Adi Da

Adi Da Samraj (born Franklin Albert Jones, November 3, 1939 in Jamaica, New York) is a religious guru and the founder of the new religious movement known as Adidam. He has used names such as Bubba Free John, Da Free John, and Da Love-Ananda [1] to correspond with changes in his work as a spiritual teacher.

Adidam claims to have close to 2000 members worldwide[2], and has published over 70 of Adi Da's books[3]. Adi Da states that he is an "Avataric Incarnation", a uniquely full and complete manifestation of the Divine in human form, and that his life and teaching fulfills the "Great Tradition" of human spirituality.[4]

Life

The following is largely summarized from Adi Da's autobiography The Knee of Listening: Adi Da was born Franklin Albert Jones and raised in Queens, New York. He attended Columbia College, where he received a degree in philosophy, and Stanford University, where he completed his M.A. in English literature with a thesis on Gertrude Stein. In 1965, Adi Da became a disciple of Albert Rudolph, also known as Rudi or Swami Rudrananda. He describes that period as one of human maturation, extensive disciplining of the body, and his first acquaintance with "spiritual transmission" from a human teacher. Following Rudi's instruction, Adi Da married his girlfriend, Nina Davis. (They later divorced; she was then and has remained his devotee.) Adi Da described how he reached a point where he had exhausted what he could learn from Rudi, and in 1968, became a disciple of Rudi's Indian teacher Swami Muktananda, whom he first visited in India in early April of 1968, and who, he wrote, gave him extraordinary spiritual experiences and realization. For approximately one year, in 1968-1969, Adi Da was involved with Scientology (mention of which was omitted from subsequent versions of his autobiography, which say that during this period he did not meditate, but "simply listened"). He returned to India in August of 1969 to see Muktananda, who subsequently gave Adi Da a letter acknowledging his yogic realization and authorizing him to initiate others. After a period Adi Da describes as including visionary experiences wherein he was guided by both Muktananda's teacher, Bhagawan Nityananda, and "the Goddess", Adi Da wrote that he re-awakened (as a divine incarnation) to his original divine state of full enlightenment, on September 10, 1970.

Adi Da founded his own group in April of 1972, operating out of a bookstore in Los Angeles, California. Initially known as the Dawn Horse Communion, the movement founded by Adi Da has been through several name changes: previous names have included The Free Primitive Church of Divine Communion, The Johannine Daist Communion, and Free Daism. It is now known as Adidam, or The Way of the Heart. Adi Da permanently broke with Muktananda after a meeting in India in 1973 in which Adi Da and Muktananda engaged in a discussion wherein it became clear they each had very different notions of what the highest, or most enlightened, spiritual state is. Adi Da would later say, however, that he still regularly "connected with" Muktananda in subtle planes, and that he always held a great love for his former guru.

Adi Da has three biological daughters (by three different women), and a fourth adopted daughter. (Feuerstein, 1991)

Teaching and community

Adi Da states that he is an "Avataric Incarnation", a uniquely full and complete manifestation of the Divine in human form, and that his life and teaching fulfills the what he terms the "Great Tradition" of human spirituality. He describes his teaching as a "radical" (or most direct), original, and uniquely complete offering that, for the first time in history, has made the total way and wisdom of the "precosmic Divine Light", or the "Bright", available to human beings.

Adi Da teaches that, in reality, there is Only God. That is, that there is only a single, Indivisible, All-Pervading, Self-Existing and Self-Radiant "Source-Condition", "Nature", and "Substance" that is Reality, in and of which everything and everyone arises as a spontaneous and unnecessary modification. Adi Da teaches the One Divine Reality is "always already" the human Condition, and therefore our task is not to seek for God or Realization but to become responsible for the action whereby we forget, obscure, and obstruct the prior State—which activity he generally describes as "self-contraction", "Narcissus", or the "avoidance of relationship". But Adi Da also teaches that one cannot Realize the Divine through one's own efforts, because all ego-based action cannot but fail to overcome its own original presumption of egoity itself. One must be awakened out of this "dream" by tangible Divine Spiritual Grace itself, appearing through the Agency of the God-Realized Human Guru.[5] Adi Da teaches that his grace must be accessed by devotional submission and obedience to him as Satguru via joining and taking up the formal practices of Adidam.

