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Chapter Three:
CHARGES AGAINST FRANK
For everyone who believes Adi Da is a perfectly purified divine incarnation of All That Is, there are thousands who have to hold their sides to avoid splitting a gut while laughing at the very idea. Following are commentaries aimed at demonstrating that Frank's claims are false. Just so.
From Sri Bob:
10 Reasons Adi Da Is Not Who He Says he Is
Hey, babes and bros, when someone speaks or acts authoritatively in any arena, we want to believe everything they say is authoritative. That is why athletes sell sneakers. Just so.
But we also live in an era of increasing personal authority. It is a time when Christ returns not as one human, but through and as all of us--according to sacred Sri Bobist lore, anyways. In this time, we elevate the experiences of others over our own only at great risk. So look upon my acolyte Franklin Jones with a jaundiced eye, sure, but also with compassion. He has aimed very high, so his failure is all the more spectacular, but it is still possible that he can turn things around and break up the scary bureaucratic web in which he is ensnared. (Okay, okay, I can hear Sid Hartha pointing out that Da is more frightened of real life than he is of his followers, but, still . . . )
Anyways, here are 10 reasons Adi Da is not who he says he is:
1. The guy claims to be stably situated in The Bright--God Realized, Abiding Forever Always Already in Timeless Infinite Bliss, Radiant Whatever, yada yada yada. Fact: We know he suffers from bouts of depression. So Frank is stabilized in Bliss, but battles depression? Sorry, dear acolytes, but this doesn't wash. It cannot wash. It ends all claims. It destroys all credibility. It's o-ver! But just in case, here are nine other reasons Adi Da is not who he says he is:
2. Sophomoric category errors. As noted by many observers, Adi Da has conflated his personal and transpersonal selves. He applies transpersonal characteristics to his personal self (I alone is All That Is, buckaroos!); and he applies personal characteristics to his transpersonal self (I am the One and Onliest of All Time!) While I have no doubt the Da-ster has tasted/sniffed many transpersonal states, I also have no doubt that this wayward acolyte of mine has failed to stabilize himself at these levels. Not a doubt in the world. Anybody got any V.O.? Oh, yes, the list:
3. Da's first-last-onliest claim is not just silly, but is itself based on a limited time-space context. In the transpersonal realms beyond time/space, first-last-onliest is meaningless. So what can it mean when he claims first-last-onliest? Your guess is as good as mine, but I think Da is either fibbing or deluded. Or both. Just so.
4. His sexual proclivities are clearly egoic and conditioned by limiting cultural norms. Note, as many have pointed out, that my acolyte gets it on with attractive female followers, not fat ugly old guy followers. Guess he doesn't really see himself equally in everyone after all. Given that we are dealing with consenting adults, his predilections are not criminal, understand, just tawdry enough to dispel any notions of unique divinity. Adi Da is just a regular guy, maybe a little oilier than most. That ain't so bad, is it?
5. All That Is is simply so marvelously infinitely complex that no single human (even one Diviner Than Thou) can be the Central Sustainer of All That Is 'n Shit. If Frank was even close, we would see miracles upon miracles. New stars would blaze in the sky. At a minimum, he would heal his followers of such diseases as cancer and MS and hay fever, even. More to the point, this quack physician would heal himself. Which leads us to yet another reason Adi Da is not who he claims to be:
6. Pure metaphorical brilliance! Frank has glaucoma, an essentially untreatable disease if you're a mere mortal. Two operations have failed to halt his progressive blindness. Face it, my adoring acolytes, a perfect guru going blind is a marvelous metaphor for the whole guru experience. Like their divinely un-purified guru, the Adidamistas are challenged to see what is happening right in front of their faces. Just so.
7. All the damn rules. (Adidamn rules?) Jesus, enough already. Money, food, exercise, sex, devotion, recreation, the right hemorrhoid cream, you name it. Everything in Adidam is either prescribed or proscribed--they're worse than the Southern Baptists. Whatever level adept Frank is, he oughta know that the more rules we humans have to live by, the less spontaneously and creatively we can live life and express our being. No wonder no one ever graduates from his academy. At least the Da-ster has the good sense to flagrantly violate his own rules.
