In this video
Transcript
Introduction
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Thinking Allowed – conversations on the leading edge of knowledge and discovery
with psychologist Jeffrey Mishlove.
Hello and welcome. I'm Jeffrey Mishlove. Our topic today is Living with the Ruchira Avatar.
My guest is Julie Anderson, a former Playboy centerfold model who was one of several intimate
companions of the spiritual master Adi Da Samraj for 16 years from 1976 to 1992.
During those years she was considered an individual of high spiritual attainments and was known
as Kanya Samarpana Remembrance and also Swami Dhamma Dalotara Devi and a number of other
names. Adi Da, the spiritual master, has also been known by many other names including Da Lavananda,
the Ruchira Avatar, and Franklin Jones. His writings have been highly praised by many thoughtful students of spirituality including
three well-known philosophers, Alan Watts, Jeffrey Kreipel, and Ken Wilber.
He died in November of 2008. Julie left the spiritual community founded by Adi Da in 1992 after a deep process known
as Reality Consideration. Julie currently lives in Australia and now I'll switch over to the internet video.
Welcome Julie. It's a pleasure to be with you. Thank you so much, Jeff. I'm extremely grateful to be here with you and for you giving me this opportunity to
be able to speak with you. Thank you. You're very welcome. I think you have a most unusual and important story to tell and I think it would be very
Early intimations
useful if we could go back to around 1976 or so when you first encountered Adi Da and
maybe talk about what your life was like just before that. Okay.
So it was in 1975 that I first came across Adi Da and I was visiting Berkeley.
And I went to Moe's Bookstore on, I believe it's the... Telegraph Avenue, I know it well.
Yes, Telegraph Avenue and I saw the book of Adi Da sitting on the shelf.
That was my first introduction and of course the cover of that original version of The
Method of the Siddhas was a vision or an image that I had never seen before.
So it was both captivating and a bit of a curiosity, I would say, like what is that?
I'd had an image of Adi Da when he was younger, much younger, and he was sitting in a seat
with a lot of decorative fabric and such behind him and I thought, what does Elvis Presley
say in a situation like that? It had that kind of impression to me.
Very attractive man, but then picking up the book and beginning to understand something
about him as a person was what drew me in to the relationship to him.
And then I returned back to Southern California and I was going to UCLA on a scholarship there
as an art student. And it was, I was living close by the university and I was then beginning to study more of
the teaching, the knee of listening and becoming familiar more with the context of his communication
and his life and the traditions around his life.
I, at that time, was a very ordinary young woman and living in California, I had the
culture of LA around me and I was very, very fascinated with mainly artistic things.
I spent a lot of time in museums and painting and drawing and studying sacred art history
and art history itself and so I was beginning to expand in my awareness beyond just my very
provincial and localized view of life when I was a young girl and began to adopt actually
some of the various disciplines that were given as for students of Adi Da just out of
curiosity more than any intention to become involved as a devotee because my life was
fairly established at that time with my family and with what I was doing there and with the
young man that I was involved with for a couple of years at that time.
And then I also had an unusual thing happen which is that I ended up modeling as a Playboy
centerfold and this was an interesting event because it brought me into the complete opposite
of what it was that I was beginning to be involved in with Adi Da. So I had two paths before me, one in which I could go one direction very easily because
I was quite drawn into that aspect of life which is very different than what another
door had opened that would be a spiritual aspect of life. Not that the two are incompatible in that regard, it's just that I had a crossroads
before me. The long and the short of it is that I had a very, very strong experience of Adi Da and
what the spiritual process is. Now my knowledge of the spiritual process at that time was extremely minimal, however
I was not unfamiliar with religious practice or unfamiliar with the psychophysical nature
of reality in life because as a young girl I had always had unusual phenomenal experiences,
in other words out of body experiences, astral travel, very strong intuitive personality,
ESP, premonitory intuitions, these were not unfamiliar to me, however I had not studied
anything about it and I actually didn't communicate a lot with others about it, it just felt like
it was a natural part of life that I was aware of and I think because of my artistic endeavors
and my intuitive side and appreciation for aesthetics and also because I had become a
born-again Christian for a period of time, my sense of spirit and life being more than
just the gross physical manifestation was something that I was available for.
So I would say at that time I was ready for something different to happen because on top
of that sadly I was extremely neurotic in the sense that I was an anorexic, bulimic
personality. So I had a tendency to dissociate from life mainly because I was very troubled by what
I observed to be a significant pain and sorrow in relationship to life in terms of the sense
of how people suffer, not just myself but also feeling that I was trapped in a personality
that had so much focus and attention on how I appeared to be, obviously signed by my participating
with the Playboy Centerfold and just a lot of what the psychophysical impact of being in LA around the Hollywood matter and models and achieving and competing and being seen
and all of those kinds of aspects of what the LA scene is like.
Of course that's not all it's like. I don't like generalizations because there's so many nuances around any situation that
we find ourselves in but when I look back on it that was my perspective at that time.
It was very narrow. And so this was an incredible 1975-76 was an incredible opening.
And to return back to the experience that I had of Adi Da, this was before coming into
being close to him. I would study often and listen to his voice on albums at that time and I was listening
to an album called The Gorilla Sermon. And I was also looking at a picture of him and interestingly enough when I viewed him
bodily in his physical bodily form I would, I fell in love with his physical form because
his body reminded me of Michelangelo artworks and that was something that I didn't know
what to make of and why but it was just I was extremely drawn into the physical form
of his person. And then at that time also his voice and his laughter and the profundity of what I was
beginning to hear him communicate was something that was both new, extremely interesting,
something I was very curious about given that it was providing an opportunity for freedom,
fundamentally addressing something that was really clear to me about the nature of suffering.
But what was odd about it is that I also felt a bit offended by it because he was accusing
the ego of being responsible for this and as I grew up with a sense that ego was to
be cultivated, was to be grown, was to become strong, was to become responsible, all of
those aspects of the ego development as a human being. So that was not foreign to me in terms of relating to that aspect of life but I found
it quite a lot to swallow in terms of what he was speaking about, in terms of the ego
fundamentally dying, being destroyed, going beyond, transcending the act of egoity.
So I was listening to him, having studied a bit, known about him, listening to his voice
as he was speaking in the gorrilla sermon, which is one of the writings and earlier pieces
of his work, and looking at an image of him and then suddenly without any effort at all
there was an incredible force of presence and literal, as if I was being smeared or
a force of energy entering into me so forcibly that it completely drew me into a sense of
not feeling like I was familiar with the shape that this body was taking.
I was conscious the whole time but my whole form became a different form with such force
that it was both extremely blissful but extremely uncomfortable too because it was unfamiliar
to me and the force of it was so strong that I had to automatically lay back just to allow
it to occur and then it enveloped every part of my being, like every aspect of my being
all the way down to my toes and if you were to imagine us to be like the shape of a rock
that's in the form of a spherical oblong shape, the force of it came all the way down to the
base of my body so extremely strong that every part of me then kind of rose in this feeling
of bliss through every part of my body and I fell in love.
That's what it was, it was I fell in love and a love that was beyond anything I had
ever known before in terms of being attracted to or having a boyfriend or even what I knew
as love in relationship to the spirit of Jesus although not too dissimilar because
there were forms of a reception of the spirit with my process with Jesus and with Bible
study and being involved in that process so there was a linking with that that was not
unfamiliar but that moment marked and it's still to this day I'm comprehending what
occurred in that particular event. This was before you ever met him in person I gather.
