Adi Da Built a Corrupt Inner Circle to Insulate Himself from Responsibility
Posted by Broken Yogi on Mar-6-05
I completely understand this whole dynamic of "Da good, community bad", because for years I held onto it also as a last gasp method for justifying my own involvement. If one could just maneuver through the dipshits and the Evelyn Discs of the community, and finally get an audience with the Great Oz himself, well then, surely he would listen and begin to straighten the whole mess out.
But the naivete, much less the narcissism, of that point of view became
increasingly inescapable to me. You seem to still be trying like mad to escape
the conclusion that the Great Oz isn't so great and innocent at all, but is in
fact culpable for creating the very dynamic you point to in Adidam, and creating
it for very good reasons that serve his own interests while at the same time
acting as a buffer against direct criticism. And as long as you keep doing your
part to preserve the fiction that Adi Da is being held "prisoner" behind that
velvet curtain, you are simply creating your own illusions about the scene.
Adi Da knows exactly what he is doing in appointing and keeping the crassly
egoic manipulators you mention in power, as a buffer between himself and the
ordinary devotees who keep the whole machine going. Without that buffer ordinary
devotees simply wouldn't support that machine, but would leave in droves. Da
knows that, his buffer people know that, and each exploits the other, knowing
that each is indispensable to the other to keep the game going. Da allows and
encourages his buffer to act without morals or ethics because it allows him to
do the same, and point to them as the problem. They allow Da to act without
morals or ethics because it allows them to point to Da and say they are only
acting on his instructions and example.
Each has the perfect excuse, at least in their own minds, that allows the sham
of Adidam to perpetuate itself. And the "little followers" who hide their eyes
from what really goes on in Adidam are doing their part as well, blaming the
buffer people some of the time for their gross crimes, excusing them at other
times for simply doing what Adi Da wants them to do, and praising them the rest
of the time for "sticking in there" and doing the dirty work which allows the
periphery to keep its hands clean.
The whole arrangement is corrupt and stinking from head to tail, but it allows
for the illusion to be perpetuated that the very top of the food chain, Adi Da
himself, is clean as a whistle and free of all error, except perhaps the error
of "loving his devotees too much", and being too permissive. This is a common
structure to exploitive cults of all kinds. Rajneesh used this same dynamic to
blame his own buffer people for the crimes he knowingly and willfully committed.
It's the way mafia bosses operate as well, always passing their instructions
through a series of loyal but corrupt intermediaries, so that they can always
claim innocence of the crimes that mysteriously get committed around them. If
you fall for that story, you are far more naive that you are probably willing to
admit to yourself, and far more easily manipulated than you care to face up to.
I can't help wondering if it isn't this quality in you that is in some respects
responsible for your business and legal failures in Adidam. I don't question
that you were probably manipulated and exploited in hundreds of devious ways,
but I do wonder how anyone as smart as you could have allowed that to happen
unless they had a huge blind spot in relation to Adidam's "spiritual" authority.
I even wonder how much of that blind spot is still intact when I read posts of
yours such as this one.
It seems to me that a fair part of your rage is just over the embarrassment at
being hoodwinked by such crude amateurs, and not wanting to admit to yourself
what it was in you that allowed this to happen. I'd suggest that the same part
of you which is still making excuses for Da and trying to carve out a basis for
his innocence in all matters is also the part of you which got led down the
garden path in this business venture of yours. Not trying to blame you, but
knowing how one made a mistake is the best way to prevent it from happening
again.
Personally, I never would have let ANY of the people you got involved with have
ANYTHING to do with any business venture of mine. It doesn't take a genius to
figure out that most people in the community, especially those in high places,
are utterly untrustworthy in relation to business and money and ethics. There
are exceptions, to be sure, but not many.
And the reason for that has to do with the lack of ethics and morals from the top down in Adidam, which is totally evident in Adi Da's complete unwillingness to accept any responsibility for his actions. That cascades down through the community in a constant shifting of blame from one person to the next, resulting in a "culture" that simply has no sense of responsibility or ethics. It isn't hard to see how this starts at the top, unless you simply refuse to look.
