The need for a Human Spiritual Master

Man has no idea of the Spirit, he has to think of it with the forms he has before him. He has to think of the blue skies, or the expansive fields, or the sea, or something huge. How else can you think of God? So what are you doing in reality? You are talking of omnipresence, and thinking of the sea. Is God the sea? A little more common sense is required.

We are bound by our present constitution, limited and bound to see God as man. If the buffaloes want to worship God, they will see Him as a huge buffalo. If a fish wants to worship God, it will have to think of Him as a big fish. You and I, the buffalo, the fish, each represent so many vessels. All these go to sea to be filled with water according to the shape of the vessel. In each of these vessels is nothing but water. So with God. When men see Him, they see Him as man, and animal as animal — each according to his ideal. That is the only way you can see Him; you have to worship Him as man, because there is no other way out of it. Two classes of men do not worship God as man — the human brute who has no religion, and the Paramahansa [the highest Yogi] who has gone beyond humanity, who has thrown off his mind and body and gone beyond the limits of nature. . . Between these poles of existence, if anyone tells you he is not going to worship God as man, take care of him. He is an irresponsible talker, he is mistaken; his religion is for frothy thinkers, it is intellectual nonsense.

Swami Vivekenanda, Complete Works of Swami Vivekenanda

The human Spiritual Master is Divine Help to the advantage of those in like form. When one enters into right relationship with the Spiritual Master, changes happen in the literal physics of one's existence. I am not just talking about ideas. I am talking about literal transformations at the level of energy, at the level of the higher light of physics, at the level of mind beyond the physical limitations you now presume, at the level of the absolute Speed of ultimate Light. The transforming process is enacted in devotees in and through the Living Company of the Spiritual Master. The relationship between the Spiritual Master and the devotee is not a matter of conceptual symbolisms or emotional attachment to some extraordinary person. The true Guru-devotee relationship is real physics. Therefore, because they can make unique use of the Offering of that person's Company, it is to the special advantage of people when some one among them has gone through the real process of transformation that makes a Realizer-Guru of one or another degree. And that advantage is unique in My case, because that process has Completed and Revealed the total cycle that becomes Divine Self-Realization.

Spiritual life has nothing to do with the childishness people tend to dramatize in relationship to the Spiritual Master. I criticize that childish, or dependent, approach more directly than most people do. Others are merely petulant about it, in the self-righteous mood of adolescence. But there are real reasons why both the childish and the adolescent approaches to the Spiritual Master are forms of destructive nonsense and must be overcome. However, the mature, sacrificial relationship to the Spiritual Master is absolutely Lawful and necessary. Those who object to that relationship might as well object to the relationship between the Earth and the sun.

Most people are willing to sacrifice things, but not themselves. They are willing to pay cash, in other words, for a quick salvation. Such "religious consumerism" is an ancient ritual of worship, but it is false and futile. True worship is the sacrifice of your own body-mind in Truth, in the Living and transforming Company of the Spiritual Master. People absolutely resist that sacrifice because they know nothing about it. They are subhuman in their present level of adaptation. Sacrifice represents another stage of evolution for them. In their present actual, literal psycho-physical condition they are incapable of it. They must be drawn out of that limited condition, and into another state of existence. And it is as far to go from where they are now to ultimate Divine Self-Realization as it is from the amoeba in the primal mud of the Earth to a human being. Everything, even the body, must change dramatically.

There is a profound difference between the condition of the usual individual and the Condition of the fully Awakened individual. The difference is an inconceivable leap in evolution. But there is a real process for making that leap, and there is Help for it: the devotional relationship to Me, the Adept Spiritual Master. In other words, something in the physics of the universe makes it possible for a single apparent individual to pass through the entire affair of Divine Self-Realization, and then to bring others into the Sphere of the same Divinely Enlightened Existence, so that they may duplicate that Divine Condition. Therefore, just as the relationship to the Spiritual Master (of one or another degree) is the supreme Principle of Spiritual life in general, the relationship to Me is the Supreme Principle of the Way of Adidam.

True Spiritual life is not just a change in your mind. Much more than an inner awakening or a good feeling about everything must take place. The literal physics of your whole existence must change. The physical body and its energies must be literally transformed. Spiritual processes do not occur as a result of the subjective nonsense of vicarious belief and vicarious salvation that people usually associate with religion, as if real Awakening were just a matter of asking some silly question or going to a few lectures for the weekend.

That is not Divine Enlightenment. Divine Enlightenment is a literal change of the whole body. When you have acquired the human form, the literal change that must occur in the body is not really so much in your outward appearance, because you already have the necessary structure. The changes that must occur are literal psycho-physical changes, just as literal as if you were to acquire more legs and arms, except that the most dramatic changes occur in dimensions other than the shape of the body. Certainly changes occur in the flesh and the elemental structures of the body, but those changes do not really alter the body's outward shape. The changes are as literal as evolving from a dinosaur to a human being, and they are as dramatic as that, but they principally occur at more subtle levels of the physics of the conditional being. There are literal changes in the nervous system, literal changes in the chemistry of the body, literal changes in the structural functioning of the brain.

