SEVENTEEN COMPANIONS

Original Writings and Talks:

Spiritual Autobiography

Book Four:
The Knee Of Listening
The Divine Ordeal Of The Avataric Incarnation Of Conscious Light--The Spiritual Autobiography Of The Divine World-Teacher, Ruchira Avatar Adi Da Samraj

The Knee Of Listening is Avatar Adi Da's autobiographical account of the years from His Birth in 1939 to His Divine Re-Awakening in 1970. Thus, this book is the utterly extraordinary story of how the "Bright" Divine Reality took Birth as a human being, voluntarily relinquished His conscious awareness of His own "Brightness" (in order to discover the Way for others to Realize that "Brightness"), underwent an incredible "tour" of all the Spiritual potentials of human life (finding that none of them was completely satisfactory), and ultimately Re-Awakened to His own Divine State of "Brightness" (thereby Demonstrating most perfect Divine Enlightenment for the first time in human history).

In Part Two of The Knee Of Listening, Avatar Adi Da goes on to speak of His "History" before His Birth in 1939. Here He makes a series of remarkable Revelations about how He, the Divine Reality Itself, was able to take human Birth in the world, by Conjoining with the combined "Deeper-Personality Vehicle" of two great Indian Realizers, Swami Vivekananda and Ramakrishna.

Part Three relates the supremely Great Events that have occurred since His Divine Re-Awakening in 1970—a series of extraordinarily intense Yogic Crises which brought Him to the point of bodily death, but which became, in each case, a vast and unprecedentedly auspicious magnification of His Divine Spiritual Blessing-Power.

The Knee Of Listening is without a doubt the most profound spiritual autobiography of all time.

Roger Savoie, Ph.D.
philosopher, translator, and writer,
author, La Vipère et le Lion—
La Voie radicale de la Spiritualité

Read Excerpts:

My First Knowledge and Unfoldment of the "Bright"
The Mechanism of My Avataric Divine Incarnation
I Am Always Already on the "Other Side"

My earliest childhood (from birth), and not merely some later (or more adult) time, was the period of my first Knowledge and Unfoldment of the "Bright", Which I Knew to be the perfect Form (and the Source of the living condition) of Reality. And what is That exactly? This book is determined to Communicate It again and again in so many ways. But, on the level of my earliest recognition of It, It was the "ordinary" Condition of even my conscious awareness. It was Consciousness Itself, Radiant and Awake. It was my simple (human and Ultimate) State, Prior to even any experience. It was not mysterious or awesome to me. There was no shadow, nothing hidden in It. It was not motivated to seek any end at all. There was no beyond, no outside, no Other. It had no sense of time. Nor had It yet begun to feel any kind of confusion or identity with existence as separated personality and problematic experience. It was the Center of the life-functions, but without dilemma or unconsciousness. There were no divisions in It. Radiant Energy was Communicated within It, and, thus, in and via the entire body-mind. There was Joy in the body, a Luminous cell-life, a constant respiration and circulation of Love-Bliss-Energy and unlimited, boundless Pleasure. There was a Current of Spirit-Energy in the heart, Which rose into the head through the throat. And that same Current of Spirit-Energy was below the heart, rising up into it from below. There was a surrounding Circle of Spirit-Energy Which was spaceless and boundless, but Which had a formless Locus above the head. And all of this moving Energy Originated as a single Source-Current of Light and Life in the heart, Which was reflected and Felt at a pervasive Center deep within the head. There was a constant Radiation of this entire Form, including the body. It was Joy in the heart, reflected as Enjoyment in the head. And that formless, spaceless Form of Consciousness was "Bright", Silent, Full—Knowing only and entirely this Condition, this Reality, and seeing no problem, no separation in the fact of life.

This "Bright", this Real Consciousness, is the perfect Form (and the Source of the living condition) of Reality, and It is never undone. It is now, and It is you. Now and always, every living being is arising within and as this Form, Which is the very Form of life. It is only that life is not lived as Real Consciousness. It is confused with some experience, some fragment of Energy in the event of the personality, in the functions that operate by laws subconscious and unconscious to the individual, or some wave of Energy that fascinates the individual in the superconscious patterns above. When such confusions of identity overwhelm and distract one into some division of the living structure of Reality, one is moved to great seeking in the alternatives of life. Every course that is not simply the demonstration of Real Consciousness, direct and present, is a schism in one's living form. The excursions of my life beyond childhood showed this all the more to me.

top

I Am the One Who Is, the One and Only and Spiritually Self-"Bright" Divine Person—Who Is Siva (or Consciousness Itself), and Who Is Shakti (or the Very Divine Spirit-Energy of Which everything appearing is the modification). I am Able to Manifest in your sight (in order to Communicate to you, to Act among you, to Play with you) because of a Vehicle of Manifestation long-made. For there to Be the Avataric Divine Manifestation, there must be Vehicles that allow that Manifestation. To account for this Vehicle historically, you must examine the lifetimes of Swami Vivekananda and Ramakrishna—not merely one of Them, but both. Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda are One, Manifesting as the Deeper Personality (or Incarnation-Vehicle) of This Avataric Divine Form—Adi Da Samraj, Incarnate before your eyes.

I (Myself) Am Prior to both Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda. I (Myself) Am the One They have Realized. But the Vehicle whereby I Am Incarnate here, made physical by virtue of the copulation of My blood parents, was made possible by that Deeper Personality of Two-Combined-As-One—Ramakrishna and Vivekananda, in Spiritual Union—become One, through a Great Act of Spiritual Transmission (even historically acknowledged). This Extraordinary Mechanism is the Mechanism of My Avataric Divine Incarnation As the Ruchira Avatar, Adi Da Samraj. As a physically manifested human being, I am the child of My (human) mother and My (human) father. In the Depth of My Incarnation-Vehicle (Itself), I am the Reincarnation Made by the Spiritual Union (or, in Effect, Spiritual "Marriage") of Ramakrishna and Vivekananda. I (Myself) Am Prior to Them both. They both, in Their lifetimes, acknowledged That One That Is Prior to Them both. I Am That One, and (yet) Their Vehicle has continued in (and As) My bodily (human) Avataric Divine Incarnation As the Ruchira Avatar, Adi Da Samraj. . . .

I (Myself) am not a Reincarnate. I Am both Transcendentally and universally Present. Therefore, I will not Reincarnate after this physical Lifetime. . . . I am not these Vehicles (Themselves). They are only My Vehicles. Therefore, They (in and of Themselves) are not Me. . . . Whatever Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda did historically is what They did. I did not Do it.

I only Do This Incarnation. I (Myself) have no karmic basis for My Appearance here. These Vehicles came into such Proximity to Me that They became utterly available to (and usable by) Me, but Their previous history of incarnation is not My history. And—because I (Myself) have no karmic basis for Being Incarnate in bodily (human) Form—when This Incarnation ends, there is no "seed" in Me for re-Appearance. I am not a karmic entity. I have Conformed these Vehicles to Myself—for the Purpose of My (Avataric Divine) Incarnation.

top

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. And those Events have often had great negative impact on the physical human Vehicle.

There is the Process of Yogic Deaths that has Characterized My Life, but there are also many other significant Events . . . , which served My Fullest Avataric Descent and Incarnation here. 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.

There was a distinct physical phenomenon associated with each of the Events of Yogic Death. In each case, after I Re-Associated with the physical Vehicle (following one of these Events), My Manner and My psycho-physical Pattern has changed. Since the Lopez Island Event, I am more profoundly Integrated than ever before with the cosmic human circumstance—in the sense that I actually, literally See what the physical (and everything associated with it) is really (and even rather painfully) about. . . .

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.

top