Adi Da
Adi Da Samraj was an American-born spiritual teacher, writer and artist. He was the founder of a new religious movement known as Adidam.
Adi Da became known in the spiritual counterculture of the 1970s for his books, public talks, and the activities of his religious community. He authored more than 75 books, including those published posthumously, with key works including an autobiography, The Knee Of Listening, spiritual works such as The Aletheon and The Dawn Horse Testament, and social philosophy such as Not-Two Is Peace.
Adi Da's teaching is closely related to the Indian tradition of nondualism. He taught that the 'ego'—the presumption of a separate self—is an illusion, and that all efforts to "attain" enlightenment or unity with the divine from that point-of-view are necessarily futile. Reality or Truth, he said, is "always already the case": it cannot be found through any form of seeking, it can only be "realized" through transcendence of the illusions of separate self in the devotional relationship to the already-realized being. Distinguishing his teaching from other religious traditions, Adi Da declared that he was a uniquely historic avatar and that the practice of devotional recognition-response to him, in conjunction with most fundamental self-understanding, was the sole means of awakening to seventh stage spiritual enlightenment for others.
Adi Da founded the publishing house Dawn Horse Press to print his books. He was praised by authorities in spirituality, philosophy, sociology, literature, and art, but was also criticized for what were perceived as his isolation and controversial behavior. In 1985, former followers made allegations of misconduct: two lawsuits were filed, to which Adidam responded with threats of counter-litigation. The principal lawsuit was dismissed and the other was settled out of court.
In his later years, Adi Da focused on creating works of art intended to enable viewers to enter into a "space" beyond limited "points of view". He was invited to the 2007 Venice Biennale to participate through a collateral exhibition, and was later invited to exhibit his work in Florence, Italy, in the 15th century Cenacolo di Ognissanti and the Bargello museum. His work was also shown in New York, Los Angeles, Amsterdam, Miami, and London.
Biography
Youth and formal education (1939–1964)
Born in Queens, New York and raised on Long Island, his father was a salesman and his mother a housewife. Adi Da claimed in his autobiography, The Knee Of Listening, that he "was born in a state of perfect freedom and awareness of ultimate reality", which he called the "Bright", and that he "sacrificed that reality at the age of two, so that he could completely identify with the limitations and mortality of suffering humanity" in order to discover ways to help others "awaken to the unlimited and deathless happiness of the Heart". A sister, Joanne, was born when he was eight years old. He served as an acolyte in the Lutheran church during his adolescence and aspired to be a minister, but after leaving for college in the autumn of 1957, expressed doubts about the religion to his Lutheran pastor. Adi Da attended Columbia University where he graduated in 1961 with a bachelor's degree in philosophy. He went on to complete a master's degree in English literature at Stanford University in 1963, under the guidance of novelist and historian Wallace Stegner. His master's thesis was "a study of core issues in modernism, focused on Gertrude Stein and the leading painters of the same period".During and after his postgraduate studies, Adi Da engaged in an experiment of exhaustive writing, a process in which he wrote continuously for eight or more hours daily, as a kind of "yoga" where every movement of conscious awareness, all experiences, internal or external, were monitored and recorded. In this exercise, he felt that he discovered a structure or "myth" that governed all human conscious awareness, a "schism in Reality" that was the "logic of separation itself, of enclosure and immunity, the source of all presumed self-identity". He understood this to be the same logic hidden in the ancient Greek myth of Narcissus, the adored child of the gods, who was condemned to the contemplation of his own image and suffered the fate of eternal separateness. He concluded that the "death of Narcissus" was required to fulfill what he felt was the guiding purpose of his life, which was to awaken to the "Spiritually 'Bright' Condition of Consciousness Itself" that was prior to Narcissus, and communicate this awakening to others.
In the context of this exploration of consciousness in 1963, Adi Da experimented with various hallucinogenic and other drugs. For 6 weeks he was a paid test subject in drug trials of mescaline, LSD, and psilocybin conducted at a Veterans Administration hospital in California. He wrote later that he found these experiences "self-validating" in that they mimicked ecstatic states of consciousness from his childhood, but problematic as they often resulted in paranoia, anxiety, or disassociation. While living with the support of his girlfriend, Nina Davis, in the hills of Palo Alto, he continued to write, meditated informally, and studied books by C.G. Jung, H.P. Blavatsky, and Edgar Cayce, in order to make sense of his experiences.
Spiritual exploration (1964–1970)
In June 1964, Adi Da responded to an intuitive impulse to leave California in search of a spiritual teacher in New York City. Settling in Greenwich Village, he became a student of Albert Rudolph, also known as "Rudi", a dealer in Asian art who had been a disciple of the Indian guru Bhagavan Nityananda. When Nityananda died in 1961, Rudi became a student of Siddha Yoga's founder Swami Muktananda, who gave him the name "Swami Rudrananda". Having studied a number of spiritual traditions, including "The Work" of G.I. Gurdjieff and Subud, Rudi taught an eclectic blend of techniques he called "kundalini yoga".Feeling that Adi Da needed better grounding, Rudi insisted that he marry Nina, find steady employment, improve his physical health, end his drug use, and begin preparatory studies to enter the seminary. As a student at Philadelphia's Lutheran Theological Seminary in 1967, Adi Da described undergoing a terrifying breakdown. Taken to a hospital emergency room, a psychiatrist diagnosed it as an anxiety attack. It was the first of a number of such episodes, each followed by what he described as profound awakenings or insights. He described the episodes as a kind of "death" or release from identity with the presumed separate persona, after which there was only "an Infinite Bliss of Being, an untouched, unborn Sublimity—without separation, without individuation. There was only Reality Itself … the unqualified living condition of the totality of conditionally manifested existence". A comparable pre-awakening process had been described by the renowned Indian sage Ramana Maharshi. Feeling none of his Lutheran professors understood this experience, Adi Da left and briefly attended St. Vladimir's Russian Orthodox Seminary in Tuckahoe, New York. Disillusioned, he moved back to New York City and found employment with Pan American Airlines, hoping this might help him fulfill his desire to visit Swami Muktananda's ashram in India.