Adidam claims to have close to two thousand members worldwide.[6] There are a number of Adidam communities around the world. Devotees are generally expected to tithe and make other financial contributions.[7]

Artist and writer

Adi Da has created a large body of spiritual writings with over 70 published books. He began the creative text now called the The Mummery Book [8] in 1957 "when he spontaneously began engaging the process of examining his own conscious process."[9] English Professor and Adidam study group coordinator[10] Askold Skalsky described it as "a novel in the mode of a vast parable, in which mystical and esoteric states of awareness are fleshed in poetic imagery. It is an experimental work — what Adi Da Samraj calls a 'prose opera' — that shatters the conventional limits of language and raises literary portrayal to radical levels of consciousness".[11]

During the mid-60s to mid-90s, Adi Da also produced a body of drawings and paintings.[12] In 1998, he turned to the medium of photography as what he wanted to intensively develop. Since that time he has created a body of work that presently numbers over 50,000 images.[13]Adi Da says of his approach to photography "I paint with light. I use the camera, but I use it as medium like people use paintbrushes. What I'm fundamentally using is light, and I use it like paint. But I am not merely luxuriating in the art I create. I have a message to bring to the world." [14]

The artistic rendering he uses with the photographic images is described as "typically involving more than two (and even as many as ten or more) superimposed layers. He creates these multiple-exposed images entirely in camera, though he is not a photographer, as such. Rather, he creates large-scale works of "light-imagery," using photographic (and also videographic) technology. No manipulation in the darkroom (or by digital means) is used. He relates to his photographic negatives as "blueprints," referring to them as the basis for making "monumental fabrications." [15]

Criticisms

A range of critical opinion exists about Adi Da and Adidam. Adi Da's writings have been praised by a number of popular authors, though his claims of unique and ultimate enlightenment have been received more skeptically. Outside of Adidam, Adi Da's behavior is generally considered to be much more problematic than his teachings by some critics. Adi Da and Adidam have been the target of several critical allegations, primarily by disillusioned former students, and secondarily by journalists and anti-cult activists.

In 1985 Adi Da and his church were sued by an ex-member for (among other things) fraud, intentional infliction of emotional distress, false imprisonment, and assault and battery; the suit sought $5 million in damages[16] (San Francisco Chronicle, Thursday April 4, 1985 [17]). The church, claiming extortion, counter-sued for $20 million.[18] In 1986, Adi Da was again sued for fraud and intentional infliction of emotional distress.[19] In 2005, the Washington Post reported: '"The lawsuits and threatened suits that dogged the group in the mid-1980s were settled with payments and confidentiality agreements", says a California lawyer, Ford Greene, who handled three such cases.'[20] No new reports of such abuse have appeared in the news media since the mid-1980s.

Around the time of these lawsuits, Adi Da and Adidam (then known as Da Free John and The Johannine Daist Communion) were subjects of a report on The Today Show (transcript).

Among ex-followers, Adi Da's strongest critics argue that he shows a pattern of abusive, addictive and self-serving behavior (San Francisco Examiner, April 5, 1985 [21]). Georg Feuerstein echos or acknowledges these criticisms to varying degrees, while still praising Adi Da's teachings and/or realization. [22]

Popular author Ken Wilber has repeatedly commented on Adi Da, both positively and negatively.[23] In 1998, he wrote: "...I affirm all of the extremes of my statements about Da: he is one of the greatest spiritual Realizers of all time, in my opinion, and yet other aspects of his personality lag far behind those extraordinary heights. By all means look to him for utterly profound revelations, unequalled in many ways; yet step into his community at your own risk."[24] Wilber has never at any point in his life been involved as a formal member of Adidam.

