In addition to our primary Source Adi Da Himself and
the Adi Da Up Close staff, we have
drawn upon, and are indebted to, hundreds of contributors,
sources, and helpers as we created and evolved this site.
It is a living example of what Adi Da calls "everybody-all-at-once"!
We'd like to acknowledge and express our gratitude to as many
of those contributors as possible.
Some of our contributors are not formal devotees of Adi
Da. Many of the non-devotees listed below are professionals
who have appreciated Adi Da's contributions in their own area
of expertise: art, spirituality, social wisdom, etc.
(For a version of this page that lists all our contributors,
both devotees and non-devotees, click here.)
Dr. Cristina Acidini is the Superintendent of the
Authority for Cultural Heritage and State Museums in Florence,
Italy.
Audio/Video Library In several video clips (here
and here),
Dr. Acidini speaks about the unprecedented exhibition
of Adi Da Samraj's image-art at the Cenacolo di Ognissanti,
in February, 2008.
Lis Addison is an award-winning composer and musician.
Albert Aprigliano was classically trained as a pianist
at The Juilliard School of Music. For over thirty years,
he has been a Manhattan cocktail pianist, serving as house
pianist for many high class Manhattan restaurants, and providing
accompaniment for numerous cabaret acts.
Audio/Video Library Our audio/video library includes
two musical tributes to Adi Da from Albert (here
and here),
in honor of his intimate partner being Adi Da's devotee.
Review
of Not-Two Is Peace Mary wrote a review of
the Florence Dance Company's ballet theater event, Not-Two
Is Peace.
Dr. Monica Bietti is the Director of the Museum
of the Medici Chapels. She was formerly with the Superintendency
of Artistic Heritage of Bologna and Florence.
Audio/Video Library In several video clips (here
and here),
Dr. Bietti speaks about the exhibition of Adi Da Samraj's
image-art at the Cenacolo di Ognissanti, in February,
2008.
James Edward Clarkez is a singer, composer,
and producer from Penarth, Wales. He manages the Ty
Cerdd recording studios at the Wales Millennium Centre
in Cardiff Bay where he produces music in a plethora of
styles and genres, from opera to rock to dubstep to pop.
James has a first class masters degree in music from Bristol
University. He has composed a symphony, Eleutherios:
The Turning to Satsang, based on Adi Da's Teaching.
Paula Crema is an artist who is well-known for her
exquisite mother of pearl, bronze and silver table sculptures.
Audio/Video
Library In this video clip, Paula speaks about the
exhibition of Adi Da Samraj's image-art at the Cenacolo
di Ognissanti, in February, 2008.
Ram Krishna Das is a learned singer of Indian ragas.
Audio/Video
Library Our audio/video library includes a video
in which Colin performs his version of "The Lord
of the Dance", in celebration of Adi Da's birthday
in 2012.
Brian Deschamp is a former Senior Advisor to the
United Nations High Commission for Refugees.
Audio/Video Library In this
video, Brian talks with great fondness about hosting
Adi Da's visit to the United Nations, in Geneva, Switzerland,
in 1996, and how Adi Da's Blessing (and being Adi Da's
"instrument" for conducting that Blessing in
the right time and place) helped serve his work with the
United Nations. He also discusses the uniqueness of Adi
Da's Teaching and Revelation in the history of the world's
great spiritual traditions.
Ashoka Dhar is the first female dhrupad
singer in India. She is the oldest disciple of the Late
Ustad Nasir Aminuddin Dagar Sahab of the great Dhrupad Maestro
(one of the senior Dagar brothers). She lives in Kolkota,
where she teaches at the Ustad Moinuddin Dagar Dhrupad Ashram.
She was blessed to make a pilgrimage to Adi Da Samrajashram
and receive the Darshan of Bhagavan Adi Da Samraj.
I
Felt Adi Da's Divine Power Immediately Ashoka Dhar
is India's first female dhrupad singer. She describes
her spiritual recognition of Adi Da Samraj and her visits
to Naitauba to sing for Him.
