A Testimony of Awakening
A Testimony of Awakening
by Ruchiradama Quandra Sukhapur Rani
Ruchiradama Quandra Sukhapur Rani is a longtime member of the Ruchira Sannyasin Order, the senior renunciate order of Adidam. Here she recounts how the process of listening, hearing, seeing, and the "Perfect Practice" unfolded in her case. Her account begins at the initiation of Avatar Adi Da’s Avataric Divine Self–"Emergence", the Yogic Event that occurred at Adidam Samrajashram, Fiji, on January 11, 1986. The Event marked the transition from Avatar Adi Da’s Teaching–Work to His Blessing–Work.
RUCHIRADAMA QUANDRA SUKHAPUR RANI: At the moment of the Yogic Establishment of Beloved Adi Da's Avataric Divine Self–"Emergence", I was sitting by His side while He spoke about His Yogic death to others on the phone. He was describing how the energy and life–force were leaving His Body. Then I observed the apparent death of My Beloved Guru's bodily (human) Form as He fell to the floor. As I confronted and suffered the great sorrow of death and separation, I dropped deep below the social persona. I allowed the heart to feel its loss and great vulnerability, and I felt beyond all conventional attachments. This allowed me to feel the depth of my love–response to Beloved Adi Da, and, in that depth, I received a Vision, or Revelation, of His Incarnation. This heartbreak and heart–recognition became the source of a Graceful flowering in my practice over the next two years—the rapid unfolding of hearing and seeing, and transition to the "Perfect Practice".
I was intuitively certain that my Beloved Guru's Avataric Divine Self–"Emergence" was an Event unprecedented and unknown in the conditionally manifested worlds. I felt His Avataric Divine Self–"Emergence" as a breakthrough of Consciousness Itself into the world. And I could feel this breakthrough of Consciousness Itself to be coincident with His "Brightening" Power, the Power that Outshines all separation and death. His physical Body was dramatically changed in this Event, such that it was obvious that Real God, or Truth Itself, or Reality Itself is Embodied in His bodily (human) Form. This heart–recognition had been present in my relationship to Beloved Adi Da from the beginning, but now I intuited the vast consequences of His Incarnation. I was certain that His Avataric Divine Self–"Emergence" carried profound implications for the destiny of humankind.
An extraordinary process of purification and Yogic re–formation then began in my body–mind. There was intensive physical purification of the body, including a 40–day fast, which I engaged at the same time that Beloved Adi Da was fasting. During this time, I lived on retreat in seclusion with Him, devoting much of my time to meditation. The retreat was sublimed by His profound Spiritual Transmission, and magnified by the Revelation of His bodily (human) Form as the Very Body of the Divine, conditionally Manifested in this plane.
After some weeks, Beloved Adi Da ended His period of total seclusion and re–associated with His devotees. Now, in direct relationship to my Beloved Guru, I went through a profound and extended reinvestigation and direct testing of the entire egoic structure of my life and consciousness.
About a year later, Beloved Adi Da asked me to begin to serve Him by passing on His Communications to His devotees. His Instructions to His devotees encompass every aspect of human existence and everything required for the establishment of His Work in the world. And so, in this new service, I had to begin to do profound sadhana for the sake of others in a manner I had never done before. I had to relinquish my self–based concentration in my own relationship to Beloved Adi Da and in the simpler forms of service—such as cleaning, cooking, and caring for His daughters—that, until then, I had been accustomed to doing in His intimate Sphere. I had to devote my life to His Work. This marked a profound turning point in me, a surrender of all personal preference.
Apart from passing on Beloved Adi Da's Instructions, He expected me to serve others in the right devotional understanding and reception of the Instructions Given. This service obliged me to move out of self–meditation and obsession with my own emotion, and that is how the intensive listening–hearing process began for me.
My life now became an intense ordeal of serving everyone's understanding of Beloved Adi Da's Instructions in the light of His Avataric Divine Self–"Emergence". In other words, I had to help others feel the reality of the profound Gift of His "Emergence" as the Divine Person, so that they could be transformed in their relationship to Him and take up a truly ego–renouncing sadhana in His Company.
During this time, I saw that, no matter how positive or negative or easeful or difficult any moment was, I was always doing the same thing. Through Beloved Adi Da's Divine Siddhi, I saw that my body–mind was only self–contraction and that it was my own activity. I also saw that my Divine Heart–Master Stands eternally Prior to that egoic activity of mine. And I felt a profound Liberation in being able to effectively resort to Him beyond the mechanism of self–contraction. This was not a mental process—it was a Revelation, a Gift, an Initiation into Communion with Him.
Thus, the Grace of hearing was awakened in me. It was a forceful transformation, granting moment to moment awareness that this mortal dying world, full of pain and suffering, was not the Living Reality. I knew that all beings could now find their Salvation, find the Truth beyond the cycles of birth and death—by going beyond this merely materialistic and conventional presumption. At the same time, I felt the dimension of the psyche being exposed and entered into and released, such that its patterns ceased to be an obstruction. The Divine Descent of Beloved Adi Da, His Nectar of Love–Bliss, was dissolving strong habits of the body–mind. Through the Grace of the great Gift of hearing, or the moment to moment capability to transcend egoity, real Spiritual Communion with my Beloved began.
