Adi Da Archives

How Devotees of Adi Da Became "Dissidents" in 1985

Posted by Jewel on Dec-4-99 12:26am

Hi. I returned from vacation Monday morning to a message on my answering machine from an old JDC friend I hadn't heard from in years. When I called him back, he told me you have all been discussing the 1985 lawsuits and the so-called "dissident" group. He asked me to participate in the conversation here because he knows I was very close to everything happening in 1985. At first I refused. I am not a writer or a debater, and I never really think about Adi Da anymore.

But I changed my mind about talking when I read the posts my friend e-mailed me. I think everyone here is getting stuck arguing about minor points and leaving out important pieces of the big picture. People can think what they want about the 1985 events, but I would like to at least give them a fuller picture to work from by including parts of the story that I know about.

I should add that I personally never spoke to the media, and I did not participate in any lawsuit. I do not pretend to be impartial, but I have less of an axe to grind than lots of people on either side of the dispute.

I was a close personal friend to every one of the people sued by JDC except Sal, who I would call a friend but not a close one. Few people saw the whole "dissident phenomenon" from as personal an angle as I did. Except in the case of Jackie, I saw each of these peoples' transition all the way from being sympathetic to Adi Da to feeling that he was an abusive fraud who should answer for what he had done by being directly confronted in conversation.

So, this is the part of the story I would like to tell you, the part that I observed.

It would take more time than I have right now to describe how this process happened for each person. The process was different for each one, and I watched it closely. I watched Mark Miller struggle every single day for months, before he gradually came to the conclusion that Adi Da wasn't who he claimed to be. That conclusion broke his heart. You should know that in 1983, Mark had already been out of the group for almost a year. During that whole time he was still donating money to JDC and also to the hermitage directly to buy presents for Adi Da's wives, etc. He was always planning to go back in the group in the near future. Then, in early 1984 he started to have some grave and significant doubts about JDC and Adi Da, but was still more ambivalent than negative towards them. At some point, he decided he would stay out of the group for good.

I watched Neil, still ambivalent about Da and JDC, slowly begin to deconstruct Da's puzzle as he befriended Mark and Sal, and worked with them through all kinds of philosophical and emotional issues. In the process of interacting with these guys, Neil woke up from the confusion of the Da-fog. I came to know Jackie, the first "dissident," who was criminalized and slandered by JDC for saying things that today no one would even bother to refute. I saw Heather, hurt and in pain, work up the courage to speak out. I watched Sal wake up to the realization that Da had drawn him into a project that had gone astray and swallowed them both up in a dark process. When Sal had outgrown his usefulness and become a threat, he was dumped by Da. Sal knew he had blood on his hands, and had much to blame for the harm he had done to many while he was in the group.

All of the dissidents had at one point been serious devotees, deeply committed to Adi Da and spiritual practice. They had left behind their lives, careers, or education to come and follow him. This is an important fact to remember. They didn't start out as "Da haters." They came to their conclusions only reluctantly, and after much soul searching.

Jackie spoke out against JDC in 1983, before any of the others had even begun to doubt Adi Da. Most of them were still involved with JDC. She was slandered in the papers by Angelo Druda of JDC, who said she was a liar and suffering from "profound drug abuse." This wasn't true. She smoked pot a little bit a number of years before. This was an unwarranted attack designed to discredit her and shut her up. Jackie was not a druggie, and certainly never did even a fraction as much drugs as Adi Da. Plus, she had only spoken the truth. Of course, Jackie was spurred to anger by JDC's vicious attack on her.

During 1984, Mark started to talk more and more about how he thought the insiders around Adi Da were particularly corrupt. He shared with me the observations he made during the end of his tenure at JDC. He was high up in the organization and was working closely with Adi Da personally as well as his cronies. He saw darkness, deception, and dysfunction that was more pronounced as you got closer to Adi Da.