Rishabh Dhar is a master dhrupad player.
He lives in Calcutta, India, and is the son of the first
lady dhrupad singer in India, Ashoka Dhar. Rishabh travels
around the world giving concerts and workshops. He has been
a visiting faculty member at many universities (including
London University), and has worked as a composer and producer
in the television and film industry.
Audio/Video
Library Our audio/video library includes an interview
with Rishabh, where he talks about living in the house
of his music Guru for twenty years; and his time with
Adi Da Samraj.
Keith Ferrone is the director of the Florence
Dance Company. He has collaborated with Adi Da (using
Adi Da's Image-Art) in his production of Quattro Maggiore
("The Four Seasons"), and has continued to use
Adi Da's Image-Art (after Adi Da's death) in the more recent
work, Divina.com.
Audio/Video
Library Our audio/video library includes a couple of
video clips (here
and here)
of Keith Ferrone talking about these productions.
Peter Frank is the Senior Curator at the Riverside
Art Museum and an art critic for Angeleno Magazine. He is
an occasional contributor to The Huffington Post.
He was a long-time critic for LA Weekly, a past editor
of Visions Art Quarterly, and an art critic for The Village
Voice and The SoHo Weekly News in New York. He
was the Co-Curator of "Transcendental
Realism: The Art of Adi Da Samraj" at the 2007
Venice Biennale, and the Moderator of the Art Panel, "Orpheus
in the Modern World", at "Orpheus and Linead",
the exhibition of Adi Da's image-art at the Sundaram Tagore
Gallery in Beverly Hills, CA, 2011.
Audio/Video Library Our audio/video library includes
a video
clip of Peter Frank talking about Adi Da's image-art.
He is also featured in this
video clip.
Stuart Gibson is Secretary to the State Hermitage
Museum International Advisory Board and a UNESCO senior
expert consultant on museums and museology. He was the Director
of Adi Da's 2007 Venice Biennale solo collateral exhibition.
Alex
Grey is a renowned artist, and the author of Transfigurations
and Sacred Mirrors: The Visionary Art of Alex Grey. His work has been
included in the album art of such popular rock groups as
Nirvana and the Beastie Boys and a book of songs by the
Talking Heads. Healers, body workers and "new age" figures
including Matthew Fox, Joan Borysenko and Deepak Chopra
have all used his work to describe the dimensions of body,
mind and spirit. Grey's artwork has been exhibited worldwide,
including Stux Gallery, the New Museum in NYC, and the Grand
Palais in Paris.
Only
the Divine Presence Alex writes about the profundity
of his encounter with Adi Da, and about his subsequent
painting of Adi Da.
Audio/Video
Library Our audio/video library includes a video
clip of Alex Grey talking about Adi Da's image-art.
Laine Griffith is a Kauai resident and a music professor.
Terence Gross is a multi-award winning film director
and writer with credits that span US and UK feature films,
commercials, television documentaries, high-end promotional
films, and multi-media. He has worked with some of the greatest
actors and sports personalities of our generation and has
been critically acclaimed for his unique visual style. He
wrote and directed the award-winning Hotel
Splendide (starring Daniel Craig and Toni Collette)
and directed The
Day The World Ended (starring Nastassja Kinski and
Randy Quaid). His clients have included Sony Columbia, BBC,
Discovery Channel, HBO, and the UK Department of Transport.
For more, visit the website of his production company, The
Wild Night Company.
Audio/Video
Library Our audio/video library includes a documentary
directed by Terence on the making of the first full theater
production of Adi Da's epic work, The Mummery,
in January, 2000, at The Mountain Of Attention.
Lex Hixon (1941 - 1995) was a religious scholar,
mystic, and radio interviewer who extensively explored
the great religious traditions. He received a Ph.D. in
comparative religion at Columbia University in 1976 and
lectured at the New School of Social Research. He hosted
the show, "In the Spirit", on WBAI from 1972
to 1989. He founded Free Spirit Journal, and documented
his explorations in nine books and many articles.
