What
Love Has Made of Death 1
The
Story of Avatar Adi Da's
Instruction and Blessing
During the Illness and Death
of a Devotee
by
Carolyn Lee
From
my early childhood, I was puzzled and fearful
about death. And so when my sister, Robyn, handed
me Avatar Adi Da's autobiography The Knee Of
Listening in 1984 and I read the Prologue,
I was touched exactly in the place where I was
seeking. Avatar Adi Da was speaking of the deathless
Condition, and I intuitively felt that His words
carried a complete Freedom and Authority:
Death
is utterly acceptable to consciousness
and life. There has been endless times
of numberless deaths, but neither consciousness
nor life has ceased to arise. The felt
quality and cycle to death has not modified
the fragility of flowers, even the flowers
within the human body.
Therefore
one's understanding of consciousness and
life must be turned to That Utter Inclusive
Truth, That Clarity and Wisdom, That Power
and Untouchable Gracefulness, That One
and Only Reality this evidence suggests.
One
must cease to live in a superficial and
divided way, seeking and demanding consciousness
and life in the present apparent form,
avoiding and resisting what appears to
be the end of consciousness and life in
death.
The
Heart Is Real understanding. The
Heart Is Real Consciousness and
Real Life. The Heart Is What Merely
and Only Is, but Which Is also
Appearing In and Behind the conditions
of mortal life and its death.
Therefore,
it is said of old, the One That Is
Is neither born nor come to death, not
Alive merely as the limitation of form
(itself), not Itself (or Entirely) Rendered
in what appears, and yet It Is the Living
One, than Which there Is no lesser other
(and no Great or Greater Other), Appearing
As all of this Play of changes, but Eternally
One, Unchanging, and Free.
There
Is Only the Constant Knowledge and Enjoyment
of the Heart, moment to moment, through
the instant of all conditions of appearance
and disappearance. Of This I Am Perfectly
Certain. I Am That.
Prologue to The Knee Of Listening
|
So
the first word of Avatar Adi Da's Teaching that
I ever read was the word "death". His Address
to human beings literally begins with death.
Over
the past year, Beloved Adi Da's Self-Revelation
of Reality became my living experience. This occurred
in the process of the death of my sister, also
a devotee of Avatar Adi Da Samraj. I found myself
standing in a place where there is no consolation
of any ordinary kind, but only the "Bright" Itself
— tangibly felt and seen. By the Grace of
Beloved Adi Da, I was able to go beyond the fear
of death without needing to "believe in" anything
at all — because the eternal nature of existence
as Divine Light had become self-understanding,
real Spiritual and bodily knowledge.
When
Robyn, three years younger than me, handed me
The Knee Of Listening, she was already
a devotee of Avatar Adi Da Samraj. She lived in
Sydney, Australia, near where we had grown up,
and she had two young sons. A psychotherapist
by profession and also trained in holistic healing,
she seemed to have a native talent for everything
she did, from academic studies to gardening and
flower arranging to the complexities of human
relationships. She was an uncommonly sane and
gifted person, always feeling and extending herself
to others.
But
I knew her at another depth, at the place of her
passion for Truth. I trusted her at that level
more than anyone alive. Therefore, when she spoke
to me of her certainty of the unique Spiritual
stature of Avatar Adi Da Samraj, I listened with
great respect.
Within
a couple of years, I also was His devotee, and
my life was divided between Avatar Adi Da's Sanctuaries
in California and Fiji. And so I saw very little
of Robyn except on the occasions when she would
come to one of the Sanctuaries for retreat. Nevertheless,
my love-bond and psychic connection with her continued
to deepen. In many ways, I felt like her twin.
I was always moved by the steadiness of her devotion
to Avatar Adi Da Samraj and by the beautiful gifts
that she would send to Him over the years.
next: An Inexplicable
Stroke of Fate
