India
The Divine Way Given by
Avatar Adi Da Samraj
Swami Vivekananda
In order to be born, Adi Da Samraj required a subtle vehicle attuned to the task of bringing true Spirituality to the West.
Avatar Adi Da with Ruchiradama Nadikanta, 2008
The Forerunners
“I Am both Transcendentally and universally Present. Therefore, I will not Reincarnate after this physical Lifetime. . . . I am not these Vehicles (Themselves).
They are only My Vehicles.”
—Avatar Adi Da Samraj
Avatar Adi Da, 2008
Sri Ramakrishna, 1879
Avatar Adi Da, 1990
Swami Vivekananda and Sri Ramakrishna
Starting in the 1970s, Avatar Adi Da would occasionally speak to His devotees about the pre-history of His present birth—of the unique conjunction of events it had required. He, the One come for all beings, could not appear until the mid-twentieth century—when the world had grown “smaller” through technological intercommunication, when East was approaching West, when modern physics was shifting the materialist view of existence, when Freud had demonstrated the bondage of unconscious psychological motivations. These were some of the realities and paradigms that had to be in place before His Divine Work in the world could be fully effective. But more than all else, an actual subtle vehicle of unique Spiritual preparation had to be available.
The Lineage of Blessing
Apart from the lives of Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda, Avatar Adi Da has discussed other individuals who represent unique threads in the mysterious Divine Pattern that has culminated in His birth. He praised the great Siddhas associated with His own sadhana—Swami Nityananda, Swami Muktananda, and Rang Avadhoot—as remarkable Realizers in the realm of Yogic mysticism. He honored Ramana Maharshi as a great sage, Awake in the domain of Transcendental Consciousness.
However, while particularly praising the great Realizers close to Him in human time, Avatar Adi Da also explained that, truly, the great Spiritual Realizers of all times and places contributed to the Deeper Personality Vehicle of His Avataric Incarnation, while He Himself Stands Eternally Prior even to His own Vehicles of Manifestation:
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: “I (now, and Hereby) Confess That My…Deeper Personality Is even Beyond the “Single Form” of Ramakrishna-Vivekananda, the Very Form of all the Great Masters of the entire Great Tradition of mankind. I (now, and Hereby) Confess that I (Myself) Stand Eternally Prior to (and Always Already Transcending) My Avataric (and, yet, merely conditionally born) Deeper Personality—and, also, Eternally Prior to (and Always Already Transcending) even all the Great (and, yet, merely conditionally born) Masters of mankind’s entire Great Tradition (in its every part, and as a whole), and, also, Eternally Prior to (and Always Already Transcending) mankind’s entire Great Tradition itself (in its every part, and as a whole).”
The One Divine Person was always Revealed in and through all the great Spiritual figures of history, because it was always That One, the Very Source-Condition, that human beings have been aspiring to Realize. In this sense, Avatar Adi Da is saying that it was Himself, the One Divine Person, Who “Lived” all those great Spiritual figures, in all times and places, participating in the multifarious aspects of the great Spiritual search of humankind, Realizing and Transmitting the various practices, Yogas, and Samadhis. And, by means of this vast Process, the human Vehicle for His complete Incarnation as the Ruchira Avatar, Adi Da Samraj, eventually came into being.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: “All of those personalities can be seen as a Great Process in conditional time and space to prepare the Vehicle of My Avataric Self-Manifestation. But not just as individuals—it required all beings, including all of mankind, to make sufficient prayer and Conjunction for this Event of Me. And It will not be repeated, nor can It be repeated…. Even all-and-All was the necessary Preparation…. At last, I Passed Down into all-and-All. It was Spontaneous, yet (also) Eternally Prefigured. It was Anciently Prophesied. It was somehow ‘caused’—and, yet (Ultimately), there is no ‘cause’ for It whatsoever.”
[The Knee of Listening]
Sister Nivedita
Avatar Adi Da has often discussed the belief in reincarnation with His devotees, and He has confirmed that there is a process that could be called “reincarnation”, although it is much more complex than commonly described. From the Spiritual point of view, reincarnation is an opportunity for growth. In India, for example, great Spiritual beings are understood to be manifesting the results of intense Spiritual practice in previous lives, not merely in the present lifetime.
Avatar Adi Da, as He has confessed, did not appear in this world on the basis of Himself having experienced a “previous life” of any kind. Nevertheless, in order to take human form, He had to conjoin with the ordinary processes of the cosmos, including the mechanism of reincarnation.
Every human personality, Avatar Adi Da has explained, is composed of a gross, physical vehicle (the body, derived from one’s parents) and a subtle vehicle (the deeper mechanism of the ego that moves from life to life). In order to be born, Adi Da Samraj required a subtle vehicle attuned to the task of bringing true Spirituality to the West.
