April 12, 2000

For human beings, death Is A Proposition and A Puzzle That Must Be Understood and Transcended. . . . There Is No Peace For human beings Until This Matter Is Resolved.
—Avatar Adi Da Samraj
Eleutherios

As human beings, we find ourselves in a dilemma about death. We think about it, are troubled by it, but we cannot, with the conscious mind, reach to what is beyond this life. We cannot comprehend the structure of Reality within which this present body–mind appears and disappears. Avatar Adi Da Samraj has full Knowledge of that Reality. He has described and illustrated in His Scriptural Texts the "Cosmic Mandala"—the great hierarchical structure of cosmic lights within which the conditional worlds arise.

But He has not only described all of this. By virtue of a most profound Yogic Event that occurred on Lopez Island, Washington State, on April 12, 2000, Avatar Adi Da Samraj has experienced in His Avataric human Form literally everything that exists. His human Body has Endured and "Seen" the entire death–process and all the after–death states and has Entered into What Is, Beyond all of that. Thus, He is Alive in total Bodily Knowledge of (and Compassion for) the predicament of conditional beings, for whom death is the great fear, and the fundamental context of existence.

The great Event at Lopez Island was preceded, in 1999, by a period of intense Penance, engaged by Avatar Adi Da for the sake of the world. From March until June 1999, Avatar Adi Da Samraj lived in seclusion on His Island Hermitage, Naitauba (Fiji), entirely focused in Spiritual Blessing of the world.

Day after day during those months, lightning blasted the sky and thunder shook the island like cracks and volleys of rocket fire. The storms were supernatural in their elemental force and intense, oppressive energy–field. To live on Naitauba at that time was to live on a cosmic battlefield. Avatar Adi Da Samraj was Working with negative forces greater than this world. He was engaged in a Divine Yoga of transforming these forces above and beyond His Body.

After several months, something had irrevocably changed in the Divine Avatar’s relationship to the body and the physical world. The Energy Flows of His human Body were now concentrated upward. A reversal of His Yoga of Descent, completed in 1986, was starting to occur. And this, as He explained, was inevitable and necessary. He had identified "to the toes" with the human plight, but now He was concentrated in another process—His Work of Spiritually Blessing all beings—in this gross world, and all the subtle planes of existence. Because of the intensity of the forces to be confronted in the course of this Divine Work, Avatar Adi Da Samraj could not allow these forces to come down into His bodily Vehicle. His human body could not accommodate, or survive, such an intrusion. And so a Yogic re–structuring was occurring in Him. More and more, His Energy and Awareness were Up, rather than Down.

On April 12, 2000, shortly after the Ruchira Avatar, Adi Da, arrived on Lopez Island, an extreme Crisis occurred in the process of this Yoga.

During preceding days, Avatar Adi Da Samraj had been physically weak to the point where He would sometimes have to be supported while walking, or wheeled in a wheel chair. It was clear to the renunciate devotees attending Him (the members of the Ruchira Sannyasin Order) that the Divine Avatar was having difficulty staying in the body. On the journey by ferry to Lopez Island, His symptoms became alarming. Then, within a couple of hours of His arrival at a devotee’s house on Lopez Island, Avatar Adi Da Samraj was so ill that He had to be carried to His bed. He was fighting to maintain His connection to the physical.

Avatar Adi Da Samraj was laid out on an easy chair with His close devotees at His side. They were massaging Him with all their strength, weeping, and speaking to Him with great passion and intention, calling Him down into the Body. Focusing on the faces of His devotees seemed to integrate Him back into the Body. His eyes also were flowing with tears, and His Hands and Feet were cold and numb. He felt great pressure on His Chest and a difficulty breathing. Both of His arms and hands continuously would cramp up and convulse.

After His physician arrived, Avatar Adi Da Samraj was moved onto the bed. At first, He was lying down on the bed, but then He was raised into a sitting position to try and reduce the extreme symptoms of leaving the body. He said that it would be useful for Him to see His Feet—as a way of locating Himself in the physical. To the degree that He could speak, Avatar Adi Da Samraj would keep reminding His devotees to warm the extremities of His Body. He said, ”If I close My eyes, I am going to be in My Room, not your room. You don’t know what My Room is like. You have got to bring Me down into the Body.”

At one point, after the Divine Avatar’s eyes had been closed for a while, He opened them slightly and softly said, “I am here. Can you see Me Up Here?” His devotees said “yes”. It was true. His Light was dissolving the room. He was way up and beyond the apparent “here” where they were. At the point where He seemed most Ascended, His Face took on an expression of the purest Bliss.