Mark was reading a lot in philosophy and anthropology, and he began to question the differences between Adi Da's teachings and what was actually lived by Da and the community. He started to share his ideas with other ex-members over the next six months, including Neil and Sal and other friends. He spurred on the discussion, and then it spread. We all started talking about what we saw and experienced, for the first time no longer through the lens of Da's propaganda. We talked about how Adi Da and the community he created were the clearest examples of Narcissus you could find, even though he called everyone else Narcissus. We talked a lot about abuse of women. Beverly, Sal and lots of other people began to feel more strongly about these issues. Neil and Heather for awhile were lukewarm and reluctant to criticize Adi Da, but they were always there for us and cared about what everyone was going through. Neil shared Mark's opinions that the inner circle group was corrupt, and Neil eventually allowed himself to acknowledge that it was most flawed and corrupt at its core, in the person of Adi Da himself.

The word got back to JDC that Mark, in particular, was discussing with other ex-members the negative conclusions he had come to about Adi Da. The JDC leadership on several occasions threatened Mark. They told him to shut up, or a group of JDC members would do some very bad things that would have created serious harm to Mark. I won't repeat what they were, but it was serious. This completely sent Mark into a rage, and everyone else got upset about it too.

Mark said it was obvious this was a cult, and if they were going to threaten him, he would fight back and make the truth about Adi Da known. His righteous anger had been stirred up, and he wasn't going to let anyone squash him. He talked about getting a lawyer.

Neil still had friends in JDC and told them they should help Mark and Sal work through their concerns, not threaten or inflame him. Neil also told Mark that dealing with lawyers would only turn everything ugly, and that maybe there was a way to work it out before everything blew up.

Neil was a stabilizing influence. He wanted to find a way for Mark, Sal and everyone else to work out their differences with Adi Da. The grievances were very personal, but there were also patterns of manipulation and psychological and physical abuse they didn't like. Neil hoped to build a bridge with JDC that would allow the growing anguish of ex-members to be healed. Heather was working through her feelings with other women she was close to whom had also left the group. A number of these women also began to feel a sense of moral outrage when they started to wake up to the reality of what their lives as women in the group had been all about. Patty Masters and Jane Panico began to re-examine their own experiences, and the experiences of other women close to Adi Da. Heather was the least publicly vocal of any of the dissident group for a number of reasons, choosing to go through her process in private. But she was very influential in her own way.

Sal slowly became more militant. He had seen through Da's game and started to talk to people inside JDC about it. He wanted to talk to Adi Da personally to straighten out their relationship, since they were best friends for so many years. Sal finally blew up when he met with some former friends inside the group who told him that: 1) he couldn't talk to Da, period, end of story, and 2) Adi Da had been telling people for years that Sal was kicked out of JDC for being a thief. Sal himself had never been told that before. Sal
responded as only Sal could, with all kinds of outrageous statements that were the only way he knew how to express his hurt. I have always had a hard time seeing Sal as a victim, because of everything harmful he did while in the group. But at the same time, I could also see that his pain ran deeper than anyone else's. That fact that he had been duped so completely by Adi Da cut into his macho pride.

Everything began to heat up from here on in. We were at a turning point, since JDC had decided to take a firm adversarial stand and made it clear they wanted to suppress us.

People like the Rosestone's, Parker's, and Paul Lynn were eventually involved in conversations about Da's contradictions. More information and hidden events from Adi Da's life were made known among the group. Everyone had a bit different view of Adi Da, but all saw him as a destructive person. No one was sure what to do about it, but they knew something needed to happen. We knew women were being taken advantage of and hit by Adi Da. Adi Da was swallowing up everyone's lives and money. We knew that most people working hard to support the group back in Marin didn't know that Adi Da was just continuing to party in Hawaii and Fiji, while telling them that he had transcended all need to do things like that. Members deserved to know the truth so they could draw informed conclusions. The pattern of lying and deception needed to end.

When people got together to talk about their feelings, these gatherings were at times "under surveillance" by JDC. One time the person whose house we were at was warned by JDC not to ever associate with "dissidents" again or to allow them to come to his house, or he might end up getting sued along with everyone else.