8. Hiding from responsibility. Adi Da likes to say: "What I do is not the way that I Am, but the way that I teach." Well gee whiz, the devil--I mean, my acolytes--made me do it! Baloney. What a bunch of dualistic crap! As if someone could be separate from the way that they act/teach. Teaching stems from who you are. One thing is for sure: our buffoonish Adi Da is a Fully Realized 7th Level Cop-Out King.
9. Most damning of all: my acolyte has utterly failed in his mission. World Teacher? I'm waiting. Shaktiput up the yin-yang? Then why can't all this juice power up his acolytes? Why isn't Da cranking out one Realizer after another? Maybe Shaktiput is more like acid, mushrooms, other drugs--gets you there for an eyeblink, but can't keep you there? It is time we all realized that giving Shaktiput is a medium level talent--sideshow stuff. A 12-step program for Shaktiput junkies, anyone?
10. Finally, the whole Adi Da program just cannot pass the giggle test. Really. Just looking at his pictures, or hearing the slavish, grotesquely adoring testimonials of his followers, or seeing all those Capitalized words . . . it cracks me up--when I'm not appalled.
And that's 10 reasons Adi Da ain't what he says he is. Enough said. (For now.) Just so.
Namaste, -Sri Bob, 8th (going on 9th) Stage Adept
FROM JCB:
This is in response to:
JCB, your "for example" of Adi Da getting on the phone and asking people to cash in retirement accounts and so on is horseshit and not at all what happened. You should know better than to believe or construct these types of interpretations. And they ask me why I drink.
And they ask me why I think. You're being dishonest by not addressing what actually DID happen (if you even know), and by misrepresenting what I wrote:
For example, it just about fried my brain when I heard about his getting on the phone and personally appealing to people -- many of whom were devotees who, like you, had never seen him and would give just about anything to catch a glimpse of him in the flesh -- to chip in for his Disney Art collection. People were cashing in their retirement accounts and stuff. This isn't too hard to see as an example of behavior that is unaligned with truth, is it?
Hmmmm. Now I've read this several times, and silly me, just cannot find where on earth I might have said that Adi Da asked people to cash in their retirement accounts. Now, what I did say what this: that he got on the phone with individuals in the community, some of whom had never before seen him or spoken with him, and asked them to help raise money for his Disney Art collection. As a result of these entreaties, some people indeed chose to cash in their retirement accounts. End of anecdote.
True, I was not there. But, please, please, hang in there with me just a moment more. This is secondhand information, but it is of the best kind: it was shared with me by a friend, a devotee who was there, shortly after it transpired. Sometime in early 1996, I think. Give or take a few months. (I think he felt a little weird about it, even though he also felt happy to get the personal attention from the guru.) The point is, I'm reporting this as I heard it from a devotee who was there. If you want to argue the validity of my account, do so with specifics.
When I was a devotee, it was incredibly unlikely for most people who were not advanced or long-time devotees to have verbal contact with the guru. As far as I can tell this basically remains so, although it may have loosened up a bit. Adi Da knows enough about psychology to know that the opportunity to speak with him on the phone, for these folks, would tremendously exciting and would create a lot of pressure on them to "respond". In this case with their wallets.
If you'd like to clarify what is and is not horseshit about the above, be my guest. Otherwise go back to digging in the Dawn Horse-shit fertilizer of your spiritual fantasies.
Okay, sorry for that one, but YOU should be honest enough to discuss and examine what actually did happen, as opposed to dismissing it out of hand!
The facts are pretty clear; all that's open is how to interpret them. There are actually people out there who would interpret Adi Da's Disney Art thing as a kind of puja, and who feel that criticizing his behavior is like criticizing Jesus for accepting the expensive ointment. And so it will be written: "The single mothers you will always have with you."
Sorry, but I just don't buy that ...... I don't see the puja angle and I don't see the bhakti angle here. I just see behavior that uses others. That kind of behavior is aligned with karma, but not with truth. Elias once suggested that Adi Da was the "Lord of Karma", something I'm beginning to appreciate a bit more. Karma is damned impressive and powerful but it is not the truth. Not the big truth, not the whole truth (so help me God). You think you know truth better, then go enact it, but don't distort how you and others do so.