You cannot realize such changes in a weekend. They are a living process of growth. But they can be quickened and intensified through right practice, through real sacrificial discipline, in the Company of the fully Awakened Spiritual Master. Therefore, in My Company, the Divine Condition is Communicated to you in such a way that It Effects a "radical" transformation in the disposition of the body-mind and then Magnifies the effectiveness of that disposition many times, so that the whole Process may take place even in a single lifetime, or at least be dramatically advanced in one lifetime if not completely fulfilled.

I have Described the full esoteric progression of this remarkable transformation in the literature of My Wisdom-Teaching. My Description is not based merely on an intellectual synthesis of things I have read and thought. The entire Way of Adidam is My literal experience – not only the complete preparation, but also the awakening of sensitivity to the Divine Life-Energy, including the full Kundalini process, the elaboration of subtle sounds and lights via the awakening of the brain centers, all the great archetypal visions, everything. I have had all the classic Yogic experiences, from the muladhar (the lowest terminal of the body-mind at the perineum) to the upper reaches of the mind in the brain core. Eventually, it became evident that the "muladhar-to-sahasrar game" (or, really, the raising of attention from the muladhar to the ajna center, with contemplation of the "sky of mind" in the direction of the sahasrar), whether played through the extended bodily and psychic processes of the Kundalini awakening, or through the higher path of the awakening of the brain centers through meditations on subtle light and sound, is not the Way of Truth. It became evident that the Realization of Truth is the Most Perfect sacrifice, not only of the lower or gross, level of existence but also of the whole subtle (or etheric, lower mental, and higher mental) elaboration of experience and function, and even of egoic seclusion in the causal level of existence. Thus, in My case, ultimately there was Perfect Realization of the Heart of Consciousness, or Divine Self-Realization, Which is an Awakening Beyond the limits of exclusive conscious awareness, into unqualified God-Realization.

That I have had all these extraordinary experiences and also Enjoy Unconditional Awakening as My constant Condition is a great Opportunity for all others. My Realization and My Wisdom-Teaching, therefore, bring the significance of all the patterns of existence into a clear unity, so that the whole affair of human existence can be approached rightly. The Realization of the Inherently Perfect Intensity of Truth continues as My Very Existence. It is not and could not have been a passing experience. And the Power of It is available for the transformation of others, if people will enter into devotional relationship with Me.

If you move into a relationship with Me, the Divine process begins to duplicate Itself in your case. It is not as if you are a robot that is being transformed through the effect of some computer — no. The process is a living and human relationship with Me. But it is not like the conventional doctor-patient and mommy-daddy-baby games. Irresponsible people cannot enter into it. You must be responsible for yourself at the human level, and in a profoundly uncommon way. You must live the discipline of ordinary life. You yourself must be love under all ordinary, daily conditions. You must make this change in your life. There is no way whereby you can be relieved of this necessity, and nobody can do it for you. Nevertheless, all of that ordinary responsibility simply prepares you for the right relationship to the Agency of the Divine in My bodily (human) Form. Such a One As I Am is your unique Advantage, because I Am Present in the same kind of bodily form as you — manifested in the same kind of physical condition, the same kind of nervous system, the same kind of brain. But in Me all these things are Raised to an Absolute level of Functioning, so that your entering into Communion with Me brings changes even at the level of the psycho-physical body that you present to Me.

The abstract Deity cannot serve you in that way, because the physics of this Process must be directly Present, and the human Demonstration of the Process must be Present in a Form that can do its Work in your case. That Work is My Purpose, because I Represent a State of the ultimate physics of things that is your potential but not your actuality at the present time. The abstract Divine and the potential powers of the universe are just as true as the Spiritual Master, but they are not organized (except in the case of the Spiritual Master) for the sake of the immediate transformation of human beings. If people enter into right relationship with Me, they begin to Realize the same transformations I have Described in My own case. Then, at the end of My physical Lifetime, My devotees will have gone through sufficient transformation that some among the community of My devotees can become the extended mechanism of My Function.

I Am the Awakened Servant of humankind. I Serve to Regenerate the Teaching of Truth and to Resurrect the great culture of compassion and Wisdom among men and women. However, those purposes are secondary aspects of My Service to men and women. They are emanations of My Divine Self-Realization and My Ultimate Function. My True and Ultimate Function is to instigate the superphysics of literal and Most Perfect God-Realization among My true devotees. If there is no duplication of that superphysical Process, there can be no true Continuation of My Blessing Work, except in verbal form, because there can be no Living Agency.

Without such Living Agency how will that Process take place in the future? Perhaps, as in the past, people will resort to the pieces of it that men and women of experience represent. People can always experience a little Yoga, a little psychism, a little internal energy, a little insight. But when the Total Representation of Divine Self-Realization is Demonstrated in the literal bodily (human) form of one individual, you must make use of it. It is an Advantage that is unique in human time.

Avatar Adi Da Samraj, The Divine Physics of Evolution