When JDC attempted to suppress us, instead of working everything out, people just became more convinced of the darkness of Adi Da and JDC. He enslaved all of us, and took away years of our lives, and now he didn't even want to talk to us about it since we no longer saw him as God. Not only that, he didn't even want US to talk about him to anyone else either. His attempts at suppression inflamed us all.

Neil met a number of times with Craig Lesser and Crane Kirkbride to try and put together an arrangement that would account for the harm done to ex-members. The arrangement would deal with emotional and financial issues. Craig and Crane both agreed with Neil that something like that was sorely needed, due to the fact that people had donated years of their lives and considerable money, and some had no resources for starting over when they left the community. Damage had been done.

Craig, Crane, and Neil all agreed that this private resolution would be better than letting the dispute end up in a court battle with Mark or Sal. They talked about a fund that would be available to members who left the community and needed assistance recovering from their lives in the community. Craig and Crane said they would begin to discuss this proposal with others at JDC and hoped it would be accepted. Neil never saw or heard from them again, as JDC clearly decided to try and suppress and defeat the "dissidents", rather than work through and heal the issues that Neil, Crane, and Craig had been discussing.

I imagine that Adi Da had his reasons for allowing things to go the way they did. But whatever they were, he made a big mistake by blowing everyone off.

On a different front, Mark met one on one with the then President of JDC, mainly to ask to talk with Adi Da. He also wanted compensation for the time and money he donated, and the years of his life and the education he had given up. They refused. Mark also wanted them to promise full disclosure about Adi Da to current and future members. I think that after this they did institute some kind of disclosure and release procedure for members, but really more to cover their butts than anything else.

Beverly was becoming more and more outraged as time went on. She decided to file a lawsuit that covered a broad range of issues. A reporter found Beverly's lawsuit in the court filings, and called her lawyer to be interviewed. The reporter had already interviewed some current JDC members. Beverly called Mark about the article that was being written, and Mark gave the reporter the names of ex-members to talk to. Lots of people went down and talked about their personal experiences with Adi Da.

The newspaper articles hit. We were pretty shocked with the way some of the coverage came out, but I guess it was to be expected. In the midst of all the sensationalism, the story got out. The outside world got to see JDC lying in action, and the papers called them on their lies right in the headlines.

JDC then lashed out and sued six of the main "dissidents" for $20 Million to try and shut them up. They didn't even sue for libel, since truth is a defense against libel, and the vast majority of the statements made in the newspapers stand unrefuted to this day. Someone writing on this forum said a big shot lawyer thought JDC had a great case, but that may well be because they lied to that lawyer. JDC certainly lied to the lawyer they ended up hiring, and then had the nerve to send him out on TV to lie unknowingly on their behalf. We heard that when JDC's lawyer found out the whole story, and discovered Adi Da and JDC were lying, he dropped them as clients real quick. The word is, he was very upset.

JDC had to hire new lawyers who were willing to represent people as dishonest as them. Actually, we heard that JDC's insurance paid for their new lawyers. We couldn't believe that JDC had adopted this stupid legal strategy of filing a suit that made the story so much bigger and made everyone want to fight them that much more.

JDC also had lots of people involved in underhanded projects to cause harm to the people who talked against them, especially the leaders of the "dissident" group. They made lots of threats and created serious problems in dissidents' personal lives by doing some very nasty things.

Mark and Jackie went on TV shows all over the place to talk about Adi Da. They were even on in Australia. Mark sent a letter to the mailing list for the Laughing Man magazine that told everyone some of the things we were all talking about. He thought the press was important, but not a good place to discuss some deeper issues. Then, the NBC Today Show was taped and aired all across the country. Lots of people talked to NBC, and they put together a show with little pieces of what was said. We were disappointed because there had been a lot of discussion on camera about psychological manipulation and cult dynamics, etc. that they edited out of the show. Still, the word about Adi Da was out. Things would never be the same for him. Generally, everyone felt they had done their job in letting the world know that Adi Da was a problem.

