As Above So Below
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“At some point (an) individual becomes a disciple, and his resort to the Guru has become intense; the purifying sadhana, the humanizing sadhana has become fruitful. He (or she) has become sensitive to the subtle activities within (them)self and within the Guru, within Satsang. So you might say that as the student resorts to the teaching; a member of the Ashram resorts to the teacher or the man of understanding; and the disciple resorts to the Guru or Spiritual Master.”
Adi Da Samraj, The Cosmos
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What’s the Problem?
An Opinioned View by Beezone
“Adidam must not be an inward-turned cult. Avatar Adi Da is here for All. That is one of the Divine Avataric Breakthrough realities we must grasp in His Eternal Time.” “We must confront that we have revised the Way. Therefore, we must purify the culture of that.”
Ruchiradama Quandra Sukhapur Rani, 2015
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Adi Da Samraj at Marin Danda (1988) Adi Da Samraj: So why didn’t you with all your friends see to it that things were done rightly here? I have been appealing to you all night and day for the last 365 days and more.
Devotee: I felt that my relationship to you included a kind of submission to the direction of others.
Adi Da Samraj: Of course you must make use of leadership fulfilling all kinds of responsibilities. But if they don’t, they are not leadership, are they? Hmm? You determine who is in charge. You all. Not Me. I’m not in charge. Those who assume positions of responsibility in this Institution are supposed to do so by the agreement of the membership. And as a gathering you should have the right of making a no confidence gesture. Hm? Don’t you think?
Devotee: It hasn’t been like that.
Adi Da Samraj: Well why not?
Preface
This essay represents Beezone’s effort to explore the origins and truths behind the complex, passionate discussions that circulated within and around the Adidam community in 2019. In the spirit of fairness and accuracy, Beezone sought input from Michiel Vos, an administrator of the Adidam Holy Samrajya, for his review and feedback.
Michiel, along with other consultants and servers of the Holy Samrajya, provided this response: “What you have written reflects an interpretation that misrepresents Adi Da’s instructions during His lifetime. Your essay portrays Adidam as fundamentally adrift and questions the legitimacy of the leadership handpicked by Adi Da to extend His Authority.”
Beezone acknowledged their concerns: “I understand how this essay could be seen as confrontational. However, my intention was not to provoke, but to seek clarity and deepen understanding on this matter. Nowhere do I, nor anyone I know, claim that Adidam’s leadership is illegitimate.”
After further exchanges, Michiel concluded, “Your essay reflects your views and those of others in response to Adi Da’s Word and Work. We do not seek to confront or dismiss these perspectives.”
Thus, an impasse was reached. My intention remains clear: this is an opinion piece on the current state of affairs within Adidam, a sincere attempt to engage with the dialogues that emerged in 2019.
As you read, I ask you to approach this with an open mind and an intelligent heart. Remember, anyone who enters into a spiritual or psychological practice does so in response to an inner call. Ultimately, we are all responsible for our own understanding, choices, and actions. No authority or external power can relieve us of that responsibility. It is up to each individual to navigate their journey with integrity and awareness. In the end, as in the beginning, responsibility rests with no one but ourselves.
– Beezone
di Da Samraj, Guru, spiritual center of the community known as Adidam, suddenly, unexpectedly and by some measure* not so perfectly, left his physical body in 2008. Behind his passing, a community of devotees was left to organize themselves without a Master. This mahasamadhi, not only shocked his community but left its leadership with a internal power differential that continues to this day.
*I’m referring to the divisions his passing created, not the passing itself.
Yes, there were instructions given. Some were in his spoken and written communications and others were left in his Will.
The Ruchira Sannyasin Order was established to be the culturally governing authority of Adidam. The editors of Adidam describes it succinctly in the glossary of “My Bright Word” as: “The Ruchira Sannyasin Order is the body of Avatar Adi Da’s “Perfect Practice” devotees who demonstrate uniquely exemplary practice of the Way of Adidam and who have chosen to devote their lives utterly to Him and His Way by embracing the life of formal renunciation, in the circumstance of perpetual retreat. It is the unique responsibility of the Ruchira Sannyasin Order to function both as the extension of Avatar Adi Da’s Sacred Authority and as His Instrumentality (or the collective human “conduit” for His Spiritual Blessing).”
