her the Gift of
Infinity Itself. In the Infinity of the Heart, what goes around
comes around!
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