After this, at the beginning of the summer 1985, everyone began to focus on getting their lives back together. People drifted off in separate directions, but of course some of us stayed in touch more than others. There were no more group gatherings of ex-members that I am aware of. The Today Show was the last of the big media events, but small articles continued when items were filed in the lawsuits.

The people who had been sued by JDC worked back and forth on their cases, and prepared potential countersuits against JDC. At this point in time they felt their job of getting the truth out had been completed. I must stress that we were all amazed that JDC was so dumb to have shot themselves in the foot by filing a lawsuit which created so much negative publicity for them. We still felt that Adi Da needed to be made personally accountable for all of the problems he caused, but the sentiment was that at this point Da and JDC might best be left to reap their own karmas.

No one wanted to spend even more of their lives fighting this cult that already took years from them before. I know that Neil was tempted, with a few others, to devote themselves to taking JDC down, and they probably could have done it. But Heather and some other people didn't want to keep the bad memories around them. Overall, I think at this time the public aspect of the conflict could have been laid to rest, but since the JDC suit had been filed, some people couldn't just walk away.

The JDC lawsuit and Beverly's lawsuit dragged on for another year or more, but there wasn't much else that went on for any of us not involved with the JDC suit. We had to look at what our next steps would be, and what we wanted to do with our lives. Some people went back to school, and others moved away. It was back to "the world" for us.

I know that all of the lawsuits and potential lawsuits were settled in the fall of 1986. As far as the actual terms, you will have to ask those involved. I will say that JDC definitely didn't win, that's for damn sure.

Some of the letters to your forum I read had information that was not correct. I can touch on a few of these points. The Cutlers never were part of our circle of people, nor did they ever talk with anyone I knew, except once. Steve Cutler, representing JDC, talked to Neil and gave him JDC's offer to pay Neil lots of money if he would shut up and go away. Neil refused. Another time, JDC went through another person to offer to pay for Neil to move out of the area to wherever he wanted, and to give him money. Neil refused again.

The Cutler's eventually threatened a lawsuit against JDC. It happened long after most of us were in touch any more, and the Cutler's did whatever they did completely independent of anyone that I knew. I didn't know about it until quite some time after it occurred. As I mentioned, our circle of people faded back into "the world" after summer in 1985.

Another big error Daist Poster makes on your forum is in his statements about Mark. Daist Poster says Mark was upset at Adi Da because he stole his girlfriend. Obviously Daist Poster never knew Mark. I talked to Mark all the time, in great depth, during the whole time he was turning against Da. I can tell you Julie had nothing to do with it. Period. He never even once mentioned or talked about her until long after he had changed his mind about Adi Da. It was Mark's insights about how Da lived that exploded his illusions about Adi Da. Mark said Da lived only his own tendencies, and was not reflecting self-transcendence or a teaching service to others. Mark felt he had a duty to tell Julie about Adi Da because he brought her in the group, and he did care about her welfare. Of course, the media wanted to hear about a Playboy centerfold, and it was part of Mark's story and he told it. The picture of Mark painted by Daist Poster is a superficial view that people who were really involved with our dispute on either side would know is just propaganda.

Daist Poster also misunderstands Sal. Sal didn't think Adi Da was a God Man. Daist Poster is only dreaming this, he never heard it from Sal. Sal thought Adi Da was a total fraud and a talented con artist. He often said, "I'm going to betray Jones like Judas and turn him over to Pontius Pilate" or some variation on that theme. I heard him say it 20 times or more. To twist this into meaning that Sal thought Adi Da was a God Man couldn't be further from the truth.

Daist Poster also says JDC sued only people clearly malicious in their intent, and at the same time admits Heather actually did get hurt in JDC. How do we reconcile the fact that JDC sued Heather with Daist Poster's statements about only malicious liars being sued? Let's face it, JDC only sued to shut people up and get publicity for their position. Bad move, but a reflection of what they were all about.

Daist Poster also says "poor Joe Kahn" was pressured to lie, but this is false. Anyone on the inside knows Joe told the truth, and that many stories virtually identical to his have been told by numbers of people. He talked because he wanted to. I know this because I spoke with Joe during this time. Daist Poster says they didn't sue people like Joe because JDC is compassionate. But one reason he wasn't sued is certainly because the JDC suit was filed long before he talked. If The Today Show had run sooner, JDC would very likely have sued more people.

