Adi Da Archives

Broken Yogi addresses a Daist poster’s litany of cliché Adidam dogma about dissident former members

Posted by Broken Yogi on Mar-2-05

Daist:  There is so much I could say I don't know where to begin. But you're not really here to understand Adi Da's relationship with devotees, are you?

(Daist name deleted), do you have any notion of my history at these websites? I began posting here 6-7 years ago when devotees told me about this place. I did so because at the time Adi Da was asking the whole worldwide community “why has my Work failed?” He was on his European tour, camping out in the mud, lamenting the state of Adidam and its mission, and I wanted to find out for myself what was wrong with Adidam and with our mission. When I began visiting these sites I was, like you, horrified to hear my Guru being slammed with “tabloid” accusations. I threw myself into these forums with the same kind of zeal that you are displaying, defending Adi Da, attacking his critics, accusing everyone of completely mischaracterizing and degrading the truth of Adi Da’s work with devotees, coming up with every rationalization and justification that I’d learned in my years of Adidam, arguing dharma and presenting as much of the positive side of Adidam as I could, and using exactly the same arguments you are making here and now.

So don’t imagine I haven’t not only heard what you are saying, but have said what you are saying. And you know what? After all that’s been said over and over and over again, the simple facts about life in Adidam, about Adi Da’s own life and actions, no longer held up for me. I not only learned things about Adi Da that had been kept secret, from this forum and from other devotees, I began to realize that what was wrong with Adidam was coming from within the group, even from Adi Da himself, and not from the outside, not from former devotees, not from critics, not from “conventional attitudes”. When you say that I’m not here to really understand Adi Da’s relationship with devotees, that’s utter bullshit. That’s exactly why I came to this place, and why I’m engaging you right now. It’s you who don’t seem interested in honestly discussing Adi Da’s relationship with devotees. I still have a hard time believing you are really (Daist name deleted), because your emotional reactivity has seemed so extreme, immature, and off-base, but then I read posts like that above and start to recognize similarities. Anyway, what comes off in your voice when you aren’t simply being emotionally reactive is the standard PR excuses that Adidam teaches its missionaries to fire off in order to prevent people from actually examining Adi Da’s relationship with devotees. It’s a smokescreen of righteous indignation to keep people from finding out what really goes on, and to provide excuses for what the already know does go on. The reason why there is no actual “meat” to your defense of Adi Da is that you are afraid to actually get into how he relates to devotees in a way that is actually convincing to anyone.

Now as you know, I was involved with Adi Da for a long time, and had significant personal contact with him and his inner circle, and was a genuinely devotional character who responded to him spiritually. I loved Adi Da and still do. I loved many people in the community and still do. So if you can’t talk to me openly and honestly about Adi Da’s relationship with devotees, and really, fully explain what all this abuse and cultic nonsense is all about in a convincing manner, what hope do you have of convincing anyone else? What hope does Adidam have as a mission, as a religion, as a genuine spiritual force in the world? Don’t think I didn’t want Adidam to succeed, or that I don’t still want it to succeed. But based on my experience there, it simply is not succeeding, will not succeed, and in its current depraved condition I don’t really want it to succeed. I would be happy if Adidam purified itself of all its ridiculous cultism and abusiveness and arrogance and egoity and stupidity, and emerged as a real spiritual community. I always thought that was a real possibility, and I invested nearly 30 years of my life in trying to make that come about. But I simply no longer have faith that it will come about. The patterns set in place by Adi Da, by you, by others in the leadership, by the general membership, by those who have left, by the public at large, have become so strongly set in place and so difficult to change that it isn’t hard to see how all this is going to turn out.

In the years before I left Adi Da made me his “court astrologer”. But that’s only the half of it. What he actually asked me to do was to simply study his pattern, using astrology to some degree, but also merely to study his pattern directly, and come to an understanding of it. And I took that service on quite seriously, and did study his pattern. That’s even part of why I came to these forums, to really look at all aspects of his pattern, and try to see the totality of it, to see why it was failing, to see what could be done to help it succeed. And of course I studied his pattern within the community, in very direct relationship to him, reporting directly to him what I found. And so I had to take his whole abusiveness into account, all the reports of his negative behavioral patterns, not just from exes, but from everyone in the community, even just from what occurred on a daily basis around him and in the community in general.