Yes, this is true, yeah, before I ever met him, yes.
And also for clarification as I recall you were originally from Utah before you came
to Los Angeles. Yes, I was born in Ogden, Utah and there's a street in Ogden, Utah that's just beautiful
as you look down the streets you can see the beautiful mountains with the snow on top and
every time it was my birthday my father would remind me of this beautiful day on this street
where the hospital was and it was early in the day and he's very romantically describes
this wonderful day of me being born in Utah. We lived there only until I was around three years old and then my family with my older
brother and my younger sister we moved to California to Southern California and that's
where I grew up spent my time in the valley that's just through the canyons of Topanga,
Mulholland, Malibu. At some point you with the boyfriend you had at the time came up to Northern California
Joining the community
where I gather that's where you first encountered Adi Da. Yes, so from Southern California, his name's Mark, we were there and became more and more
interested in moving up to Northern California because there was the Mountain of Attention
Sanctuary that was established there, a retreat center and understood to be a traditional
type ashram. I didn't know anything about what that meant or what that environment would be like but
I ended up leaving Southern California packing everything up and in the middle of university
life and life in LA and life with my family and went up there because the pull was so
strong to be able to find out more about this offering, you know, this way of life and Mark
was really keenly interested also and so we ended up going up there together driving up
with a friend. Everything packed in the car and we landed in San Francisco and we landed in what was
called a household because the devotees at that time there were many many many devotees
that lived in San Francisco Marina and the surrounding areas up by Clear Lake which is
where the sanctuary is and landed there in a household where a number of devotees lived
and we as devotees early on it was recommended that you live cooperatively because it was
understood that the process of spiritual life had to occur in what Adi Da described
that the greatest form of renunciation is the cave of relationship, not the cave of
being removed from life but actually being fully entered into life and so we in living
collectively a lot was learned by having to live that close with other people so we landed
in this household and that was interesting in and of itself just being in that kind of
a situation and then as Mark and I were there we also discovered that oh life with devotees
is not just about living a life of spiritual practice with a significant amount of disciplines
yoga, meditation, study, kind of a specific type of a very disciplined diet, you know,
no meat and mainly vegetarian, it was studying of the great tradition, there was the sense
that a discipline was to be a loving person in life in service to other beings, all beings,
forms of these types of disciplines and then suddenly there was a party call so we had
what was called gathering periods where suddenly beer would come out, cigarettes would come
out and all the disciplines would be thrown to the four winds and then we would have the
flip side of the coin to investigate what our personality was like, what our desires
were like, what our energy and attention went to, a sense of what taboos were about,
so this is what was happening like within the first week that we landed in San Francisco.
Now if I understand correctly there was a phase in the teachings of Adi Da, I think it was called
the goddess in the garbage period, something like that, that involved this type of what you
could call, I don't know, wild behavior. Yeah, yes, it was sometimes it was wild and sometimes
it wasn't, so at this particular period of time it was post garbage in the goddess, that occurred
earlier on, so I arrived in mid-1976 and while the garbage in the goddess was a particularly
dramatic time there were periods of time where we continued to make use of what we described
as accessories and partly what it was is a way of loosening everyone from the notion that true
spiritual life required a kind of a renunciate life that would be celibate, where you'd have
to wear a certain costume, you'd basically be eating nettles or something really severe
types of discipline of denial in relationship to the impulses of the incarnate bodily being,
and these periods of time were actually equally as confronting as they were embracing severe
and significant discipline of the body-mind. So the wildness from a conventional perspective,
I believe, probably has been coined because of the fact that we were oftentimes involved in a
process of investigation in action and in study relative to what is described as money, food,
and sex. Emphasis on the sex part because that's what seems to fascinate people,
you know, is to want to focus on the wildness as being things that have something to do with just
the emotional sexual character. That's true. We did investigate a lot of that and it was extremely
confronting because that's where all of the nitty-gritty goblins and ghosts and different
things hide. Oftentimes it's called the shadow side where people don't really want to investigate
that that much. However, our process, and this has continued to be the case, is always an investigation
of all aspects of life, you know, that it can't exclude anything. So yes, there were wild parties
and some of the things that are understood to be have happened during those times. I couldn't
really address all of them because each individual who may have something to say about what they
experienced or what gossip may be evolving as a result of that, I wouldn't be in a position,
I can just communicate what I experienced with authenticity. But I would say that
I can understand really clearly and I have no reaction to what people have experienced
or even how they have reacted because it's comprehensible
from the perspective of myself having experienced similar things and also have had similar
reactions. So it's a necessary process to have to go through all these kinds of feelings to actually
take responsibility for the awakening in spiritual process and practice and truth. So that's a
very colorful part of the relationship with him and I'm happy to speak in more detail about that
because I know many people are curious about it. Aside from the garbage and the goddess period
of Adi Da's teachings, I'm under the impression that in general he was regarded as being in
a tradition known as crazy wisdom. And there were other gurus who are associated with that idea
of crazy wisdom. And I presume that was perhaps something that he was known for throughout his
life. Yes, this is true. And the crazy wisdom tradition, I think it would be fair enough to
say that probably most of humanity has no comprehension of what that actually means,
particularly Westerners. And as the world is becoming more and more westernized, I would
say that it's probably true that even the Eastern traditions are not that familiar with the crazy
wise traditions. There seems to be more and more of a shutdown relative to the explorations beyond
what is conventionally, politically and socially acceptable, even religiously acceptable or even
spiritually acceptable. There's a real clamping down on the investigation of life in all of its
totality. So at that time, however, when I came around Adi Da's, you remember the 60s and 70s
were a different type of era where there was much more of an opening. So a lot of what we were doing
was actually not uncommon in relationship to what was happening worldwide in terms of there being a
renaissance of the kind in this exploratory fashion. Of course, there were people who
vehemently hated that, opposed it immensely because it was a threat to possibly what was the
program of the day. So with the crazy wisdom tradition, another word for the crazy wisdom
tradition could be tantra. There are aspects that I experienced immediately in Adi Da's company was
that he began to speak and had even previous to my being there about the different ways in which we
could live humanly, religiously or spiritually and transcendentally. So there was all these aspects of
life that I was beginning to learn about and he was beginning to reveal to me and to show me
directly, not through just study. We did a lot of studying, like studying the great tradition.
He coined that word, the great tradition of humankind, which is about all the different
traditions that have happened through all the cultures in human, religious, spiritual and
transcendental terms. So my entire life has been a significant investigation
served by his teaching, but also served by his asking us to invest ourselves in the study of
all the traditions so that there wasn't just, he wasn't asking us to believe anything. We actually
were in a process of investigation and study, significant study. And then part of the crazy
wisdom that he took on and we practiced and with one another and with him was that nothing was
taken at face value in terms of what it seemed to be. So we had to enter into experimenting with
different forms of practice and process. And that occurred in relationship to every aspect of life.
And so, and I think this refers to something that you called the social experiment.
A penetrating social experiment, yes. Yes, yes. And I thought that was brilliant because it
was that and the social was in company, you know, in company and then company of all
of what I had just described relative to life. So it took you well beyond the social persona
because you had to drop the social persona in terms of trying to hold on to assume you had to
be a certain way or believe a certain something or have certain presumptions about things. It
was a discovery and a revelation process in relationship to him as the teacher and the
Siddha Guru who had realized what he describes as reality itself, the bright itself. And so the
bright itself or reality was the context and the feeling of being context and the transmission
that was the vessel or the space within which all of this consideration took place.
And what we were doing was always asking the question, is this truth?
