Developmental Stages

Listening, Hearing, Seeing, and the "Perfect Practice"

As a process, the Way of Adidam develops through four distinct stages: listening, hearing, seeing, and the "Perfect Practice". This is a process of increasing freedom and literal En–Light–enment, based on the growing process of the devotional and Spiritual relationship with Avatar Adi Da Samraj. These stages are not goals to be attained. They are simply the unfolding signs of a life lived as always present–time Communion with Avatar Adi Da.

Listening

This is the process of attending, or listening, to Avatar Adi Da’s Teaching Argument about the nature of your activity of self–contraction. It includes the devotee’s original adaptation to the fundamental practice of Ruchira Avatara Bhakti Yoga, the supportive life–disciplines, and the responsive practices of the "conscious process" and "conductivity". Upon receiving Avatar Adi Da’s direct Spiritual Initiation into Searchless Beholding of Him, your practice of listening becomes greatly intensified and concentrated. Now you are Spiritually Awakened, sensitized to Spiritual Communion with Avatar Adi Da. You have now been Initiated into a relationship with Avatar Adi Da that is both devotional and Spiritual, and are now part of the "culture of access"—coming on retreat in Avatar Adi Da’s physical Company as often as possible, to surrender yourself in devotion to Him, and receive His Spiritual Blessing.

Now your awareness of your own habitual act of self–contraction becomes magnified. You spontaneously observe yourself in every moment that you are turning away from the natural condition of relationship and Communion with Avatar Adi Da. In every moment that you turn away from the natural condition of relationship and Communion with Him, you spontaneously observe yourself doing this. Then you naturally turn, again, to what Avatar Adi Da calls "unqualified relatedness"—with Him, and with everyone and everything.

Hearing

As this listening process unfolds by the Grace of the devotional and Spiritual relationship with Avatar Adi Da, a profound crisis in conscious awareness is provoked. You come to the point of understanding that the self–contraction is the fundamental activity that is the sense of separate self. You directly hear Avatar Adi Da’s Argument for yourself. What was previously an uninspected automaticity in you now becomes a matter of conscious responsibility. The self–contraction itself is seen to be unnecessary, and you are able to consistently relinquish that activity and the effort of struggle against it. You are awakened to a capability for love and free feeling in every kind of circumstance, and you discover that no circumstance in your life is an impediment to Communion with Avatar Adi Da.

Seeing

Persisting in the demonstration of hearing, a Spiritual conversion occurs. You have already been Awakened by Avatar Adi Da into the Spiritual dimension of Reality, in the listening stage. Now another Spiritually Initiatory retreat in Avatar Adi Da’s physical Company occurs, in which He Awakens you to the Spiritual capacity He calls "seeing". With the advent of seeing, you become fully technically responsible for receiving His Spirit–Force in every moment. It becomes obvious, in your living experience that everything arising, including your own body–mind, is arising in a field of Spirit–Energy, Avatar Adi Da’s Spiritual "Brightness". His Spiritual Presence is experienced with the same degree of clarity as His bodily (human) Form (although feeling–Contemplation of His bodily human Form always remains the devotional foundation of the practice, even once you have become profoundly sensitive to His Spiritual Presence). With seeing comes the spontaneous awakening of deep, Spiritually responsive love.

Now the Spiritual relationship with Avatar Adi Da deepens, and your body–mind becomes more and more sublimed by His Spirit–Baptism. You experience Avatar Adi Da’s Spiritual Transmission in the unique form that He describes as the "Samadhi of the ‘Thumbs’", and, through this process of devotional and Spiritual Communion with Him, you are gracefully grown entirely beyond identification with the body–mind.

The "Perfect Practice"

Once again, when the signs of right preparation are present, you go on retreat in Avatar Adi Da’s physical Company, to surrender yourself to Him in loving devotion. Now He Awakens you as the Witness–Consciousness that stands prior to body, mind, and world, and even the act of attention itself. This Awakening to the Witness–Consciousness marks the beginning of the "Perfect Practice".

Once you are Spiritually Initiated by Avatar Adi Da into the "Perfect Practice", you are free of identification with body and mind. Thus, the "Perfect Practice" is the devotional and Spiritual relationship to Avatar Adi Da lived in the context of Consciousness Itself.

The "Perfect Practice" progresses through three consecutive stages epitomized by Avatar Adi Da’s three Admonitions: Be Consciousness (Itself), Contemplate Consciousness (Itself), and Transcend everything in Consciousness (Itself). It is important to understand, however, that this practice in the "realm" of Consciousness Itself is not a mental or philosophical exercise, not a form of "mind Dharma". Rather, the "Perfect Practice" of the Way of Adidam takes place entirely within the context of the devotional and Spiritual relationship with Avatar Adi Da, and on the basis of reception of His Ruchira Shaktipat, His Spiritual Transmission of the "Bright" Itself.

At last, Avatar Adi Da’s devotee is Spiritually Initiated by Him into the third stage of the "Perfect Practice", corresponding to the Admonition "Transcend everything In Consciousness (Itself)". This is most perfect (and eternal) Divine Communion with Avatar Adi Da Samraj, most perfect Awakening to His Divine Conscious Light, most perfect Divine Self–Realization.