Daist Poster also states a theory that people weren't willing to defend their accusations against Adi Da, so they decided to put the accusations into the body of lawsuits to avoid liability for libel. This is just fiction, and a very poorly constructed fiction, I might add. Only one lawsuit ever got filed before or during the time media statements were given, and that was Beverly's. The 20 or so people other than Beverly who told their own stories didn't hide behind a lawsuit while getting their stories out. They just talked openly, with no fear about libel charges because they were telling the truth as they saw it. No one was ever sued for libel. Never. Further contradicting Daist Poster's theory, the only "dissident" suit that ever got filed, other than Beverly's, was Mark's. This was done long after all the big media thrust was over. Mark didn't use his suit to get publicity at all, his story was already known. By the time he filed it, he was sick of it all and had moved on in life. He didn't jump out in the media when he filed his suit.

All in all, the media coverage in 1985 was very important in exposing Adi Da. It wasn't pretty, but it happened for a reason, like everything else in this world. It was a reflection of the karmas of Adi Da, and his refusal to be responsible for the ill effects he created in his devotees' lives. I'm hoping that after 1985 there was a new little voice in the back of Adi Da's head, telling him that there is a limit to what he can get away with. I hope he knows that there is always a chance that one of his slaves will wake up, like the "dissidents" did, and hold him accountable for his manipulation and abuse of others.

The last "dissident" is still in your midst, Mr. Adi Da, and the last chapter in your book has yet to be written.

Jewel

Follow-up post in answer to a "Daist Poster’s" criticism of 1985 “dissidents”

Posted by Jewel 12-4-1999

Dear Daist Poster,

As you note, there are more than two sides to the story here. As far as Mike Wood, he wasn't really involved on the front lines in 1985 but would at least know about one version of what happened behind the scenes at JDC.  For that reason, Mike's story would be of some interest. But how much he knows or can be counted on to tell truthfully is an open question, given his position as the group's lawyer. There were others who had far more to do with us whose stories would be of more interest: Buss, Adi Da, Craig, Crane, and Brian.

Regarding Mark, more than anyone else I am intimately familiar with exactly what was going on for him in relation to all the statements he made to the media, Julie's family, and in letters, etc. If we are going to have any kind of meaningful conversation at all, I would ask you to please step back and consider a few things. First of all, no one else was in a position to have seen the complexity and depth of what occurred in Mark's transition out of the Daist mindset like I did. Without your respect for this, I'm not sure it makes sense to talk about this particular subject any further.

Secondly, you have seized upon a picture of Mark created by people who, like you, did not observe him during the time he changed his opinion of Da. You saw him only after he was enraged by his mistreatment and threats from JDC leaders and had decided to go to war.  He didn't start out the way you saw him. Let me reiterate most emphatically that Mark's discontent with Adi Da had nothing to do with his ex-girlfriend becoming one of Da's wives. Your view of Mark is a superficial one that discharges your teacher and JDC from any responsibility for Mark's pain, and attempts to dismiss his very pointed observations about Adi Da and JDC as the rantings of a jilted lover. The guys who are saying that Mark was upset about Julie during his tenure in JDC are at best extrapolating and exaggerating whatever few statements Mark may have made about Julie years before when he was in JDC. I know from Mark he didn't talk about Julie much at all when he was in the group, and really got over her pretty well, given the circumstances. On the other hand, the observations that you and others make about Mark seem to fit together from where you all stand. This would be especially true after observing Mark's public persona, for reasons I will explain. Your picture makes sense from a distance, but it is far from true.