Swami Muktananda, a disciple of Bhagavan Nityananda, was a well-known guru who had brought his tradition of Kashmir Shaivism to the West, establishing meditation centers around the world. Adi Da received formal permission to visit the ashram for four days in April 1968. Muktananda encouraged him to end his studies with Rudi and study with himself directly. In his autobiography, Adi Da related how he was granted shaktipat initiation, the awakening of the Kundalini Shakti that is said to reside at the base of the spine, which deepens the practice of Siddha Yoga meditation. Adi Da described experiencing an awakening to the Witness consciousness, beyond identification with the point of view of bodily consciousness. He began to study formally with Swami Muktananda.
After returning to New York, Adi Da and Nina became members and then employees of the Church of Scientology, leaving after a little more than a year of involvement. Adi Da returned to India for a month-long visit in early 1969, during which he received a handwritten letter from Swami Muktananda, granting him the spiritual names Dhyanananda and Love-Ananda, and authorizing him to initiate others into Siddha Yoga. In May 1970, Adi Da, Nina, and a friend named Pat Morley traveled to India for what they believed would be an indefinite period living at Swami Muktananda's ashram. However, Adi Da was disappointed by his experience there, especially by the institutionalization of the ashram and the large numbers of westerners who had arrived since his previous visit. Three weeks after arriving, he visited the burial place of Bhagavan Nityananda and, by his account, received an immense transmission of the Shakti-Force. According to his autobiography, he began—to his great surprise—to see visions of the Virgin Mary. The vision of Mary directed him to make a pilgrimage to Christian holy sites. After embarking on a two week pilgrimage to holy places in Europe and the Middle East, he, Nina and Pat returned to New York. In August 1970, they moved to Los Angeles.
Becoming a spiritual teacher (1970–1973)
Adi Da wrote in his autobiography that in September 1970, while sitting in the Vedanta Society Temple in Hollywood, he awakened fully into the state of perfect spiritual enlightenment that he called "The Bright". He wrote that although he had been born with full awareness of "the Bright", this awareness became obscured in childhood, and his subsequent spiritual journey had been a quest to recapture it, and share it with others. The autobiography, entitled The Knee Of Listening, was published in 1972. It included a foreword by the well-known spiritual philosopher Alan Watts, who on studying Adi Da's teachings had reportedly said, "It looks like we have an avatar here. I've been waiting for such a one all my life". In the foreword, he wrote: "It is obvious, from all sorts of subtle details, that he knows what IT's all about… a rare being".In The Knee Of Listening and subsequent books, Adi Da spoke of "Consciousness Itself" as the ultimate nature of Reality. This Consciousness is "Transcendent and Radiant", "the Source-Condition of everything that is", "the uncaused immortal Self", "a Conscious Light utterly beyond the limited perspective of any ego, any religion, or any culture." Everything in the physical universe, he claimed, is a modification of this Conscious Light. Expressed in more conventional language, Adi Da's realization was that there is only God, and that everything arises within that One. In later years this was summed up in the three "great sayings" of Adidam:
When Swami Muktananda stopped in California on a worldwide tour in October 1970, Adi Da visited him and related his experience the previous month of "The Bright". He felt that the swami did not understand or properly acknowledge the full importance of his realization of "Consciousness Itself", prior to visions and yogic phenomena and indeed all experiences in the context of the body-mind. During the visit Adi Da reconciled with Rudi.
In 1972, Adi Da opened Ashram Books, a spiritual center and bookshop in Los Angeles. He began with a "simple and traditional" teaching method, sitting formally with a small group in the meditation hall and simply transmitting his state of "perfect Happiness" to them. He began giving discourses, soon attracting a small following due in part to his charismatic speaking style. He taught in a traditional Indian style, speaking from a raised dais surrounded by flowers and oriental carpets, with listeners seated on the floor. He incorporated many elements of the guru-devotee relationship associated with the Kashmir Shaivite and Advaita Vedanta schools of Hinduism, but also expressed original insights and opinions about both spirituality and secular culture. As the gathering grew, he introduced disciplines related to money, food, sex, and community living. He was one of the first westerners to become well known as a teacher of meditation and eastern esoteric traditions at a time when these were of growing interest. Some early participants stated that Adi Da demonstrated an ability to produce alterations in their consciousness, likening the effect to shaktipat of Indian yoga traditions. In 1972, he began to teach "radical understanding", described as "a combination of discriminative self-observation and guru-devotion". With the number of followers increasing, a formal religious community—"The Dawn Horse Communion"—was established.
In 1973, Adi Da traveled to India to meet a final time with Swami Muktananda. They disagreed on a series of questions which Adi Da had prepared, creating a rupture in their relationship. They later criticized each other's approach to spiritual matters. Adi Da nevertheless stated that he continued to appreciate and respect his former guru, and to express his "love and gratitude for the incomparable service" Muktananda had performed for him.
Upon returning to Los Angeles, Adi Da assumed the name "Bubba Free John", based on a nickname meaning "friend" combined with a rendering of "Franklin Jones". He and Nina divorced, although she remained a follower. In January 1974, Adi Da told his followers that he was "the divine lord in human form". Later that year, the church obtained an aging hot springs resort in Lake County, California, renaming it "Persimmon". Adi Da and a group of selected followers moved there and experimented in communal living. Most followers relocated from Los Angeles to San Francisco, where Dawn Horse Books also moved.