Is this sufficient? Is this love bliss? Is it true of everyone and everything? Or is it
separative, dissociated, isolated, conflictual, or is it all inclusive?
So that this crazy wisdom process is what we entered into in terms of even diet,
even in terms of how we served our environments, even in terms of how we would relate to different
skills that we have. As an artist, for example, that was a whole process of development took
place in terms of my artistic skills as it did with Adi Da himself. And the particular
characteristics of myself as an individual was something that I had to begin to know really
clearly in order to be able to practice an aspect of what he describes as radical self-
understanding. So the crazy wisdom process was about constant self-observation relative to
the manner in which this being manifests, where energy and attention is drawn.
Meeting the Guru
Now let's talk about the time when you first encountered him bodily, physically in your presence.
Okay, thank you. Yes.
So a lot have built up in my feeling and my anticipation because of what I had experienced
before being there with him. So when I was in San Francisco, we were invited up to go to the
Mountain of Attention to participate in a weekend retreat. And this weekend retreat
happened to be a period of time in which there were gatherings going on where these accessories were being used. And however, every time accessories were being used, there was also
coupled with that we would still enter into meditative practices, or what would be described
as devotional practices known as puja or ritual practices that would involve holy sites, temples,
the sanctuary itself. So when I entered onto the Mountain of Attention sanctuary,
the first thing that I noticed, which has to do with his form again, and actually seeing him,
was that there was a palm tree there in the middle of the sanctuary, one really tall palm tree,
and immediately I recognized I have seen that palm tree in dreams my whole life,
because I would have a reoccurring dream of walking down a street and everybody was walking
their dogs except for me. And in this reoccurring dream, I was somehow not visible in the dream
objectively, but I felt that I was naked in the dream. I couldn't see that I was physically naked,
but somehow I was naked in the dream and I was watching everybody walking their dogs. And
what I noticed is that the person and the dog looked somewhat similar and I thought that was
amusing. And at the same time, there was this heartbeat that was sounding really loud in my
ears. And the heartbeat was simultaneously a rhythm that I was following, but it was also
a sense of threat to it because there was a sense it could stop or it could end at any point. And
then as I was hearing this heartbeat and feeling that rhythm more and more, and seeing the humor
of the situation with the people and the dogs and them walking them with their chains, I began to
move quicker and quicker and quicker. And suddenly I came across this big palm tree
and spontaneously I went up to this tree and I hugged it. And that hugging, everything came to
a stillness. And the tree and the heartbeat came to rest. There was no more vision of the
humans and the dogs and the chains and all of it just came to rest. And when I saw the palm tree,
I knew that this was the place where I was meant to be. So that was another experience before
seeing Adi Da physically, but he was on the sanctuary. And so the feeling of anticipation
and excitement and nervousness altogether was really full in my expectation of coming to see
him. So right by where the palm tree was, there was a building that was called Huge Helper,
which is a place where he would gather with devotees there. And beside it there were two meditation halls. One was called Extraordinary Eyes. And suddenly there was a bell, a big bell
that was ringing on the sanctuary. And that was the notification for everybody. Suddenly everybody
sang, go to Extraordinary Eyes, go to Extraordinary Eyes. And so I didn't know where that was, but I
just started following everyone. And before I knew it, I found myself sitting in the back of a big
hall. It was like a cathedral. Actually it was called the cathedral at that time. I may get my
terms and names and words and places mixed up, just because I'm a bit older. But I'm remembering,
actually this was called the cathedral at the time. Yes. And when I walked into this room,
it felt enormous. Obviously it had a shape to it, but it felt enormous. I sat down in the room,
and then soon after that Adi Da came walking from the back of the hall, and he took his seat
in the front of the hall. His seat was slightly raised a bit so that everyone at the way back of
the room could see him. So he was on what we call the dais, where his seat, everybody was able to
view him. And as he sat down, suddenly what I began to see was that everything around me
became like a peripheral view, even if it was somebody close next to me. And it kind of faded
into a, it was fused with light at the same time, as if there was gentle rain coming down. And then
my vision became extremely focused on his physical body. And when that occurred, I started to see
visions of icons from what I know to be now the great tradition. Like I saw Jesus, I saw Buddha,
I saw sages, I saw deities of different kinds. And in his form, it wasn't his physical form,
it was Franklin Jones, and he was actually Baba at the time. He was called Baba, which meant friend.
I was seeing all of this pass before me, and at the same time I was just fully fell into
this extraordinary vision. And then he left. So that was my actual first experience with him.
Very powerful. Very powerful. And apart from the visual aspect of it, it was the same feeling
of the overwhelm of love, like just falling in love. And at that point in time, it didn't
have anything to do with him as a man, not at that point. It was just the extraordinary
nature of being drawn into a divine process that was extremely,
stopped my mind. So how did you follow up at that point? So then I stayed on retreat
on the sanctuary, and what occurred is the day later, there was another gathering that was going
to happen. And I began to be curious about Adi Da's life at that point. I started asking questions
of the devotees who had been around a lot longer. And there was a gathering where he again began to
speak in the cathedral again, about the consideration that he calls divine ignorance,
which means that while the mind may want to know the truth, truth can only be experienced,
wholly experienced in the heart and with the whole bodily being. And it would be something
that would be mutually felt by everyone and everything in the room and beyond. And so the
mind falls away. And so that's, we do not know what it is. We do not know what anything is
in truth, as truth. There's that profound consideration about divine ignorance, and it
relieves you of any search or seeking for what it is through experience and knowledge, but it's a
falling into that divine ignorance. So he was speaking about this. And as he was doing it,
I noticed that there were men and women around him who were taking care of them in different ways.
Like it was hot, so it was fanning. It was mid-July. So he was being fanned by a couple women or men,
and then he would be bringing some, being brought something if he needed something. And I noticed that, well, what's this about? He's being served in some way. Why? And so I started asking questions.
Well, unknown to me, my questions began to be brought back to him. In other words, there was
a curiosity about him as a human being that he knew that I was interested in. So I was invited
to another type of gathering that took place. And I was invited to what was called the King's Room.
Now the King's Room was a room that was downstairs. It was almost like underground,
because it was beneath a building called Great Food Dish. Now you've been on the sanctuary,
so some of these buildings, if I was to describe where they were, you might remember them a bit.
But it was a building where the kitchen was. And then there was another hall there, and it was next to his private residence. And downstairs, underneath that, there was a room that was called
the King's Room. So I was actually invited to go to this gathering. And this was the first gathering
where I actually participated with him. And we were using accessories, which meant that people
were drinking beer, and some were smoking cigarettes. And of course, to me, it's like, really? What does this have to do with spiritual life and practice? Even though I had known that
this was occurring because of what I read, I didn't think that was going to be happening. But I walked into the room, and in the middle of the room, there was a pool table. So that was
another thing that was interesting. And in the room, it was this incredibly interesting kind of deep maroon carpet. And a lot of three sides of the room actually had big wood stones. It was made
out of stones, you know, so it was literally underground. And then the front of it was large glass. So I came in, and I sat down, and I was there with devotees, and I was drinking and enjoying
having conversation. And there was an anticipation again in the air and excitement that Adi Da would
be, Baba would be arriving soon. So when he came into the room, he was wearing a Indian type
a silk shirt and silk pants that was extraordinarily brilliant yellow color, and a v-neck long sleeve.
And when he walked into that room, and I saw him, I fell in love with him as a man.