Audio/Video
Library Our audio/video library includes the 1974
film, A Difficult Man: The Miraculous Activities and
Radical Spiritual Teachings of Bubba Free John. Lex
introduced the film, speaking about the spiritual traditions
of the past and Adi Da's new spiritual offering.
Gregory Hoblit is the Emmy
Award-winning executive producer of such well-known
television series as Hill Street Blues, L.A.
Law, and NYPD Blue. He also directed several
major movies, including Primal Fear (1996, with
Richard Gere), Fallen (1998, with Denzel Washington),
Frequency (2000, with Dennis Quaid), Hart's
War (2002, with Bruce Willis), and Untraceable
(2008, with Diane Lane).
Audio/Video
Library Our audio/video library includes the 1974
film, A Difficult Man: The Miraculous Activities and
Radical Spiritual Teachings of Bubba Free John. Gregory
was the producer and director of A Difficult Man.
It was his first film, and it jump-started his career.
Steven Bochko (who would eventually co-produce Hill
Street Blues with Hoblit) "had seen and admired
Hoblit's documentary, A Difficult Man, about the
Northern California Guru Bubba Free John, and later hired
him to produce Paris, then Vampire."
(p. 252, Todd Gitlin, Inside Prime Time)
Michel Karman is world-renowned as a master printer.
His services are in great demand by many well-known photographers
including Helmut Newton, Sally Mann, Nan Goldin and Greg
Gorman. Recently, The Corbis Collection invited Michel to
hand-select and print 75 of the archive's most striking
(some never before) images, and give them new life in a
special limited-edition presentation, "The Living Lens:
75 Limited Edition Prints from the Bettmann Archive."
Audio/Video
Library Our audio/video library includes a video
clip of Michel Karman talking about Adi Da's image-art.
Donald Kuspit is one of Americas
most distinguished art critics. Winner of the prestigious
Frank Jewett Mather Award for Distinction in Art Criticism
(1983), given by the College Art Association, Professor
Kuspit is a Contributing Editor at Artforum,
Sculpture,
New
Art Examiner, and Tema Celeste magazines, the Editor
of Art Criticism, and on the advisory board of Centennial
Review. He has doctorates in philosophy (University of Frankfurt)
and art history (University of Michigan), as well as degrees
from Columbia University, Yale University, and Pennsylvania
State University. He is Professor of Art History and Philosophy
at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and
has been the A. D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University
(1991 - 1997).
The
Female Nude in the Art of Adi Da Samraj "It is
a rare artist who can convey, convincingly, the sense
of being face to face with the source of being. Adi
Da can clearly live in the depths without succumbing
to their pressure, bringing back pearls of art to prove
it."
Dr. Ervin Laszlo is the founder of the Club of Budapest
World-Shift
Network.
Audio/Video Library In this
video, Laszlo talks about the "Deeper Level"
that Adi Da is "plugged into" and from which
the wisdom in Adi Da's book Not-Two
Is Peace comes, and with which all others can
resonate and connect, enabling world transformation. He
also talks about the timeliness of Adi Da's call for a
Global Cooperative Forum.
Barbara Marx-Hubbard is the founder and executive
director of The Foundation for Conscious Evolution. Called
by Buckminster Fuller "the best informed human on the
concept of futurism", Barbara is an internationally known
lecturer and the author of several books, including Emergence: The Shift from Ego to Essence. She is the co-creator
of an intentional cooperative community in Santa Barbara.
The
"Adi Da Frequency" Barbara describes how she
found Adi Da, and how she draws upon the 'Adi Da Frequency'
to help her work in creating a better and more conscious
future for humanity.
Daisy
McCrackin is an actress and a singer-songwriter. She
has appeared in well-known television series (including
Cold Case, Angel, and The Division)
and movies (including 3000
Miles to Graceland, Halloween:
Resurrection, and Atlas Shrugged: Part 1).
