Adi Da Causal

This article is meant to give people a realistic, rather than idealistic account of how things could be around Adi Da Samraj when he was embodied, and to dispel some common misconceptions, which I carried myself, prior to this retreat. It makes note of an overlooked and often misunderstood direct function of the Guru. The Guru’s Demand or Testing Requirement, Adi Da’s own Guru’s, Baba Muktananda (for an example scroll down page), Swami Rudrananda  and  Baba Nityananda functioned in this manner in their own characteristic ways, as a demand to their disciples (It is reported for instance that the Great Siddha, Baba Nityananda tested Baba Muktananda relentlessly for several years prior to his becoming a surrendered disciple)

The first level of sadhana or spiritual discipline that I had to endure with a human teacher wasn’t any sort of otherworldly yoga, nor did it involve love and acknowledgment from the Guru, or even kind words. I spent about two minutes with Rudi when I first met him. He told me to get a job and come back in one year! But I was perfectly willing to do that. As it happened, within a month or two later, my spiritual work with him did begin. It wasn’t in fact necessary for me to be away a year, but I was perfectly willing for it to be so I was ecstatically happy to have made this contact, to have a beginning, to have become capable of spiritual life. It was a profound joy to me to have found someone who was obviously capable of drawing me into a condition at least more profound than the one I was living. From that moment it was one demand on top of the other. It was work. Work was the sadhana, work was the spiritual life. There was no “Come to me and sit and chat.” It was “Take out the garbage, sweep out this place.” If I came to sit and talk with Rudi, I was most often told “Scrub the floor,” or “There is a new shipment in the warehouse, so go and unload my truck.” I worked constantly, day and night, for four years. On top of the heavy physical labor, Rudi had me going to seminaries, where I studied Christian theology, masses of historical literature, ancient languages, all kinds of things in which I had no fundamental interest. I had to live in Protestant and Orthodox seminaries, but I was not a Christian. My sadhana was continuous work and self-transcendence. There was no ending of it. Even in sleep and dreams, there was no ending of it.

Adi Da talking about his time with Rudi ( Swami Rudrananda)

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On a recent service retreat to Naitauba Island the principle Hermitage Ashram of Adidam I had the great good fortune to serve for a few weeks in the gardens surrounding the area called “The Matrix”, this is where Bhagavan Adi Da Samraj would most often reside on a daily basis.I felt this to be a blessing and a happy service position for me. The first thing that came to my attention was a sense of great stress, surrounding anything remotely to do with service in the area. Everyone was stressful, all communications were tense and gave the tacit sense of pressure.

This really perplexed me, why the tension? (I had also noticed this on the face of a devotee who was running with a unmistakable look of profound distress, at the Mountain of Attention Sanctuary in 2005 when Adi Da was in residence) Surely Adidam is about finding equanimity in life and practice. I mentioned this underlying and constant pressure to another devotee who had spent many years in Bhagavan’s company, he agreed that this was the case or more exactly, “its only half of the equation” –the other half is called “The Beauty Foot” which makes the “Demand”  of the Guru, tolerable.

The more time I spent serving around The Matrix, the more obvious it became that Bhagavan Adi Da Samraj, was the center and cause of this constant stress, it was deliberately though not strategically generated and intrinsic to close proximity to the Guru, the closer the proximity, the more the sense of a distinctive “Demand” was palpable,  it was hard to relax there, there could be moments of lightness and humour with other Gurubai and these were quite common, quiet restrained humour was constant and happy communication was not absent. However a distinct tension and sense of pressure was always near the surface.

One effect of this constant “Demand” was there was little room for unconsciousness in service, what I mean by that is a person had to be constantly alert, no room for day-dreaming or making mistakes. Everything was “Sadhana” ( conscious spiritual practice), never quite comfortable, always with an edge to it. The most trivial thing had to be taken into account, lest it created a disturbance of some kind or other.

At the same time I found  an older book called “Ishta” quite gracefully, it is mainly a series of spoken discourses given on Naitauba to devotees in the early 1990’s Upon reading several chapters it became very clear to me that Adi Da Samraj always acted in this way.

He called it “Kicking Ass!” and stated “If your Guru does not Kick your Ass enough, he does not love you (enough)” So what he created was a sacred “Ass Kicking” machine, that went on night and day, most directly in his close proximity but outward from there. “Ishta” explained this paradoxical  effect, and I became certain I found the book for this very reason.

Bhagavan Adi Da constantly “turned up the heat” both hourly and daily, that was clearly one of his functions as Living Spiritual Master It was a primary form of his service to devotees and he looked for any and every occasion to do this. It was a very tangible, benign form of his love or sacrifice as Guru.

