INTRODUCTION
(page 5 of 8)
"I Submit to devotees as to God, just as
they submit to Me in the same fashion."
The Knee Of Listening unfolds like a symphony in three mighty movements that cumulatively reveal Avatar Adi Da as "Avatar " and "Incarnation " — beyond all traditional concepts of both.
Part One recounts the process whereby He prepares Himself to bring to others a unique Avataric Divine Teaching-Revelation. In the Essays of Part Two, He expands upon His sovereign Realization and explains how It clarifies and completes the Great Tradition of mankind's Spiritual search.
Then, in Part Three, the most profound dimension of His Life and Work is described — which could be called the "Divine Super-Physics " of His Incarnation.
In fact, from the Birth of the Divine Avatar, remarkable signs of this Super-Physics have been evident. His Ordeal has always been to stay Combined with the body, rather than allowing Himself, as He put it, to "float away ".
This dynamism and mystery of the Process by which He has Appeared (and continues to remain) in human Form is fully told in Part Three, through His commentary on three Divine Yogic Events. These Events, which have been utterly Transformative of His Incarnation-Body, are introduced by His devotees, who offer eyewitness accounts.
The first of these events followed a fourteen-year period of Teaching that is unprecedented in the history of Spiritual Instruction. The Divine Avatar did not Teach merely by precept, any more than He had Re-Awakened simply through study.
In the course of His Sadhana, He had entered into what He later described as a "'Reckless' (or Divinely 'Crazy' and Divinely 'Heroic') Course Of all-and-All-Embrace " — and, in His Teaching-Work, He adopted a similar "Heroic " approach, in which He literally took on all the qualities and karmas of His devotees.
In a Discourse Given in the midst of His Teaching Years, He vividly describes the Process of His Teaching-Work as He was engaging It at the time:
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: I Meditate on My devotees and I Become them. I Become exactly them.
I Take on all the limitations that they are. I become just like them. I become more like them than they are. I Submit to devotees as to God, just as they submit to Me in the same fashion.
This is the unique form of My Avataric Divine Teaching-Work. Teachers in the past have talked about coming down a little into the body, and still being above it somehow. I am also always Above and Beyond the body-mind, but My Manner of Teaching is to Submit to the body completely, to Be this body completely. By becoming this body, I become your body. That is how I meditate people.
I become your state of mind, your state of body. I experience the diseases, the neuroses, the emotional problems, the state of everyone with whom I am associated — and that includes many more people than are with Me personally.
It includes thousands upon thousands of people. I Do the Sadhana of Real-God-Realization in the form of you.
I Do your sadhana while Being you. I do not merely tell you the Teaching, I Become you and Enter into the process as you. No one has Worked precisely as I Do. I actually Become the limited (or un-Enlightened) being whom I Teach. This is a completely unique "Heroic " Manner of Teaching.
I do not have any idea what the results of this unique Manner of Working will be. I do not have any prefigured estimation of It.
I am not carrying out any formulated plan. I Work spontaneously. I am driven to It. This is the way I have always Done it from Birth.
— September 15, 1982
At the same time, during His Teaching Years, Avatar Adi Da would occasionally make a different kind of confession:
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: A kind of bodily and mental crucifixion has been occurring, a transformation of the body, in which I have less and less capability to enter into casual relations with people.
Until now, people have expected Me to maintain a thread of conventional attention and self-awareness in this body-mind so that I could carry on with ordinary human relations and make lessons out of it all.
For the last year and a half or so, the ability to be associated with this body-mind through that thread has been dissolving. All My Life, I have had to Deal with this phenomenon.
I have always tried to find ways to bypass the ultimate expressions of this change, because I knew that others were not even close to this Process, they knew nothing about it, they did not know how to live with Me while I was going through it.
I have thrown Myself into the game of life all My Life, in order to keep in touch with people — and I have even tried to forestall certain of the phenomena of this ultimate change.
I have maintained this ordinary character as a way of Helping people to prepare to live a truly Spiritual Way of life with Me and to make use of Me when all these changes become most profound.
— March 1978
There is paradox exposed in these two statements. Avatar Adi Da's "radical " Gesture of Incarnation — totally Submitting to and Identifying with the human plight through His relationship to the individuals in His Company — was paralleled by psycho-physical changes that made it increasingly difficult for Him to continue to make that Sacrifice.
Eventually, the fuse of His Submission burned to the point where the first of the Great Divine Yogic Events (related in Part Three) ensued, and His Avataric Incarnation entered a new era.