What I found was a widespread pattern of abusiveness that did not seem to have a spiritual basis. I looked at this as liberally as I could, making excuses or at least giving him the benefit of the doubt wherever I could, but as I simply looked at the actual evidence that I could really verify and trust, not all the wild tabloid things floating around, the pattern that emerged was still not a pretty one. It no longer seemed to have a truly spiritual origin. In fact, the patterns it resembled most closely were those of cult leaders, pathological narcissists, megalomaniacs, despots, and even the ordinary pattern of abusive husbands, alcoholics, substance abusers, and immature and even infantile people of all kinds. It’s not that I forgot that there were some profound and spiritual patterns in Adi Da’s life and teachings, or that I deliberately ignored them. I just could no longer ignore this darker side of his character and life. The two do not fit together in a manner that makes sense spiritually, at least to me, or to most other people. And the only people I’ve met in Adidam who do seem to think it fits together show all the signs of a complimentary neurosis - that of cult followers blindly accepting the irrational excuses and habits of cognitive dissonance, in order to bridge the huge gap between what is preached and what is practiced in Adidam.

And don’t think I haven’t talked to higher up people in Adidam. I have. I can understand your public outrage about these matters being discussed openly on an internet forum, but I also know that if we talked privately you might not be so obtuse. I talked with quite a few inner circle people about my feelings while I was moving away from Adidam. Adi Da himself was very concerned, and asked leadership types to talk with me. I had some very good conversations about these matters. And in my experience, even those people are able to admit that there is a very dark side to Adi Da that they simply don’t know how to deal with. They didn’t pretend that these things have never happened, and they at least showed me enough respect not to lie and stonewall and preach the usual public story that you are trying to lay on me. They even told me how they coped with it all, and tried to show me how I could cope with it as well. But it was obvious that what they had constructed for themselves was an alternative to Adi Da’s teaching, a way of not really confronting the truth, not even from Adi Da’s perspective about it all. It was a revision of Adi Da’s teaching, the very thing that Adi Da railed against every day. One fellow even told me that he and other people in the top hierarchy - and by that I mean people higher than even the great (Daist name deleted)- talked about this stuff on a daily basis and how difficult it was to deal with, and that they had decided that the “real” teaching was not what Adi Da actually taught openly, but was some very secret thing that they had figured out, and would pass on to me to help me through these doubts of mine. And they told me that they knew that if they ever mentioned it to Adi Da he would completely deny it, and so they never did, they just practiced it themselves and worked through it somehow. I listened, and it’s not worth repeating here, but I can simply say it’s purely revisionist drivel, a simple form of cognitive dissonance as applied to an extremely stressful situation.

Now maybe you cope with it all in your own way, but the signs that are coming across from you are not very encouraging. But maybe that’s just your public face of righteous indignation. I’m sure that behind that face you have your own deep doubts and fears and all kinds of methods for dealing with them that you won’t readily describe here. You did leave for many years, pray tell, and that couldn’t have been easy, and coming back I’m sure wasn’t easy, so don’t just give me this stonewalled party-line I-have-no-doubt-of-God shit. I mean, you’re supposed to be Mr. Emotional-Sexual Maturity, and you can’t even get out of the batter’s box. So yeah, if you want to really talk seriously about Adi Da’s relationship with devotees, please do. I’m open to it. Are you?

Daist:  You're out to repeat the same tabloid nonsense we've come to expect from your group. You offer a cartoon character version of events you still don't understand, apparently, even after all these years.

I’m not interested in the tabloid version, but I am interested in the plain facts, at least as a basis for deeper discussion. You can’t talk sensibly about Adi Da’s relationship with devotees if you can’t speak openly and honestly about the plain facts first. I’ve given you some of those plain facts, as have others. If you want to spin a spiritual interpretation of those facts, you at least have to start with them, and argue from them. Otherwise you are just talking out your ass. It’s not my intention to create a cartoon version of events, but that’s certainly true of some people here. And let’s be honest, the events themselves often lend themselves to cartoon satire, don’t you think? We are talking about what on the face of it is often truly absurd theatre, don’t you think, a real-life Mummery of cult fantasy mixed with rank hedonism? So go a little easy on the whole righteous indignation thing. Anyone who signs up for Adidam has to pretty much renounce the righteous indignation theme forever. It’s the price you pay for being a part of Adi Da’s “spiritual theatre”.

