Adi Da “miracle” – sadism or accident or supernatural event?
In The Dreaded GomBoo, 1983, pp. 335 339, there is a description of an alleged miracle by Adi Da. According to the book, in 1982 Adi Da healed a woman's back supernaturally with "lightning" or energy shooting from of his fingertips, which caused three burn marks on the woman's back between her shoulder blades (picture of burns is in the book). The woman (Denise Marrero) said in the book that her back felt like she had been touched by a soldering iron. The burns scabbed over, and a doctor in fact confirmed that the marks were burns.
Several internet posters have pointed out how unlikely it is that this event was a miracle at all.
Some further details are in order as we consider what transpired. Denise Marrero and her husband had come to the Adidam community’s property in Hawaii to do work for Adi Da and receive spiritual instruction. On the night in question, Denise was at a party with Adi Da and many others who were smoking cigarettes and cigars that had been purchased by Neil Lupa. People at the party were drinking heavily, and during this time period Adi Da was known to be using "poppers" (amyl nitrate) and also giving this to some of his numerous sexual partners. At the time of the alleged miracle, Adi Da was having anal sex with Denise and there were several other women in the room presumably engaged in various types of sexual activity.
At the time Denise’s back was burned, she therefore would not have been in a good position to see exactly what was doing the burning. (Try to see the middle of your back between your shoulder blades just by turning your head, even if your not being anally penetrated at the time). From most angles, whatever Adi Da did to burn her back would not have been visible to the other women in the room, who were presumably preoccupied with other things that were going on anyway.
Denise told several people after the incident that she thought she had been burned by Adi Da with a cigarette or cigar. This was also what people in the community commonly believed had happened. However, Denise was encouraged by certain others and by her own tendencies towards exaggeration in spiritual matters and magical thinking to conclude the event was a miraculous healing. Denise was the kind of person who had a history of claiming to have had visions and spiritual experiences and healings, and was not believed or respected by most people as having any integrity with respect to these, by the way. So, over a period of days, Denise’s explanation for her burns grew into them being the result of a miracle. This interpretation was helped along by the “investigation” (please !) by David Forsythe (the “official miracle investigator” for Adidam) who had no real alternative but to validate Denise’s spin. What else was Forsythe going to do, accuse Adi Da of burning her in some cruel manner?
It is clear to anyone who looks at Adi Da’s history that he has often resorted to mythologizing his mistakes and problems, invoking spiritual explanations for what would otherwise be seen as abuses or just ordinary health problems (e.g., anxiety attacks and coronary incidents are explained as profound events that will change the course of history). So, it is not too surprising that Adi Da supported and encouraged Denise to run with the “miracle” explanation for his burning of her back, knowing that there were many reasons why it would be in both of their interests to do so. One can only imagine that Adi Da, partying heavily at the time, was in a state of mind that led him to get into some very kinky stuff with a hot object of some type that night. Or maybe he just got careless while smoking and his ash fell on her and burned her. Either way, Adi Da may have been concerned that she would tell other people that he had hurt her, and the miracle story gave him cover from that accusation and at the same time provided great new material and more "proof" of his supernatural powers to put in the next book.
In conclusion, it’s possible that the only one who knew for sure exactly what happened that night was Adi Da. However, in this incident like all others no one ever thought to seriously question him about having done something that may have been sadistic, or to second guess the extraordinary explanation that was given for it. Everyone seemed more than willing to accept that the known laws of physics had been broken, as if this were no big deal, in lieu of exploring more ordinary explanations. That is what devotees systematically do, they believe explanations and Daist mythology that are contrary to common sense without much critical thought. And Adi Da plays off of this repeatedly -- in fact, he has built a whole way of life around it.