Adi Da and Adidam thoughts and policies on internet posting by devotees
this was part of a post on Yahoo DFJ forum by iamnome, who quoted Broken Yogi
From: "brokenyogi"
Date: Mon Jun 14, 2004 2:57 pm
Subject: Re: (Daist) is gone from the forum.
Yes, I think it's too bad (Daist) left, but it's also obvious why he had to. The only way intelligent people can preserve their cultic nonsensical delusions is to avoid any kind of exchange in which those delusions are confronted. (Daist) had some very obvious delusions about Adidam that he simply could not defend on the facts, and thus in order to maintain them, he had to leave, angry and bitter about how he was "treated".(Daist) is actually a fairly intelligent fellow, which is why it's so frustrating to see him defend obviously fallacious notions about Adidam. Those fallacious notions prevent us from ever getting into the real "meat" of the Adidam argument and counter-argument. I mean, the notion that Adidam does not promote extraordinary claims about Adi Da from the getgo is so absurd as to render any further debate pointless. If you can't agree on that, what hope is there for meaningful discussion on truly controversial matters?
Let's not pretend that (Daist), or anyone posting on these forums, is a typical Daist. Typical Daists don't post on internet forums. As mentioned before, they are greatly discouraged from doing so, both overtly and much more importantly, by the general cultural approach to everything in Adidam, which is all based on the notion that one needs permission and "cultural approval" to do just about anything.
So (Daist) himself, we can assume, is a bit of an oddball within Adidam, just as Zensun and Peter are over at Lightmind. Regular Joe devotees simply don't participate here or there or anywhere. It's simply not part of the routine, and is in fact so far out of the Adidam routine as to be virtually taboo.
As for Adi Da's own involvement in this, it's fairly explicit. He was very deeply involved in the whole consideration of missionary work in general and the use of the internet in particular. His notion of how to use the internet is extremely autocratic. Everything would be centralized, and controlled by Adidam authorities. No one would be authorized to create a web-site that had anything to do or say about Adidam that was not approved by the culture, meaning an internet oversight board. Even further, Adi Da wanted to create a massive network of internet sites through Adidam that devotees could participate in, but the content of course would be subject to review and approval.
The plan involved, literally, creating hundreds of thousands of interlinked web-sites, part of the purpose of which was to drown out any negative websites, such as Lightmind, and so that search engines would not bring up those negative sites so readily. That never happened, of course, but it may someday.
As for devotees posting about Adidam on the internet, for a time that was considered forbidden. Adi Da's own view on this was that no devotee should be doing any kind of "public" missionary work without
the expressed approval and review of the culture. The explicit policy for a time was that anyone posting on public internet sites was in violation of "good standing", and was thus ineligible for all kinds of things in Adidam. When I was declared a security threat for doing so, the reaction against that was so strong that they had to pull back a bit. Nonetheless, while no longer explicitly forbidding such posting, the general policy strongly discourages it. And any mention of specific information about anything remotely controversial going on in Adidam is strictly forbidden, and would certainly be punished.
This is why Adidam devotees who do post on the internet almost never defend anything specific: to do so would require that they actually discuss the details of what goes on in Adidam, and since that is forbidden, they would be fighting with both hands tied behind their backs. Even I generally tried to avoid arguing specifics for that reason when I was defending Adidam, and tried to confine myself to dharma and general principles as much as possible. And even now, as I mention, it raises a twinge of hesitation to even be mentioning these specific matters, knowing as I do that it would be considered a violation of Adidam security to even mention what Adidam security policies are.
One cannot really ignore the reality of how pervasive the whole security psyche is in Adidam, how it is drilled into people from the very beginning never to talk with outsiders about any specifics of what goes on in Adidam, of how there is a tremendous, paranoid approach to even the kinds of material that is presented to devotees at their own meetings and Guruvaras and internet conferences, presentations, etc., for fear that such information "might fall into the wrong hands". It's rather comical to see the degree of intense seriousness that is often attached to these "secure communications" in order to prevent them from spilling out. As if anyone really cares. And of course, information from the inner circles about what Adi Da is really up to is generally forbidden to anyone outside those circles. They simply don't trust ordinary devotees with such info, as if they are at war with demonic powers, and "loose lips sink ships". So it's really no wonder that there are almost no Adidam posters on these forums.
The real purpose of all that drama around communications is not really to protect Adi Da from exposure to threats from the outside. It's to keep everyone in Adidam protected from having the ridiculousness of so much of what they do reflected back to them by the outside world. It of course re-creates on a daily basis the essence of the cult, of the vast difference between insiders and outsiders, and of the supreme importance of even the slightest responsibilities in Adidam. As Daist demonstrates, it also reinforces the notion that outsiders simply cannot comprehend what is really going on in Adidam, what the real meaning of these absurd shenanigans are, and that they cannot be entrusted with such information until they, too, become insiders. That outsiders will inevitably "fail to understand", or even "refuse" to understand what to people within Adidam consider to be unassailable truths. One cannot emphasize enough how superstitious people in Adidam are, and how afraid they are to "step on a crack" for fear of breaking the Guru's back. They fear that the slightest miscues can have the most awful effects, not just in Adidam, but in the world at large.
Did I ever mention the time that one of Adi Da's servant ladies showed up at his house with a new haircut that he didn't like? He said that her haircut was such a profound disturbance to him that it was affecting the peace process in the Middle East, and that she needed to get it fixed immediately for the sake of world peace. Now, in any other setting in the world this kind of thing would be greeted with howls of laughter, as some kind of colossal joke. But not in Adidam. It was treated with great seriousness and considerations were undertaken as to what kind of haircut repair was needed for this lady to help alleviate tensions in the Middle East.
