The Final Esoteric Secret

by Carolyn Lee, PhD

Avatar Adi Da's discovery of the "seven stages" paradigm was not a product of merely philosophical enquiry but a tacit clarity that arose during His youthful quest to recover the "Bright".

The tradition with which He was most directly associated during that time was that of Kundalini Yoga. His first Spiritual Master was Rudi (Swami Rudrananda), who worked in New York.

Later, in India, Avatar Adi Da's Gurus included some of the greatest Siddhas, or Master-Yogis and Spiritual Transmitters, of modern times — including Swami Muktananda, Rang Avadhoot, and Swami Nityananda (then deceased).

The principle of their teaching was the "Shakti" — the Spirit-Power transmitted from Master to devotee, which awakens the chakras (or esoteric energy-vortices in the spinal line) from base to crown.

While Adi Da Samraj freely experienced all the potential of Kundalini Yoga during His association with these Masters, He was never satisfied that the experiences and samadhis — no matter how dramatic or apparently profound — amounted to Ultimate Enlightenment.

Throughout His youth, in fact, He experienced breakthroughs of the "Bright" that established Him in a "radical" disposition relative to all the traditional forms of esoteric practice. Thus, He brought a unique intelligence to whatever arose to His experience.

After His Re-Awakening to the "Bright" in 1970, the esoteric anatomy underpinning His entire Spiritual adventure was obvious to Him, and was eventually systematically described by Him in terms of seven stages of life.

One of the most remarkable aspects of Avatar Adi Da's account of His quest to recover the "Bright" is His description of a previously unknown Yogic process that leads from fixation in the chakra system (exemplifying the fifth stage of life) into the causal dimension (associated with the sixth stage of life), and then into the Ultimate Yogic Form that characterizes the seventh stage of life.

The following passages, selected from The Knee Of Listening illustrate the developments in this process. The first passage — from Avatar Adi Da's recounting of His myriad experiences in the mode of Kundalini Yoga — describes a classic vision of the ascending process associated with the fifth stage of life.

This vision occurred while Adi Da Samraj was on retreat in Swami Muktananda's company in Mumbai in 1969.

I saw the muladhar appear below me as a Siva-lingam. Then I appeared below, my hands tied to the lingam in a gesture of prayer, pointing above.

I rose up with the lingam into the sahasrar and experienced the perfect, Infinite, Unmoved Sat-Chit-Ananda — the Pure Existence-Consciousness-Bliss of the Indian Godhead, my own Ultimate Self-Nature as the Divine Being of all the world's scriptures.

The next passage describes an event in February 1970, when Adi Da was living a reclusive life in an apartment in New York:

For several nights, I was awakened again and again with sharp lateral pains in my head. They felt like deep incisions in my skull and brain, as if I were undergoing a surgical operation.

During the day following the last of these experiences, I realized a marvelous relief. I saw that what appeared as the sahasrar (the terminal chakra and primary lotus in the crown of the head) had been severed. The sahasrar had fallen off like a blossom.

The Shakti — Which had previously appeared as a polarized Energy that moved up and down through the various chakras (or functional centers), producing various effects — was now released from the chakra form. There was no more polarized Force. Indeed, there was no structure whatsoever — no up or down, no chakras. . . .

Previously, all the universes seemed built and dependent upon that foundation structure of descending and ascending Energy — such that the nature and value of any given experience was determined by the level of the chakra in which the humanly-born conscious awareness was functioning. . . .

But now I saw that Reality (and Real Consciousness) was not in the least determined by any form apart from Itself. Consciousness had shown Its inherent Freedom and Priority in relation to the chakra form.

It had shown Itself to be senior to that entire structure, Prior to every kind of manifestation or modification of cosmic Energy (or Shakti).

From the "point of view" of the stages of life, Adi Da Samraj was now passing through a process associated with the sixth stage of life.

But the esoteric anatomy behind this profound spontaneous shift into the Consciousness dimension prior to Energy became fully clear to Him only after His Re-Awakening to the "Bright" seven months later (in September, 1970).

Soon after that great Event (described in detail in The Knee Of Listening), He wrote:

I realized that, in the context of natural appearances, I am Communicated through a specific center in the body.

Relative to the body, I appear to reside in the heart — but to the right side of the chest. I press upon a point approximately two inches to the right of the center of the chest.

This is the seat of Reality and Real Consciousness.

Around this time, Adi Da Samraj began to recollect, and further investigate, sayings of Ramana Maharshi in which Ramana Maharshi indicates that the doorway to the Transcendental Self in the human being is located at a psycho-physical locus in the right side of the chest.

The traditions of Transcendental Realization (notably Advaita Vedanta and classical Buddhism) do not, in general, associate Realization with any psycho-physical locus — perhaps because the entire effort of the sixth-stage Realizer is to ignore psycho-physical experience and to dwell in the "cave" of Consciousness alone.

Thus, the association between the causal dimension and the right side of the heart has scarcely been acknowledged in the Great Tradition.

In January 1971, in Los Angeles, the nature of Avatar Adi Da's unique Yogic process was fully clarified. He had a revelatory experience of the "design" (or form) of the "Bright" as It manifests in the context of the body-mind.

He later identified this form as the "Amrita Nadi", or "nerve of immortal bliss", alluded to in a few traditional sources (including remarks of Ramana Maharshi), but without any evidence of an experiential awareness of its real structure. Adi Da Samraj writes in The Knee Of Listening:

That morning (as I sat in meditation with two of my devotees), my body suddenly jolted and twisted strongly on its spinal axis as the "Bright" Divine Spirit-Current moved up from my heart, via the right side, to the crown of my head, and above — even into the most ascended Matrix of the "Bright" Divine Spirit-Power, infinitely above the body and the cosmic domain.

In the instant of that ascent, there was a loud cracking sound (also heard by the others in the room), as if my neck had been broken.

And, in that instant in which the Amrita Nadi showed Its "regenerated" Form in me, I (as had no one else before me) directly observed Its Shape.

It is an S-Shaped Form, beginning in the right side of the heart (but including the entire heart region), then ascending in a curve along the front side of the upper chest, then passing backwards (through the throat), then curving upwards again (but via the back of the skull), finally curving toward the crown of the head (and, from thence, to the Matrix of Light infinitely above the crown of the head).

Therefore, it is this Ultimate (or truly "regenerated") Form (or Most Ultimate Realization) of the Amrita Nadi — this "regenerated" Circuit and Current of Spiritual Love-Bliss, Which passes in an S-Shaped double-curve, front to back, from the heart (on the right side) to the crown of the head and to the Matrix of Light infinitely above the crown of the head — that I declare to be the perfect Form, the Form of Truth, the Form of Reality, the Form of the Heart.

I call that "regenerated" Form (experienced in the living context of the total body-mind) "the 'Bright'".

Even from birth, I have Known the "Bright". It has, ever since my birth, been the guiding and revealing foundation of my life.

And the "Bright" (in Its Totality) is the most ultimate Realization and revelation of my "Brightly"-born life.

Next: No "Argument" Between Consciousness and Energy