Avatar Adi Da's Unique Testimony of Receiving His Own Spirit-Baptism, from Infancy Onward
from the Introduction by Jonathan Condit, Ph.D.
Avatar Adi Da has been directly and experientially aware of the process of Spiritual Transmission from His infancy.
As soon as He was Born in physically Incarnate Form, He already Knew what the Perfect Process of esoteric Spirituality involves — literally, from His Avataric Birth onward.
Thus, His Ultimate Revelation of esoteric Spirituality — in this book, Hridaya Rosary — is His Disclosure of a process He has been intimately familiar with, in His Own Body-Mind, since Birth.
As Avatar Adi Da was later to confirm (in the early adult years of His Sadhana), the esoteric Spiritual process He had known since infancy was a form of Spirit-Baptism that had never before been known. It was a Transmission-process unique to Him. His Own Body-Mind, as a baby, was the first human body-mind to experience this unique form of Spiritual Transmission.
But — by means of the immense Ordeal of His Birth, Sadhana, Divine Re-Awakening, Teaching-Work, Revelation-Work, and Blessing-Work — He has been able to establish His Unique Gift of Spirit-Baptism as a Divine Gift available to all who heart-recognize Him and heart-respond to Him at depth.
As soon as He acquired the capability of language, Avatar Adi Da gave a name to His Own Divine Self-Condition — the "Bright". And, at the same time, He also gave a name to His Spiritual Transmission — the "Thumbs". The two are inextricably related to each other — for, as He has said many times, the "Thumbs"is His Transmission of the "Bright".
These two words — the "Bright"and the "Thumbs"— are a complete and perfect summary of His core Revelation. And these "Childhood Teachings" were generated by Him — in words — while He was still, in bodily Form, a one-year-old baby.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: The Manifestation in This Body — ever since My Coincidence with This Body, in the Event of Its Birth — has been what I, as a very young child, called the "Bright"and the "Thumbs".
The "Bright"and the "Thumbs"has always been the Process. It was never otherwise.
There has never been anything lost or gained, in terms of Realization. It has all been Avataric Divine Play — taking place under many different kinds of circumstances, and (ultimately) constituting My Complete and Perfect Avataric Divine Self-Revelation.
– November 21, 2004
Avatar Adi Da uses the term the "Thumbs"in a general sense — meaning His Spiritual Transmission altogether.
He also (most commonly) uses that term in a specific sense — meaning a particular form of His Transmission, which Spiritually Carries the rightly prepared devotee beyond identification with body and mind, into the Perfect Domain of Identification with Consciousness Itself. This particular technical meaning of the "Thumbs"is indicated whenever He refers to "the experience of the 'Thumbs'" or "the Samadhi of the 'Thumbs'".
Throughout the years of His childhood and young adulthood, Avatar Adi Da frequently experienced the "Thumbs":
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: The "Thumbs"(and a sense of this Transmission-Process) that I spontaneously conceived when I was a tiny child.
In any moment when that Process re-Initiated Itself, I would feel It as something coming down from above, into My throat — and It would be associated with a gagging sensation, as if a mass of thumbs was pushing down behind My tongue into My throat.
It was a sensation something like what you feel when you suck your thumb as an infant — a kind of comfortable rhythmic activity, serving various purposes. But It would be felt as a mass of thumbs.
It would become a kind of gagging sensation. It involves a unique kind of physical openness — not associated with the normal operating of the throat and the mouth, even in the case of an infant.
It was an openness beyond the usual — allowing that intrusive gagging sensation. And the gagging sensation in the throat preceded the course of the Descent of My Divine Spirit-Current down into the heart and the abdomen and the bodily base.
As an infant and, thereafter, as a young child, I fully allowed the "Thumbs"-Descent of My Divine Spirit-Current (down to the bodily base, and into the subsequent full Manifestation of the Samadhi, or full Realization, of the "Thumbs").
I recall that, as an adolescent boy, and on into My early adult years, that full allowance was, to one or another degree, limited by the patterns of ordinary life to which I had Submitted Myself.
Nevertheless, the Breakthrough of the "Bright"via the "Thumbs"did fully occur in spontaneous Great Moments — and I, eventually, was again able to consistently allow the spontaneous Divine Yoga of the "Thumbs"that is My Unique Avataric Birthright and Sign. (Thus, that consistent Yogic Capability was progressively restored during My young adult years, and, especially, as I began to do conscious Spiritual practice, in the time of My association with My first human Spiritual Teacher.)
– March 16, 1998
Avatar Adi Da describes the "Thumbs"as the feeling of being "Utterly (Love-Blissfully) 'Intoxicated'". Thus, when He (as a young adult) entered into His Sadhana with His Lineage-Gurus — Rudi, Swami Muktananda, Bhagavan Nityananda, and, at last, the Divine Goddess — He already Knew the feeling of His Own Spiritual Infusion of the body-mind. Therefore, everything He experienced in the company of His Lineage-Gurus was tacitly measured against His direct experiential Knowledge (since Birth) of His Own Esoteric Spiritual Yoga.
He had undertaken an in-life "Consideration" of traditional esoteric Spirituality — even, at last, in relationship to the Divine Goddess Herself (who, for a time, Functioned, in subtle form, as His Spiritual Master). And that "Consideration" reached a definitive conclusion: No traditional form of Spirituality had the unique and all-Outshining Nature of His Own Spiritual Transmission of the "Thumbs". All of this He Knew, with perfect certainty, from His own direct experience.