And this was communicated to devotees as an example of how important it was to be attentive to every detail of our service to Adi Da, because it has consequences far beyond our little ideation of things. So Adidam devotees are taught to be extraordinarily conservative in every respect, never doing anything that might endanger Adi Da's very sensitive work with the world. And that includes how ordinary devotees might inadvertently slip up in their communications with the public on internet sites like this and lightmind, creating some kind of faux pas that could have devastating effects worldwide.
One has to realize that this outlook is considered a core article of faith by the inner circles of Adidam, and in many respects is the key element separating them from those who do not take Adidam quite so seriously. Certainly no one who doesn't fully subscribe to this notion is ever allowed into those inner circles of direct service to Adi Da. These ideas are drilled into people who actually serve Adi Da directly, and they radiate from that core to the rest of the culture. So it's no wonder that devotees don't post here.
As mentioned, the overt reasoning behind this policy is, in my view, not the real reason for it. The real reason it exists is to create the cultic psyche in Adidam that keeps the whole thing going, and without which Adidam would just fall apart. So even while the actual "security threats" aren't true in a literal sense, it is certainly true that they are real in the overall sense. And as I've already admitted, even though my posting on the Lightmind forum was not a real security threat in the direct sense, it definitely was in the greater sense of things, in that by exposing myself and Adidam to the inspection of outsiders", I was undermining the cultic psyche which holds Adidam together. And as you can see in my own case, they were right. When people break through the cultic psyche of Adidam, they dont' generally stick around very long. So the whole "security" psyche of Adidam is just a way of trying to keep the cultic presumptions of Adidam secure. And to undermine that cultism is to threaten Adidam's very existence.
What would Adidam be without its massive web of cultic aburdities? God knows. What I do know is that Adi Da and all of Adidam is afraid to find out. The feat is that there would be no Adidam, and perhaps they are right. In any case, as you can see, it is not "faith" that keeps these things in place, but fear. I once had some rather tense meetings with Adi Da's head of security, when we were discussing the issue of whether I was really a security threat or not, and I have to say that he was the most frightened individual I've ever met in my whole life. He's the kind of person who tries to show no sign of fear outwardly, but instead tries to make everyone around him terrified. And it was obvious that even the heads of the culture who were in the meeting with me were terrified of this guy. His history is that he was in the military before coming to Adidam, in charge of some top secret US nuclear weapons labs that were building the most destructive weapons on the face of the earth. And he brought the same extreme views on security to Adidam that he had of course learned in our nuclear programs. To him, and to most people in Adidam, what Adi Da is doing is more important than even fighting the Russians in the Cold War, it's the ultimate battle of good and evil in the universe, and of course Adidam represents the good guys.
To fight that war Adidam needs a core of dedicated individuals whose mindset is like that of CIA agents fighting the evil empire. Security is therefore absolute, and outsiders cannot be entrusted with secrets, nor can they be expected to understand the significance of the battle. All they know is that history is on their side, and will vindicate their course of action someday. What they do not dare do, above all else, is take a look around them and see that they are just little boys playing secret agent games, feeding off the grisly drama of it all. It's not the external cover that they are trying to keep from getting blown. It's the internal cover, the narcissistic self-image that keeps the whole game going.
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Posted on Lightmind -- 03/11/07 by Broken Yogi
I find this thread a bit bizarre. You are claiming virtually from out of nowhere that if Adi Da goes to India he will be widely acclaimed and recognized as a genuine Sat-Guru. Well, fine, let him try that. It's not like he hasn't been there before, and been rejected. Muktananda didn't recognize him. Maybe a few people here and there felt something spiritual about him, but none of them joined up. They are still not responding to all his books and scriptural works, and there's been every opportunity to do so.
If the Indians will recognize Adi Da, why did they throw Jerry Sheinfeld, Adi Da's emissary to India, in jail for several months for blasphemy for defiling a Hindu temple by having Adi Da's picture put on the walls (of Nityananda's Mahasamadhi site in India)? The story is, Nityananda's Mahasamdhi temple is privately owned, and was lacking in financial backing. Adi Da's people began funding the temple owner, and finally made the squeeze play to get Adi Da's photo put on the wall there with other Indian Gurus. The locals felt this was sacrilege, and brought charges to the government under India's blasphemy laws. They won, had Jerry arrested, imprisoned, and finally deported. He can't return to India.
So, the better question is, if Adi Da goes to India, and makes the kind of claims he does, and insinuates himself as a Sat-Guru, will the Indian government arrest, imprison, or deport him? This is a far more likely scenario than his being recognized and proclaimed as India's Divine Savior.
As for Adi Da's internet presence, yes, I'm sure they are beefing that up finally in response to this (Lightmind) site. It was always part of their plan. I was present in planning meetings for this kind of thing, and at one point the idea was to literally create hundreds of thousands of bot-driven websites in order to utterly drown the search engines so that this site would not be readily found. Adi Da approved of the plan, but it proved to be technically unworkable.
Now, if people are fooled by Chris Tong's websites, that's too bad. I doubt they will be. At present, Adidam continues to decline in numbers and financial support. I can't see any sane argument that says this Lightmind site is actually helping Adi Da somehow, even by spurring them on to do better PR. PR alone can't save Adidam, because once you get anywhere near the actual organization, all the red flags and alarm bells start going off, and no amount of PR is going to change that situation. Now, if these sites actually got Adidam to change internally, that would be great. I for one have no problem with a radically reformed Adidam attracting people. I just doubt it will ever reform itself to the degree it needs to. Every sign points in the opposite direction. So if they are spurred by sites like this to change only their PR program, and put even less energy into the necessary internal reforms they need to make, the long-term effect will continue to be that of decline and fall.