In addition to what I had experienced spiritually in terms of what's described as his transmission,
or Shaktipat, the energy that was coming from his being, everybody transmits his particular form of
transmission is extremely strong. And also was his, you could call it charisma, you could call it
beauty, but his physical appearance was extremely attractive to me. So in that moment, I actually
fell in love with him as a man. And I began to notice that, and of course, I didn't know
what to think of that, but that's just what happened for me. And when I feel it, you know, I feel the depth of that love, you know, that depth of that emotion of falling in love and the
extraordinary situation I found myself in that was so unexpected, completely unexpected, and not
anticipated at all. But the room was so full of joy, and so full of people's celebration,
and laughter, and real conversation. It wasn't social, it was real dialogues about important
matters. And there he is as he walks in the room, and everyone is taken aback, just because he is
the master, the heart master, he's the guru, he's the teacher. So there's a respect that is
being acknowledged when he comes in the room. And of course, the first thing that he does,
is he makes a joke. You know, it was like he just, he's always doing something to break the spell
of our either being fixed, or being tight, or being too loose, he's always breaking a spell
of our sense of association with him and with one another.
And that, of course, was wonderful, because it eases everything, you know, humor is beautiful in that way. And that was something he was really often engaged with and in bringing humor
into our life with him and with one another. And then he started to play pool. And he played pool
with a couple of the male devotees on yellow, one of the very earliest devotees. And the amusing
thing about it is that I noticed that he was being really cheeky when he was playing pool,
in that he was making up his own rules, you know, so he wasn't going by the rules of the pool game.
And there, that was another form of humor and another way of kind of demonstrating that, okay, well, there are rules here, but okay, we can have fun and breaking the rules. And so it would
end up that everybody would kind of go with it in an amusing way, because it was a pool game, and it was amusing. And then at one point, unexpectedly, he came over with his pool cue,
with his pool stick. And he took it with the pool cue on the bottom of it. And he put his
right down on my right foot on my big toe. And he said to me,
you have finally come down at last.
And then he said, I thought you would be a lot taller. And what he meant by that was that
I had sent him a Playboy magazine where I had actually signed it. And this was done from San
Francisco by the prompting of some of the devotees in the household because they thought that would be really amusing. Okay, so I did it. I thought it would be amusing. And I put with heartfelt
love and lust and devotion, something to that effect. You know, it was,
it was a, I thought it was a kind of amusing and silly thing to do. Little did I know how that would get played out. But so I put, he put his, and I can still feel that on my foot,
like the coming down, like coming down, being there with him. So that was the first
interaction that I had with him humanly. And then as soon as he took it off my foot,
I began to swoon. And I just like a revolving in my body, again, another force of spirit
and transmission that was going, coming in, you know, from the interaction with him, but then
in the room itself, the whole event, everything and everybody there.
And it wasn't because we were just intoxicated. It wasn't because of beer or alcohol. I hadn't really drunk that much. But then at a certain point, I began to feel ill. And I couldn't conduct,
I couldn't conduct it. You know, I just was, and I ended up going out and I actually had to leave.
Then I went to sleep that night and slept for a really long time, a really deep sleep.
When I woke up in the morning, I was then again invited to go to his house.
So that's another story. And I can just, I could tell you endless stories in detail of the
environments, the people, the spaces, the places, the interactions with him
that would cover the full spectrum of what it would be like to have a relationship with him.
In every sense, from a man as his intimate, as his sexual intimate, as a devotee,
and I practiced in different forms of relationship to him through now coming from 1975 until now.
And it's changed quite dramatically too. At some point, you became part of a circle of female
Household of the avatar
devotees who were all in intimate relationship with him. Yes, yes. So when I arrived
at the mountain of attention and particularly during gathering periods, as the, as I described,
the conditions or the disciplines that were required for any devotee to take on to prepare
themselves to enter into depths of meditation and various forms of yoga and the process itself,
they were lifted. And so was the requirements for access. Like in the earlier days, he was much more
readily and easily available. Like people could just say, I really want to see Adi Da.
You know, can I come onto the sanctuary? And then typically there's a lot of people who came in and
out of his, the ashram quite readily and more easily than it was as years went by. So on the
mountain of attention sanctuary, I continued to be there and I ended up
being invited by him to live with him. And that occurred in his home. I was there at the Manor
of Flowers. And I can, sometime I can tell you the details of that particular moment in time,
but in terms of the situation of those that were surrounding him, there were, he lived on the
ashram grounds in his own home, but he was, he lived with everyone. That was in part what the
name Baba was about, is that he befriended so many people and he lived with so many people as he lived
in the ashram. So he wasn't isolated or separated out from people. He loved interacting with people.
So as Baba, as friend, he was easily accessible by a large number of people and who could come
and ask him questions, who could be on the ashram, and he would move about the ashram freely even
though he had a set apart house. But even in the house that he lived in, he didn't live alone.
There were always people who were there. I mean, he had his own room, but there were people who
would stay and there were people who would sleep in the house, both men and women. And it wasn't as
though, and there weren't men and women who were there who were being sexually active with one another. It's just that it was the place where he was fully integrated. That was, that was the kind
of time that I entered into. So at a certain point, as I said, we had a conversation and
a time in which we agreed that I would come to live with him and be in his intimate household,
as you indicated. And at that time, there was no defined group of orders or congregations or
practitioners at a certain level of practice. It was all very fluid. And I began to notice that
because of my curiosity of questioning and because of my being asked to live with him,
that I became aware that he was also intimate with women at the time. And
that felt natural enough to me at that point in time because of my having fallen in love with him.
And I think because of my background, it wasn't something that was offensive to me, having come
from LA and that kind of a scene. And I was also sexually active at a very young age. I wouldn't
say that I wasn't promiscuous or widely sexually experienced or anything like that,
but my availability to be able to be around him with the knowledge that he had more than
one wife, who was Nina, had been Nina, although they weren't married anymore. But you will hear
and read about Nina because she was the one who came to be with him very, very early on,
along with Patricia. So these two women were also there. And although Patricia had another
husband at that point in time, I began to become familiar with a number of other women
who also he was intimate with. And I would say it wasn't a large number of women, although there
were lots of men and women around him. There were just a few women who he associated with more
intimately, and they were the ones who were actually attending to him, that were serving
him bodily, serving his environment, serving his home, serving the temples. They were ones that he
were comfortable with. And I wasn't just saying human terms, as I've learned as years have gone
by, the individuals who were around him, there was a reason for why they were there. And even
though we did not know that at a human level, altogether, we also certainly didn't understand
it from religious and spiritual terms in terms of understanding or knowing the various levels of
how the being manifests that is not just visible to the naked eye. So as a spiritual realizer,
particularly as a Siddha guru and someone who was a teacher in human terms, he could see things
about us that we weren't aware of yet. And so those of us who became intimate with him and in
his household had different aspects of their personas that were available for this depth of
process with him. And we would only understand more about that in time as we would enter into
the process more seriously. So I happened to be one of those people and I knew nothing about the
why of it at that time, except for that I was available and I was really wanting with every
fiber of my being to participate there with him. And I was of the
feeling relationship to him that I never want to ever be anywhere else again.
That's how strong it was in me. And it was as if I forgot the world.
I became so involved in being around him that it was so I just forgot everything else.
And there was a part of that that was, you could call it an infatuation,
but I was drawn so strongly that it was easy to let go of everything else. In time I realized
that there was aspects of that that I didn't take proper responsibility for and I have had to
correct since then. But that was the reasoning for why I was so drawn to be there. And traditionally
it could be described as a gopie with a guru. I think you use the amusing language as though we
were with a rock star. He was so much charisma that we were just enthralled in that regard.