She released her first EP, The Rodeo Grounds (Aeronaut Records) in 2009, and
her next album, God Willing in 2011. She spent time in the Adidam
community while she was growing up (see below).
Audio/Video
Library Daisy's song, "Miracle", is
the soundtrack to a video on the ballet, Not-Two
Is Peace.
On her time in the Adidam community: "From an early
age I was searching for meaning in life. . . I became
very drawn to a teacher named Adi Da Samraj, and I had
begun to seriously study his books. My parents had studied
with him in the past before I remember. So there was
actually somewhere to go — to the Ashram [The
Mountain Of Attention] where I saw Adi Da Samraj and
got to live in an Ashram culture, on a sanctuary similar
to the Ashrams in India. An Ashram is different from
the regular world because, rather than exist to satisfy
the ego, it is purposed solely to spiritual practice,
and to understanding yourself. It was intense. I have
great memories of it. I cooked in the kitchen for about
200 people (vegetarian food, of course). It was not
glamorous, but I was so happy! My friends and I would
run off in afternoons to swim in a small lake on the
Sanctuary. I found it to be a wonderful, cooperative
community where the arts are practiced and treated as
a sacred act. I made a lot of great friends who I am
still close with and it was a healing, powerful time
in my life. Best thing I ever did."
Elizabeth Midwikis graduated with a
BA from Louisiana State University in interior design, and
was a commercial interior designer for many years. She is
now retired from that profession, and is a contemporary
painter and printmaker. She lives in southern California
and Kauai, Hawaii.
Feeling
Without Limitation Elizabeth: "As
I sat in the church, I was feeling Beloved Adi Da throughout
my body and radiating beyond my body, by His grace.
My eyes ran tears for the entire funeral service; but
I was deep in the Heart, feeling everyone and their
profound sorrow and suddenly
I noticed: there was no problem! Waves of deep love
and sorrow flowed through me, seemingly radiating to
everyone and beyond."
Audio/Video
Library Our audio/video library includes Flo's cover
of "Love Comes To Here In Time" (words by Adi
Da, music by Naamleela Free Jones), which she recorded
as a tribute to Adi Da.
Achille Bonito Oliva is an internationally acclaimed
art critic and historian, and a teacher at La Sapienza
University in Rome. He has curated numerous thematic
and interdisciplinary exhibitions in Italy and abroad,
including Adi Da's exhibit at the Sundaram Tagore Gallery
in New York City, September, 2010. Bonito Oliva was
the Director of the 39th and 45th Venice Biennale. He
has been awarded various prizes and recognitions, including
the Valentino dOro, an international prize for art
critics. He has authored and edited many essays and
books on art, including Alighiero Boetti: Delivering Art to the World, Art Tribes, White and Other: In Any Case, Art, and Luca Pignatelli.
Commentary
at the Inauguration of the Exhibition of Adi Da's
Art at the 52nd Biennale di Venezie Oliva delivered
the following remarks at the opening of Adi Da's Art
Exhibition at the Venice Biennale in 2007: "I
believe that art should always be a surprise. It must
create, even in the critic, not emotion, but a sense
of insecurity. When one views Adi Das art, it is
easy to see 'pop art', 'op art', all the possible
linguistic, ethnological, and iconographic references
but, in the end, the final work is always a surprise.
With Adi Das work, I did not simply find myself in
front of a new personal iconographic universe but
rather in front of images that returned me to an experience
of 'epiphany'."
Audio/Video Library Our audio/video library includes
a video
clip of Achille speaking (as curator of the exhibit)
at the opening of Adi Da Samraj's solo exhibition,
'Orpheus and Linead', at Sundaram Tagore Gallery,
New York, on September 9, 2010.
Andrea Portera is
a premier composer from Florence. His official catalog
consists of over 100 works, including chamber music,
symphonic pieces, and theater and ballet. His music
has won many awards, and has been performed by famous
orchestras and chamber groups.
