Mark Miller comments on his 1985 lawsuit against Adi Da
Posted by Mark Miller on May-16-02
Daist Poster,
You keep bringing up the topic of my lawsuit against Adi Da, so I’ll say a few
words about it. I haven’t seen the complaint in over 16 years, but I am
confident my memory of it is good enough for our purposes here.
First of all, JDC filed a $20 Million lawsuit against me and several others in
mid-1985 in an attempt to grab some headlines and to silence people who had
spoken out against Adi Da in the media. Obviously, their motivation wasn’t to
get $20 million from us, since none of us had any money at the time. Things
weren't going well for JDC in the media, and they looked to the lawsuit to
provide some momentum for their side of the story. All it really did, though,
was make them look like a typical cult.
I don’t have the time or interest to rehash the entire history of how things got
to that point, but suffice it to say that many efforts had been made over a
period of several months to create some kind of process where ex-members with
grievances could work through them with Adi Da and the community. Adi Da was
unwilling to address the concerns of this group of former devotees, which
included many who were former personal friends of his. As a result of his
failure to act and the typical cultic behavior of those in his inner circle,
matters escalated until the dispute ended up in a public arena.
I myself did not file any legal action against Adi Da until approximately a year
later, and did so primarily for legal, tactical reasons as a response to the JDC
lawsuit against me. My lawsuit, among other things, alleged that Adi Da and
others had engaged in a pattern of fraud and deceit. I had taken actions in
reliance upon those deceptions and been detrimentally impacted as a result.
Daist Poster’s inference that reading a legal draft is a good way to understand
someone’s true motivations and grasp their inner thoughts is really pretty
ridiculous if you think about it. By the time you're in a lawsuit, you've made
the decision that you are in a fight and the battle's on. Lawyers draft legal
complaints in order to win lawsuits by establishing the culpability of the other
party. They cite specific events or facts that support the “causes of action” in
the lawsuit. Their job is to point the finger at the other guy, to the extent
the facts support this. It's not their job to bare their client's soul in front
of the opposition, or to draw out complexities and nuances that don't serve the
cause. Lawsuits are fights, not a form of public confession.
My lawyer also drafted my lawsuit for an audience that was presumed to be
utterly ignorant of esoteric spirituality. As a result, it comes off as very
crude and unsophisticated to people who are practitioners. Quite frankly, I also
remember being somewhat embarrassed at the fact that the lawsuit made me look
like a total fool. The picture of me that my lawyer was painting for tactical
reasons was not one that I found to be particularly flattering. Nonetheless, the
complaint I filed was factually correct and I stand behind it to this day.
The legal actions between JDC and me were settled out of court, and included a
non-disclosure agreement. I think that many people are aware of the results, but
I have honored the non-disclosure agreement and have not spoken about the terms
of settlement to anyone. I intend to continue doing so. My settlement agreement
does not prohibit me from talking about events that occurred after I left the
group or about events that I did not personally observe or participate in while
part of the group. Therefore, if I were to choose to criticize Adi Da and Daism,
I could do so within specified boundaries. I have generally not been inclined to
do so, however, and the few posts I’ve made here this week are an anomaly.
I was willing to settle matters with JDC because I had already accomplished a
great deal and achieved many of my original goals. Some of those goals were to
bring previously hidden information about Adi Da out into the open, and to
create an awareness that alternative interpretations of the Daist phenomenon
were possible, apart from Adi Da’s “official” apologetics. By the time an
opportunity to settle matters with Adi Da and JDC afforded me the opportunity to
achieve some of the other goals I had, my conclusion was that the benefits of
continuing to fight Adi Da were not warranted when compared to the impact the
legal battle would have on my personal life. I was already struggling with
putting my life back together after nearly 10 years of being entangled with this
group, either as a member or as an adversary of theirs.
The years after 1985 have been extremely fulfilling for me, in terms of personal
achievement and enjoyment of life. I am no longer a spiritual seeker, and live
the adventure of life without any formal, systematized ideology or teacher to
lead me. I do not regret my decision to expose Adi Da after I left the group,
nor my decision to walk away when I had achieved satisfactory results in that
endeavor. I came to terms with my adventure in JDC many years ago, and really
don’t care to dig back into it. It is always possible to immerse oneself in the
past and re-create old moods and feelings, but to me this seems very
unattractive. There is so much to do in life, and we aren’t here forever.
I do not anticipate discussing Adi Da or my history with him at any time in the
near future, unless some unusual event motivates me to want to dig into this
again. Enough has been revealed about Adi Da to clearly demonstrate that he
isn’t who he says he is, and I don’t think I have a whole lot more to add to the
conversation.