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December 2008 
Adi Da Has Died
Posted on Dec 4th, 2008
by 
Joseph
Joseph
adi_da_samraj1.jpg
Adi Da has died. More info can be found at http://www.beezone.com/
Crazy old Adi Da/Da Free John/Franklin Jones was an important figure in my spiritual formation. I am saddened by his death. I knew him primarily through his writing and had only peripheral contact with his community.
AdiDa-pic5Da was a paradox. He began his teaching work writing and instructing with profound clarity on Understanding, but ended his life proclaiming himself the ultimate Avatar. He wrote elegantly about the dangers of cultism, but founded a community that embodied the classic dysfunctions of a cult. He announced himself a World Teacher, but lived in inaccessible seclusion. He presented himself as a renunciate, but was supported in style by the contributions required of his devotees.
Yet, The Knee of Listening, The Method of the Siddhas, The Paradox of Instruction, The Dreaded Gom-boo and other books that he wrote during the first 15 years of his teaching work remain profound in their clarity & humor. I am glad to see that some of these early writings have become available online at the Beezone. Most of the writings he has produced in the last 2 decades are unreadable in their self-referential inflation and arrogance.
I was a student of a man who spent nearly 2 decades as a devotee of Da before leaving and undergoing his own spiritual awakening. He had an amazing spiritual presence but was emotionally quite toxic when I knew him. I believe this was due to the many trials and humiliations he suffered under Da. I can only hope he has healed from some of these wounds.
It seems that we as human beings cannot escape our frailties and limitations. No matter how brightly the light shines in us there is always a shadow.
Access: Public
My thoughts on Da are at
http://stuart-randomthoughts.blogspot.com/2008/11/adi-da-dies.html
and
http://stuart-randomthoughts.blogspot.com/2008/12/more-on-death-of-adi-da.html
Joseph: Very good summary of the paradoxes and contradictions in the life of Franklin Jones. I know a number of ex-devotees who are still angry at the way they were manipulated by Da and his followers.
I also know a number of people who are committed devotees to this day and who are saddened by his passing.
But why should they be sad? The nature of the guru-devotee relationship is such that, once a connection has been established, it doesn’t matter if the guru is physically present. If Adi Da is a true guru (there is some doubt in my mind about this), he will always be there for you.
Wrote a piece in an upcoming collaborative book about my 1973-1977 time with Adi Da (Franklin Jones). Click “The Path of No Seeking” on the following site if of interest. http://www.maieutikos.com-a.googlepages.com/home
Yes, indeed, many paradoxes. How we presently live our lives, that’s what counts, no? Thanks for the conversation which I hope the present Da community will genuinely engage as well. Peace,Morgan Zo Callahan
Adi Da Samraj: Nov 3, 1939 - Nov 27, 2008
Deep End
Adi Da Samraj Passes from the Body
Naitauba, Fiji – November 29, 2008
Adi Da Samraj, a spiritual master, writer, and artist of international renown, passed away in his hermitage in Fiji, on November 27, of natural causes. He was 69 years old. He founded an entirely new way of spiritual practice, to which he gave the name “Adidam”.
Adi Da was a prolific writer and artist with over sixty published books and hundreds of thousands of works of art. The book that Adi Da designated as his most important work is The Aletheon, which he worked on intensively for the last two years, bringing all of his most essential spiritual and philosophical communications into a final form. He completed his work on The Aletheon on the morning of his passing. The Aletheon is scheduled for publication in 2009.
Spiritual Teacher
In the early 1970s, Alan Watts, writer of numerous books on religion and philosophy, acknowledged Adi Da as “a rare being,” adding, “It is obvious, from all sorts of subtle details, that he knows what IT’s all about.”
In the 1980s, Wittgenstein scholar Henry Leroy Finch wrote: “If there is a man today who is God-illumined, that man is Avatar Adi Da Samraj. There exists nowhere in the world, among Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, or any other groups, anyone who has so much to teach. Avatar Adi Da is a force to be reckoned with, a Pole around which the world can get its bearings.”