But I will admit that you are right, I don’t fully understand the events that have gone on even after all these years. I admit I don’t know why Adi Da beat (female devotee’s name deleted), pulled her hair out and broke her arm. I don’t know why he beat and raped a woman with another devotee while she was screaming to stop. But I also don’t understand why O.J. killed his wife, I don’t understand why Michael Jackson likes to sleep with little boys. And you know what? I don’t really have to understand it to criticize it, to think that it fits a certain narcissistic patterning that is so common throughout the world, and that spiritual maturity is supposed to transcend, not encourage or commit. What you are not willing to face up to and acknowledge is that the patterns of Adi Da’s behavior match very precisely the medically established patterns of pathological narcissism, NPD, sociopathy, etc., and the culture of Adidam matches very precisely the universal cultural patterns of cults and narcissistic groups everywhere, and this is a very sick situation that you can’t just blame on critics and pop-psychology interpretations. What the underlying motives and “truth” is I can’t altogether say, but there’s obviously something very rotten in the state of Adidam, and it doesn’t take a Ph.D in psychology to see that.

Daist:  Comparing Adi Da to those who ran the concentration camps is incredibly offensive to me, and to anyone who appreciates the horrors that occurred there.

Yes, it’s an over-the-top comparison, used to make the point that simply because some ordeal is difficult or horrible, it doesn’t necessarily have a spiritual basis. When you claim that the rape and beating of a woman is actually a spiritual lesson, you’re the one who is falling down the moral abyss that leads to concentration camps horrors, not me. The point is, where does your rationalizations for Adi Da’s behavior actually end? Is there any point that you would say is too far for him to go, where you would no longer support his Divine Work? And why, if there is a such a point for you, does the rape and beating of a woman fall short of that point? I cut Adi Da a lot of slack, but not that much. And once you stop cutting him slack, and look around at the whole scene, at all the slack he’s been cut, it begins to look different. You begin to realize that so much of what devotees put up with in Adidam is just plain bullshit, not having any real spiritual basis, that the spiritual basis for Adidam may have some legitimacy in some areas, but it gets used to cover all kinds of matters that actually have no real spiritual basis at all. And then you have a massive cult with a massive coverup operation going on, and that’s Adidam in a nutshell.

Daist:  Tell me this: if what Adi Da has done is so bad, then why are the very people you've mentioned as victims still his devotees?

They’re not. A whole heck of a lot of people who were once in Adi Da’s inner circle have left, and will not return. Do you want me to name names? In regards to the rape I described, true, the woman stayed, but she shows all the evidence of battered wife syndrome, which as I’m sure you know is very, very common among women. There are plenty of women who spend their whole lives with an abusive husband, who never leave, and who make excuses for everything he does. So it’s not evidence in favor of Adi Da that the woman might stick around for more abuse. There are lots of people in the world who feel they should be abused, and get what they asked for. As for the man, no, he didn’t stay around. He left and deeply regrets his involvement in Adidam, especially all the other shit that went on in the inner circles, and he doesn’t see any spiritual benefit from having helped Adi Da rape and beat a woman.

But in general, your excuse that some people are abused and stay around doesn’t fly. If you know anything about human nature and especially the nature of cults, abuse is commonly used to keep people in a cult, and it doesn’t have the effect of driving some people away. Quite the opposite, due to the perverse effects of cognitive dissonance, it actually helps cement the relationship. It creates a special bond that actually helps strengthen people’s commitment to the group, and to the group leader. And the signs of that kind of pattern are seen everywhere in Adidam, and it’s a very unhealthy sign. It’s a degenerative pattern, not a life-giving pattern, and it accounts for much of the deadness in Adidam. It’s also why so many people stay away.

Daist:  How do you explain the fact that apart from one group of very immature people in 1985, we enjoy excellent relationships with the vast majority of even those who've chosen to leave. This is not consistent with the picture you're painting.

First of all, that’s simply not true. You don’t enjoy excellent relationships with the vast majority of people who chosen to leave. There have been something like 30-40,000 people who have come through the Adidam ranks over the last 30 years, and only 1-2,000 have stayed associated even on a nominal basis. Of the 95% who have left Adidam, you probably have very little association with any of them, and aren’t even in a position to know what they think of Adidam. Many people who have left continue to have friends in Adidam, and yet still don’t have a very good opinion of Adidam, or of Adi Da. You could even count me as one of them. I still have friends in Adidam. Hell, my wife is still a participating devotee in Adidam. I have very good relations with her, and with my friends.

