Adi Da has said many times that, in a certain sense, His entire Teaching is summarized by those two gestures.

Of course these gestures -- the fist and the open hand -- are not entirely unfamiliar to us: we conventionally use these in many circumstances. For example, we gesture "hello" to somebody with the raised open hand. And we "shake hands" in a gesture of friendship and good will by pressing open hands against each other. Indeed, to make Adi Da's point, there is no other way to shake hands!

Some historians suggest that the sole reason behind such gestures is to show the other person that we don't have a weapon in our hand. While there may be some truth to this in the ordinary functioning of human society, this explanation fails to capture the (ultimately spiritual and transcendental) fullness of the relational gesture.

A better intuition is given by that other social occasion when the hands are raised: when someone is surrendering to someone else. While again, one could focus on the fact that, from a practical standpoint, this is indeed showing the other party that the person has no weapons in hand, it is the surrender that points to the more profound significance.

Raised hands indicate surrender. Not just surrender in the abstract, but surrender to someone. And as a spiritual gesture, they indicate spiritual surrender to the Divine, which opens the way to the ultimate form of relationship: Divine Communion (and ultimately, God-Realization, awakening as the Divine Being).

So this is why you often see us raising our hands! More often than not, it is a gesture that spontaneously occurs when we are experiencing Communion with the Divine. We also do it when someone with a camera is taking a picture we know our Spiritual Master, Adi Da, will probably be looking at, to show our devotion and spiritual surrender to Him, as our Spiritual Master, and our spiritual recognition of Him as human Incarnation of the Divine.

Adi Da making the same gesture many years later