The Asana (or psycho-physical Attitude) of Spiritual Communion with Avatar Adi Da Samraj: "Upwardly Open and Downwardly Receptive"
from the Introduction by Jonathan Condit, Ph.D.
A fundamental communication in Hridaya Rosary is Avatar Adi Da's description of how His rightly prepared devotee becomes capable of receiving and conducting His Spiritual Transmission.
This capability is not a matter of doing something, but simply of maintaining a certain attitude (or asana) of the body-mind. And, indeed, that "asana" is the natural and spontaneous response of the body-mind to the Infusion of His Spiritual Gifts.
Avatar Adi Da calls this psycho-physical attitude "Samraj Asana" — the asana (or attitude, or total psycho-physical "posture") of receptivity to His Spiritual Transmission that spontaneously occurs when the devotee truly Beholds Him as the Universal Divine Lord (or Samraj).
"Samraj Asana" works in both directions: It is Upwardly open to Avatar Adi Da Samraj, open to receive His Spiritual Descent from Infinitely Above, and (at the same time) It is downwardly receptive, allowing that Spiritual Infusion to Pervade the entire body-mind (thereby Purifying and Transforming it):
"Samraj Asana" is characterized by opening Upward to Me and being in-Filled by Me....
"Samraj Asana" must be an open and Up turned gesture of the entire body mind-down to the bodily base, down to the toes. Then, when you are self-surrendered to Me, there is Spiritual in Filling by Me, Spiritual reception of Me....
Once the practice of "Samraj Asana" is Spiritually Initiated (and, Thus and Thereby, begun) by Me, the psycho-physical gesture of the entire body-mind must (spontaneously, and progressively) change from down-turned to Up-turned.
[Hridaya Rosary, p. 226]
Avatar Adi Da's Unique Divine Gift of the "Thumbs": The Spiritual Means for Transcending Identification with the body-mind
Hridaya Rosary is about the process of constantly magnifying "Samraj Asana" — and, thereby, magnifying one's Spiritual receptivity to Avatar Adi Da-to the point that the entire body-mind is utterly Infused by His Spirit-Baptism, with nothing "left over".
The culmination of that process is the full Samadhi of the "Thumbs" — the Means by Which Avatar Adi Da Spiritually Carries His devotee beyond the confines of identification with body and mind, into the Domain of Consciousness Itself. It is only in that Domain that what He calls the "Perfect Practice" of the Way of Adidam can be engaged.
In Sutra 45 of The Dawn Horse Testament (included in Hridaya Rosary as "The 'Thumbs' Is The Fundamental Sign Of The Avataric Crashing-Down Of My Divine Person"), Avatar Adi Da describes the full Samadhi of the "Thumbs":
[In The Samadhi Of The "Thumbs"], My Descending Spiritual Fullness Will Completely Overwhelm the ordinary frontal (or Natural human) sense Of bodily Existence...
This Yogic Event Will Occur With Such Force That You Will Feel Utterly (Love-Blissfully) "Intoxicated" — and There Will Be The Feeling That the body Is Somehow Rotating Forward and Down (From The Crown Of the head), As Well As Backward and Up (From the base of the spine).
This Rotation Will Seem, Suddenly, To Complete Itself — and The Experience Will, Suddenly, Be One Of Feeling Released From the gross physical body, Such That You Feel You Are Present Only As An egoless "Energy Body" (Previously Associated With and Conformed To the gross physical body-but Now, By Means Of My Avatarically Self-Transmitted Divine Spiritual Grace, Infused By and Conformed To My Avatarically Self-Transmitted Divine Body Of Self-Evidently Divine Spirit-Energy).
You Will Feel This "Energy Body" To Be Spherical In Shape — Centerless (Empty, or Void, Of Center, mind, and Familiar ego-self) and Boundless (As If Even bodiless, or Without form), Although (Somehow, and Partially) Also Yet Associated With (While Rotating From and Beyond) Your ordinary psycho-physical form.
The ordinary References Of the body-mind and the environment Will, In This Divine Yogic Event, Not Make Much Sense (or, In Any Manner, Affect This Experience Of The "Thumbs") — Although There May Be Some Superficial (and Entirely Non-limiting) Awareness Of the body, the room, and so forth.
In a Talk Given in 1998, Avatar Adi Da spoke ecstatically of the process by which His Spiritual Infusion — Manifesting first as "Samraj Asana", and then as the "Thumbs" — is the Great Mover in the process of Divine Self-Realization:
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: The Domain that must be entered, in the course of the sadhana in My Avataric Divine Company, is the Domain of Consciousness Itself.
That entrance into the Domain of Consciousness Itself is built upon the magnification of your own conscious existence, moment to moment-from the beginning of the sadhana of the Way of Adidam. In the course of that sadhana, the body-mind becomes the Asana that honors Consciousness Itself — "Samraj Asana".
When the "vessel" of the body-mind is utterly Upwardly open in "Samraj Asana", My Divine Avataric Spiritual Crashing-Down Causes the rotation that becomes the full Realization of the "Thumbs".
Your complete Upward openness to Me, your complete Spiritual receptivity to Me, Your ego-forgetting Spiritual Communion with Me is what enables this rotation to occur — which then becomes the awareness of the Sphere of the "Thumbs", transcending the usual shape of the body-mind.
When the "Thumbs" is fully allowed and the Sphere of Consciousness is Thereby firmly Enforced, That Sphere Is Radiant, Expansive to Infinity. And if — in this Conscious, Free Disposition — there is an awareness of the human (bodily) form, just a tacit awareness of it, it is always found to be persisting in "Samraj Asana".
All the while of the "Thumbs", there is this "Bright" Spiritual Sphere.
You see what the Shape of It is like — a Sphere from head to toe, from head to base, from all above to all below. It Is the Self-Existing and Self-Radiant Sphere of Consciousness Itself.
That Sphere Is the "Bright", Shown in the context of bodily existence. That Sphere Is — in Itself, or in Its Own and Ultimate Domain — Always Already the Case. And, yet, in the ego's estimation, That Sphere is always reduced to the locality and limitation of the separate and mortal self.
The structure of body-mind must be made devotee to Me, established in "Samraj Asana". By Means of My Spiritual in-Filling, My Magnification of My Avatarically Self-Transmitted Divine Spirit-Current within your body-mind, the "Bright" Spiritual Truth of the Consciousness-Position is Realized.
The Force of Consciousness Itself, the Force of Being Itself, must Demonstrate Its Priority, Its hierarchical Seniority — through real tangible experience, through the real ego-transcending Spiritual process.
This is why sadhana is inevitably an ordeal. Sadhana is not merely a matter of dealing with patterns. Consciousness Itself must Realize Its Own Nature and Condition, in the context of the ordeal of the transcending of conditions.
There is Grace and Help for this — but That Divine Grace (or Help) is Given, by Me, in the context of an ordeal. There is a transformative process that you must go through — a process relative to the consciousness-dimension of your existence, your fundamental conscious awareness of yourself as existing.
The "Thumbs" is the restoration of right form.
There must be this Spiritual Infusion. I must Invade the body-mind in the course of your real practice, such that meditation, or any moment of profound exercise, is profoundly Full, Love-Bliss-Full, and shows itself to be the Primary Condition and Zone of a born life.