It also makes it obvious that reforming Adidam is about as stupid an idea as reforming the mafia. The whole point of Adidam as a religious institution is to create a place in which unethical behavior can be gotten away with. If you took the "religion business" away from Adidam, what would you have left? Maybe a loin cloth. You really think Adi Da wants to sit around in a loin cloth like Ramana, just radiating in silence? Not a chance. He wants all this garbage, and he's willing to put up with whatever it takes to get it, including ripping off people like you to feed the egos and the wallets of his fiefdom. Get the message, and get on with your life.
Posted by Anonymous in 2003
That is key to understanding what is now called Adidam. As I said in the first post, it isn't possible to extricate Adi Da from those who gathered around him. As the years have gone by, and Adi Da has become less and less capable and competent to function, those around him have taken more and more in an opportunistic fashion.
In the early days, (70's - 80's) the inner circle lied and redacted who he was and what he said. Over time, those who grew up in it and came into positions -- well -- some realized that they could just grab what they wanted and the sheep around them wouldn't peep. In an evolutionary manner, different people tried different things, and some learned how to be really, really excellent sycophants [and exploiters]. Those who didn't do it right got spit out.
Those who tried hard to be honest and straight got undermined over and over again, worn out and left -- over and over. He never helped them. So that means that by default the system that grew up selected for criminals, liars, opportunists, con-men, con-women (and the marginally sane).
Nowadays, what you see or hear of Adi Da is extremely filtered and rewritten. But it's more filtered going into Adi Da's "circumstance" than it is coming away from him. That's a side effect of the way Adi Da relates to people, by screaming at them and setting impossible goals, gotchas, and creating lose-lose situations for those around him. He's gleeful about those lose-lose setups.
Think about that. Whatever you hear or see written about Adi Da has been highly edited at the very least, made up out of whole cloth at worst. But what is he told? He is fed a steady diet of highly purified total horseshit. First his individual students produce horseshit to send him, then the horseshit gets renovated without limit. The key to that process is the inner circle. Any indictments had better include them.
..................
It's most definitely a con as an organization, but maybe not an individual one. Whether Adi Da is the "king-con" is a matter of diagnosis. I think the primary con-men are those immediately surrounding Adi Da, using him more and more for their own ends.
I have seen hundreds of people worn down over years, trying to meet the mark, and getting whacked down over and over, given impossible tasks. Just worn down, worn out, tired, somewhat hysterical sometimes, sitting and listening to the same kind of crap as he would say 20 years ago.
I have seen hundreds of people over the years become enamored, get close, and basically flip in some way. If they got to the innermost circle, they would become silent or less talkative, with a traumatized look in their eyes. A few would talk, and say things like, "It's utterly clear to me that he doesn't give a rat's ass about my life!" But they would say this as if it were a fine thing.
I have seen his innermost circle become populated almost exclusively by liars and thieves. I can say that every single person who is directly related to him as an intimate is a thief and a liar. Every person who is close to him has committed many felonious acts, from drugs to rape, grand theft and statutory rape -- depending on the person. I can say that the inner circle utterly misrepresents virtually all of what is going on. They become practiced liars.
I don't think Franklin Jones is a con man. I don't think he sets out to intentionally deceive people, like those who conceive a Ponzi scheme. Instead, I think he is an extreme narcissist, a severe sociopath, and probably psychotic.
But hey. That's just me. What do I know?
Information from an anonymous ex-devotee that was posted at http://www.kheper.net/topics/gurus/correspondence_from_an_ex-Daist.html
26 May 2006
….Let me start by saying that I was involved with that way for almost 20 years. Much of my experience confirms what you say, except that I was much closer, and was present for most of the teaching talks that got edited into books. I took it very seriously, and exhausted myself doing it. Interestingly, I will say that I did get results that were real and profound. I don't know if it is even possible to communicate it. I have marveled at the ability of anyone to do as Franklin has done if what was my experience and for a time realization is true of him. I look back at that time, and much of it was good. The community is mostly made of very good people. The way of life is mostly a good one, and for the most part the community is highly moral.