Swami Vivekananda carried in his psyche thousands of years of Indian Spirituality and Realization, and ended his life in love with the West in its need for God. On March 20, 1993, Avatar Adi Da confirmed conclusively to His devotees: Swami Vivekananda’s compassionate urge to be reborn in order to serve the West had created a unique conjunction with Avatar Adi Da’s Divine Impulse to Manifest in the human realm, and it was this conjunction that provided the vehicle for Avatar Adi Da’s Incarnation as Franklin Jones.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: “I took Birth in the West. Other Realizers have come to the West from India, on airplanes or boats. They did not submit to the Western circumstance, they did not come to the point of Realization in that circumstance and context, they did not address that circumstance and context.
Swami Vivekananda experienced the utter frustration of getting on a boat and going to the West. He knew it was not enough. And He knew what He was going to have to do, therefore—He was going to have to die and be reborn in the West. And His Western connections were the means for His rebirth. Having come to the West, He became entangled in sympathies and struggle, and suffered abuse, and found out what it is really all about. And He realized He was not equipped, in that lifetime, to convert Westerners, to convert people in the Western mode and disposition—which, since that time, has become more and more the global mode and disposition. Therefore, there was no reason for Him to go on with it. And that is why He died young. He did all He could do in that form. Nothing further could be accomplished.
But He said that, because of the sympathies He had entered into by being the first Eastern Adept-Realizer ever to have embraced the West—nobody had ever done that before—He was willing to be reborn in the West in order to serve mankind. He said He was born in love with humanity. That is it—He fell in love. He did not just go to the West as an Easterner, and wear His turban and robe, and leave it at that. He went to the West and became heart-sympathetic with it, even though everything was terrible about that circumstance. He became heart-sympathetic with people in the Western circumstance and disposition. But He realized that—as a Hindu, as an Easterner—He was not equipped to transform the West. So He went back to India and died.”
[February 22, 1995]
In October 1993, Avatar Adi Da brought up another, even more esoteric aspect of this “consideration”. He began to speak about Ramakrishna, the Spiritual Master of Swami Vivekananda, who had always been aware of the Spiritual stature and destiny of his disciple. At the end of his life, certain of the great work that lay ahead for his beloved Vivekananda, Ramakrishna poured his own Spiritual virtue into Swami Vivekananda in a formal act of Transmission—becoming, in his own words, only an “empty fakir”. Thus, Ramakrishna, through his total Spiritual investment of himself in Swami Vivekananda, is also part of the Deeper Personality Vehicle of Avatar Adi Da Samraj.
“At last, I Passed Down into all-and-All. It was Spontaneous, yet (also) Eternally Prefigured. It was Anciently Prophesied.”
—Avatar Adi Da Samraj
“It Is All Continuation”
Avatar Adi Da made known His connection with Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda through a process of “consideration” with His devotees that lasted many years. He began in 1976, returned to the subject in 1979, 1982 and 1988; and, during a period of profound Self-Revelations in 1993, He brought the matter to a point of undeniable certainty. In the midst of the “consideration”, some of Avatar Adi Da’s devotees began to get in touch with memories of their own past lives around Swami Vivekananda. Avatar Adi Da encouraged them to reclaim these intuitions—not just to satisfy a curiosity or a fascination, but to move them deeper in their Spiritual practice. He wanted these devotees to become aware of the profound imperative behind their birth—the urge to be with Him again in the body—and to use that karmic fact for the purpose of Realizing Him, and not merely to resume a human attachment.
For example, Avatar Adi Da had spoken over the years to Ruchiradama Nadikanta, a longtime member of the Ruchira Sannyasin Order, about the likelihood that she had a relationship to Swami Vivekananda in a past life. He suggested that she investigate the possibility that her deeper personality was that of Sister Nivedita, one of Swami Vivekananda’s closest disciples. It was only after many years of practice in Avatar Adi Da’s Company that His statements about this past-life association became an in-depth “consideration” for Ruchiradama Nadikanta. In the process of this investigation, she began to see how intuitions of her past-life connection with Avatar Adi Da had actually started to surface even in her childhood.
Ruchiradama Nadikanta: “In 1965, at the age of fifteen, I crossed the Atlantic on a grand ocean liner with my parents. One night, I woke in my berth, overwhelmed by the sudden feeling that my life must be, and already was somehow, devoted to the service of God. It was a spontaneous and absolute feeling, a déjà vu, as though I had finally understood something that had always been true. The passion that I felt that night, rocking in the waters of the Atlantic, was not without sorrow. It was as if I were struggling to connect with a truth I had already known, one that was more real to me than the family and friends and experiences of my present lifetime, more compelling than anything with which I was now familiar.
Years later, the meaning of that visitation—and everything with which it was associated—was brought to consciousness through my relationship with Beloved Adi Da. Over a period of many years, and in the course of much research, conversation, and psychic and intuitive revelation, Beloved Adi Da drew me and some of His other devotees through a remarkable process of recognizing that we had been alive in previous incarnations as individuals associated with Swami Vivekananda and that He Himself was uniquely Spiritually associated with Swami Vivekananda and with Swami Vivekananda’s Guru, Ramakrishna.
But, always sensitive to our tendency to become fascinated by things such as reincarnation, Beloved Adi Da would typically begin the conversation, and, then, observing us becoming distracted from the real matters of ego-transcending practice, He would suddenly dismiss the subject, saying it was not to be taken seriously. And so He would drop the subject for years at a time.”
