Aham Da Asmi is the first volume of the "23 source texts of Adi Da Samraj". Reading it I found a number of interesting bits and pieces mixed like raisins in a porridge of abstract legalese. More than anything the book made me think the writer (Adi Da) is a man sitting in a jail cell preparing a complicated defense he plans to deliver to a Court of Cosmic Judgement after he dies!

As he composes his "defense", he minces no words in reminding the Judges of his ultimate authority over all beings who ever lived or ever will live! In fact, he delivers a "prophetic" tirade condemning anyone and everyone who fails to believe in him, respond to him, and fall down and worship him:

Those who Do Not heart-Recognize Me and heart-Respond to Me-and who (Therefore) Are Without Faith In Me -- Do Not (and Cannot) Realize Me. Therefore, they (By Means Of their own self-Contraction From Me) Remain ego-Bound To The Realm Of Cosmic Nature, and To The Ever-Changing Round Of conditional knowledge and temporary experience, and To The Ceaselessly Repetitive Cycles Of birth and search and loss and death.

Such Faithless beings Cannot Be Distracted By Me -- Because they Are Entirely Distracted By themselves! They Are Like Narcissus -- The Myth Of ego -- At His Pond. Their Merely self-Reflecting minds Are Like a mirror in a dead man's hand. Their tiny hearts Are Like a boundless desert, where the mirage of Separate self is ceaselessly admired, and The True Water Of My Constant Presence Stands Un-Noticed, in the droughty heap and countless sands of ceaseless thoughts. If Only they Would Un-think themselves In Me, these (Now Faithless) little hearts Could Have Immediate Access To The True Water Of My True Heart! Through Devotional Surrender Of body, emotion, mind, breath, and all of Separate self To Me. Even Narcissus Could Find The Way To My Oasis (in The True Heart's Room and House) -- but the thinking mind of ego-"I" Is Never Bathed In Light (and, So, it sits, Un-Washed, Like a desert dog that wanders in a herd of flies).

The "Un-Washed dog" of self-Contracted body-mind Does Not think To Notice Me -- The Divine Heart-Master Of its wild heart and Wilderness.

The "Wandering dog" of ego-"I" Does Not "Locate" Me In My Inherent "Bright" Perfection -- The Divine Heart-Master Of Everything, The Inherently egoless Divine True Self Of all conditionally Manifested beings, and The Real Self-Condition and Source-Condition Of All-and-all.

If Only "Narcissus" Will Relent, and heart-Consent To Bow and Live In Love-Communion With Me, heart-Surrendering all of body-mind To Me, By Means Of Un-Contracting Love Of Me, Then -- Even If That Love Is Shown With Nothing More Than the "little gift" of ego-"I" (itself) -- I Will Always Accept The Offering With Open Arms Of Love-Bliss-Love, and Offer My Own Divine Immensity In "Bright" Return.

Therefore, whoever Is Given (By heart) To Me Will Be Washed, From head To toe, By All The True Water Of My Love-Bliss-Light, That Always "Crashes Down" On All and all, Below My Blessing-Feet.

My Circumstance and Situation Is At the heart of all beings -- where I Am (Now, and Forever Hereafter) Avatarically Self-"Emerging" As The One and All-and-all-Outshining Divine and Only Person (Avatarically Self-Manifested As The "Radically" Non-Dual "Brightness" Of All-and-all-Filling Conscious Love-Bliss-Light, Self-Existing and Self-Radiant As The Perfectly Subjective Fundamental Reality, or Inherently egoless Native Feeling, Of Merely, or Unqualifiedly, Being).

Ahama Da Asmi, pages 77-78

What can we say? What can lowly unwashed dogs like ourselves say before such awe-inspiring megalomania?

Well, first of all we can point out the "them vs. Me" aspect of it -- the mountainous duality of the claim of his rule over all imaginary others.

Secondly we can point out that he is, in fact, mimicking the prophetic voice, stealing words and phrases from the inspired speech of Spiritual Adepts, and recycling them into bombast. Despite the dash of "Franklin Jones poetry", there is something curiously unoriginal about the above passage.

Then we can point out how uninviting he makes himself -- how singularly dissociated and embittered is this "Godman" who wants to put his Divine Foot on our backs and fill us with his "Radically Non-Dual Brightness of All-and-all-Filling Conscious Love-Bliss-Light."