I began to really consider this each time I went to The Matrix, often the sacred conch would sound and Bhagavan would be seen walking, even this happy event would have stong protocols attached to it. A friend once made the sharp observation “Adidam is never,never, quite a holiday” or no matter how outwardly positive the circumstance there is always an edge of stress attached to it. This is exactly how Bhagavan wanted it to be. For one reason only, to constantly generate circumstance that required his student devotees to always go passed (or transcend ) themselves.

In the living company of Adi Da Samraj, there was acknowledged to be only 2 “moods”, the “Power Foot” and the “Beauty Foot”. These 2 qualities were very real, they were not any sort of imagined event, they would be “in your face”, self evident, undeniable.The Power Foot is the Guru’s “Demand” (male form) and the Beauty Foot is the Guru’s “Sweetness” (female form) they could also be together in the same moment, but this rapidly changing dynamic was Adi Da’s constant gift and prasad to devotees.

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Baba Muktananda’s “power foot”

Below are quotes from an unpublished book by a 30 year disciple of Baba Muktananda from this website (copyright to those who own this material)

A Siddha Master has very special ways of working on the student. Everyone of his gestures is a teaching, and each piece of teaching goes to the deepest level of the disciple’s consciousness with utmost directness. It is amazing to watch a perfect Guru work on the soul level. Swami Muktananda’s teachings were extremely sober and concise: not a word, not a gesture that was superfluous. His teachings were without repetition, unforeseeable and ever new, because in total harmony with the ever-new constellations formed by Life herself.

Baba, as he was called affectionately, loved to go on rampages and to let his Shakti (his spiritual energy) burst out in unique ways. One morning Baba came to the Guru Gita (the early morning chant) carrying his long stick. That stick was quite famous. He told everyone to look only at the Guru Gita text which we would usually chant in the early morning. No one was to look at him. That triggered vigilance. It created a dense atmosphere, a mixture of awe and fear. If he so much as saw you even glance at him, the stick came swirling toward you. In the perspective of the Tyrant Benefactor, this is an example of how a great teacher can destroy fixed ideas of what “yoga” is supposed to be. In the Western world, many people have concepts of what a Guru is, or should be. I saw Baba continuously wipe out these mental representations so as to free people for the direct experience of the Guru’s spiritual energy. In the evening of that day, Baba spoke of the people who worship the Guru’s form, emphasizing the uselessness of such attachments to his human appearance.

Many times I heard him recommend that everyone just follow the general discipline and leave him alone in his old age, to enjoy the divine silence. Often he even scolded the whole crowd of students, telling us how we weighed on him with our lethargy and lack of understanding, forcing him to repeat a thousand times that we were god, and most often to no avail, because we did not listen with the ears of the heart. . . .

I will attempt to describe in detail some of the fascinating ways a great Siddha Master used to teach his disciples and how he embodied the Tyrant with full compassion for our sake, when this seemed beneficial for the seeker’s evolution.

There were several buildings with dormitories around what was called ‘the older buildings.’ The kitchen was located there. One early morning—it must have been around three o’clock—everybody’s attention was aroused by mighty noises. Lights were on, which was not unusual. The noises were frightening. Suddenly pans were flying out the window, a voice in the air was saying, “Baba is in the kitchen.” The setting had a breath-cutting quality. Our minds got incredibly sharp. Everybody was listening, stunned. Then the noises subsided. Meanwhile, by now dressed, we rushed down, to do what Ashram discipline required. This meant many gathered in a big hall for tea in utter silence, followed by chant. . . .

Events of this nature shook everybody up. They were perfect mirrors. Facing the irrational, the unexplainable, our minds strained to make sense. These events had a direct impact on the deepest level of consciousness; they were energy transmitters, and whatever discussions they triggered, they were always beyond all our speculation in their effects. We could simply assume that what we were seeing and commenting on was a perfect reflection of our own reality. We could listen to other people’s interpretations. Could look at such events as “dreams” and go into dream interpretation. Whatever the choice, the wealth of their symbolic value drew everyone to magic inner spaces. . . .

Each time something so sudden, shocking and beyond reason happened in the community the whole field was shaken. Our usual patterns were broken. The awakening from mechanization opened space for new vitality.

Another fascinating aspect is the a-rational (beyond-reason) nature of the Siddha teachings, as we got them from Baba Muktananda. The incident with the flying pans could not be absorbed and classified by the rational mind, as e.g., the consequence of some negligence. Here was a man endowed with the highest Siddhis (spiritual powers), from whom we continuously experienced love, and this same man was triggering something like a thunderstorm in the middle of the quiet night. With such natural forces in action, all concepts, all ideas of what a Guru should be, of what the relationship to him should be, all rational analysis, was cut through. This created a formidable opening in consciousness. Also, these events remain recorded forever in the mind, unforgettable.