Youth and formal education (1939–1964) Born in
Queens,
New York and raised on
Long Island, his father was a salesman and his mother a housewife. Adi Da claimed in his autobiography,
The Knee Of Listening, that he "was born in a state of perfect freedom and awareness of ultimate reality", which he called the "Bright", and that he "sacrificed that reality at the age of two, so that he could completely identify with the limitations and mortality of suffering humanity" in order to discover ways to help others "awaken to the unlimited and deathless happiness of the Heart". A sister, Joanne, was born when he was eight years old. He served as an
acolyte in the Lutheran church during his adolescence and aspired to be a minister, but after leaving for college in the autumn of 1957, expressed doubts about the religion to his Lutheran pastor. Adi Da attended
Columbia University where he graduated in 1961 with a
bachelor's degree in philosophy. He went on to complete a master's degree in English literature at
Stanford University in 1963, under the guidance of novelist and historian
Wallace Stegner. During and after his postgraduate studies, Adi Da engaged in an experiment of exhaustive writing, a process in which he wrote continuously for eight or more hours daily, as a kind of "yoga" where every movement of conscious awareness, all experiences, internal or external, were monitored and recorded. In this exercise, he felt that he discovered a structure or "myth" that governed all human conscious awareness, a "schism in Reality" that was the "logic (or process) of separation itself, of enclosure and immunity, the source of all presumed self-identity". He understood this to be the same logic hidden in the ancient Greek myth of
Narcissus, the adored child of the gods, who was condemned to the contemplation of his own image and suffered the fate of eternal separateness. He concluded that the "death of Narcissus" was required to fulfill what he felt was the guiding purpose of his life, which was to awaken to the "Spiritually 'Bright' Condition of Consciousness Itself" that was prior to Narcissus, and communicate this awakening to others. For 6 weeks he was a paid test subject in drug trials of
mescaline,
LSD, and
psilocybin conducted at a
Veterans Administration hospital in California. He wrote later that he found these experiences "self-validating" in that they mimicked ecstatic states of consciousness from his childhood, but problematic as they often resulted in paranoia, anxiety, or disassociation. While living with the support of his girlfriend, Nina Davis, in the hills of
Palo Alto, he continued to write, meditated informally, and studied books by
C.G. Jung,
H.P. Blavatsky, and
Edgar Cayce, in order to make sense of his experiences.
Spiritual exploration (1964–1970) In June 1964, Adi Da responded to an intuitive impulse to leave California in search of a spiritual teacher in New York City. Settling in
Greenwich Village, he became a student of
Albert Rudolph, also known as "Rudi", a dealer in Asian art who had been a disciple of the Indian guru
Bhagavan Nityananda. When Nityananda died in 1961, Rudi became a student of
Siddha Yoga's founder
Swami Muktananda, who gave him the name "Swami Rudrananda". Having studied a number of spiritual traditions, including "The Work" of
G.I. Gurdjieff and
Subud, Rudi taught an eclectic blend of techniques he called "kundalini yoga" (although it was not related to the Indian tradition by that name). As a student at Philadelphia's Lutheran Theological Seminary in 1967, Adi Da described undergoing a terrifying breakdown. Taken to a hospital emergency room, a psychiatrist diagnosed it as an
anxiety attack. It was the first of a number of such episodes, each followed by what he described as profound awakenings or insights. He described the episodes as a kind of "death" or release from identity with the presumed separate persona, after which there was only "an Infinite Bliss of Being, an untouched, unborn Sublimity—without separation, without individuation. There was only Reality Itself … the unqualified living condition of the totality of conditionally manifested existence". A comparable pre-awakening process had been described by the renowned Indian sage
Ramana Maharshi. Feeling none of his Lutheran professors understood this experience, Adi Da left and briefly attended St. Vladimir's
Russian Orthodox Seminary in
Tuckahoe, New York. Disillusioned, he moved back to New York City and found employment with
Pan American Airlines, hoping this might help him fulfill his desire to visit Swami Muktananda's
ashram in India. Swami Muktananda, a disciple of Bhagavan Nityananda, was a well-known guru who had brought his tradition of
Kashmir Shaivism to the West, establishing meditation centers around the world. Adi Da received formal permission to visit the ashram for four days in April 1968. Muktananda encouraged him to end his studies with Rudi and study with himself directly. After returning to New York, Adi Da and Nina became members and then employees of the
Church of Scientology, leaving after a little more than a year of involvement. Adi Da returned to India for a month-long visit in early 1969, during which he received a handwritten (and formally translated) letter from Swami Muktananda, granting him the spiritual names Dhyanananda and Love-Ananda, He wrote that although he had been born with full awareness of "the Bright", this awareness became obscured in childhood, and his subsequent spiritual journey had been a quest to recapture it, and share it with others. The autobiography, entitled
The Knee Of Listening, was published in 1972. It included a foreword by the well-known spiritual philosopher
Alan Watts, who on studying Adi Da's teachings had reportedly said, "It looks like we have an avatar here. I've been waiting for such a one all my life". In the foreword, he wrote: "It is obvious, from all sorts of subtle details, that he knows what IT's all about… a rare being". In
The Knee Of Listening and subsequent books, Adi Da spoke of "Consciousness Itself" as the ultimate nature of Reality. This Consciousness is "Transcendent and Radiant", "the Source-Condition of everything that is", "the uncaused immortal Self", "a Conscious Light utterly beyond the limited perspective of any ego, any religion, or any culture." Everything in the physical universe, he claimed, is a modification of this Conscious Light. Expressed in more conventional language, Adi Da's realization was that there
is only God, and that everything arises within that One. He taught in a traditional Indian style, speaking from a raised dais surrounded by flowers and oriental carpets, with listeners seated on the floor. He incorporated many elements of the guru-devotee relationship associated with the