And that's true enough to be said in a way of describing it. Yeah, you did describe him earlier as being like Elvis when you first saw his picture.
Yes, he was very attractive. Well, of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder,
but for me personally that was a response to him as a man, one thing. Yes, so as I was there with
him in his house, and when I was there in his house, as I said, his house was the ashram. It
was the center of the ashram. And what we did on any day was to determine by what his movements
were in relationship to everybody in the ashram and also what was happening in terms of what was
being brought to him by people in the ashram. In terms of news about people, news about the world,
news about events, bringing things from the great tradition to him, bringing things to him
that he maybe had asked for that was of interest to him. One thing was art, always art. He was
always interested in traditional art, traditional iconography, books from the great tradition,
all sorts of things were being brought to him in this regard. So there would always be interaction with him, the reciprocation of devotees interaction of bringing things to him or telling
him stories or speaking about his process. And this was happening when I was there in his house.
And he also spoke often that was recorded. So all of his teaching through decades was recorded. And
that's one thing that was occurring when I was around him, is that we would sit down in a room together and it would always say turn the tape recorder on and then he would speak.
And often the speaking would be devotees having interaction with him, very personal interactions
about their life, about their family, about their practice, about their work,
about their relationship to certain things that would occur with him personally. And then again,
I noticed that, okay, towards the end of the day, more people would leave and then fewer and
fewer remained around him. And it seemed to be understood that there were certain people that would just stay there with him. And lo and behold, at a certain point, I was, it was asked of me,
do you want to stay, just stay here in the house? And yes, that was exactly where I wanted to be,
was to stay in the house. I didn't want to go to the retreat quarters anymore. I wanted to stay in the house. And so the time that it was decided that I would actually stay there in the house with
him, I was, he said to me, if you'd really want to do this with me, you need to go speak to Mark
and you need to communicate what this choice is and why. So I did do that. I went away and had
a conversation and explained to him what had happened with me and how come I was choosing to stay there in the house with Bubba at the time. And so Mark accepted that and he understood why.
And so we ended our relationship and he remained in the ashram and was a devotee for quite a lot
longer. And also then very shortly after that, became intimate with another woman and was married
and had a child with this woman. So he continued in the process and practice himself. I let go of all
of that and remained focused in the house with Bubba. And then the next thing that became clear
to me is that I would begin to learn how to attend to him. And it was very simple things,
you know, in relationship to bringing him tea or fanning him or taking care of
his certain things in his room, lighting incense, lighting candles, you know, just very simple
forms of service. And then I was given a very simple form of service of like taking care of
dishes that he's particularly were given to him to use, you know, I was polishing the silver or just
doing very ordinary things. So I was adapting just to being around him and getting comfortable.
And that was necessary because of the fact that the force of his energy, the transmission from him
was full on 24 7. No matter what he was doing, the event, so to speak, where the context of our life
and relationship to him was always about transmission, it was always about the process
of being able to learn how to relate to what was being given from him as a Siddha Guru.
Now this is traditionally understood, but I had no knowledge of the details of what it
takes to be able to adapt to spiritual transmission and not only spiritual transmission, but
transcendental spiritual transmission, which is the uniqueness of his process and Shaktipat Yoga.
And then at a certain point, I spent the night with him. And there was an initiation then in
terms of being intimate with him that was no different than sitting in meditation with him,
except for that it actually involved the body and the genitals and the feeling being and the
breathing being and the actual relationship with the human being bodily. And that was the most
profound initiatory process that was experienced to that point, because it my whole being was
given over in love. And every cell of my being actually psychophysically being active was also
imbued with this transmission. And that was a revelation that has taken a lifetime and I
don't think it will ever end in terms of incorporating what that relationship is altogether.
That kind of intimacy with him in human terms and spiritual terms that included sexuality lasted for decades.
Julie, you described yourself earlier before you moved up to Northern California
as being highly neurotic. And so I imagine you brought some of that with you into his household.
Yes, I did. I did. That's interesting. You should ask that question because
being anorexic and bulimic, I was about 84 pounds when I first came to see Adi Da. So I was very,
very tiny. And I was not, I wouldn't say I was fully grounded in my physical body.
When you have that kind of an ailment and neurosis, there's a disconnect from the physical
body. So you're feeling things peripherally often or above and beyond, you know, you
become more ethereal. And so in coming into his physical company, because he was so grounded,
I noticed that something happened immediately. And that was that
whatever it was that I was feeling that I was disconnected from and what I was suffering
in the physical body. And in terms of my need to dismiss the physical body, because I was apparently
suffering in it, which is why I was anorexic and bulimic, and also the neurosis about putting weight
on, which is part of the suffering of anyone who has this type of eating disorder. There's a lot
I can say about that, but I won't say that right now. But when I came into his company,
my anorexic bulimia liabilities stopped, just unexpectedly stopped. And what I can feel about
that, and this isn't retrospective, this is actually what I felt at the time, is that I became completely connected at the heart with something that was sustaining, that wasn't
dependent upon food, it wasn't dependent upon how I appeared, it wasn't dependent upon what people
thought of me, it wasn't dependent upon my neurosis about being able to fulfill the expectations
of being what I seen. It was something so profoundly deep within that that I came to rest.
Normally one would associate a certain amount of petty jealousies emerging between different women
all living together, surrounded by a single male, or surrounding a single male.
Yes, yes. So at this particular time when I arrived, there began to form an order of women
around him. In 1975 through 1979, the manner in which he lived began to change a bit.
And all the women who were there with him, and I think that there probably weren't more than maybe
15 that were around him at that time possibly, but that didn't, that many didn't actually live with him. There were fewer than that that actually
lived in the house with them, maybe five or so at that time. And then I noticed that one thing that
was interesting between the women, well for me, I think because I was so one-pointed and so
distracted in terms of my directness with him, I didn't notice a lot about petty jealousies.
I didn't see any reactivity from the women around him at that point in time in relationship to me.
Honestly, I didn't. And it could have been because I wasn't noticing it and I wasn't
in the know relative to the politics. I did discover that in time. However, at that moment
in time, there wasn't, it was just ecstatic. You know, the joy of being there and the women
actually were very, very supportive of me. They helped me adapt. They embraced me. I befriended
certain of the women really closely. I could talk with them freely. They would help me
understand things, help me be able to not just understand what it was like to live around him
as a man that also helped me understand the traditional precedents for it.
Speaking about how to enter into the sexual yoga as a spiritual process
that was part of the meditative process, there were depth levels that were going on synchronous
with the physical aspect of being there with him simultaneously. Naina, incredible
woman. I don't even know how to describe her. She is just a sweetheart, an incredible woman
that I feel entirely indebted to. It was in particular her I became, you know, very close to.
There was River, her name. Sharon was her given name. She became one of the mothers
of beloved's children. Yeah, there was Marsha. There's many women that really helped me a lot.
Soon what happened within the year that I was there, it was determined that there were nine women that he wanted to be able to have around him that he would begin to work with more
intensively. What working with more intensively meant is that along with these nine women,
there was also a group of men similarly that he wanted to work with more closely.
These men were not men that he was humanly, sexually, emotionally intimate with. He never
had intimacies with any men in that regard ever in sexual terms. Was he emotionally in love? Yes,
he was in love with everyone, but he did have specifically strong male intimates too
that were around him that he was working with in a more potent or intensive way.