Sure, there’s plenty of people in Adidam who consider me a heretic, but I don’t see those people, and except for you, they don’t come around harassing me and calling me names. I know they exist, however, and thanks for reminding me once again of one of the many good reasons I left, but I wouldn’t say I have a bad relationship with devotees in general. I’m just critical of many things about Adidam, and if someone asks me about that I won’t hesitate to tell them, but I’m not out to antagonize anyone. And I know plenty of devotees who have left, and most of them don’t post here and don’t even want anything to do with this place, but they also don’t have a very high opinion of Adidam. They also have critical views of Adidam. And then there’s the people who really went through heavy abusive shit in Adidam and can’t stand the place. Altogether, the cumulative opinion of Adidam that gets passed on by former devotees - which really means the vast majority of people who were ever involved - is a negative one, and that is why Adidam has such difficulty in its missionary work. Word gets around in spiritual circles about Adidam, because those 28-38,0000 people do talk, and most of what they talk about is enough to warn most people off about ever joining. So if Adidam really does have excellent relationships with the vast majority of former devotees, how do you explain the absolutely abysmal reputation that Adidam has out there, even in the world of spirituality? Why is it so hard to get anyone to even come to an Adidam event, if you have such excellent relationships? Can you really blame it all on a few bad apples? That’s really stretching it, (Daist name deleted), and I think you know that. You’ve really got to start facing up to the realities of Adidam and its relationship with former devotees and the rest of the world.

Daist:  Our way of life is a rigorous one, and our teacher is not interested in conventional relationships that reinforce the ego.

But the practice of Adidam does seem to reinforce the ego, doesn’t it? That’s his own testimony as to the results of his 33 years of teaching, isn’t it? He complains regularly that all he has is a bunch of egos around him, not devotees. So where is the evidence of this ego-transcendence? Where is the evidence of it in your own case? You come here full of ego, showing no signs whatsoever of ego-transcendence. What Adidam shows the signs of is not ego-transcendence, but of ego-cultism, and even Adi Da himself confirms that opinion. You yourself are evidence of it. So what’s all this bragging about not being interested in conventional relationships? That’s all Adi Da has surrounded himself with, conventional egos interested in a conventional relationship to him. You may have missed this part of the equation, but being the cult follower of a narcissistic cult leader is the most conventional kind of egoic relationship a person can have, and that’s what Adidam has created. That’s the role Adi Da has played, and that’s what you have played into.

Now maybe you can argue that this is part of his “Mummery”, and fine, but it’s still what it is, and if you can’t acknowledge that, you can’t even begin to understand it, much less transcend it. Are you even interested in transcending it? Because as you must know, the “price” or ego-transcendence is ego-inspection. It means you have to actually inspect the egoity that you are playing out in Adidam, and to be honest, you seem to have missed that entirely. You don’t seem to have a clue about your own egoity, or how egoity itself has been endlessly re-enforced in Adidam. Instead you have just taken this arrogant attitude that you are involved in some kind of great unconventional ego-transcending relationship with Adi Da, even when he tells you to your face that you are full of shit. And you then go around telling everyone else that it’s they who are the egos, and they just want conventional egoic relationships. But that’s yourself you are describing. You are the guy who wants the conventional egoic relationship with Adi Da. That’s what you’ve always played out with him, and that’s what you are playing out now. And you have to come here, to us exes, to get the reality consideration about that. So, glad to be of service.

Daist:  If this doesn't interest you, fine. No one is forced to practice. No one stopped you from walking out, did they?

The relationship to the Divine does interest me. The relationship to the Guru does interest me. Understanding all of this does interest me. That’s why I was involved with Adidam for so long. Practice does interest me. If I had faith in the Adidam approach to all that, I’d still be involved. But I don’t anymore. Yet because I am still interested in spiritual practice, I have a lot of sorting out to do, of separating the wheat from the chaff, of purifying myself of many of the illusions about spiritual practice that I accumulated in Adidam. And so I post on this forum as part of the process of becoming clear about all that and moving on. There’s been a clear progression on my part of the years here, and of late I’ve really not been posting on Adidam much at all, but on the whole consideration of non-dualism and especially on the teachings of Ramana Maharshi, and to some degree comparing that to the teachings of Adidam, and seeing where they differ, and where the teachings of Adidam seem to be a distortion of the truth. I’ve never said that Adidam is all bullshit or just a fraud, but I have come to see that it isn’t a full and complete teaching about the spiritual process, but has its own peculiar mistakes and errors which it is well time for me to acknowledge and be done with.

So no, people didn’t force me to practice in Adidam, but I did learn many things about practice in Adidam that simply aren’t true. And separating myself from Adidam has given me the opportunity to consider what was true and what wasn’t in a way that just isn’t possible within Adidam. As you know, people are simply not allowed to deviate in the slightest from the orthodox view of Adidam without serious consequences. Long before I even left Adidam, before I even became critical of it, I faced severe consequences within Adidam even for discussing these issues on these forums. I was declared a security risk and banned from darshan, merely for displaying that most dangerous of qualities: an open mind willing to speak openly. I had to begin to wonder at some point why I was even bothering to defend these people.