Kashmir Shaivite and
Advaita Vedanta schools of
Hinduism, but also expressed original insights and opinions about both spirituality and secular culture. In 1972, he began to teach "radical understanding", described as "a combination of discriminative self-observation and guru-devotion". Adi Da nevertheless stated that he continued to appreciate and respect his former guru, and to express his "love and gratitude for the incomparable service" Muktananda had performed for him. Upon returning to Los Angeles, Adi Da (then Franklin Jones) assumed the name "Bubba Free John", based on a nickname meaning "friend" combined with a rendering of "Franklin Jones". He and Nina divorced, although she remained a follower. Later that year, the church obtained an aging hot springs resort in
Lake County, California, renaming it "Persimmon" (it is now known as "The Mountain of Attention"). Adi Da and a group of selected followers moved there and experimented in
communal living. Some followers reported having profound metaphysical experiences in Adi Da's presence, attributing these phenomena to his spiritual power. Others present remained skeptical, witnessing nothing supernatural. Adi Da initiated a series of teachings and activities that came to be known as the "Garbage and the Goddess" period, based on the title of his fourth book,
Garbage and the Goddess: The Last Miracles and Final Spiritual Instructions of Bubba Free John. The text recounts a four-to-five-month "teaching demonstration" by Adi Da, in which he initiated and freely participated in a cycle of activities of a "celebratory" wild and ecstatic nature – an overturning of previous restrictions and conventional behaviours that was often accompanied by spontaneous displays of "spiritual power". Many of his devotees spoke of experiencing visionary states of consciousness, kundalini phenomena, blissful states and so forth. However, Adi Da constantly reiterated that such experiences were only manifestations of the Goddess and her phenomenal world: they were not spiritually auspicious and had no bearing on the realization of Consciousness itself. Over a period of years, Adi Da entered into what he called "emotional-sexual reality consideration" with his formal devotees. It included "sexual theater", a form of
psychodrama that sometimes involved the switching of partners, the making of pornographic movies, orgies and other intensified sexual practices, with the aim of revealing and releasing emotional and sexual neuroses. Adi Da spoke of the cultish and contractual nature of conventional relationships, particularly marriage, as being a form of reinforcement of the ego-personality and an obstacle to spiritual life. Many couples were initially encouraged to switch partners and experiment sexually. Drug and alcohol use were sometimes encouraged, and earlier proscriptions against meat and "junk food" were no longer adhered to for periods of time. obliging devotees to confront their habitual patterns and emotional attachments. According to his teaching, little of spiritual value can be accomplished until the "emotional-sexual nature of the human being" is understood, incorporated into spiritual practice, and transcended. Human sexuality, he said, always deeply encodes social practices, identity formation, and the most secret and important truths about individuals. He said that his present work in this area could not have been as effective without the earlier cultural and philosophical groundwork laid by
Freud's depth psychoanalysis. In 1979, Adi Da changed his name from "Bubba Free John" to "Da Free John" ("Da" being a Sanskrit syllable meaning "the One Who Gives"),
"Divine Emergence" and final years (1983–2008) Even before Adi Da opened the ashram bookstore in Los Angeles in 1972, he stated that people need holy places where Spiritual Force is alive. In 1983, having established such "empowered" places in Northern California and Hawaii, Adi Da moved with a group of about 40 followers to the Fijian island of
Naitauba, purchased by a wealthy follower from the actor
Raymond Burr. His intention was to establish a "set-apart" hermitage for his spiritual work in the world. After this event, Adi Da expressed an impulse to enable people everywhere to meditate on his image or body in order to "participate in his enlightened state". He began a period of intensive fasting, before leaving Fiji for California. At The Mountain Of Attention Sanctuary he sat silently with over a thousand people, read from his book
The Lion Sutra, and gave discourses calling on devotees to embrace the inherently renunciate, ego-transcending nature of the way he had given. He later traveled to New York City, London, Paris and Amsterdam, silently giving his blessing to all who came visibly into his sphere. Following the death of spiritual teacher
Frederick Lenz (Zen Master Rama) in 1998, some followers of Lenz joined Adidam. Adi Da actively supported Lenz's followers joining his organization; according to religious studies professor
Eugene V. Gallagher, Adi Da claimed to have been
Swami Vivekananda in a past life, with Lenz having been Vivekenanda's disciple
Rama Tirtha. In the late 1990s Adi Da often spoke of dark forces that were becoming increasingly powerful in the world, telling devotees of his constant engagement with these forces and his unarmoured receptivity to the pain and misery of the countless people suffering. These processes, he said, had a devastating effect on his body, and in April 2000, while traveling in Northern California under the care of devotees, he became almost completely physically incapacitated. On April 12, at
Lopez Island, in the presence of a number of devotees, he again experienced a process of disassociation from the physical resembling death. In this event, he said, he became fully established as the "Bright" Itself, in a living demonstration of what he calls "Divine Translation". Only the knowledge that his work in human form had not yet been completed, he said, maintained his connection to the world and drew him back into embodiment. Adidam later acquired the property on Lopez Island where this had taken place, renaming it "Ruchira Dham Hermitage": the event itself, which Adi Da discusses in detail in part 19 of
The Aletheon, is referred to as "The Ruchira Dham Event". He wrote that it marked the definitive end of his "active" teaching work: from now on he would simply transmit his state, requiring devotees to become responsible for their reception of that. He nonetheless continued to write books, make art, and give discourses, but with an increased emphasis on what he called "silent
Darshan". Adi Da had four children: three biological daughters with three different women, and one adopted daughter. ==Teachings==