With these women and with these men, he was wanting to establish what he described as a renunciate
order. Renunciation aligned with his meaning of renunciation. Within the first couple of years
that I was there, he ended up telling the entire worldwide gathering and everyone in the ashram
that he needed to become more focused in a group of individuals that were available to advance
in the practice. Therefore, he would not be as freely and easily available as anybody who would
come in and out off the street or just enter into the ashram freely. There began to be called
around him more formalities of association and more signs of demonstration of maturity
was required of people in order to be able to come to the ashram or to be able to enter into
a relationship with him more directly or to be involved in retreats or to sit in darshan
occasions where he would just sit silently or he would speak with people. So that transition happened fairly soon after I arrived there.
Sixteen years together
Well, I guess it would be useful if we could look back from the point of view of 1992,
near the time when you ended your relationship in his household. You'd been there for 16 years. So
what would you say about the 16-year long process?
Oh, that would have to be a really big nutshell,
but I will try to say it as succinctly as possible.
For me to speak about Adi Da in a comprehensive way and for anyone to get a feeling of what my
life was like for 16 years with him and that kind of proximity
would require an understanding of his teaching, would require an open heart to be able to feel
him, even if it isn't a full recognition of his confession of the divine self condition, as he
describes it, the Bride itself, but it would also require an understanding of the Great Tradition,
an understanding of the Great Tradition, and it would require an understanding of the seven
stages of life, which is a schema that he established for devotees and whoever is interested
to be able to understand the Great Tradition of humankind that I described earlier. So the 16 years
was an involvement in him in every sense of the way that I previously described, wherein he was
teaching me and awakening me in the seventh stage process.
That is about going beyond the sense of identifying with a set of a sense of separate self
and what he describes as the act of the ego, I. Now that doesn't mean that I have fully accomplished
that even at this point in time, but he woke me up into that process entirely so that in
the way that he describes the first six stages of life, all the way to the seventh stage of life,
I entered into a profound, very, very in-depth, detailed consideration, lived and studied and
experienced relative to every aspect of life in the first six stages in the context of the seventh
stage awakening, which is the awakening into reality, the feeling of being the heart itself
as love bliss, the heart itself as love bliss, and that is the measure within which everything
that I considered about life was to be felt. So I entered into this with him, with others,
with many others through the 16 years, and it took many, many forms, as I described, various
times of discipline, going traveling different places, going around the globe, being in different
ashrams, establishing different ashrams with him, entering into his art process with him in terms of
his appreciation of art, his interactions with non-devotees. I saw his interaction through these
six years with people who weren't practitioners. I saw him traveling the world and sitting in front
of people who were public people or beginning practitioners. I entered into processes with
just a few, very few, devotees who were involved in very advanced, most esoteric aspects of the
process. And I practiced from 1986 for six years, I practiced the most advanced process called the
perfect practice, perfect knowledge practice in relationship to him, which could be correspond
most easily with the teachings of Advaita Vedanta or Ramana Maharshi as the six-stage dhyanis
would practice. I also was given in his company, because of the psychophysical
patterns called vasanas or karmas of this being, I also was awakened into various forms of samadhis
associated with all of the different traditions. Again, this might sound very technical, but for
people who understand what the different forms of samadhis are associated with the different chakras
of the body-mind, people who are yogis, people who are mystics, people who are
psychophysically awake, you know, in the different dimensions of manifest being, all of these things
were awakened and my awareness of the existence of these realities are alive in me. And so over
those 16 years, he gave me the means of being able to discriminate intelligently, to take
responsibility for life with that understanding relative to the condition within which we find
ourselves. And I'm not the only one, you know, this occurred with many, many people. And that
continued to occur with me after 1992, when there was an event that happened that was really,
really profound for his work. And this is important to understand about Adi Da,
because I know there's much controversy around Adi Da in the world, and he was a difficult man.
And he was very demanding and very strong. And I would say all of those qualities were coupled
with the passion of his heart for the liberation of beings and the ability for him to feel so wide
and to encompass so much in terms of his relationship to everyone and everything.
He was urgent in terms of wanting to help everyone, but he couldn't do what he needed to do with everyone. So he began to work more and more privately.
And that still encompassed him being crazy wise. It's just that he didn't do it with everyone in
the same fashion. And over the years, it took many different shapes and forms in terms of what it was
that he converged with and what he coincided with in terms of the individuals who were around him.
So in 1992, when I actually ended up leaving the island of Naitamba,
he indicated to the there only at that point in time, there were only four women around him,
who were intimate with him. And from 1986 to 1992, I was actually a celibate.
I was no longer sexually intimate with him. I attended him bodily. I was his principal masseuse
during those years and served him bodily. And that was extraordinary. In a very real sense,
the sexual process had fulfilled itself. It became so profound that the necessity of even
the engagement in it was fulfilled through the depth of the process of being and being intimate
with him in any form of action with him and in life. And so at that point in time, I assumed
a celibacy. Now I was the only one. The others continued with their intimacy. I extended,
he asked me to extend that process of celibacy. And I spent those many years,
most of time in the meditation hall, I spent huge hours a day in the depth of meditation.
And also I was given the responsibility for taking care of sacred spaces, the temples
and the halls and his home, which was a temple to even though he lived there physically in very real
human ways. And I also was given the responsibility to help to raise the three
children that were his blood children and one other child that was the daughter of Patricia
and William. And the mothers and fathers also lived intimately with us that had other children
so that the children had a culture around them as they were raised. So I was the spiritual guide
for these children. So that defined my life for a number of years. It was an extraordinary gift of
opportunity to be able to work with these beautiful young beings and who I still have, you know,
a relationship with now, although it's changed significantly. So from 1992 when I left,
The decision to leave
he indicated that while he had worked for all those years, even prior to my being with him,
really from, you know, the late 60s into the early 70s, he was working with many, many
beings and traditions, you know, going to India and back and with teachers and such. He indicated
that the particular form of his avataric incarnation as the Ruchira avatar had not been
had not fully fulfilled itself sufficiently in order for there to be a true culture that could
carry on after his physical body passed away. And he said that there was an urgency for that to occur
in order to authenticate the particularly unique process that he had come down. That's what avatar
means to simply cross down from a higher in association with the body mind, a seemingly
higher domain into the physical, psychophysical, cosmic domain. And our domain here is what in in
the mandala of manifest existence is understood to be the red-yellow realm. And there are higher
realms of manifestation that associate with vibrations and colors of manifest light.
And here in the red-yellow realm, it's actually an extraordinary blessing to be here because as
human beings, we have access to all these different dimensions. And you know this full well,
given the extraordinary amount of dedication and time your life has been to speaking with
individuals who are aware of these various realities that are also in coincide with our
grossest bodily dimension here. And so he indicated that his process of the Ruchira avatar
was about awakening beings to the condition of the bright, which is what he describes as reality
itself, consciousness itself that is true of everyone and everything. It's actually the
native feeling of being, the native feeling of being, which is there's no separation between
any of us in this native state of being. It has nothing to do with being parts of different
traditions or different cultures or different experiences or different points of view. This native state of being is at the heart, the feeling of love bliss being itself
that is consciously awake and responsible for feeling discrimination to stay in and at the heart
and so that there is no conflict in relationship to the apparent duality that creates
differences of mind and experience. So this transmission was always active and it's constant
because as he describes it, it's the fundamental foundation context that is prior to and eternally
present and felt and intuited by every being, everyone and everything. And my life is a process
of that, that participation in that reality that is obvious and the the process is eternal then.