Daist:  I find it sad that in the process of turning your back on your devotional relationship to Adi Da, you've now chosen to make outrageous characterizations of very personal situations that really aren't appropriate for discussion here.

I didn’t turn my back on Adi Da, (Daist name deleted). He’s the one who shut himself off from me. I had legitimate difficulties in my practice with him that he simply refused to address or help me with. The Guru-devotee relationship imposes obligations not merely on the devotee, but on the Guru as well. Adi Da has failed to keep up his end of that relationship, has failed to give full and proper instruction, has failed to help devotees like me, and instead turns his back on anyone who raises any of these issues. Rather than helping devotees, he becomes petulant, angry, and vengeful. He lashes out in anger at devotees, blames them for his own problems, and tries to make himself out to be the victim of abuse. That kind of attitude is a violation of the Guru-devotee relationship. Rather than practicing the wound of love, he plays out the victim-game and heaps abuse on others. That is a violation even of his own teachings. At some point, I simply had to say enough is enough. I won’t relate to him that way anymore. If he wants to relate to me in a sane and spiritually effective manner, fine, I’m here for him. I haven’t closed any doors. I could have a very honorable discussion with him at any time. I could ask him questions about non-dualism and other matters of practice without even bringing any of this stuff up. But I won’t accede to the cultic demands that he places on his devotees, or anyone who approaches him. So I know that isn’t likely to happen. He’s drawn his line in the sand, and I’ve drawn mine.

Daist:  Not only that, you engage in pop psychoanalysis that I don't think is going to impress anyone. "Cognitive dissonance." "Delusional narcissist." Do you even know what these things mean?

Yes, (Daist name deleted), I do know what these things mean. Do you? I’d be happy to get into a discussion of these matters. Cognitive dissonance is not a topic you find in any pop-psychoanalysis books. If you want to refer to the professional literature on the subject I’d be happy to oblige. We could start with DSM-IV and go from there.

Daist:  You're certainly not impressing me.

I’m not trying to impress you, (Daist name deleted). I’m just trying to get to the facts of this matter. You are trying to evade those facts. Who do you think you are impressing with this spinmeister act of yours? You may be able to get away with this shit in front of sycophantic audiences in Adidam, but it just doesn’t fly anywhere else.

Daist:  You're attributing conventional character traits to Adi Da in a way that's only intended to sensationalize your claims, distorting the nature of his Play with those who love him.

Adi Da does in fact possess a great many conventional character traits. The attempt to Divinize all his character traits betrays an enormous misunderstanding of the Divine Process as it appears in this world. The Divine Process is not about character traits, nor does it somehow make one’s character traits immune from criticism. Your error is to associate all of Adi Da’s character traits with a Divine Process that somehow makes them into something that is inherently perfect and free of bondage. But that is not the case.

Adi Da does have all the character traits of the very worst kind of humanity, the pathological narcissists, the sociopaths, the manipulators and exploiters of humanity, the despots and the cult leaders. Those are just the facts. He also has some very positive traits as well, and I have no problem acknowledging that. He even has some Divine spiritual capacities that I have experienced first hand, and have nothing but praise for. But his Divine transmission, even his loving human side, does not negate the dark side of his character, all the things you object to my talking about, all the things you would like to sweep under the rug and pretend don’t exist. What we have in Adi Da is a very mixed bag, not the pure light that you would like us to believe he is all about.

Daist:  The person of Adi Da is an agent of Divine Awakening, and that's his function. Not the protection of fragile egos who fail to understand our way of life.

How would you even know, (Daist name deleted)? Your fragile ego seems very well protected after all these years. How do you explain that? Now unlike some people here, I have no problem seeing Adi Da as an agent of Divine Awakening. He certainly served that process in me, and I still feel gratitude for that. But not enough to turn a blind eye to everything else that he’s served, in me and in others, that hasn’t had anything to do with Divine Awakening, but has actually worked against that process. So the problem here seems to be that Adi Da has only a limited capacity to serve the process of Divine Awakening, limited by his own addictions and narcissistic traits. In that respect, he’s no different than the rest of us, just more extreme than most. So I’m not going to get on the high righteous horse about him. No need to. Let’s just put all the facts on the table, good and bad, and see what kind of pattern emerges.