From his birth (on Long Island, New York, in 1939), Adi Da manifested unique signs of spiritual illumination. He described his early years as being focused in two fundamental activities. His first focus was to discover the process by which any human being can realize the Truth of “Reality Itself”. His second focus was to develop his own ability to communicate the Truth of “Reality Itself”–through verbal means and also through artistic means.
Adi Da graduated from Columbia University in 1961, with a BA in philosophy, and from Stanford University in 1966, with an MA in English literature.
In 1964, Adi Da began a period of intensive practice under a succession of spiritual masters in the United States and India. Eventually, in 1970, after a final period of intense spiritual endeavor, Adi Da spontaneously became re-established in the continuous state of illumination that was his unique condition at birth.
Author
Adi Da’s literary, philosophical, and practical writings consist of over sixty published books. These include many masterpieces of spiritual illumination, including The Knee of Listening, his spiritual autobiography, and The Dawn Horse Testament, his magisterial revelation of the entire Spiritual process from beginning to end.
Over a period of many decades, Adi Da undertook a massive examination of the world’s religious traditions, culminating in an annotated bibliography of approximately 10,000 items, entitled The Basket of Tolerance. A briefer “epitome” version of The Basket of Tolerance is scheduled for publication in 2009.
Adi Da also created original translations of traditional spiritual texts, translations which bring out the deepest meaning of the original texts. The recent publication Reality Is All the God There Is presents his translations of texts from the traditions of Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta.
Adi Da’s writings on fundamental practical areas of human life, examined from the spiritual perspective, include Green Gorilla (relative to raw diet) and The Complete Yoga of Emotional-Sexual Life.
Adi Da’s principal literary work is his trilogy entitled The Orpheum. In the late 1990s, poet Robert Lax said of The Mummery Book (the opening volume of the Orpheum trilogy), “Living and working as a writer for many decades, I have not encountered a book like this, that mysteriously and unselfconsciously conveys so much of the Unspeakable Reality.” The Orpheum is also presented in theatrical form—as shown online at www.mummerybook.org.
Artist
Adi Da was an extraordinarily prolific artist, producing over 100,000 works, primarily in the years since 2000. He was invited to show his work in a solo exhibition at the 2007 Venice Biennale, and also as part of the 2008 Winter in Florence Festival. Noted art critic Donald Kuspit has written, “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 …” Among the publications of Adi Da’s art are The World As Light, Transcendental Realism, and The Spectra Suites. His artistic work can be viewed online at www.adidabiennale.org and www.daplastique.com.
Call for World Peace
Another dimension to his far-reaching legacy is his contemporary social wisdom embodied in the book Not-Two Is Peace. In it he calls for the establishment of a Global Cooperative Forum that mobilizes “everybody-all-at-once” on the basis of recognizing the inherent unity of the entire human family. He proposes that such a forum is the necessary and effective means for addressing the world’s most pressing issues. Information about this initiative is available online at www.globalcooperationproject.org.
Spiritual Way
Adidam, the spiritual way founded by Adi Da, is practiced by thousands of individuals worldwide, with centers in many parts of the world. Information about Adi Da and Adidam is available online at www.adidam.org.# # #
posted by Ian on 12.01.08 @ 7:31 am |
3 Comments so far Leave a comment
As a former devoree for 14 Years ND
By Elaine on 12.22.08 2:01 am
Greetings & blessings from Los Angeles. Thanksfor ideas.
I wrote at length as mentionedabout my personal experience living and learning with Bubba Free John, as Adi Da was then known, between 1973 and 1977. My article, called “The Path of No Seeking,” can be found at http://www.maieutikos.com-a.googlepages.com/home. I hope that it offers some balance in the public discussion that has followed his death. Since Adi Da died on November 27, of the year that just ended, I’ve been re-visiting some of my experiences.
