Adi Da

Adi Da Samraj, (born Franklin Albert Jones, November 3, 1939, in Jamaica, Queens, New York City), is a contemporary and controversial guru, spiritual writer, and artist who is also the founder of the new religious movement currently known as Adidam. He has also used names such as Bubba Free John, Da Free John, Dau Loloma, Da Love-Ananda, Da Avadhoota, Da Kalki, and Da Avabhasa. Adi Da states that he is an "Avataric Incarnation", the "Da Avatar", a uniquely full and complete manifestation of the Divine Person unprecedented in human form, and that his life and teaching fulfills and transcends the limitations of what he terms the "Great Tradition" of human spirituality.

Adi Da's teaching is summarized as follows: suffering is the result of the (false) presumption of separateness. This assumption forms the basis of all conventional human activity, and must be undone. The ego is identified by Adi Da as the activity of separativeness, which is enacted in every moment. Ultimately, there is only one divine consciousness, which is the state to be realized. This can be done by turning one's attention to the realizer of the divine in every moment, thereby receiving the grace of spiritual blessing and transmission. Adi Da describes himself as the most spiritually realized being to appear in human history, the "First, Last, and Only Seventh Stage Adept", "Promised God-Man", and "Divine World-Teacher". He states that the ego cannot undo itself, which is why divinity in the form of the spiritual master appears in human life. He describes the ultimate condition (or prior condition) as love-bliss, self-radiant indivisible conscious light. More simply, he refers to it as the Bright. In this realization, all egoic tendency is "outshined", or made completely obsolete.

Allegations by ex-members of what is now known as Adidam that Adi Da (then known as Da Free John) and some of his followers engaged in financial, sexual and emotional abuses were widely reported in American news media in 1985, including The Today Show. Adidam said these public allegations were part of a conspiracy to extort large sums of money from the religious group and to discredit and destroy the group in a smear campaign. The claims were settled out of court by Adidam with payments and confidentiality agreements, per an attorney who handled three such cases.

Life

According to Adi Da's autobiography, The Knee of Listening, he was born Franklin Albert Jones and raised in the New York City borough of Queens. He graduated from Columbia University in 1961, with a BA in philosophy (including an additional focus on both art and literature), and from Stanford University in 1966 with an MA in English literature. His master’s thesis, a study of core themes in modernism, focused on Gertrude Stein and on the modernist painters of that period. In 1965, Adi Da became a disciple of Albert Rudolph, also known as Rudi or Swami Rudrananda. He describes that period as one of maturation, extensive disciplining of the body, and his first experience 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 describes 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 (the actual existence of this letter remains a point of controversy). After a period Adi Da describes as including visionary experiences in which 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 (then Franklin Jones) founded his own group in April 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, and that Muktananda would not acknowledge his enlightenment. Adi Da would later say, however, that he still regularly "connected with" Muktananda (and Rudi) in subtle planes, and that he always held a great love for his former gurus.

Since the early 1970s, Adi Da has written over 70 books on religion and related matters (see below).

Name changes

Adi Da is noted for his frequent name changes, which devotees believe are associated with changes to his teaching work. As a student of Muktananda, he was given the name Dhyanananda. Shortly after becoming an independent teacher, during the 1973 visit to India where he broke with Muktananda, he took the name Bubba Free John, "Bubba" being a colloquialism for "brother" and "Free John" a loose translation of "Franklin Jones". In 1978, 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" and since 2007 Sapta Na Adi Da Samraj.They also frequently refer to him simply as "Beloved".

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 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 has described human life as unfolding in seven potential stages. While other religious teachers, such as Jesus and the Buddha, are said by Adi Da to have attained the status of "fifth" (or "sixth") "Stage Realizer", he maintains that he is the "first, last, and only seventh stage Adept-Realizer (cf. The Basket of Tolerance, 1991). Adi Da says his divine incarnation is the unique means for sentient beings to attain seventh stage realization now and for all future time. In 1984, Adi Da said "I am here in my lifetime to change the course of human history, and I want to see some evidence of it. No one on Earth compares to me...I believe that before this body dies, all mankind will acknowledge me.

Adi Da states 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 the task is not to seek for God or realization but to become responsible for the action whereby one forgets, obscures and obstructs 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 will fail to overcome its own original presumption of egoity itself. One must be awakened out of this "dream" by spiritual grace, appearing through the "Agency of the God-Realized Human Guru". Adi Da states that this grace must be accessed by devotional submission and obedience to Adi Da himself as Satguru by joining and taking up the formal practices of Adidam.