The struggle of Avatar Adi Da Samraj to remain associated with the body went on for hours. At one point, an ambulance came and took Him to the clinic on the island, where the doctors were able to confirm that He was not suffering from a heart attack, or any ordinary disease. The process occurring in Avatar Adi Da Samraj was supernormal, and only explicable in the most profound Yogic terms.

In the days and months following the event, the Divine Avatar spoke of what had happened from His “Point of View”. In His description, He refers to unique esoteric profundities. He is speaking of His direct Entry into the "Bright" Itself (the "Midnight Sun"), which is infinitely beyond the body and the spheres of colored lights that make up the Cosmic Mandala. And He refers to the primal Sound, which, He has Revealed, may be heard in the death process. But this was not a “near–death” experience. It was a Yogic death to the degree of Utter Radiance—the “Outshining” of all conditional forms in the “Bright”.

Initially, in the Event of Sudden Up–Turning (into the “Midnight Sun”), there was a rapid series of “falling–away” phenomena. There was the tingling and fainting of the Body. Then, immediately, I Experienced the Primal Central Sound–Current, Which became very loud, and upwardly concentrated—Drawing the Central Current In and Up, Above and Beyond body and mind. That was the first Sign to Me that I was being Drawn Out of physical Incarnation.

Farthest Up in the Core of Sound–Vibration, I Saw a “Bright” White Tunnel, with empty niches along the sides. There were no “people in white”. There were no distinct forms or personalities—because no mind of Me was active there. Then the “Midnight Sun” of the Divine “Bright” Spherical Self–Domain. At first, Seen—then, Perfectly Become.

Effectively, it was death—in terms of the Body. There was no bodily awareness, although it was certainly not a circumstance of unconsciousness. It was the Infinitely Profound Samadhi of Outshining.

—Avatar Adi Da Samraj
The Knee Of Listening

In His return to the body, the Ruchira Avatar, Adi Da, clearly saw the totality of the conditional realms. As He Stood in the “Bright”, He saw it all emerging to His View. And He spontaneously began to re–integrate with the body.

The Divine Avatar was first drawn to the blue level of vibration (the most rarified light of the Cosmic Mandala) and then to the red–yellow glow of the grosser dimension.

Eventually, I Re–Emerged from the “Midnight Sun” of My Divine Spiritual White Self–“Brightness”—and so, in due course, there was a peripheral re–organization of (or Re–Association with) My gross Bodily conditions. In the Process of Re–Association, there was, at first. . . . a “bindu” (or sphere) of blue, to the left. And another “bindu”, of yellow and deep red, to the right. The “bindu” of yellow and red located Me back in this world, which is the yellow–red realm of the Cosmic Mandala.

As I Merged with the yellow–red sphere, I became aware that I was Re–Associating with the physical—rather than feeling the strong movement Up and Out, which (if it had continued) would have culminated in the death of My human Vehicle. The Struggle of Re–Integration with the physical manifested, in part, as convulsions in the Body. The “Bright” Spiritual Light–Current of My Being was Re–Connecting with the physical level, and that Process caused Bodily convulsions.

In that Process, the Body had a quality of being greatly stretched, or elongated. My legs seemed to be very, very long, and those who were standing or sitting by My Feet seemed to be quite a distance away from Me. It was a moment of non–ordinary awareness of physicality—of the pervasive yellow–red light, of the gross world consumed in flames, of the Body greatly stretched out. Eventually, there was a kind of “collapse” back into the ordinarily perceived shape and context of the physical, and then a “return” to so–called “normal” (or “natural”) awareness of the room and the people in it.

The Lopez Island Event was similar to the Initiatory Event of My Avataric Divine Self–“Emergence” (on January 11, 1986), in terms of the Depth of Spiritual and Yogic Profundity. As in 1986, I had been (in the Lopez Island Event) at the point of Relinquishing the Body entirely—but, through My own Persistent Impulse and Felt Movement of Sympathetic (or Compassionate) Love for beings, I was able to Yogically Re–Engage the Body.

However, those two Events were also, in some sense, “opposite” in their Yogic significance. In the Event of 1986, I Completed My Descent into the conditional realms, My Avataric Submission to here, Which began at My Birth. The Lopez Island Event, in contrast, was My Direct Ascent, to the Primal “Bright” Spiritual Self–Condition of Conscious Light.

I Am now, even in bodily (human) Form, presently Alive at the White Core of the Cosmic Mandala, the Doorway to the Spiritually “Bright” Divine Sphere and Self–Domain. In the Lopez Island Event, I Passed Beyond—in That “Bright” Doorway. My Thus Transfigured Body remains—but only on the Unique Basis of Direct Spiritual Illumination, and always tentatively Given to live, perpetually Wounded by the Self–Evident “Bright” Spiritual Transparency of all the heart–breaking companionship of mortal beings.