So you enter into realization, the separate self does not become realized. So in 1992 he said that
this understanding and this realization was not firmly established sufficiently in the culture
even surrounding him. And he had actually prophesied that this would happen even before
he began speaking and he wrote a book that's called The Trilogy. It's a poetic book. He's an artist,
a literary artist in addition to a visual artist. And in this book he describes what is called the
scapegoat and how the ego act will end up not relating to God, to the heart, to the divine,
you know, in a manner that will transcend the differing points of view so that there will be no conflict amongst one another. And he said, look at the way that you all live around me,
there's ego politics. What you were talking about earlier, not just the jealousies and the reaction
of, you know, me, mine and other and gotta have this, you can't have this, you know, ownership and
controlling of things in relationship to one another. He said, you're doing this with one another even though we've established a sacred domain, a culture, a seeming culture. You understand
something about me, something about my transmission, but you have not realized it most fully yet.
And the profundity of doing that was what I was just beginning to comprehend after 16 years and
after having practiced the most advanced practice. I felt like I was a beginner all over again
in the sense that the radical nature of what it was that he was bringing to humanity
required an incredible preparedness on the part of people to be available for that undoing
of the separate self identity and to be able to participate in the true self, the very self that
is true of each and all. And then to be able to be that vulnerable, that open, that transparent,
that exposed, having turned every rock of the shadow to be able to test it to the point where
you're aware that nothing can separate you from the heart of love. And that was the process with
him. And in 1992, he said to the four of us who were around him, we were the Kanyas. We established
what was called the Kanya order. And we were practicing in the domain of consciousness itself.
We were practicing in the domain of the heart itself that was the witness of everyone and
everything in terms of what would arise and fall as experience in mind. And he said that the depth
of our process had not occurred sufficiently because energy and attention was being drawn out
from that domain such that we could not fall where there was the dissolution of the sense
of separate self. And he said it had to do with this fact. In truth, we are not separate beings,
any of us. There is the understanding of the unity, the prior unity, the interconnectedness
between us all. Even as you sit on the side of the other side of the globe as I am right now,
there is no difference or distinction in terms of the fabric of light itself. And the light that he
describes as unqualified love bliss is the very self condition in which we are awake.
That conscious awareness, that feeling awareness is true of you and of I, seemingly separate.
But to live in truth is to be awake in that, even beyond lifetimes, you know, no matter what room you
move into, no matter who you associate with. So he indicated you all are still somewhat assuming
that somehow you're separate. And I'm speaking to you. And all the years that I have been speaking
to you, I have been speaking to that heart that is only one that is in you and awake and aware.
And I am drawing you into that space of being. And therefore I'm speaking through you to all beings.
And the world itself is not prepared yet to receive me. And so some of you may have to
leave my company to go out into the world. Now, when he said that to us, he says, I don't know
which one of you it will be or how it will happen. But some of you, not only the four of us, but other
devotees would have to leave his intimate sphere and be scattered around. And honestly,
based on what I have communicated and tried to describe to you, that was the last thing I wanted
to do. I never, ever thought I would leave his intimate sphere, nor did I want to. But as events
unfolded over the year, I fell in love with another man unexpectedly. And part of the process of
reality consideration that encompass not just the emotional sexual character, but the deeper parts
of the personality, the deeper personality, the soul that corresponds with the gross embodiment,
there are the saunas that have to be undone for the spiritual process to take hold at that depth.
And so I ended up being one of the ones that left. He blessed my relationship with Nick,
and Nick and I have been together now for 31 years. And upon that leaving, as he said to me
at that moment in time, not expecting or knowing that I would be the one that I ended up being that
one. And so did another woman, Kimberly, and others who served around him. And many over the
years have ended up coming and going. He works through many beings in the world that may not be
even he though he's not physically alive, that process, the divine process that not as is not
and was never exclusive to his physical embodiment is still active, because it is the divine
self condition that is the grace or the spirit that moves and draws the heart to awaken.
And therefore, in the 30 years after that, it was equally as profound for me to
realize that being close to his physical body was not essential to the process that anyone
anywhere, even beyond his physical body and his physical death, this process is alive,
as it always has been throughout seeming time and space. The divine process is the reality
and the truth of anyone's divinely spiritual and transcendental condition.
The human side of Adi Da
Julie, let me ask you this question. You've talked about during the 16 years you were with him,
his transmission was constant. And you've described that transmission in terms of
he being the Ruchira avatar, the transmission of the bright, of something entirely radiant,
entirely joyful and blissful. And yet, I wonder and I imagine our viewers will wonder,
he was also a human being. He experienced illness. He experienced, any human being would
experience frustrations and disappointments. And I gather he was disappointed that his teachings
didn't reach more people in his own lifetime. What was that like?
Yes. Well, your description is right on and apt. And I'm very glad that you've asked this question.
Therein lies the paradox of our own embodiment, that very question about him,
a seeming other, and the seeming dichotomy between, call it God, call it the divine light,
call it bliss, call it whatever you want to name it. The certainty
that love and bliss and conscious being is present. And the paradox that we also arise
in a real situation, even though many mystics or realizers will say this is an illusion,
or realizers will say this is an illusion. It's also very real.
And very real, we are very real, seeming entities that experience everything profoundly.
And to varying degrees carrying various karmas and various sensibilities and various awareness.
So with Adi Da, because his bodily being and that spirit of transmission was
so potent in him, every aspect of his human being was
magnified. So love was magnified. Every emotion that you could feel
was magnified to infinity. And it was not held back. There was no taboo around feeling everything
or experience everything. And he helped us feel that by virtue of him being transparent and not
strategic or calculating or not in a program. He wasn't confined to traditional or conventional
norms. He was free. He was a free man. So yes, indeed, did he experience all of these emotions.
And you would also see and feel that, oh, yes, he has a gross persona. He has all of that,
all of those aspects of being that all of us have. And what his life was a demonstration of
was showing us that it's not a contradiction. Yet, if you are actually living with the divine
heart, intent and purpose to realize and remain constantly and perpetually established in the
divine self condition, then you develop the discrimination of the heart. So does the gross
or personality end up being entirely amoral? No. Is it going to be aggressively harmful to others?
No. Is it going to be perfect and never doing any of that to any degree? No. In other words,
the full spectrum of the light and the dark manifested in his being as it does in anyone.
So for myself personally, I just described that in rather broad terms and in rather esoteric terms
that would be considered by some people. But it applies to human life. It tries,
applies to the very ordinary moments of constantly living with him where everything was being
triggered, triggers, triggers going off constantly relative to how he may respond to me or may not
respond to me, what I want or what I don't want, what he wants or what he doesn't want. All of those interactions at a very human level are occurring. And the measure was always,
are my choices or reactions, are his choices or responses, are they serving the process of
reality truth and that awakening or not? So there was always that evaluation going on in terms of
whether or not what we did or what he did served the process. And that question that you just asked
is the meat of it. And most people want to avoid that. And I actually have found that
because my family and myself was actually involved in one of the lawsuits that occurred early on in
relationship to the controversies around beloved's manifest personality, many accusations that were
made in relationship to him, that the media got a hold of and all of that. And I and my family
suffered that attack from the public and from a few ex-devotees who were disgruntled around what
they experienced around him because of the fact that yes, he would get angry, very angry,
very angry and shout very loudly at times. He would get extremely frustrated about things.