But now, 11 years after his passing all does not seem well in the house of Adidam.
The authority of this Order has, in principle, never been in question, for it was clearly stated many times that this Order would govern Adidam.
“I have established an Order – the Ruchira Sannyasin Order whose responsibility is to be the culturally governing Authority in this gathering.” He added a quip at the end by saying, “I have communicated My Teaching in such a manner that I and the Ruchira Sannyasin Order during and after My physical Lifetime, will always be able to identify a bullshitter.” – Adi Da Samraj, 2004
Adi Da’s teaching is vast and profound, and it resists any attempt to reduce it to a simple formula or set of dictates. What remains in question within the “house of Adidam” is the very “bullshit” Adi Da himself referred to. While I am not in a position to declare what is true regarding the current disagreements circulating within Adidam, I can speak from personal experience: serious concerns exist about how the present leadership exercises its authority. More troubling are the “court politics” that emerged after Adi Da’s mahasamadhi, which have led to growing suspicions. The critical voices that surfaced in 2019 may not simply be “bullshit” as some claim.
There is no dispute that the Ruchira Sannyasin Order is the highest governing body within Adidam. What is under scrutiny, however, is how that authority was established, and how it is currently being implemented and managed. – My Pattern
DEVOTEE: Beloved Adi Da, in light of Your conversation this afternoon about patterning, I’m wondering in what sense, in terms of Your Revelation, is Your Patterning conditional, and in what sense it is Unconditional?
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: All pattern is conditional. [murmurs of understanding] There are also all kinds of patterns. My Pattern coincides with Me, and, therefore, is the Way to Realize Me. Whereas patterning otherwise, all the patterns that can be found within the conditional realms, are not themselves about Realization. They are simply signs of the machinery of klik-klak, possibility, dualistic possibility, alternatives. They are not about Realization, they are about happening, experiencing, and so forth, in the conditional sense. Whereas My Pattern, entered into as My devotee is Called to enter into it, is direct means for Realizing Me. However, My Pattern Itself is not the Realization. It’s the sadhana, the means.
The Sarvadhikari
The managerial level of Adidam falls under the responsibility of the Sarvadhikari (“sarva” means “everything,” “adikari” means “manager”. The evidence is clear that Adi Da gave this responsibility to Quandra Sukhapur, not absolutely but conditionally. Bhagavan Adi Da, accepted Quandra Sukhapur to be the one who held the Ruchira Sannyasin Order culturally governing role – the Sarvadhikari role – under conditions that there would be a large and true membership of Ruchira Sannyasins who would work together. As there are only two associates in the Ruchira Sannyasin Order, only one actually functioning in that role, no other devotees qualified. The sole responsibility for the organization – seeing it aligns to the instructions of Adi Da – is held by one associate of the Ruchira Sannyasin Order, Ruchiradama Quandra Sukhapur.
The Ruchira Sannyasin Order
In February, 2005 discourse, Adi Da stated that there were no true members of the Ruchira Sannyasin Order. He said there is an office, and there are two individuals associated with it, but as he stated up until his mahasamadhi, “there are no true Sannyasins practicing the Perfect Practice”, a fundamental requirement of membership in the Ruchira Sannaysin Order.
“Everything necessary for beginners has been provided by Me. You must make the culture and the organization out of it, and the mission and everything altogether. The Treasures must be preserved.
There is no Ruchira Sannyasin Order apart from My Person. Sukhamai and Nadikanta are associated with the Ruchira Sannyasin Order, but not because they are demonstrating the Perfect Practice of this Way.
They simply maintain a kind of office of responsibility associated with various matters that must be under the cultural governance of the Ruchira Sannyasin Order. They are not even in dialogue with Me at the present time. I don’t meet with them now. I have no intention of doing so. It was just done enough to the point where it was an unbearable abuse of Me to continue with it.
