"in
the Mahayana the seventh stage consideration was at first
developed by Nagarjuna tradition of Buddhism"
Nirvanasara
The
following is from AdiDaUpClose.org
A Conversation with Adi Da Samraj about
His uniqueness as a Seventh Stage Adept Realizer
Donald Webley
Donald Webley was born in Jamaica and came to the United
States to study physics. He is now a medical legal
consultant. He has been a devotee of Adi Da Samraj since
1980. He has written several introductions and commentaries
to Adi Da's books and has been helping to make Avatar Adi
Da's Art known in the world.
Donald's story refers to Adi Da as a "Seventh Stage"
Adept Realizer. For more on Adi Da's "seven stage of life "
framework, click here.
Donald WebleyThis story concerns Adi Da's Samraj's
Revelation of His uniqueness. This occurred at Adi Da
Samrajashram on March 5 and 6, 1993 when I was graced to be
on retreat there and was able to pose some questions to Him
— questions that seemed relatively insignificant to me
at the time. I had no idea about the torrents of Blessing
and Revelation that would result.
I arrived on Naitauba on February 26. I remember as I
fell on the beach in the gesture of gratitude that all
devotees make as they arrive on Adi Da's Hermitage Island,
and an intuition, a flash, a feeling, passed through me,
that Adi Da was not simply a great Realizer but that He was
the heart's desire of all beings. I did not attach a great
deal of significance to this feeling. I thought that it was
simply just a passing moment of recognition of his
greatness. But it was an intuition of what was to be
revealed during my retreat.
This was a period in which Avatar Adi Da spent many hours
responding to his devotees' questions. I worked in the
editorial department of the Dawn Horse Press, and we had
just finished putting together a biography of Ramana
Maharshi. There was an introduction to that book written by
Adi Da in which He made certain distinctions between His
Work and Ramana Maharshi's work. I did not understand these
distinctions fully, so I asked Adi Da about them at such a
gathering, on March 5.
I said something like, "Beloved Adi Da, You have said
thus and so about Ramana Maharshi's work and thus and so
about Your Work. Now, as I understand it, You are both
seventh stage Adepts — why is there this
distinction?"
As a preamble, it is important to point out that at that
point His devotees did not understand His uniqueness. We
were not in a position to, and He had not made the
Revelation. We all understood that He was a seventh stage
Realizer and that His Teaching had a unique clarity.
However, we believed that perhaps, almost certainly, there
had been other seventh stage Realizers who taught in a
limited form in the fifth or sixth or fourth stage mode
simply because of the cultural and institutional
circumstances into which they had been born. We understood
Adi Da Samraj to be, certainly, a Realizer of the highest
type, but we had no idea of the depth and fullness of His
Incarnation and His Revelation.
When I posed that question to Adi Da, it was on the basis
of this kind of understanding. His response was, "Well, are
you sure Ramana Maharshi was a seventh stage Realizer?" That
stopped me in my tracks. My response, which I did not
verbalize aloud, was "Well, didn't You say that he was?"
That was the beginning of a consideration about Ramana
Maharshi's teachings and his life demonstration, the import
of which was whether Ramana Maharshi, in his life as it is
recorded, in his teachings, in his mode of living and his
demonstration, showed the signs of seventh stage of life.
Was that the case, or did he show the signs of an ascetic in
the sixth stage of life? It was a long consideration, in the
course of which Adi Da discussed all aspects of this matter
with us to the point where it became clear that there is not
in fact the evidence of seventh stage Realization in Ramana
Maharshi's life.
Before I became Adi Da's devotee, I had studied and
practiced Zen Buddhism with two different teachers. I had
had quite a bit of exposure to Tibetan Buddhism, although I
had never been a Tibetan Buddhist practitioner. Adi Da has
spoken very highly of Shakyamuni, the Buddha, and so I
grasped at this straw. I said, "Beloved Adi Da, well what
about the Buddha?"
In all His Written Teaching Adi Da has always referred to
the historical Buddha as the Buddha Gautama, or Gautama the
Buddha. Now, as a former Buddhist, that was a little jarring
to me because Buddhists never refer to the Buddha as
Gautama. It is akin to calling Avatar Adi Da Samraj
"Franklin Jones". The Buddhists always refer to him as
Shakyamuni which is a title that means "silent sage of the
Shakyas", the clan to which he was born.
But when I brought up the Buddha, for the first, and as
far as I know, only, time Avatar Adi Da referred to him as
Shakyamuni. I did not have to say anything about that. He
began by addressing me about the wandering of my mind. He
said, "I am right here. I am your Master. The Buddha existed
2500 years ago. What difference does it make?"
But, nevertheless, He took us through a very similar
consideration, at the end of which it was clear that as far
as the recorded teachings of the Buddha and what is known of
his life are concerned, there was no evidence of seventh
stage Realization.
Avatar Adi Da Samraj has taught and spoken about a
four-stage Yoga, beginning with seventh stage awakening, the
Yoga of Divine Transfiguration, Divine Transformation,
Divine Indifference and ultimately Divine Translation. There
is no record or even hint of this Yoga in the traditions and
certainly in nothing written by or attributed to Ramana
Maharshi or the Buddha.