There are a number of Adidam communities around the world In a 1999 news article they claimed 1,800 members worldwide According to Adidam, formal devotees of Adi Da should perform disciplines including meditation, sacramental worship, financial contributions, mission, study, service, diet, yoga and formal exercise, cooperative living, regular work, sexuality, and spiritual retreats. Adidam states the degree to which the disciplines are engaged depends on the devotee's level of participation, and their careful consideration of the disciplines.

Hermitage ashrams

Adi Da and his devotees have established five Hermitage Ashrams to be used principally for spiritual practice and meditation retreats, and are believed by his followers to bestow blessings upon visitors.

The main Hermitage Ashram is called Adi Da Samrajashram and covers the Fijian Island of Naitauba. Others include The Mountain Of Attention Sanctuary, Love's Point Hermitage and Tat Sundaram Hermitage, all in Northern California; and Da Love-Ananda Mahal in Kauai, Hawaii.

Art

In the last decade, Adi Da has engaged himself as an artist. From 1998 to 2006 he focused primarily on camera based images. During this time he created a body of work exceeding 60,000 images. In 2006 he began to create large or “monumental” scale digital images using pigmented inks and paper on large aluminum substructures. In some cases he has integrated his original photographic and videographic images into this digital work. Adi Da states that his image-art can be characterized as paradoxical space that undermines “point of view”, and thus communicates a reality or truth that transcends the limitations of the ego. Adi Da calls this art “Transcendental Realism”. In 2007 Adi Da was featured as a collateral artist at the 52nd Venice Biennale International Art Exhibition curated by highly recognized and respected Italian contemporary art critic, Achille Bonito Oliva who wrote in his curatorial statement, “Adi Da Samraj has established a new use of geometry, as a fertile field of unconventional aesthetic communication that takes delight in developing its principles asymmetrically, through surprise and feeling. Welcome Books of New York has also published a book of Adi Da’s work titled “The Spectra Suites” with a forward by American art critic and professor of art history, Donald Kuspit, who wrote “It is Adi Da Samraj’s imaginative triumph to have conveyed the illusions created by discrepant points of view and the emotionally liberating effect when they aesthetically unite in the psyche of the shocked perceiver.” Hank Sims, writing for the alternative weekly newspaper North Coast Journal, was dismissive of Adi Da's art and suggested parallels between his efforts as guru and as artist, stating: "both rackets require the ability to corral a pile of detritus and imbue it with all the mystery and meaning and wonder that has supposedly escaped our dull, quotidian existence. American art critic Titus O'Brien, blogging for the online Texas art journal Glasstire.com said: "[Adi Da] studied the roots of Modernism in college before realizing he was “the World Teacher.” You see him channeling Bauhaus, surrealist, and pop sources he would have been aware of, mixed in with some Indian yantric trickery and happy Hawaii tourist art cliches. Subtle they aren't.

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.

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.

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

Adi Da's written work has been at times praised by scholars on textual and conceptual grounds. For example, Jeffrey J. Kripal describes "this English idiom has been enriched by a kind of hybridized English-Sanskrit, and that a new type of mystical grammar has been created, embodied most dramatically (and, to the ego, jarringly) in Adi Da’s anti-ego capitalization practice, in which just about every grammatical move is nondualistically endowed with the status once imperially preserved in English for the non-existent “I”. Such a reading experience constantly calls upon one’s ability to think and feel beyond the socially constructed ego.

Adi Da's teaching about his avataric function has evolved over time. In a 1971 preface to the original version of his autobiography, Adi Da wrote: "It has taken me at least thirty-one years to produce this book. If I were an Avatar or one of the eternal Siddhas I would have made it for you as soon as my faculties were fit to write. But I had to learn it all instead according to the condition of our usual birth...I promise that none of this will lead to me but always to reality, which is conscious and unqualified joy. Many years later as he evolved further in his realization and his understanding he wrote: "I Am the Da Avatar, the all-Completing Adept, the First, Last, and Only Adept-Revealer (or Siddha) of the seventh stage of life", and "I Am The Perfectly Subjective Divine Person, Self-Manifested As The Ruchira Avatar—Who Is The First, The Last, and The Only Adept-Realizer, Adept-Revealer, and Adept-Revelation of The Seventh Stage of Life"..