Mark's positioning vis a vis Julie, which only came into play some time after he had become concerned that Adi Da was a fraud, was a combination of: (a) a genuine concern for Julie's welfare and a sense of duty to give her an alternate interpretation of Da, and (b) his decision to animate a character (ex-boyfriend of beauty queen) for public consumption that would allow him to pull the Playboy Centerfold angle into all of his communications, generating broader publicity and more interest. I don't think Mark realized that people in the community would just latch on to this character as the real Mark, and use it to discredit him, but he wouldn't have cared anyway. The relative influence of the two factors I mentioned on Mark's behavior changed dramatically as the conflict progressed, for obvious reasons. First it was all "a", and when that effort was stifled, it gradually became mostly all "b".

To understand Mark, you need to know that he considered himself expendable as a person in order to get out the message about Adi Da. He was willing for some people to hate him or slander him or misunderstand him as long as he accomplished the task of raising awareness about Adi Da. He wasn't out to make himself look good. I could go into far greater detail about Mark, but this isn't an appropriate place to do it. I'm not sure just how much it even matters anymore, so I will go no further.

About Sal, you ask the following questions: Why constantly compare himself to Judas? Doesn’t he know that Judas is not viewed in a positive light, historically? Isn’t Judas known as the betrayer of God? Why not see himself as a courageous whistleblower, for example, like Daniel Elsberg? Someone who did what they did for the greater good of humanity?

Well, first of all Sal's Judas statement was pretty damn funny to all of us, and he got lots of laughs with it. Sal would usually laugh when he said it, but sometimes he also said it out of rage and anger. It fit in with Sal's bad boy image of himself, because it was full of intrigue and portrayed Sal in a key position. It also inferred there would be a day of reckoning for Adi Da that Sal would love to have taken responsibility for. As for Daniel Elsberg, do you really think Sal would even know who someone like that was, or idolize him? Jimmy Hoffa, maybe, but not Daniel Elsberg :-) You think Sal is a crazy and an asshole, but he was good enough to be the best friend of your teacher for years and good enough to be a co-founder of JDC with Da. What does that say about Adi Da's judgment?

About Heather, the victim of a sexual injury who was sued by JDC, you write:  "Heather’s involvements in that inner circle left her vulnerable to the accusations of conspiracy that would not have been made, and were not made, of peripheral characters like Joe who merely spoke out..." What does this mean, Daist Poster, guilt by association?  To call Heather a "conspirator" is very silly.  She deserved compassion, not a lawsuit. For JDC to have treated her this way is unforgivable. You can't imagine what Heather went through emotionally during these times, and how difficult it was for her to put herself back together after leaving JDC. At least admit the mistakes that were made, like this one, Daist Poster. How much credibility can I give you if you can't even admit something this far off base was wrong?

You might want to consider that since you didn't know any of these dissidents,  you have not been in a very good position to really understand them in depth. This is especially true if you consider that the people who have fed you your information have been so intent on protecting their teacher that it would have been very difficult for most of them to see at all clearly. I hope you are perceptive enough to have observed this about your comrades. None of us is perfectly clear, myself included. But there is a whole range of clarity or lack thereof we can bring to bear on our considerations, depending on our honesty with ourselves, and our capacity for self-reflection.

I know that Adi Da systematically insulated himself from bad news and otherwise hid behind an extensive hierarchy when I was in JDC. Whether or not he knew about the requests of former members to meet with him personally to work out their complaints is unknown to me. I do know with great certainty that at least two of his wives were well aware of what was happening long before the lawsuits and newspaper stories hit. If Adi Da created such a bizarre environment that this kind of information would be hidden from him by his inner circle and his wives, this is just one more reflection of a pathological (to use your word) setup around the Guru. It is the Guru's setup and the Guru's pathology. I don't mean to offend you with this statement, Daist Poster, but this would be my conclusion.

I'm not sure I can devote too much more time to this conversation, because this is a very busy time of year. But I hope what I have said so far is helpful to everyone, and I will consider saying more if there is a good reason to do so.

What I don't want to do is go back and forth in the style of a debate, which I guess I have just done to a large extent above.

This all happened so long ago, and it's a shame nothing ever got resolved between the parties.

Well, bye for now. Peace to all, and Happy Holidays.  I'd really rather be drinking some eggnog and putting up my Christmas tree, so that's what I'm going to do.

Jewel