Teaching literature

Adi Da has authored over 70 books on spirituality and the process of God-Realization. Since the late 1990s, he has been working on a series of definitive volumes commonly referred to as the "23 Source Texts." Not all of the 23 source texts have appeared as of mid-2006. The culmination of these "Source Texts" is a massive volume entitled "The Dawn Horse Testament," which summarizes his teachings.[25]

The texts comprising this body of work—the Dharma (or Scripture) of the Way of the Heart—are distinct from other general or introductory Adidam books. It should be noted that over the decades the books in the canon have changed, with many receiving editorial changes making them into new books, while older books that were once in the canon have been removed or incorporated into later books. The current structure of this canon is listed at adidam.org.[26]

The essay "First Word"[27] appears at the beginning of each Source Text as a way of orienting the reader to the right understanding of the "point of view" expressed in the text, and to counter the inevitable cultic mind-set that most "unenlightened seekers" bring to their approach.

Name changes

Adi Da is noted for his frequent name changes in the past [28]. As a student of Muktananda, he was given the name Dhyanananda. Shortly after becoming an independent teacher, he took the name Bubba Free John, "Bubba" being a colloquialism for "brother" and "Free John" a loose translation of "Franklin Jones". In 1979, he began calling himself Da Free John, "Da" meaning, in Sanskrit, "the giver". From 1986 to 1990, he was known primarily as Da Love-Ananda, "Ananda" meaning, in Sanskrit, "bliss". From 1990 to 1991, he was known as Da Kalki, in reference to the Hindu avatar Kalki, the 10th and final incarnation of Vishnu, and from 1991 to 1994 as Da Avabhasa, "Avabhasa" meaning "brightness". The title his devotees currently use for him is the Ruchira Avatar, Adi Da Samraj, literally "the radiant avatar, primordial giver, universal ruler". They also frequently refer to him simply as "Beloved".

See also

• Shawnee Free Jones, a daughter

Bibliography

• Georg Feuerstein, Holy Madness: The Shock Tactics and Radical Teachings of Crazy-Wise Adepts, Holy Fools, and Rascal Gurus, Paragon House, 1991, ISBN 1-55778-250-4
• David C. Lane and Scott Loww, Da: The Strange Case of Franklin Jones, Mt. San Antonio College Philosophy group, 1996, ISBN 1-56543-054-9. online:

• Part One: The Paradox of Da Free John: Distinguishing the Message from the Medium by David C. Lane
• Part Two: The Strange Case of Franklin Jones by Scott Lowe (registration required; link to Google cache; link to earlier version

• Edward Plotkin, The Four Yogas Of Enlightenment: Guide To Don Juan's Nagualism & Esoteric Buddhism (2002) ISBN 0-9720879-0-7.

External links

Official Adidam sites

• Adidam.org: official website
• The Dawn Horse Press: publisher of the literature of Adidam
• DaPlastique: Adi Da's "Transcendental Realism" Art
• The Mummery Book: Adi Da's Epic Theatrical Work
• The Knee Of Listening: Adi Da's Spiritual Autobiography
• Easy Death: Adi Da's book on how to transcend death
• Fear-No-More Zoo: Adi Da's teaching related to "non-humans"
• The Names of Avatar Adi Da Samraj: Comprehensive resource on Adi Da's previous and current names
• Naamleela Free Jones, a daughter *Io Free Jones, a daughter

Unofficial advocacy sites

• About Adidam: one of a series of unofficial outreach sites from Chris Tong[29]
• DAbase
• Beezone
• Adi Da and The Case of Ken Wilber An Adidam follower's collection of Ken Wilber's writings on Adi Da, with critical commentary
• Frank Marrero : A monkey's tale A devotee's account of his time with Adi Da in the late 70's and early 80's
• Every Being Heart-Yearns for TruthYouTube recording of Adi Da at Fijian Ashram includes music score

Criticism from former followers

• The Daism Seminar, with related links and research materials and a forum for online discussion
• An Open Letter by Mark Miller, 1985 (follower from 1976-1984)
• Holy Madness: The Dangerous and Disillusioning Example of Da Free John, by Georg Feuerstein, 1996 (follower in early 1980s)
• A Room With A Guru, by Dennis Trunk, 1999 (follower in early 1970s)

Other criticism

• The Case of Adi Da by Ken Wilber
• Rick Ross Institute page on Adi Da/Adidam: material compiled by anti-cult activist Rick Ross
• A critical appraisal of Adi Da's philosophy, by Andrew P. Smith
• Da Free John/Adidam/Adi Da Samraj, by M. Alan Kazlev

Other sites

• Profile of Adidam from the Religious Movements Homepage Project