He curses the egos of all his critics, all who mock him, and all who simply ignore him -- "Their Merely self-Reflecting minds Are Like a mirror in a dead man's hand. Their tiny hearts Are Like a boundless desert, where the mirage of Separate self is ceaselessly admired, and The True Water Of My Constant Presence Stands Un-Noticed, in the droughty heap and countless sands of ceaseless thoughts."

What is the purpose of that kind of speech except to intimidate and push the mind of the listener into a conflicted state? And who would want anything to do with such a man, except to see that he is properly cared for in a State Institution?

But perhaps you fear he might be right. He is what he says he is, and if you fail to heed him, fail to go to him, fail to obey him -- surely you will fall under his angry glance and spend ten thousand lives in a hell of his choosing!

If that is your dilemma, I suggest you find a copy of the long suppressed work, Garbage and the Goddess, where you will hear Franklin Jones addressing his followers this way:

The world is the Avatar, the totality of human beings is the Avatar. It is humanity as a whole that is the Avatar in human form, not some specific human individual. No apparent or exclusive manifestation is in itself the Avatar. Only the whole is the Divine manifestation without exclusion. Therefore, the Guru is not the Avatar in that exclusive sense. Mankind is the Avatar. I am his Heart. When the Avatar realizes his true Nature and Condition, when he realizes me, he will cease to be hidden. He and this Community of which I speak will become one and the same at last. Then his sadhana is fulfilled, and he will manifest his Beauty in the world for the sake of all beings. Only then will he live freely and do his Divine work.

But people want the Guru to be the Avatar. They want that exclusive God image, whereas God doesn't exist in the exclusive sense. God is absolute. And the Guru lives as the Present Divine, not because he has attained anything, but because he has been undone. So he doesn't represent himself as the Divine in the exclusive sense. In his ecstatic speech he claims identity with the Divine, but he is not making a statement about himself, about his ego or his personal qualities in some exclusive sense. He is making a statement about all beings and worlds, about the Nature of Reality, the Condition that is God. Of course, until there are others who realize that same happiness, that same enjoyment, he seems unique, and he functions for them as the Source of the operation of the Divine Siddhi in order to generate the life of Understanding in them. But in fact he doesn't exist as God in any exclusive sense whatsoever. So there is no Avatar except the whole, if it makes any sense to use such words at all. [Garbage and the Goddess, pages 335-6]

Daists love to point out that just as, in the mid-1970s, Frank spoke "ecstatically" of his identification with God, so with his latest ravings. He is sounding exclusive, perhaps, but he is really expressing the paradoxical oneness of all beings, the Avatarship of the entire human race.

By pointing to 1970's statements such as "Mankind is the Avatar. I am his Heart. When the Avatar realizes his true Nature and Condition, when he realizes me, he will cease to be hidden." (see above), Daists are in effect apologizing for the way Frank expresses himself now. They are claiming there is really no difference between what he says in books like Aham Da Asmi and what he said back in the days when he was hearty "Bubba Free John", everybody's brother, the man who said that the only mantra he would ever teach was laughter itself.

However, despite the attempts to soften "Adi Da Samraj", a careful study of Frank's 30-year evolution of speaking about himself will show this: Throughout the years there has been a relentless expansion of the claim of "Divine Me" and an equally relentless contraction of the admission of the divinity of "the entire human race."

You can find syntactical connections between all his writings -- but let the full effect of his juggernaut of self-proclamations wash over you and there can be no doubt what he means:

In 2001 Frank fully believes he is the exclusive avatar, the exclusive God image, the unique (for all time) manifestation of the Absolute. Furthermore, he believes that his body and mind are uniquely crafted and empowered, in a way that no other human being ever was or ever can be. He really believes the following:

My Circumstance and Situation Is At the heart of all beings -- where I Am (Now, and Forever Hereafter) Avatarically Self-"Emerging" As The One and All-and-all-Outshining Divine and Only Person (Avatarically Self-Manifested As The "Radically" Non-Dual "Brightness" Of All-and-all-Filling Conscious Love-Bliss-Light, Self-Existing and Self-Radiant As The Perfectly Subjective Fundamental Reality, or Inherently egoless Native Feeling, Of Merely, or Unqualifiedly, Being).

and

I (Alone) Am the Avatarically Self-Manifested Divine Self-Revelation of the seventh stage of life.

He really believes this stuff...doesn't he?

My view is that in his heart of hearts he knows none of it is true, that it's all a fabrication of a massively inflated ego that wants to claim "the throne of God" in the minds of large numbers of people. That's why he uses so many words to convince, and makes so many self-proclamations to sell his megalomanical self-idea to your mind -- because Truth is obvious, but a lie always has to be told.