There is nothing to discuss with Me about any organizational matter and so forth. I’ve Communicated everything. Why should I be talking about business? It is a terrible imposition and gross misuse of Me. It is intolerable to Me to submit to a kind of consumer religious ceremonialism on My Body. It is unconscious and foolish. It’s not right access to Me. It serves no purpose whatsoever. I have no requirement or interest relative to social relations with people. It has nothing to do with Me.
I don’t meet with the Ruchira Sannyasin Order representatives. They have been Instructed. I have Communicated what is necessary that covers everything about culture and organization. I did that because I was submitted, and submitted to that degree, and did it to the last utterance that I could possibly oblige Myself to make about all of that. And I simply cannot and will not do it anymore.”
(This excerpt is from a video from Avataric Discourses (Feb 16, 2005), “I Can Not”. It should be understood Adi Da was always acting in spontaneous, sudden, paradoxical, and non-linear manner. To take him literally is to take him out of context. Everything he said or did should be understood in its context and with a time/date stamp on it).
What Happened Immediately After Adi Da Died
Since there were only two legal sannyasin, two “associates” of the Ruchira Sannyasin Order, I can see how the present structure manifested given the history of rivalry* that existed. I also see how this created the basis that played out as “the last man standing”. There was no one else even a possible candidate based on the dynamic up to the point of the mahasamadhi. This unanticipated perfect storm included the failure of those also “in charge,” the allowance that “political power” would usurp “spiritual power” under the name of Adi Da Samraj. The immediate need for leadership, now that the Master was “gone” had to be decided. As you read below you will see it was not played out in a cooperative circle.
*This requires a longer explanation since Adi Da clearly stated that Adidam as a spiritual order was hierarchical. But even that needs to be understood further (See: When Wisdom Fails). But for now understand “court politics” was always being enacted with the inner circles of Adi Da.
What’s the Problem
Court Politics
“In the days and weeks directly after Bhagavan’s mahasamadhi, there was a small group of longtime devotee men and women who met together to help guide and determine what would happen in the wake of Bhagavan’s Physical Absence. These individuals know who they are, of course, although most devotees do not know this history. One of the dynamics they saw very early on was a move on the part of Ruchiradama Quandra Sukhapur to take charge and consolidate power and control around her.”
“A small group that was meeting on the lawn in the Village Square decided that it would discuss things and then every day send up its members up to the Brightness to meet with Ruchiradama Quandra Sukhapur. This “group of elders” as we were informally calling ourselves (along with Ruchiradama Quandra Sukhapur) were designed to exchange understandings about where we should go, on a daily basis
Immediately she refused to meet with the representatives and said that “I am in charge as Ruchira Sannyasin Order and do not want to meet with anyone else as if they were my equals and to have them influence my senior point of view.”
“This was openly discussed, and a decision had to be made about whether or not to intervene in this, or to allow it, thus excluding Ruchiradama Nadikanta and allowing Ruchiradama Quandra Sukhapur to hand-pick those who would extend her own authority. This was felt by many to be a possible mandate from Bhagavan, at least in her role of ‘Cultural Governance’ . Others believed that was happening expressed longstanding patterns of rivalry and infighting that had always been present within the “court of Adidam”.
“A decision was made finally by a majority in the group to allow this and not to fight it, although an opposite choice could have been made. Several members of this original group of men now question whether that was the right decision; some outright feel now that it was profoundly mistaken, as it has had many direct, and in some ways negative consequences to the culture, mission, and community of Adidam. It certainly was not Bhagavan’s Intention that Adidam become a single-person, hierarchically-driven, authoritarian community, but in the wake of that decision, and with no larger body of Ruchira Sannyasin Order devotees to balance things, that is at least functionally what we have become.”
The Problem
Adidam, as a collective, is struggling with a lack of integrity and strength. I mean this in the way Avatar Adi Da writes about it in the Aletheon.