There are three rings to the community. There is the outer one, which is moral, sane, intelligent and really very good. There is the buffer zone that stands between the inner circle/intimates and the community. That is composed of people who are variable, but mostly very earnest, some heavy duty climber types, and some who are criminal. This circle is the one that causes people to get flung out most often and frequently very disturbed and disaffected. The inner circle is the most problematic. Those who get closest are not the best. And it has been my observation over the years that many of them do not get better or become better human beings, quite the reverse, rather like the old timers in the buffer group. Instead, those who survive and prosper become fluent and habitual liars, cheats, and even simple thieves. They all become masterful manipulators and good at intimidation. People come away from these inner circle "considerations" abused, angry, freaked out, etcetera.
One has to ask over years of time, "What's up with that?"
That said, I am no longer involved, although I try to maintain friendly relations with the community. I am somewhat afraid of Franklin, and do not trust him nor his inner circle. I have gathered evidence that would be admissible in court that confirms that he and the inner circle have lied for years, and probably from the very beginning about Franklin's use of drugs of all kinds. His community has become pervaded by drug use, primarily marijuana, with some alcohol thrown in. What I came to be with and be involved in is no more.
... I also know that one of the "healers" in the community treated him with an Ayurvedic medical treatment for many years which treatment contained a lot of mercury. Enough mercury to cause symptoms of blindness and psychosis. I was never able to get samples for analysis, but when I found that out and did the timing, it corresponds well to his becoming more florid - to the point of bizarre.
Franklin has been on medications to function at all since the days in Maria Hoop in Holland when he went off into the woods and wouldn't come back. Various things from antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications to Viagra. He's unable to function and cope without taking drugs. That's a very disturbing thing and makes it hard to believe that he is truly "enlightened" unless you expand that quite a bit. And yet, that ineffable presence remains.
I also have been in the room in later years when Franklin had drifted. By that I mean that in the earlier days he would come out with something and say it with that intense delivery of his. But I have been there since when he quite clearly was just confabulating, saying things that couldn't possibly be true and were contradictory with what he had said shortly before. But he did it with the same delivery. …
May 29, 2006
....Franklin is, unfortunately, a sociopathic exploiter of people. He has systematically stripped women of their inheritances, and if someone has something happen, or is even dying, he will not direct that a cent of the money he takes be used to help them. The "kanyas" who come and go? Many of them are women with significant inheritances. Franklin systematically abuses them, he's a master at it and at social manipulation. He casts them out or they just fall out, devastated, destroyed, and emotionally broken so they can't fight or attack him after. But he romances them and strips them of their money. After that he is done with them.
...And yet, there is a spiritual something there that is as if not more real than other religions, and it was stronger in the past. I relate to it like technology now. The Tibetans understand this and say that the phenomenon of a yogi with great siddhis arising who becomes dark in some form(s) is common. Most who are involved with the group are decent people, or start out that way. They become damaged by it though, and that is the bottom line for me in the end. After more than 2 decades, what has he wrought? There are none in his inner circle whom I respect. People are used and sucked dry by him, then cast away like trash. His family, well, I just don't like them very much. Those who are at the innermost sanctum? They get worse and worse, not better and better. That's the bottom line, and the proof that this is not true "crazy wisdom". This is the proof that it is sociopathy mixed with yogic capacity.
June 14, 2006
….Getting back to this as a group phenomenon, I think the major difference between Franklin, Ken Wilber and those you listed is that the Dalai Lama, Ramakrishna, etcetera, live within a larger culture and tradition. The Tibetans if you go to Nepal and talk to them know about such tendencies. There is a tape of Muktananda saying that Franklin is a dark yogi who will lead many into darkness. This reminds me of what one sees in larger political movements such as Communism which also acquired very similar adherents. Some of those still pump out apologist writings today. The communist world was taken over by dark gangsters taking advantage of naive idealism. They conducted programs that would make Sauron proud. But, over time, that system evolved as human groups do, with intelligent and principled people making their way into positions of power. By the time it fell it was mostly just another system. Same thing is already happening in Adidam.
Within Adidam, for a long time, now, almost 2 decades, Franklin has ranted with increasing frequency about how the regular student body is not what he is about and hems him in. At this point it is the primary content of his rantings that are translated into "notes" for the membership. It's also quite true. I think it is the best thing going in that organization and evidence of good human character. The regular run of student (the inner circle is very small) is an intelligent, highly principled, kind and thoughtful person. The inner circle knows that and it is why they are so very careful to hide as well as they can and spin things so aggressively.