Not-Two
Is Peace Andrea was the primary composer for
the multimedia ballet event, Not-Two Is Peace
(both the 2012 and 2013 versions), based on the wisdom
communicated by Adi Da's book of the same name. This
series of clips provides excerpts from the July 22
and July 23, 2012 performances.
Celia Rabinovitch
is an artist, writer, and teacher. Her paintings have
been exhibited in solo shows in Canada, the U.S.A. and
Europe, including Quattro, a four person international
show in Vienna, Austria (2000) the Florence Biennale
(1999) The Grotto Cycle, California Institute of Integral
Studies (2003); Industrial Romance, University of San
Francisco and Gallery, Winnipeg, YYZ, Toronto; Emily
Carr Institute; Plug-In and the Winnipeg Art Gallery.
Her book, Surrealism And The Sacred: Power, Eros And The Occult In Modern Art (2002), uncovers new territory between the history
of art and the history of religions. She has taught
art and cultural and art history at Stanford University,
U. C. Berkeley, The California College of Art and the
San Francisco Art Institute, the University of Colorado,
McGill University and as a Visiting Artist at Syracuse
University (1990). Currently she is Professor and Director
of the School of Art, the University of Manitoba.
Tacit
Glimpses: A Review of Adi Da Samrajs Transcendental
Realism and Aesthetic Ecstasy "Adi Da extends
and expands an alternative understanding of art that
has run like an underground stream through history:
appearing intermittently in the meditations of the
scholar-artists of Chinas Tang dynasty; in the writings
of Leonardo and Michelangelo in the Renaissance; and
in the aesthetic theories of Kandinsky and Mondrian
in the modern era."
Pien Rademakers is a gallerist who runs the
Galerie
Pien Rademakers in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. The gallery
translates her passion for art into carefully composed exhibitions.
Its focus is international photography and also the works of new, talented artists.
Audio/Video
Library Our audio/video library includes a video
clip in which Pien expresses her deep appreciation for
Adi Da's Image-Art, and her personal commitment toward
seeing it get wider distribution.
Carol Raphael writes
for EnlightenNext magazine (formerly, What
Is Enlightenment?).
The
Heart Was Released From Images: The Art of Adi Da
Samraj (pdf, 2.4MB) "Brancusi said that 'one
arrives at simplicity in spite of oneself by approaching
the real sense of things.' What Adi Da is doing, though,
is not really simple, either visually or metaphysically.
His imagery is both highly complex, in terms of its
composition and its execution, and startling pure
or uncomplicated at the same time. Remarkably, he
is attempting to transmit the totality of pure consciousness
by means of the specificity of the manifest world
and he's succeeding."
Ed Reither is the creator of The
Beezone, and is a strong advocate of Adi Da's Teaching.
Audio/Video
Library Our audio/video library contains many audio
and video clips from Ed. The video clips include: conversations
with Frank Marrero about the seven stages of life; and
interviews with devotees.
Roger Savoie is a philosopher, writer, and translator.
He is the author of many books, and has written for
such prominent magazines as La Revue 3e millιnaire.
Click
here to visit his website.
Michael Sheppard is a classical
pianist who trained at the Peabody Conservatory of the
Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, where he studied
with Leon Fleisher and Ann Schein. As one of two 2003
Classical Fellows of the American Pianists Association
he toured Southern Asia and the Middle East in collaboration
with the Cultural Programs Division of the United States
Department of State. Upon his return he made his Kennedy
Center debut. Michael has received critical acclaim
as a grand interpreter of transcriptions of operatic
tunes as well as American musical theatre in addition
to the traditional piano repertory.
Rajesh Shukla is an art critic and
the author of several books, including Contemporizing Buddha, Hindu Tantra Yoga, and Concerning the Spiritual in Art: An Indian Modern Art Perspective.