Books by Adi Da

Title	Description or subtitle	Subject
The Knee Of Listening	The Divine Ordeal of the Avataric Incarnation of Conscious Light	Autobiography
Not-Two Is Peace	The Ordinary People's Way of Global Cooperative Order	Peace
Easy Death	Spiritual Wisdom on the Ultimate Transcending of Death and Everything Else	Death and Dying
The Dawn Horse Testament	The Testament of Secrets of the Divine World-Teacher and True Heart-Master, Da Avabhasa (The Bright)	Teaching Summary
"Radical" Transcendentalism	The Non-Religious, Post-"Scientific", and No-Seeking Reality Way of Adidam	Seventh Stage Dharma
Reality Itself Is The Way	Essays from The Aletheon	Seventh Stage Dharma
Surrender self By Sighting Me	Essays from The Aletheon on Right and True Devotion	Devotion
Perfect Philosophy	The "Radical" Way of No-Ideas
My "Bright" Word	Discourses from The Divine Siddha-Method of the Ruchira Avatar
The Ancient Walk-About Way	The Core Esoteric Process of Real Spirituality and Its Perfect Fulfillment in the Way of Adidam	Core Adidam
Up?	Beyond the Beginner's Spiritual Way of Saint Jesus and the Traditions of Mystical Cosmic Ascent via Spirit-Breath	Jesus and Beyond
Is
Aham Da Asmi	Beloved, I Am Da
Ruchira Avatara Gita	The Way Of The Divine Heart-Master
Da Love-Ananda Gita
Hridaya Rosary	Four Thorns Of Heart-Instruction
The Liberator (formerly Eleutherios)	The Only Truth That Sets The Heart Free	Truth as Liberator
My Final Work of Divine Indifference	Wherein I Constantly Abide Only As I Am, in Divine and Avatarically Responsive Transcendental Spiritual Regard of all-and-All
The Truly Human New World-Culture Of Unbroken Real-God-Man
The Only Complete Way To Realize The Unbroken Light Of Real God
The Divine Siddha-Method Of The Ruchira Avatar
He-and-She Is Me
Ruchira Shaktipat Yoga		Spiritual Transmission
Ruchira Tantra Yoga	The Physical-Spiritual (and Truly Religious) Method Of Mental, Emotional, Sexual, and Whole Bodily Health and Enlightenment In The Divine Way Of Adidam	Spiritual Discipline
The Seven Stages Of Life	Transcending the Six Stages of egoic Life, and Realizing The ego-Transcending Seventh Stage of Life, In The Divine Way Of Adidam	Understanding the Traditions
The All-Completing and Final Divine Revelation To Mankind
What, Where, When, How, Why, and Who To Remember To Be Happy		Happiness
No Seeking—Mere Beholding
Santosha Adidam
The Lion Sutra
The Overnight Revelation Of Conscious Light
The Basket Of Tolerance		Bibliography of Traditional Texts
The Transmission of Doubt
Love of The Two Armed Form
Drifted in the Deeper Land	Talks on Relinquishing the Superficiality of Mortal Existence and Falling by Grace into the Divine Depth That Is Reality Itself	A Collection of Talks
The Enlightenment of The Whole Body
The Mummery Book	A Parable Of The Divine True Love, Told By A Self-Illuminated Illustration Of The Totality Of Mind	Fiction, The Orpheus Trilogy
The Scapegoat Book		Fiction, The Orpheus Trilogy
The Happenine Book		Fiction, The Orpheus Trilogy

Controversies

In 1985 Adi Da and his church were sued by a former member for (among other things) fraud, intentional infliction of emotional distress, false imprisonment, and assault and battery; the suit sought $5 million in damages.) The church then filed its own suit naming the former member and 5 others for abuse of process, extortion, breach of fiduciary duty and intentional infliction of emotional distress. The suit further charged that the 6 former members tried to deprive the church of its "constitutionally protected rights to freedom of religion. The church sought $20 million in damages.

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. There, and in other media reports, ex-members were quoted as saying that Adi Da exhibited a pattern of abusive, and self-serving behavior. Adidam charged that these public allegations were part of a conspiracy to extort large sums of money from the church. They said that the former members "met several times to discuss, conspire and scheme to obtain extraordinary sums of money from Adidam under the threat of destroying the church". Adidam also said that the former members unfairly discredited the church in the eyes of the public through a media smear campaign. Adidam stated that they received a letter several months prior to the public allegations that were made on the Today Show and in other local media. In that letter the former followers of Adi Da demanded $5,200,000 and said that they might undertake to destroy the church if their demands were not met.

Local media also reported that a church spokesman disclosed that despite previous denials, controversial sexual practices involving the guru had continued after 1976, but had been hidden from some members and the general public. A church official said that no illegal acts took place and the church had a right to continue experiments in lifestyles.

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.'