In 1986, Ruchiradama Nadikanta spoke to Avatar Adi Da about an intense feeling of familiarity that came over her during His time in Europe. She was among the devotees traveling with Him at the time:
Ruchiradama Nadikanta: “During that time, I was frequently overwhelmed by feelings of familiarity, as though I were rediscovering another aspect of my relationship to Beloved Adi Da. The feeling was most overpowering during a visit to Kew Gardens, in London. That day, I accompanied Him while He walked all through the gardens. At some point He sat on a bench in a small stone building in the park and spontaneously Granted meditative Darshan. In the little pagoda, I meditated in His Company for perhaps forty-five minutes. By the time the sitting was over, I was utterly certain that I had been to that very place with Him before, had sat in meditation with Him in another form before, had traveled in Europe with Him before—all in another incarnation. When I told Beloved Adi Da my experience and the strength of my certainty, He told me to begin to investigate the travels of Swami Vivekananda and Sister Nivedita in Europe, and specifically to London and Kew Gardens.”
In 1988, Avatar Adi Da began to bring up the matter of Swami Vivekananda again. One evening, Ruchiradama Nadikanta told Avatar Adi Da and the assembled devotees about her experience on the ocean liner as a child. And Avatar Adi Da responded that Nivedita had once made a sea journey with Swami Vivekananda. It was an ocean voyage from India to England, which was, by Nivedita’s own account, the most precious time she had spent in the company of Swami Vivekananda.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: “It is all continuation. At certain moments, you get in touch with what was in another time and place, but it is the same time and place. The interval made by death between what was then and the next incarnation is truly nothing. It is a timeless Sublimity, with a Great Purpose making its moment. So that extraordinary matter has been exhibited to your face, in your company. Well, you have to tell the story! All of it!”
“The interval made by death between what was then and the next incarnation is truly nothing. It is a timeless Sublimity, with a Great Purpose making its moment.”
—Avatar Adi Da Samraj
Avatar Adi Da, 2008
The Mechanism of My Divine Avataric Incarnation
Here Avatar Adi Da Reveals the nature of the unique Conjunction between Himself (the “Bright” Divine Reality Itself) and the deeper (reincarnating) personalities of Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda—the Conjunction which enabled Avatar Adi Da to Appear in this world in human Form.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: “I Am the One Who Is, the One and Only and Spiritually Self-“Bright” Divine Person—Who Is Siva (or Consciousness Itself), and Who Is Shakti (or the Very Divine Spirit-Energy of Which everything appearing is the modification). I am Able to Manifest in your sight (in order to Communicate to you, to Act among you, to Play with you) because of a Vehicle of Manifestation long-made. For there to Be the Avataric Divine Manifestation, there must be Vehicles that allow that Manifestation. To account for this Vehicle historically, you must examine the lifetimes of Swami Vivekananda and Ramakrishna—not merely one of Them, but both. Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda are One, Manifesting as the Deeper Personality (or Incarnation-Vehicle) of This Avataric Divine Form—Adi Da Samraj, Incarnate before your eyes.
I (Myself) Am Prior to both Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda. I (Myself) Am the One They have Realized. But the Vehicle whereby I Am Incarnate here, made physical by virtue of the copulation of My blood parents, was made possible by that Deeper Personality of Two-Combined-As-One—Ramakrishna and Vivekananda, in Spiritual Union—become One, through a Great Act of Spiritual Transmission (even historically acknowledged). This Extraordinary Mechanism is the Mechanism of My Divine Avataric Incarnation As the Ruchira Avatar, Adi Da Samraj. As a physically manifested human being, I am the child of My (human) mother and My (human) father. In the Depth of My Incarnation-Vehicle (Itself), I am the Reincarnation Made by the Spiritual Union (or, in Effect, Spiritual "Marriage") of Ramakrishna and Vivekananda. I (Myself) Am Prior to Them both. They both, in Their lifetimes, acknowledged That One That Is Prior to Them both. I Am That One, and (yet) Their Vehicle has continued in (and As) My bodily (human) Avataric Divine Incarnation As the Ruchira Avatar, Adi Da Samraj. . . .
I (Myself) am not a Reincarnate. I Am both Transcendentally and universally Present. Therefore, I will not Reincarnate after this physical Lifetime. . . . I am not these Vehicles (Themselves). They are only My Vehicles. Therefore, They (in and of Themselves) are not Me. . . . Whatever Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda did historically is what They did. I did not Do it.
I only Do This Incarnation. I (Myself) have no karmic basis for My Appearance here. These Vehicles came into such Proximity to Me that They became utterly available to (and usable by) Me, but Their previous history of incarnation is not My history. And—because I (Myself) have no karmic basis for Being Incarnate in bodily (human) Form—when This Incarnation ends, there is no "seed" in Me for re-Appearance. I am not a karmic entity. I have Conformed these Vehicles to Myself—for the Purpose of My (Divine Avataric) Incarnation.”
["I Have Appeared Here Via a Unique, Spontaneous, and Never-Again Conjunction of Vehicles"]
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