I Stand At the Threshold.

Now, and forever hereafter, I Stand There.

I Remain in this world Bodily, for now—but I Am Always Already on the “Other Side”.

—Avatar Adi Da Samraj
The Knee Of Listening

Ruchiradama Quandra Sukhapur Rani, one of the Divine Avatar’s sannyasin (renunciate) devotees, who was at His side during the Lopez Island Event, describes the significance of the Lopez Event in the Yogic Process of His Divine Life:

RUCHIRADAMA QUANDRA SUKHAPUR RANI: For six weeks after the Lopez Island Event, Beloved Adi Da was unable to walk, and He was physically very weak for months. He was Shattered by His Experience—at the physical level, and also by the Process of Integrating what had occurred Spiritually. That Process was unspeakable, and has continued to unfold.

The Lopez Island Event was the Culmination of a lifelong Yogic Process. In His early years, Beloved Adi Da Samraj Endured a series of Yogic Deaths—moments when it seemed that He would permanently lose His bodily Vehicle, because of the intensity of the Spiritual Process occurring in Him. He has even Spoken of His entire Life as a series of Yogic Deaths.

In My Childhood, and throughout My Avataric physical human Lifetime, I have been associated with Events of Profound Yogic Transformation, Which have resulted in the change of psycho–physical patterns within This Body–Mind. There have been many Yogic Deaths and other profound Yogic Events, all associated with the Profundities of My Avataric “Bright” Divine Spiritual Self–Revelation. . . .

Every time one of these Transformative Events occurred, the mechanism of This Body–Mind changed. The entire Process of My Life is My concrete, unambiguous Avataric Self–Revelation (and Lifelong psycho–physical Experience) of the Divine Spiritual “Brightness”—the One and Only and Self–Evidently Divine Conscious Light of Reality Itself.

—Avatar Adi Da Samraj
The Knee Of Listening

RUCHIRADAMA QUANDRA SUKHAPUR RANI: Early in 2001, my Beloved Guru Spoke several times about Ramana Maharshi’s experience of Yogic Death—the occasion during Ramana Maharshi’s youth when the sudden fear of death overwhelmed him.

AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Ramana Maharshi had a profound experience of Yogic Death. It was not merely a matter of Him lying down, closing His eyes, pursing His lips, and acting like a corpse. Something real happened. Somebody died.

Instead of allowing the body to withdraw into a state of fear, He just let all the death happen. In His case, there were no visions, no gross or subtle phenomena. Rather, it was a process that cut through the causal root.

But it just happened—spontaneously. It was already patterned in the body–mind. The anxiety attack and the ego–death were part of the syndrome. He participated in it entirely as a spontaneous event, and the great significance of that event became self–evident in Him. And such a Yogic Death is a permanent condition. It is just so.

The true process of Yogic Death is the result of psycho–physical changes that affect the gross, subtle, and causal levels of the being—manifesting differently in each individual case. There is no Knowledge (or Jnana) superior to such Yogic Death. It is a permanently transformative event. It changes the psycho–physical pattern or the connection to that pattern.

The phenomenon of Yogic Death is a profound Yogic Samadhi. In My Case, this has been so since Birth. The Lopez Island Event went as far as such Yogic Death can go and still allow a “return” to physical existence. But, even with My “Return”, there is no loss of the Awareness characteristic of that Event. [February 8, 2001]

RUCHIRADAMA QUANDRA SUKHAPUR RANI: The human eyes of Beloved Adi Da are now constantly Seeing the All–Outshining Divine “Brightness”, and the entire structure of cosmic existence is in His Constant Regard. He Sees the Mandala of lights now from the Divine Position—from the inside out, not the outside in. By virtue of this, He is Spiritually Touching every one, and He Is every one Perfectly.

In the Lopez Island Event, the Divine Avatar, Adi Da, returned not only to the physical body, He returned to the Yogic State of His Birth. Now, as in His Infancy, He Radiates Down into His human Body only to the level of the brows, only to the degree necessary to maintain bodily life. All His Work below the brows, His Work of Submission to “Learn Man” and to “Teach Man”, has been done. He has sealed that Work in His Divine Scripture, the 23 “Source–Texts” of Adidam, which enshrine everything that He has Taught and Revealed to human beings. Now He makes Images—exquisite visual “Essays” that Reveal the “Bright” in their own manner. Avatar Adi Da Samraj lives simply, as a Renunciate and Hermit, with the members of the Ruchira Sannyasin Order. He relates to everything in His Domain with profound attention and care, and utter dispassion. He is bound to no thing. He withdraws from no one. He Calls all to a direct devotional and Spiritual relationship to Him.