Thursday, August 03, 2006

Da Prophecies

A reader wrote a comment below somewhere (I don't know where exactly; blogger emails me all comments, but it doesn't tell me what post they were made under - it could be from a post written some time ago):

George Feurstein has updated his classic work 'Holy madness'recently (2006). The chapter on Adi Da has been revised significantly. The author mentions the so called 'Lopez Island Event' which occured in the Year 2000. According to him Da had prophesised that the world would acknowledge him in the year 2000. As a result of this, Da suffered a mental breakdown around April 2000 due to high level of anxiety. Yet I have never seen this prophesy in any of the Dawn Horse produced books/articles prior to yr 2000. I wonder if this is a myth propagated by disgruntled ex devotees. Where is the proof that Da actually made this prophesy?


I couldn't point you to any "proof" that Adi Da ever made this prophecy. It certainly wasn't published in the literature anywhere. But only a small fraction of what Adi Da has ever said has been published. I certainly heard from his kanyas that he made such a prediction, and as his "court astrologer" I was asked whether I saw something like this in his chart. I said that no, I didn't see any corroboration in his astrological chart for this sort of thing, and obviously it never happened. I'm not sure when the prediction was actually made, or what the exact wording of it was. One fallback position Da always takes in relation to such things is that he claims most of his work is invisible, and will only make a manifest appearance much, much later. So I would gather that when he didn't become world famous in 2000 that he pointed to the Lopez event, which he claimed represented the most important "event" in the history of the universe, as being the basis for his "world fame" that will eventually make its appearance. He has of course said suchthings before. Back in early 1974 he claimed that he was transforming himsef, the community, the world, and the entire cosmos in a way that would change everything forever, and it would culiminate in July of 1974. Of course nothing much happened then, but he claimed that it was like the "Dawn Horse" dream of his - that the essential work had now been done, and the appearance of that work would occur somewhere down the line. We are all still waiting.

George might know more about this prediction. My sense was that it was originally made long before 2000, and had become something of a legend in the community by then. So if you want to know more of the specifics, I'd suggest you ask him. But no, my basic understanding is that it was not something invented by disgruntled ex-devotees to embarrass Da. He has a long history of making predictions that don't actually come true, except in his own interior sense of reality. Much room for cognitive dissonance to operate there. There's not much need to invent things to embarrass Da - he has provided virtually endless material for such things from the beginning of his teachings, and even before.

Note: SOory about the lack of posting of late, particularly regarding Andy Smith's piece. Just overloaded with things to do. Will get to it soon. Like Da's prophecies, I've already written it in my mind, it just has to manifest. World fame will inevitably follow.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

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Anonymous said...

Feuerstein may be referring to the published "Mark My Words" predictions that Da made. These were around New Year's of 1984 and published shortly thereafter in the community magazine. In these talks he makes specific predictions about becoming world-famous, universally acknowldged as the "promised God-Man" (he may not have used that exact phrase at that time), etc. He said that it would definitely happen within 20 years. That doesn't quite line up with the year 2000 prediction, but closer to the beginning of 2004. Of course, nothing of the sort happened then either. What's more, it's clear that it's not going to happen at all.

Broken Yogi said...

Yes, I believe the "world fame in 2000" prophecy was different from the 1984 "Mark my words" talk. Not all of that talk got published, however. It didn't so much say that Da would be universally recognized by 2004, but that after that time things would be getting much better in Adidam, the difficulties would be over, and the world would be getting markedly better. Fat lot of good seems to have come of it. None of that seems to have come true, even to a fairly minor degree. True, the Cold War came to an end, but things are not exactly looking rosy now, are they? Nor does Adidam seem to have improved any. If anything, it's worse than it was in 1984, and no sign of it getting better. But Da changes his predictions along the way. He superceded his 1984 predictions with dire prophecies in the late 90's of how the world will go down the toilet if it doesn't recognize him. He doesn't explain how he was wrong in 1984 but right in the late 90's. People are just expected to ignore anything he said before as part of his "at times I assert, at times I deny" spiel. The point is, he's never wrong, he just morphs to whatever seems to work in the moment.

Anonymous said...

Well put, Broken Yogi. When "such a one" as Adi Da is "never wrong," all evidence to the contrary is readily explained away by some kind of silly paradoxical statement that he has made to cover all contingencies.

Revisionism has been the "way" of Adidam all along. It began very early as each new book presented his life history in ever more glorified language. Events of his life were constantly reinterpreted in light of his supposedly ever-increasing understanding of "who he is".

I find it less amazing that he could go so far as to spin psychotic breakdowns into unprecendented world-transforming events, as that his followers would go along with this, conveniently ignoring all blatant contradictions as well as his previous statements. But that's cultism.

This story has been raked over so many times that it seems redundant here, but these remarks and yours were in response to the apparently sincere question that you quoted in your original post in this thread. Da has spun a web of rationalizations that is still convincing to some, so it's worthwhile to continue to shed some light by presenting a little more of the whole picture. Someone reading this, sometime, might recognize it as a "red flag" about Adi Da, and that would be a genuine service.

Anonymous said...

Broken Yogi, have you ever written an assessment of Da, based purely on core instructions about self-enquiry?
For example, explaining what is up with him, why it turned out how it did?
I know in one of Da's books or writings he explains his experience of self-enquiry and nuances he felt he discovered with the channels and the heart
Did he alter it, or just not complete it, or ... ?

Anonymous said...

It still upsets me that frank couldn't prevent 9-11.

Or is this event, too, being spun to support his advent as the Avatar to end all Avatars?

dcb