I loved the Master and his teachings. I was never a blind sheep who does anything the Master says. I accepted and acknowledged my true spiritual relationship with Franklin Jones as a genuine spiritual teacher.
Franklin, for me, was the person who led me into the practice deep meditation in the Hindu tradition which I had first encountered at the Vedanta Temple in Hollywood. Franklin worked in this tradition with his own teachers and other teachers from India, such as Ramana Maharshi. In those early years, Franklin came to me as a gift, a source of humor, wisdom, yogic initiations into deeper meditation, a delving into the mystical within the varying great traditions, with a respect that there are many sacred teachers & teachings.” Adi Da said “All is Sacred” and St. Ignatius encouraged me to “Find God in All Things.”
I was very close to Adi Da, so when in the mid-80’s the media gave full uncritical coverage to some stories of dissidents in the community—they were only allegations—I was shocked and disappointed. In the 70’s I didn’t feel at all attached to conventional sexuality; I wanted to go with the “free love” currents of those years. Looking back I have to admit it was a failed experiment, but I don’t regret trying to live “in a hippie commune” while doing spiritual practices. I was never encouraged to abuse my wife. Rather I was encouraged to understand the anger inside and addiction to power that wanted “to dominate” anyone. I felt the sexual experimentation was between consenting adults, who always have the freedom to say yes or no. I wasn’t a dissident regarding sexual experimentation, but I was a dissident saying I just don’t believe in everything Franklin, Bubba would say and along with my best friend, Marcus Holly, never felt any compulsion or “thought control.” In the very early days, I felt questioning, even disagreement, was welcome. I openly said, for example, that I don’t believe in reincarnation.
By the time I began to see what I thought were mistakes in the direction that the community was taking. I felt that the attitude “we’re the only ones; I’m God exclusively” got the upper hand. Others felt as I did and several left like I did, but I didn’t leave with feelings of anger from or for the teacher or the community. Rather I felt that the community and Adi Da were forming a cult around the guru that was suffocating the teaching. It was the end of a cycle along the journey of growth.
I’ve never regretted those 4 years with Adi Da—they were great, but by 1977, my gut was telling me to leave. I was able to say good-bye and state my reasons for leaving the community. I didn’t like that the community was closing itself off. For example, one time, fellow former Jesuit Jerry Brown, came to the land to visit with Bubba but was turned away, for some dumb reason. I said this was such bullshit and my buddy, Marcus Holly, couldn’t get it either: “What the hell is Bubba afraid of. People like Jerry and Bubba would mutually benefit from connection.” I said that I didn’t understand why we were starting to get cultish when the teaching was totally against surrounding “anything”—a guru, a teaching, a drug, power—with absolute devotion.
Buddhists sometimes discuss gradual or sudden enlightenment. In early days, it was stressed that all of us share the same enlightenment, to be discovered through spiritual practice. Rumi says it so clearly: “Work. Keep digging your well. Don’t think about getting off from work. Water is there somewhere…Submit to a daily practice…Your loyalty to that is a ring on the door. Keep knocking… and the joy inside will eventually open a window and look out to see who’s there.” A relationship with a spiritual teacher can be authentically devotional, but I think that it is private, humble, not bloated up, and, as in my case, perhaps lived intensely for only a limited period of time. But even in 1977, the community around Master Da was still predominantly about spiritual practice, service, study, community living, yoga & sitting in meditation on a regular basis.
I confess that I loved Adi Da until the day he died, and that love will continue in some form for the rest of my life. He was a special teacher who showed me so much about meditation and the “Path of No Seeking.” At the same time, Adi Da, for me, was always only a human being, like any other guru.
Thanks for allowing me to share with you and your readers. There will be places where we don’t agree entirely, but perhaps others where the similarities of our thinking far outweighs any differences. This may become real conversation. Please feel free to communicate/disagree/encourage/blast me at morganzc@hotmail.com">morganzc@hotmail.com.
Peace to all in 2009! May Adi Da rest in Peace.
Morgan
By morgan zo callahan on 01.03.09 1:52 am