“My true devotees “create” according to the aesthetic logic of Reality and Truth, and (thus) they turn all of their living into limitless relatedness and true enjoyment. They constantly remove the effects of separative existence and restore the inherent form of things. They engineer every kind of stability and intrinsic beauty. They give living human form to My Avatarically Self-Transmitted Divine Transcendental Spiritual Presence of Love-Bliss and Infinite Peace. Their eye is on the integrity of inherent form, and not, on egoically fabricated (and necessarily, false and exaggerated) notions of artifice.” – I Have Come To Found A Bright New Order of Global Humankind, The Aletheon (Original version also in “The Knee of Listening”)
The “uprising” that is currently occurring in Adidam is about its leadership and how it is being conducted. In addition, the long history of rivalry for access to Adi Da, and for dominance and control over His Work, has always been a central play (court politics) around Adi Da. I’m not going to focus on this dimension. But it is a core area for many who see the signs of revisionism turning into a real-life version of what Adi Da Samraj wrote about in The Mummery Book and The Scapegoat Book—a fake, revisionist religion that confines Him, and threatens the relevance of “My Own Divine Avataric Lifetime” and its “Profoundly Consequential Import for human history.”
Adidam at present is a very small, aged, stagnant community that shows little signs that it can even come close to measuring up to Adi Da’s Vision of being a “World-Religion”. Evidence for this is in the consistently low numbers of devotees (approximately 1,500 worldwide), and the lack of any significant increase in over 40+ years.
It is clear that there is a good percentage of active devotees confused, disturbed, in need some clarification on some fundamental matters. It is difficult to believe after hearing Avatar Adi Da’s ‘Shout,’ painfully, in the last years of his life that somehow magically it has been corrected and no longer an issue.
I do not want to engage in pitting one side against the other. But it would be negligent as a journalist not to investigate further into the “discordant voices” circulating in devotee discussions in 2019. In my investigations, discussions, and inquires, I have identified four understandings on how these controversial matters are currently being viewed
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The Form
The first group is the formal group. This group believes strongly the present structure and governance are right, true, and rightly sanctioned by the instructions given by Adi Da. They understand and trust in the direction of the sole leadership and its governing bodies that are invested in it.
Personal Practice
The second group and probably the largest has no direct knowledge of how and why the structures formed themselves after the passing of Adi Da but follow the direction and interpretation of the leadership. For this group, the political structure is fine, and their primary emphasis is on their personal relationship to Adi Da.
Access
The third group has questions, concerns, and in some cases direct knowledge about the isolated, authoritative (punitive) and fundamentalist mood of the gathering but will not speak up for fear of being sanctioned by the ‘powers that be’. In other words “cut off from access”.
Bullshit
The fourth group, probably the smallest are devotees who see the present organization operating outside of any real sanctioned authority and integrity. This group believes that Adi Da never meant the group to be led by any one individual outside any collective accountability. This group is more vocal and less concerned for any ‘reprisals’ that may follow for their disagreements.
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Unless these various tribes of Adidam come together under their professed and vowed Relationship to The One True Seventh Stage Realizer, Adi Da – who is clearly missing in this impasse – Adidam, as agency for “The True World-Religion Of Adidam” seems not only laughable to anyone viewing the “present state of affairs,” but also clearly delusional and teetering on the brink of madness. Some devotees would argue that “the nature of the relationship to Adi Da is intimate, personal, direct, and esoteric. No one can say what anyone else’s relationship to Him really is and they would assert that the opinion is uninspected, presumptive, and not true.” And this I would agree with. But what still remains is Adidam, as a human collective Agent of Adi Da Samraj has a long way to go!
I do not want to focus on these controversies (as much as they need to be) for there is a much more immediate issue at hand. Something that would “turn things around”. And that is a lack of a “True Spirituality” being demonstrated within Adidam and an honest evaluation of it, at all levels. This is not my observation as much as it was Adi Da’s throughout most, if not all of his life.