In his 1989 book, Saniel Bonder wrote "Much of which was alleged in the media was sheerly preposterous and much of the rest was twisted and distorted...the representatives of our institution learned the hard way there is no way to achieve a fair hearing in the sensation-mongering elements of public reporting.

Criticisms

Indologist Georg Feuerstein, a former student of Adi Da, has become critical of Adi Da's wisdom and his alleged extravagant lifestyle, as is clear from the second edition of Feuerstein's book Holy Madness. Feuerstein speculates: "For a period of time, (Adi Da) was a member of Scientology; this fact was mentioned in early editions of The Knee of Listening but was later on downplayed or dropped altogether. In the course of several decades, this autobiography and other biographical accounts of Adi Da have been cleaned up and to a growing degree even mythologized, undoubtedly under his instigation. This "revisionist" trend became obvious by 1985, with the publication of the "biblical" Dawn Horse Testament. Feuerstein continues: "In any case, later autobiographical presentations regrettably tend toward mytholization, as does indeed Adi Da's entire self-portrayal certainly since the mid-1980's... Unless we dismiss Adi Da's claims to avatarhood as the whimsical playfulness of a crazy-wisdom adept, we are left with a rather unsavory alternative explanation: that of a less-than-enlightened adept with a God-complex.

Regarding Adi Da's name changes, Feuerstein writes:

...critics would undoubtedly proffer a different analysis, namely that the name change is yet another indication of an inflated personality and perhaps a symptom of growing self-delusion. If the latter is the case, his disciples are truly imperiled. Adi Da tells them that he can do no wrong, and they, in all seriousness, see in him God incarnate. History is replete with instances of such claims and the dire consequences when these claims are taken literally by a sufficient number of people. The self-delusion of a charismatic leader tends to infect his or her following with the same disease, leading to a closed worldview that regards the surrounding world as inimical to the purposes of the charismatic leader, and hence as enemy. From there to active aggression, as we have witnessed in the case of the Rajneesh movement, is a dangerously small step. Or, as in the case of the People's Temple of Jim Jones, the aggressive instinct is turned inward, leading to enforced mass suicide.

Author Ken Wilber has commented on Adi Da, both positively and negatively. In 1998, in his last written comment on the subject, 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. Wilber has never been actively involved as a formal member of Adidam.

Franklin is discussed in Stripping the Gurus - Chapter XX Da Avatar, Da Bomb, Da Bum in overview terms. This book also contains an excellent crticism of Ken Wilber.

Franklin's teaching literature contains beliefs, such as the contention in the unexpurgated later Knee of Listening, (1992) that are clearly psychotic. (viz. astral creatures that live in the moon and eat souls.)

 Excerpts from the lawsuit brought by Mark Miller in 1985:

 53.) During the periods of captivity set forth in paragraphs 49 and 52 above, and while in the custody of DOES 53 through 55, inclusive, plaintiff MILLER

was continually subjected to constant verbal abuse, degradation and physical threats. Inter alia, plaintiff MILLER was told that he was "full of shit"; that

he did not belong at the Sanctuary because he "was not spiritual, and all of the disciples of MASTER DA were spiritual"; and that plaintiff was "a punk

straight off the streets and should be treated just like one." Plaintiff MILLER was further told that the reason he was confused, frightened and sick was

that plaintiff existed spiritually on a "worldly level of consciousness that needed to be purified." DOES 53 through 55, inclusive, further advised plaintiff

MILLER that MILLER must submit to the will of defendant MASTER DA and the male leaders of JDC in order to attain truth, wisdom and spiritual maturity. DOES

53 through 55, inclusive, further advised plaintiff MILLER that MILLER was required to obey and conform to the authority, conduct and "spiritual qualities"

of defendant MASTER DA and the male leadership of JDC.

 54.) By means of manipulation of plaintiff's idealistic desire to attain the "Truth" and frustration at being unable to find "Truth" in the society around

him, deception, administration of copious quantities of alcohol and drugs resulting in extreme intoxication and vomiting, isolation and separation from his

girlfriend, intimidation, degradation, abuse, emotional stress and physical threats from MASTER DA, Lesser, and DOES 53 through 55, inclusive, said persons

perpetrated the undermining, breakdown, and destruction of plaintiff MILLER's capacity for independent thought, ability to reason, perceive and comprehend

the events occurring around him so that by the advent of the third morning at the Sanctuary arising on or about September 4, 1976, MILLER's capacity for

independent thought or exercise of volition was destroyed.