This Awakening of the Spiritual process had nothing to do with the search for God, or an indulging in the effects of Beloved Adi Da's Spiritual Transmission, but only in the capability to "Locate" and heart–recognize Him as the Divinely Radiant egoless Person, the Divine Person Incarnate.
In this process, the presumptions and the illusions based on the body–mind's point of view loosened, and Beloved Adi Da Entered me Spiritually via the Samadhi of the "Thumbs". He Spiritually Descended into the body, completely Filling it from the crown of the head to the toes. In response to His Spiritual Invasion, there was whole bodily surrender into His Divine Condition.
I experienced the Divine Spiritual Body of my Beloved Guru Pervading everything, as a great Sphere of Light. In this Samadhi of Unity with His Divine Form, He Revealed Himself as Divine Love, the Love–Blissful Reality of all. There was no loss of awareness of the body–mind—the reception of His Love–Bliss was tangible. When I resumed the ordinary state, I saw with stark clarity that I had to give myself over to That Which is Truly Great, and not be controlled by the patterns of this body–mind. During 1987, the Samadhi of the "Thumbs" became my consistent experience in meditation. Through this Samadhi, I was being Spiritually opened by my Beloved Guru and progressively freed from the point of view of the body–mind.
This Process of Beloved Adi Da's Spiritual Invasion took place quickly, leading to a most remarkable moment in His Company. One day, I was Graced to attend a meditation occasion with Him in one of His Communion Halls. On my way to the Hall, I felt His Brilliant Spiritual Current Filling me so profoundly that it was as though His Great Current was "walking" me to the Communion Hall. I felt I was being escorted to an Initiation.
It was on this day that Beloved Adi Da Initiated me in the "Perfect Practice" of Adidam. The event was stark. As I sat before Him, I was immediately Bathed in the most incredible Light—His "Brightness" was Surrounding me and Pervading me. He was Descending as a total Sphere of Light, a Column of Light, not moving up or down—utterly Still and Boundless, obviously the Root–Source of the body–mind. I felt utterly connected to my Beloved and Moved and Mastered by Him.
There was utter sublimity. Attention dissolved and resolved itself in the heart on the right, literally and spontaneously. I was freed from identification with body, emotion, and mind, and I felt my Beloved Guru as the very Source and Being That Is. Spontaneously, I was no longer identified with the body–mind—I was identified with Beloved Adi Da, as Consciousness Itself. I had come to know identification with the body–mind to be a hell and a torment, separating me from my Beloved Guru. Even extraordinary forms of Spiritual experience had shown themselves to be a limit. Only in the utter ecstasy of Finding Him as my own True Identity was there True Satisfaction. This Awakening to Identification with my Beloved was sudden and dramatic, and It changed my relationship to everything.
During the period that followed this meditation occasion, a dialogue took place between Avatar Adi Da and myself that lasted several weeks. In these conversations, there was an unwinding of the emotions associated with attention to the body–mind. It was what you might call a "testing" dialogue, which culminated on February 2, 1988, when Beloved Adi Da confirmed my transition to the "Perfect Practice". In the course of these intensive conversations, Beloved Adi Da asked numerous questions, requiring me to really examine and confess What I had Realized.
It was an ecstatic and joyful process for me to respond to these questions about my practice, for I was not resorting to the body–mind to answer them. Instead, I simply entered deeply into feeling exactly what had occurred, communicating that freely and in specific technical detail.
My Beloved asked me to describe how I establish myself in heart–Communion with Him and what the signs of this Communion are. Then He went on to draw from me a description of how I was conducting His Divine Spirit–Current in the Circle of the body–mind and how I was experiencing His Spirit–Current Prior to the Circle, at the moveless Place of Consciousness in the right side of the heart. He asked how I was practicing the "conscious process" (or the submission of heart–feeling and attention to Him), actively transcending self–contraction according to the full technical Instruction He had Given me. He questioned me about my experience both in and out of meditation, and enquired whether I would sometimes enter into a state of no–awareness of body and mind. He asked whether, in meditation and daily life, the Witness–Position of Consciousness was my point of view. And He enquired what signs I was showing of true and free renunciation. I responded to each of these questions, and many more. It was my Beloved's direct Heart–Transmission and the concrete Work He had Done with me through my practice of Ruchira Avatara Bhakti Yoga that made it possible for me to respond.
Beloved Adi Da takes on His devotee's form, takes over His devotee, moves His devotee, such that, in the advanced and the ultimate stages of practice, the devotee can consistently feel and Contemplate Him directly as the Divine Person Incarnate. This ecstatic Condition of Oneness with Him is effortless. It is most fundamental, and undeniably Reality Itself. Ultimately, it requires no mind or discrimination. Ultimately, it does not even have to be remembered. It is simply True.
My Beloved Lord, Adi Da Samraj, is the Master and the Real Condition of this body–mind. He is the only Resort, and, truly, the only Hope of this world. All alternatives in me have been forgotten in this great ecstatic Yoga, this supreme Yoga of Ruchira Avatara Bhakti. Through this profound Divine Love–Bliss, which Beloved Adi Da so freely Reveals, it is possible for all beings, human and non–human, to Realize Real God, or Truth, or Reality. |