There would be the flip side of it, as I've described already. He would be free to experiment
with somebody who wanted to come into his company to say, Oh, you know, I would like to,
well, my, you know, I had this weird desire ever since I was a child, you know, that I would really
like to have sex with a few women. You know, just for example, because sex is the thing that
everybody's occupied, and it's such a taboo subject. So, okay, well, you know, fine. Is there
anybody who would be possibly willing to do that with you and learn about it? You know,
experiment with that. And then so somebody would go off and they would do that kind of thing. Or if they were really close to him, like myself, for example, I think I might have an interest in women
too. Okay, so what's that about? What does that feel like? How does that relate to you as a full
persona? How important is it to you? What is the significance of it? Is that something that will
serve your spiritual process to engage in that? Or is it better for you to practice the sexual
yoga with a man with me or me with another man? I mean, there were all types of possibilities that
were evaluated in terms of their significance in relationship to the primary process. So that
corresponds with what you described. And I hear you taking into account that that the process,
the realization, call it satsang, call it vichira avatara bhakti yoga, all sorts of names,
you could give it, but it's the fundamental transmission of truth or being conscious light,
the bright itself. Everything always occurred in relationship to that. It's like the shruti note,
or the drone note in classical Eastern music, or the drum, you know, there's a primary rhythm
that you never lose, never ever lose the connection with, so that you're constantly in that
vibration. Everything's measured by the heart. Everything's measured by the heart. So every
experience that arises in and out of that, you consider every aspect of the being. So with Adi
Da, there were wild times. Wild's a good word. They were over the top. They were confronting.
I reacted many times, significantly. You call yourself God? You know, like, what's this about?
You know, even when I thought I was going to have to leave, you know, I don't want to leave.
I don't want to leave. You know, and in his passion with even tears in his eyes, but this is necessary for the divine process. You know, these kinds of impassioned moments in which
all people experience, any devotee who wants to give you a view of Adi Da, as if it was,
you know, a whitewashed version of being just blissful, is not being honest. And I object to
that. And that's in part why I actually have, I'm so grateful that you're having this conversation
with me. And I feel quite emotional about it because for a period of time after Adi Da passed
away, and even to the day that he passed away, his frustration increased, increased because the
urgency of his need to say to any individual being or to group of individuals that you have most
perfectly understood or this consistent realization is so such that you could establish a true culture
that can serve and carry on my work with integrity. He said, you have only barely begun. You have
hardly even begun. And this is after 40 years of some people being intimate with him and still
having communicated that no, it's not complete yet, synchronously saying it's an eternal process.
Why? No separate selves realize this. Realization is the self condition,
which is always already the case. It's always already true, but the whole bodily being in the
world and life must conform to that awakening in order for the heart to be the one that is acting
with feeling discrimination and responsibility. And he said that in order for me to acknowledge
that there would have to be a number of beings that would show signs that this is so, which would
inevitably manifest as a collective of individuals that show authenticity and integrity. And he had
in no uncertain terms, even though he never, he was hoping it would be different, that he was
always honest and true. He said, it is not happening. What you are manifesting as a gathering around me
is a cult. What you are manifesting around me is scapegoating me. You scapegoat others and therefore
you interfere with the process of divine self-realization. You are still what he called
mummers. You're still acting the act of the ego rather than allowing the divine self condition
to be the one that lives and breathes you. The one that is the heart. The one that is true love.
He said, look at the conflict in you all. Look at the politics that you're dramatizing. Looking
how, look at the world is not even attracted to you as a gathering. And that's one thing that I
actually learned as time went by, being out of his physical company. And that was that I, more I integrated with the world, I kept hearing people saying a few things that were really,
really important. And a lot of times, cult devotees don't want to talk about this.
Is that, how come you're not realized yet? Is that a reflection of Adi Da? Well, I can understand the
profundities of what Adi Da is speaking, but I don't see the demonstration of it as a culture.
You're all cultic. You're not very welcoming. You act as though you've got a secret and nobody else
could understand. Or you're just kind of a club that it's hard to get into. All sorts of things.
People would say, I really appreciate what Adi Da is saying, but maybe he's a bit mad. Is he an ego?
Is he just full of himself? I got to combine with all of the objections that people have had. And
in 2011, I combined so significantly with them, I realized that that mind is not other than this
mind that seems to be associated with this personality and this persona. That mind itself
is all a collective mind. A profundity of depth that not only does the body itself
need to be open and vulnerable and trusting, the mind itself that is in the collective psyche
must be gone beyond. So to presume that as a devotee, you don't have those reactions and
you don't have those negative thoughts is delusional. So I went through the process
from 2011 to transcend and to go beyond what I also had to recognize was so in myself.
And come to an understanding that the whole process of his embodiment wasn't dependent upon his body or the mind of response in relationship to what seemed to be about how he
played or how he was or how he reacted or how he reflected what he did or didn't do.
There was always a lesson that was to be learned about that. There was always a radical understanding,
a self-understanding that was necessary in order for the heart to remain open,
to remain in the room of being itself or the Bride itself. In other words, to be established
in the self-condition. So that's the process. And in relationship to the formal gathering
since then, I have been unable to continue to participate in that, which I think I spoke to
you about before. I am no longer associated with the formal gathering. The whole gathering,
the whole worldwide gathering is in a conundrum right now relative to the transcending of being
a cult around Adi Da and his life and what happened while he is alive. That is what is
occurring. And just to present it as being anything else is the error. And yet there are
a number of people who have, and I'm just going to say it plainly because I don't want to play
games. It's too serious to play games. I'm not playing a game here at all. The integrity of
Adi Da's work and what he did is too significant for it to be dismissed by gossip or by hearsay
or by lack of even the willingness to be open enough to even consider it or to be able to
hear devotees speak about it from every perspective or point of view. But after he passed away,
there was a power grab that occurred in relationship to him and that actually ended
up taking over his work and the narrative has taken a shift and lies have been being told
and secrets have been being kept around what happened and people are being muzzled relative
to actually speaking about the details of the practice and what occurred in his lifetime as if
there was something so horrible that happened that he could never be given for a for we could
never be forgiven for that would just you know make it impossible for anybody to accept or hear
about this divine process that occurred in his company. I don't agree with that orientation.
I feel that transparency is absolutely essential because we're not different than anyone or any
being and the truth is necessary.
Conclusion
I think Julie you've you've said it all
for now. Yeah and there's many more details. I don't know how easily acceptable it is or if it
doesn't have to be acceptable it just feels important to say it you know and and to say it
truly as I as I understand it and have practiced it now since I was 18 years old and going on 68
now. I know in a way we've just scratched the surface. We went over 16 years of your life in
just a few minutes and I actually think it would be a good idea if we come back sometime
and review some of those practices in more detail. For example, the different forms of samadhi
that you experience. I think that would be a wonderful story to share with our viewers.
But I would say for now you you've given our viewers a fabulous overview
of your life for the almost half a century in relationship to one of the most extraordinary
human beings. Well thank you. Thank you. I'm yeah thank you so much.
I'm very grateful to you Julie and I want to thank you for being with me. Thank you and I
really look forward to going forward with you in this. Wonderful. Wonderful. We'll have more
conversations. I think our viewers will will find them of great value and I will close the way I
normally close our interviews by thanking those of you who have been watching or listening to this
conversation. I want to thank you profoundly because you are the reason that we are here.
I imagine that by now many of you already realize that in conjunction with White Crow Books,
we've just launched the New Thinking Allowed Dialogues book imprint and our first title
is, Is There Life After Death? New Thinking Allowed is a non-profit endeavor. Your contributions
to the New Thinking Allowed Foundation make a meaningful difference in our ability to produce
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