Which brings me to a question: Do Adidams misrepresent this stuff, and spin it, because (a) what transpires in the guru's company is too esoteric to be understood in the secular world? Or perhaps because (b) deep down, it's kind of embarrassing?
Lest you doubt the premise of my question, remember that a lot of the nasty "dissident" stuff from 1984 wouldn't have happened if Adi Da and the folks on the island had been straight with the worker bees in California about what was going on. There's an undeniable history of spin and lack of straightforwardness, starting with Mr. "I assert what I deny" Himself.
This gets interesting, because there is enough that's true in Adidam that people do retain (most of the time) a good chunk of their consciences. Thus Adidam doesn't get into the outright evil of a group like Scientology, but it's still sufficiently unaligned and power-driven to give devotees funny feelings when they want to go out and spread the pure bhakti good word. Adi Da criticizes their failure to advocate him, but sadly, there is frequently little to advocate. Not that it doesn't work for some: but the point is, those people seem to be few, and I suspect they have specific karmas to be with Adi Da (borne out, BTW, by an initial astrological inquiry using composite charts).
It's weird. Meher Baba meets L. Ron Hubbard, like I said!
And they ask me why I drink ...and smoke, and overeat, and skydive on laughing gas with "Houses of the Holy" blasting through a Walkman while stoked up on ketamine, with a vibrating butt plug safely tucked away in the sacred space of my muladara chakra, all the while meditating on the transience of all phenomena. Hey, what would you do in this crazy universe?
But I regress, again.
JCB
FROM Elias:
Nice fierce post, JCB...
I can counter it, however, with Adi Da's greatest teaching, which is found on the indicia page of all his books:
All who study Adidam (the Way of the Heart) or take up its practice should remember that they are responding to a Call to become responsible for themselves. They should understand that they, not Avatar Adi Da Samraj or others, are responsible for any decision they may make or action they take in the course of their lives of study or practice.
It's all right there, the greatest Truth. He will, in the course of "initiating" you, try to take away your free will and even attempt to rob you of the Knowledge of your unique and original Divine Freedom ...but all you have to do is refer back to the first words of all his books, as quoted above, where he gives you Total Acknowledgment.
;-)
Elias
FROM JCB:
Excellent stuff, Elias. But doesn't it say somewhere else that if anything good comes out of the practice, then that would be all on Adi Da's shoulders? I think the main purpose of the disclaimer was to make it clear that anything bad is the devotee's fault. Adi Da is the one generating the good stuff. As one of the greatest hidden adepts ever to walk the earth, Dan Aykroyd, said: "Yes, it's just that simple". ;-)
FROM Elias:
There's an interesting note Frank sent around which sort of directly contradicts the "call to responsibility"--
You see, when you have a Master, a Spiritual master, you don't tell your Master what you're going to do. You ask! In other words, you live by the Master's instructions, and that's that. In other words, you don't live by your own instructions. ...You make the vow of submission to the Master, and the Master's Word governs you, and you do not consult your body-mind anymore. This is how sadhana is purifying, by this submission...
etc. etc.
The "disclaimer" in the front of the books, of course, is an insincere one, placed there for legal reasons, to protect against lawsuits.
E
FROM JCB:
Bingo, bingo, bingo! You have to have your head in the sand to deny the coercive effect of the guru's words. That's why you'd better trust him, which is kinda hard if you've never seen him, but that's a different story. Free will is real, but so is coercion, and of all people Adi Da ought to know this. Maybe I'm whining... life isn't fair... etc... why should spiritual life be? Something about compassion, I can't remember exactly.
Ass-kicking is fine too, but I don't see the lesson in getting financially overextended, other than maybe knowing when to say no to the guru ... and in the big picture what kind of lesson is that? Indeed, if you take the preceding quote (in your previous post) seriously, then there ain't no sayin' no.
Ah well, if that's your bag, cool. Tain't mine.
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