[This is a collection of random thoughts, quotes, and short pieces I posted on the Daism Forum between 1998-2003.]

There is a distinct possibility that Lucifer, being the Shadow of God (so to speak) knows EVERYTHING God knows.

But not being a "finished" work, the one thing Lucifer doesn't know is Compassion.

(And that's how, in the realms of form and manifestation, you tell the good guys from the bad guys)

As JCB has said over and over, "it's the charity, stupid."

Had a strange Da dream...

In this dream I saw Da sitting with his back to a room full of his followers. There was a television camera pointing at him and he was facing a big TV set on which his image was projected.

The next strange part was this: He had placed an ornate Japanese stone carving of a phallus between his legs, so it looked as if it was his own penis. He (and the devotees) were pleased with how he looked on the TV screen, with this well-proportioned stone phallus...

Now the next strange part: As Da admired his television image, a horned lizard darted suddenly out from under his robes, ran along the stone phallus, and leapt into the television screen, disappearing into the image.

end of dream!

Besides being a long-time observer and "critic" of Franklin Albert Jones (Adi Da), I am also a fan of the absurd positions he has taken, and quite in awe of the corners he has painted himself into, with his pompous caricature of a guru, his fatuous self-worship and his absurd claims to spiritual exclusivity.

I honor the fact that he represents a challenge to those who "dare" to listen to him and then soundly critique him. It is as if he has thumbed his nose at us, flailed us with a rubber chicken, and whispered in a voice with all the subtlety of a whoopee cushion: "O.K., so I am a fool, a brigand, a swindler, a humbug and a charlatan... What are you? What is your spiritual reality, and what are you doing to bring divine reality into the world?"

In that moment of clownish apotheosis, he has served us well!

It's true that I favor jnana over bhakti -- I don't believe a bhakti passes into realization until the path of knowledge (self-understanding, self observation, self inspection, recognition) awakens in that person.

The bhakti/devotional path is OK -- but tends to become a temporary stasis, a way of hanging out and keeping occupied while all the unconscious complexes rage on uninspected.

Daism, a recent bhakti-cult, is a very good example of what I mean. Dip into the life of the community 15 or 20 years ago and you find a group of unconscious psychologically undeveloped people jacking themselves up on devotion to a cult-leader.

Come back fifteen years later and you find that nothing has changed -- they haven't grown in understanding at all, and in fact they haven't kept pace with the psychological development of ex-devotees and spiritual people who live in reality.

Even Frank agrees with me on this point -- just read Daism Report #6 for his merciless descriptions of the failure of his devotees to grow up.

OK...is there a great and true form of bhakti-religion that I honor and respect? Yes, there is. I think that devotional religion is absolutely a necessity for most people, and the best way to prepare themselves for beginning the process of self-understanding.

Characters like Frank always trigger a compensating (and balancing) counter-force. However, people are usually just too darned chicken to stand up and speak out. I think he was always counting that by sheer force of personality (and a good measure of hypnotic-siddhi) he could intimidate everyone into falling on their knees in abject worship and surrender. And you know, it worked for a few...so who's to say it couldn't captivate many?

A Daist once accused me of having an Oedipus Complex relative to Frank, i.e., that I see him as my "father" whom I want to "kill", just as Oedipus did in the famous myth.

When I was involved with Frank, he was good ol' Bubba, the spiritual brother to all. The myth he promulgated was that he'd help his friends make the transition to enlightenment, and then we'd all roll around as equals, "eating owl sandwiches" together.

So if you want to pin a complex on that, I guess you'd have to look into sibling rivalry, or maybe the territorial imperative...something along those lines.

Somehow to me "Da" never cut it as a father-figure -- my dad, and the spiritual fathers I found in life, were all the real thing.

But I've heard reports that men who had domineering alchoholic fathers did manage to project the oedipal relationship onto Frank quite easily.

The fact that Frank's "realization" is not obvious and has to be argued isn't a reflection of us -- it is a reflection of the fact that he is not yet realized!

The sign of Frank's (and his apologists') copout on responsibility is that devotees and the whole world have to be "accused" of failure for not seeing and responding to Frank's spiritual wonderfulness, and "blamed" for Frank's all-too-obvious failures and shortcomings!

As a matter of fact, the endless stream of wordy rationalization for everything Frank does -- including his own baroque legalistic self-justications -- are a clear indication that something is amiss in Adidaland.

I'll take Ramana any day. WYSIWYG.

A Daist argued that Ramana was and is little known, and that this is the common state of advanced realizers. He even argued that Ammachi has had hardly any visible effect! My response:

I think you are surely leaving India out of your equation -- Ramana's name is recognized and honored there, by millions and millions. One would also need to consider Ramana in an historical context -- that is, many millions of people -- including Europeans and Americans -- became sensitive to Ramana's grace during the last century.

Also there are the considerable followings of the disciples of Ramana -- teaching gurus now at work on several continents.

Finally, among all people who read of and study the spirituality of enlightenment, Ramana is universally recognized and celebrated.

Franklin Jones, on the other hand, is widely dismissed (and ignored) by these same people...or thought of as a bizarre curiosity.

Now..let's consider Ammachi. A Reuters article in The Los Angeles Times reports that Ammachi has personally hugged twenty million people! Whatever you may think about the spiritual effects of hugging that many people, surely you'll agree there is wide recognition of genuine gurus like Ammachi.

One thing is for sure -- one of the people who has absolutely refused to go and get hugged by Ammachi (and honor her as a realizer) is Franklin Jones.

The dichotomy between exploiters and exploited within Adidam is a mirror of Frank's own psychology.

My view is that the path of love never awoke in Frank. He approached Muktananda (and Rudi) strictly through the power-principle, standing apart, petulant.

Power is a mug's game, a low and unworthy way of relationship.

Frank has often said that he is pursued by demons...and that may well have described the truth of the matter -- that he is being assaulted by his own psychic larvae.

A Daist accused my friend Kawday of "having a problem with submitting to the Self". Kwaday replied:

I don't have a problem submitting to the Self, do you?

Oh right, you think I am submitting to my own ego.

Well that is your idea, but it is not what I know.

Oh right, you say I am deluded.

I say what comes from without can delude you but what comes from within is the Truth.

from the radical first draft of The Knee of Listening:

Understanding relaxes the necessity of the root of all suffering, the pattern and identity of contra-dictions. When that necessity becomes unnecessary and that reality becomes unreal, there is the implication of relationship as the most prior condition, which need not be created but only enjoyed.

When this conscious enjoyment is embraced and allowed there is unqualified realization, the real and necessary form of conscious bliss. Then what is known is only enjoyed and manifest as life.

My journals end at this point. And, truly, I have never exceeded this knowledge. It is the primary truth as far as I am concerned. And it is radical truth, radically free of the whole movement and motive of traditional seeking It only remained for me to confirm it by enlarging my experience. I would come to include marvels of spiritual phenomena in my life. But always I would return to this understanding, always knowing it in a more radical form, gradually excluding every separate motive and every kind of secondary practice. Until at last there was no symbol for it, but only a radical communication that does not depend on the philosophy of God or of Self, or any tradition, East or West.

--Franklin Jones