Adi Da

Adi Da Samraj (born Franklin Albert Jones; November 3, 1939 – November 27, 2008) was an American-born spiritual teacher, writer and artist.

He was the founder of a new religious movement known as Adidam.

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.

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" (although it was not related to the Indian tradition by that name).

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.

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 (or process) 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.

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.

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.

Adi Da became known in the spiritual counterculture of the 1970s for his books and public talks and for 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 a publishing house, the 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.

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.