He received his B.A in Fine Art and Philosophy from
Allahabad University in 1993. He took Sanyasa for two
years, and studied the six systems of Indian philosophy,
focusing specially on Vedanta from the Sankaracharya
of Puri, Swami Nischalananda Saraswati. He was the winner
of the Lalit Kala Academy Scholarship Award for art
criticism in 2005. He is currently working on a book,
Buddhist Tantra Yoga. He lives and works in Delhi,
India.
The
Ancient Walk-About Way of Adi Da Samraj "Adi
Da is the one and only artist whose art is beyond
idiom. Adi Da is postmodern in this sense, because
he knows the very locus from where things appear.
Images are things, and they appear on the surface,
carrying multiple messages of the locus. In this sense,
Adi Da does not express, rather he creates. His images
appear as it is an expression of Reality
Itself."
Lisa Paul Streitfeld is an art critic, curator,
performance artist and novelist who delivered a paper,
"Applying the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle to 21st
Century Art", at the 2009 International Association of
Art Critics (AICA) Conference in Dublin. She has written
on metaphysics and contemporary art for The New York Times,
The Hartford Courant, Art New England, and the international
avant-garde. As regular reviewer (2000-2005) for Southern
Connecticut Newspapers, she interpreted a 21st century
icon, the hieros gamos, subject of her forthcoming
four volume critical study.
Modernist
(R)evolution in Chelsea: The Premiere of Adi Da Samraj
Lisa: "Sundaram Tagore Gallery's New York premiere
of the self-proclaimed avatar Adi Da Samraj (1939-2008)
filled a vacuum existing in the art world expectantly
awaiting the rise of the New since the tumult of the
market fall. Curated by the Italian critic Achille Bonito
Oliva, Orpheus and Linead celebrates a joyous union
of opposites that polarized 20th century art into objective/nonobjective,
abstract/figurative."
Hιlθne Tavernier is half of the French band,
Angel
Factory. Hιlθne grew up in a family of classical
musicians and learned cello. When cello met computer,
or more precisely, when Maurizio Fasolo of Pankow fame
(the group providing the Florence Dance Company with
electronic music over recent years) heard her duo play
live in Lille, Hιlθne was invited to listen, improvise,
then set her vocal melodies to the pieces Maurizio had
prepared for Divina.com.
Divina.com
(video)
In this multi-modal performance (featuring the Florence
Dance Company dancing against a projected backdrop
of Adi Da's Image-Art that was constantly changing),
Hιlθne Tavernier's role was to take texts from Dante
and Adi Da Samraj, compose music for them, and then
sing them (variously in Italian, French and English).
Kenneth Welsh
is a renowned
actor. He spent seven seasons at Stratford, playing
among many other roles, the title role in Hamlet.
The next twelve years he spent in New York, where he appeared
on and off Broadway. His film credits include The Freshman,
Legends of the Fall, Crocodile Dundee II,
The Day After Tomorrow, Absolute Power,
The Aviator, and Margaret's Museum. On television
his credits include starring roles in Empire Inc,
Love and Hate, And Then You Die, Hiroshima,
Edison, Smallville, Law and Order,
The X-Files, and Twin Peaks. He has won
six Geminis and one Genie (the Canadian equivalent of
the Oscars and the Emmys).
Steve Zerlin is a
brilliant and versatile bassist, fluent with many styles.
He is accomplished as a jazz musician on both electric
and acoustic bass as well as having adapted the bass
to Eastern modalities as a member of Facing East. He
has toured India as well as extensively throughout the
USA with many top artists including Jack DeJohnette,
Dennis Chambers, Carl Filipiak group, Paul McCandless
and others. He was cited in Jazz Times magazine
(April 2004) for his unique style and abilities.
© Copyrighted materials used with the permission of The Avataric Samrajya of Adidam Pty Ltd, as trustee for The Avataric Samrajya of Adidam. All rights reserved. None of these materials may be disseminated or otherwise used for any non-personal purpose without the prior agreement of the copyright owner. ADIDAM is a trademark of The Avataric Samrajya of Adidam Pty Ltd, as Trustee for the Avataric Samrajya of Adidam.
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