Beyond Evidence
In my investigation into the present dynamics within the “house of Adidam,” there came an impasse I could not penetrate. The stalemate had nothing to do with any obstruction; it had to do with “belief.” Anyone who has been a part of a religious or even psychological group eventually finds the truth to be a collective consensus, based in their Source of True Wisdom.
Without the embodied Master present how is one to authenticate what this paragraph written by Quandra Sukhapur under the title “The Divine Avataric Self-Emergence-Culture” in Volume Two, Number One of the Adi Da Samrajashram Journal, 2015 states:
“The Divine Avatar Self-“Emergence”-culture and the rightening process that must occur to establish this true culture of Adidam Ruchiradam is not about seeking through a process toward a goal. Divine rightening is about establishing a perfectly egoless pattern that has been Revealed by the Divine Master, such that the distinctions between self-identity with the complexities of ego pattern and That Which Is Divine, Bhagavan, egoless, is Revealed.”
Well, surely, you could not profess yourself to be “egoless.” The truth of any such condition (state) could only then be “revealed”, without The Master, by group consensus. Otherwise, it would be pure, unadulterated delusion.
The process of how this is aligned is clear. Adi Da’s Heart-Word is the Sacred Measure – i.e., “that has been Revealed by the Divine Master” – then the cultural governing authority extends His Sacred Authority. But of course this HAS TO BE based on and in conjunction with REALIZATION, otherwise the play exists only as an abstraction. Again, I refer the reader to, “When Wisdom Fails the Word Prevails”.
Here is where the waters get, not only murky, but dangerous. Adi Da “warned’ his devotees about such errors in “The Orpheum Trilogy.” “The Orpheum Trilogy” could be seen as the guardrails of Adidam. For the process Adi Da was/is Revealing is inherently ripe for delusion. Magical thinking, “saint and ear”, “the asylum”, salvation revisions, scapegoating, whisperings revealing messages only “you” can hear are some of the signs Adi Da warned his devotee about. Since there are no practitioners in the “Perfect Practice”, nor in an establish(ed) “perfectly egoless pattern that has been Revealed by the Divine Master”, Adidam has been left to govern itself as a devotional, and not yet “perfectly egoless pattern”.
Conclusion
I find no evidence that Adi Da Samraj’s “Shout,” so painfully expressed in the last years of his life, has been fully understood or adequately responded to by his devotees as a whole. My final observation on the current karmic “state of the union” within Adidam is that there is significant work that needs to be recognized, addressed, and resolved—both at the spiritual and the practical managerial levels.
Eleven years after Adi Da’s mahasamadhi, unresolved karmic issues continue to resurface within Adidam. This is a critical time for the community to properly confront these matters, rather than cultically avoid them, and to move forward in manifesting a truly enlightened culture of wisdom and attraction.
“I Am the Very One. I Am the One you must Realize. I am not an enforcer. I Give you a Gift. It is an opportunity. You choose. It is entirely up to you. – Adi Da Samraj
Ed Reither
Beezone
ed@beezone.com
For more reading/study:
Adidam and The First Three Stages of Life
The Church of Adidam
A Church of devotees in the higher stages of life is what I am here to serve, to bring into being, not forever to tussle with reluctant non-devotees.
But in order to create such a Church there must be struggling with reluctant nondevotees (Laughter). But the Church is not truly established until there are devotees in the higher stages, you see.
It’s not that such devotees, you know, all of a sudden have extra arms or something (Laughter), their personal qualities would vary from person to person. They won’t necessarily be full of psychic powers and so forth. They simply naturally rest in the Divine, prior to the body-mind. And the body-mind becomes the native expression of the Transcendental Heart.
This way they can truly serve in the world and become the center of the Church, the center of the Community of devotees, in terms of being mature, true elders of this Way. It’s through such individuals that this Way of life may feel duplicated beyond my lifetime and it is significant that during my lifetime, there be such people, as close to it as possible.
Unpublished discourse, October 14, 1978
Failure – In the Life, Teaching, and Community of Adidam
Why No Hearing After All These Years?