So at the end of this conversation, which went on for
quite some time, it was clear that according to the
available evidence, neither the Buddha nor Ramana Maharshi
was a seventh stage Realizer. And this was surprising to
everyone in the room. So, again grasping at straws, I
remembered that in The Basket of Tolerance, Adi Da mentions
a certain number of books — six or seven — as
seventh stage texts. And I said, "Beloved Adi Da, what about
the Tripura Rahasya, the Diamond Sutra, the Platform Sutra
of Hui Neng?" And He interrupted me, reciting the other
books in that group. And I said, "Well, You have said,
Beloved Adi Da, have You not, that these are seventh stage
texts?" And He corrected me, saying "No, I have said that
texts contain elements suggestive of the seventh stage of
life."
Adi Da went on to say that they were products of a
tradition. I said, "So therefore, one cannot conclude that
they were written by an individual in the seventh stage of
life?" And He said, "No. One cannot." I was left with the
clear inference that seventh stage Realization had not
appeared in anyone's case before Adi Da's unique
Revelation.
It is important to remember that this was a
consideration, not a proclamation. In other words, Adi Da
did not, at this point, say, "This is the case that Ramana
Maharshi was not, the Buddha was not . . .", He led us
through a process and allowed us to come to our own
intelligent conclusions. At this point, Jonathan Condit, who
is Adi Da's senior editor, who had been a formally ordained
Buddhist monk before becoming a devotee of Adi Da, and who
was the person in the gathering most familiar with Adi Da's
Teaching, asked the question that had been at the tip of my
tongue. He said, "Beloved Adi Da, even though Your devotees
praise You for Your integrity in leading us through this
great consideration, allowing us to understand for ourselves
what is represented by the great Adepts of the past, we know
that You, by virtue of Your Divine Siddhis, know what
Realization is true in the case of anyone at all." And the
Avataric Great Sage, Adi Da Samraj sat silent for a moment
— He received Jonathan's confession and praise and, as
if conveying a great secret, which in fact He was, then
said, very softly, "All right then. The Buddha was a sixth
stage Realizer. Ramana Maharshi was a sixth stage
Realizer."
Then Adi-Dasya Nadikanta referred to a conversation that
had occurred several nights before about Jesus of Galilee.
Adi Da said, "And Jesus was fifth stage." One could have
heard a pin drop in the room; we all understood that we had
just been given a great Revelation, a Revelation beyond our
wildest imaginings. We understood that Adi Da was telling us
that seventh stage Realization had not existed in anyone's
case before His birth.
To understand how revolutionary that was to our
understanding, I will tell you a humorous story. Jonathan
telephoned a devotee on the mainland who is a great scholar
of Adi Da's Teaching, and told this individual that Avatar
Adi Da Samraj had just Revealed that He was the first
seventh stage Adept. This individual said, "Oh, no. That's
impossible. He's just playing with Don Webley!" Now, that is
not a comment on this person because that really was our
understanding, collectively. We did not know, did not
understand the One into whose company we had been drawn. We
did not understand His greatness.
That night, shortly after the end of the gathering there
was a torrential downpour. Fiji is a tropical country and
Naitauba is a tropical island. I had grown up in the tropics
and I had seen tropical downpours, but this was no ordinary
tropical downpour. It was as if the heavens opened, and the
heavens and earth were acknowledging Adi Da's great
Confession.
The next evening we gathered again with Adi Da, assuming
that He had made His great Revelation. We had no idea what
further Revelations He was going to grant us. After perhaps
an hour and a half of conversation, Jonathan asked Avatar
Adi Da various questions. Then Adi Da referred, out of the
blue, to the conversation of the previous night, and wanted
to know if I had anything more to ask. I said "no", that He
had answered most of my questions. He very humorously
responded, "Most?" I then went on to praise Avatar Adi Da,
and I acknowledged to Him my understanding that the
torrential downpour was the earth's own acknowledgment of
His Confession.
The Avataric Great Sage, Adi Da Samraj then said,
"Understand further, I am not the first seventh stage Adept
in the sense that there will be other seventh stage Adepts.
The great Work that I do is once and for all time. There
will be other seventh stage Realizers. My devotees will be
Realizers of the seventh stage, but it is neither necessary
nor possible for there to be another seventh stage Adept."
In other words, as He said, by His birth, by His Appearance,
by His Revelation, by His Divine Re-Awakening and Work, He
had brought into the earth and the conditional realm
altogether the Spiritual Powers and Divine Grace that now
makes possible the seventh stage Awakening in the case of
all others. And He went on to say that the completion and
fulfillment of His great Work, His Divine Work, will be the
Divine Translation of all beings.
This was something we could not have imagined. Everyone
in the room was overwhelmed by the sense of gratitude that
this relative few of us who are His devotees have been
graced to witness the central event of all cosmic
manifestation, the Appearance in human-time of the Divine
Person, the One in Whom all beings, worlds, and conditions
arise. The purpose and fulfillment of His Birth is the
Divine Translation of the entire cosmic domain, in other
words, to draw all beings and the entire universe into His
own Divine Condition.
When I had returned to my senses, I asked Avatar Adi Da
Samraj by what means it had occurred that we few were thus
fortunate? He was silent for a moment and very quietly said,
"You are only the first. All beings will eventually come to
Me."
It is important to understand that on this occasion, as
on any occasion when Avatar Adi Da Samraj grants a
Revelation and gives the Teaching, He does not just say it.
The Siddhi [Spiritual Force] of His Very Being
communicates the truth of what He is saying to the heart and
entire body-mind of His listeners. The potency of Adi Da's
Confession of His own uniqueness was thus indelibly
imprinted in our hearts, beyond all possibility of
doubt.
The
following is from AdiDaUpClose.org
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