 86.) On or about October 10, 1984, plaintiff was advised by JDC member Julia Knox who advised plaintiff that while in Fiji, MASTER DA had beaten up and

snapped the neck of one of his nine "wives", Bonnie Bevin. This disclosure deeply affected plaintiff and reawakened in him the intellectual capacity for

independent thought, reasoning, evaluation, and judgment such that plaintiff could perceive the abusive nature of the acts of defendants imposed upon

plaintiff and the nature of the fraudulent scheme underlying defendants' behavior.

 105.) These representations were false and MASTER DA and JDC and various of its agents or employees knew at the time defendants caused said representations

to be made, and at all other times mentioned herein, that they were false. In fact and truth, the above described stoppage of sexual, narcotic, alcoholic and

culinary profligacy was false by means of the following allegations set forth in paragraphs 106 through 110, inclusive.

 107.) Plaintiff has information in which he believes, and on that basis alleges, that continuing from early 1977 into the 1980s, defendant MASTER DA,

individually, and by and through his agents and employees, would command his disciples to perform aberrant, perverted and degrading sexual acts, including

but not limited to the use of sodomy, urination, defecation and dildo assaults on one another.

 108.) Plaintiff has information in which he believes, and on that basis alleges, that continuing from early 1977 into the 1980s it was not unusual for

MASTER DA to command the acts set forth in paragraphs 106 and 107 above, to be committed in his personal presence and under his direct observation and

supervision.

 109.) Plaintiff has information in which he believes, and on that basis alleges, that continuing from early 1977 into the 1980s, defendant MASTER DA

personally engaged in the use and abuse of various alcohols and narcotics including, but not limited to, amyl nitrate, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD),

nitrous oxide, ketamine, marijuana and champagne often in conjunction with the practices set forth in paragraphs 110 through 112, inclusive.

 Selected quotes from an ex inner devotee of Franklin:

 I am somewhat afraid of Franklin, and do not trust him nor his inner circle. I have gathered evidence that would be admissible in court that confirms that

he and the inner circle have lied for years, and probably from the very beginning about Franklin's use of drugs of all kinds. His community has become

pervaded by drug use, primarily marijuana, with some alcohol thrown in.

 Franklin has been on medications to function at all since the days in Maria Hoop in Holland when he went off into the woods and wouldn't come back. Various

things, from antidepressants and antianxiety medications to Viagra. He's unable to function and cope without taking drugs.

 Franklin is, unfortunately, a sociopathic exploiter of people. He has systematically stripped women of their inheritances, and if someone has something

happen, or is even dying, he will not direct that a cent of the money he takes be used to help them. The "kanyas" who come and go? Many of them are women

with significant inheritances. Franklin systematically abuses them, he's a master at it and at social manipulation. He casts them out or they just fall out,

devastated, destroyed, and emotionally broken so they can't fight or attack him after. But he romances them and strips them of their money. After that he is

done with them.

 Within Adidam, for a long time, now, almost 2 decades, Franklin has ranted with increasing frequency about how the regular student body is not what he is

about and hems him in. At this point it is the primary content of his rantings that are translated into "notes" for the membership. It's also quite true. I

think it is the best thing going in that organization and evidence of good human character. The regular run of student (the inner circle is very small) is an

intelligent, highly principled, kind and thoughtful person. The inner circle knows that and it is why they are so very careful to hide as well as they can

and spin things so aggressively.

See also

• Shawnee Free Jones, a daughter

Notes

References

• 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; Hohm Press; Rev & Expand edition Holy Madness: Spirituality, Crazy-Wise Teachers, And Enlightenment, (June 15, 2006) ISBN 1-890772-54-2

Further reading

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

External links

Advocacy

• Adidam.org: official website of Adidam
• The Dawn Horse Press: publisher of the literature of Adidam
• DaPlastique: Adi Da's "Transcendental Realism" Art
• Fear no more zoo Zoo established by Adi Da
• DAbase: unofficial advocacy site (includes mirrored Adidam publications)
• Adidaupclose: Personal accounts of current devotees of Adi Da Samraj

Criticism

• The Daism Seminar, a critical site (includes mirrored news articles)
• Holy Madness: The Dangerous and Disillusioning Example of Da Free John, by Georg Feuerstein, 1996 (follower in early 1980s)
• The Case of Adi Da by Ken Wilber
• Rick Ross Institute page on Adi Da/Adidam: material compiled by anti-cult activist Rick Ross (includes mirrored news articles)
• A Room With A Guru, by Dennis Trunk, 1999 (follower in early 1970s)

Other sites

• Profile of Adidam from the Religious Movements Homepage Project
• Adi Da/Adidam from the Kheper Site by M. Alan Kazlev