In early 1997, my computer stopped working. For the next three months, I worked off of borrowed computers and the generosity of devotee friends. My colleagues in the Adidam Holy Institution assured me they'd find the resources to purchase a new computer. But the financial needs associated with creating a new spiritual tradition are immense, and must cover many different areas simultaneously. And so, three months went by, and I still was without a computer.

This was a difficult challenge — here I was, the head of Adi Da's "Web Mission", and I had no computer! On one level, it felt absurd. . . If I had still been in academia, the amount of money required to purchase a new computer would have been inconsequential. And my academic department would have automatically paid for it and installed it. But now I was living as a renunciate, with no income of my own, and I was completely dependent on the resources made available to me through Adidam. And in this moment, there simply were not enough resources to go around. It was nobody's fault. But it certainly spoke to the need for Adidam to grow significantly, to the point where no dimension of Adi Da's Work could ever be jeopardized by a shortage of resources.

The service I was doing for Adi Da was vital. Every passing day without a computer was having an impact on what I was able to accomplish for Adi Da. It finally became obvious that I'd have to generate the income for a new computer myself, in order to continue my service to His Work. But because I was living at the Mountain Of Attention Sanctuary, and no income-generating business could be done on the Sanctuary (as a matter of principle [1]), I would have to move off the Sanctuary, and leave the Dasya Mandala. That was the last thing I wanted to do! But I had no choice, given my service to Adi Da.

Even so, I struggled with the decision. One night, I suddenly awoke around 3am, the hour when it is said the veil between our world and the spirit world is at its thinnest. Just before I opened my eyes, I saw a glowing white, humanoid figure. He was looking at me and smiling. Although his outline was fuzzy, I could see that there were protrusions around his shoulders, and it made me think of an angel with folded wings. I opened my eyes, and the image was gone. I fell back to sleep. An hour later, I woke up again — and, like before, just before I opened my eyes, I saw something before me — an address: "28 Holy Street".[2]

I have written in an earlier chapter how I have had visitations from extraterrestrials and non-material beings before, and have some experience of the unusual and somewhat indirect ways they can choose to communicate — largely because we're not yet capable of "speaking" directly with them. Their help can be extraordinarily powerful, tremendously amplifying what one can do alone, and — in the case of a devotee — often augmenting Adi Da's Agency, and allowing us to serve His Divine Work more effectively. Being in Divine Communion with Adi Da "raises one's vibration", and attracts such "higher vibration" beings, who then become accessible more readily and more tangibly.

And so in this challenging moment, I was being visited by an angel! The purpose of his first communication was to let me know that he was an angel, which would also allow me to correctly interpret his message to me. The second communication was his actual message: "28 Holy Street". "Holy Street" was a way of indicating this was not an earthly communication but a spiritual communication, so I shouldn't go looking at a neighborhood street map for a local address of "28 Holy Street"! The core of his angelic communication, then, was that number, 28.

I was aware of a huge body of knowledge compiled about "angel numbers" (which are usually two digit numbers beginning with "1" or "2") and what they mean when an angel communicates one to you. So I went researching, and found that angel number "28" has three important aspects:[3]

• It confirms one is receiving guidance directly from the Divine. (That I already knew!)
• It signals coming abundance. Great — I needed a new computer!
• Most important for me in that moment: It represents the closing of old doors, to enable the opening of new ones — and to not resist, or be anxious about — the closing of the old doors, because higher powers are guiding me and leading me in specific new directions.

And so, with the encouragement of my angel friend (who I thanked profusely), I let go of all resistance, and welcomed the new chapter of my life, allowing old doors to close, and inviting new ones to open.

Receiving help in this way made me aware that we are all part of much larger processes, that involve many players, seen and unseen — and the more we become aware of this, the more we can consciously participate in these processes and solicit help from other beings.

Looking back at that difficult moment with the hindsight of many years, I now view it differently — more shamanistically. It's clear to me now that circumstances were conspiring to bring about a major change in my life, for the purpose of transforming my service to Adi Da in very positive ways.

And indeed, many new doors would open! Those "new doors" would come in the form of new insights and new opportunities for serving Adi Da's Work.

But before those new doors could open, I first needed to establish a new, steady source of income (and, on that basis, acquire a working computer!).

So I started a web design/programming company (in 1997, it was one of the earliest web design companies out there), and began developing commercial websites.

Almost immediately, a major "new door" opened. A very interesting opportunity came my way, the kind that would not have occurred while I was still working within the Adidam Institution and hadn't been creating commercial websites.

Many new people found and became interested in Adi Da through the Adidam website. One of those people was Ed Kowalczyk, the lead singer of the alternative rock band, Live. When I asked Ed later what caught his attention, he said it was the endorsement from Ken Wilber I had placed on the home page.

Live was huge among young people in 1997. The band had recently played the Tonight Show, Saturday Night Live, and the Howard Stern Show, and they had won Billboard's "Rock Artist of the Year" Award in 1995 (winning out over other nominees, Pearl Jam and Tom Petty).

Ed had been a spiritual seeker all his life, and had a strong response to Adi Da. He received Adi Da's Darshan several times. He was interested in finding a low key, non-proselytizing way to help others discover Adi Da. "We've never been a band that's proselytized for any specific group of people or religion or anything. . . It's always been about a totally open-eyed investigation of it all. There's no preaching involved. I didn't get to where I am, to wherever that is, to the feet of my guru, by anybody telling me to do it. Or what to think or do. I don't appreciate it from other people, and I would not do it to anyone else."[4] The idea he came up with (which Adi Da Blessed) had two parts. The first part was a new album the band had just created, called Secret Samadhi, which had subtle references to Adi Da throughout (and which debuted at the #1 spot on the Billboard charts upon its release). The second part was the creation of Ed's own website (separate from the band's website), through which he could personally carry out that "low key" advocacy.

And that's where I entered the picture. I became the webmaster of Ed's personal site, edko.org.

With Adi Da's Blessing, the home page presented the name of the site, "The Hole in the Universe":

Curious visitors would be able to find, elsewhere on the site, Ed explaining how the title was actually a reference to his spiritual teacher, Adi Da. Besides the enticing, mysterious title, the site was filled with subtle pointers to Adi Da and Adidam like the locket with the Sanskrit "Da" symbol engraved on it in the lower right corner of the home page graphic.

We deliberately made the site extremely innovative and pioneering for its time, in its use of multimedia and virtual reality. Upon entering the site, the visitor would be greeted with an audio welcome from Ed:

I had recorded a few words from Ed, and then mixed them with the opening of the first track of Live's first album, Mental Jewelry. It was brief, but potent.

Then the visitor would click on the home page image, and suddenly be viewing a fantasy vista, a mysterious place with many rooms.

click image to enlarge

Here we were enormously helped by a friend of Adidam who worked at a company specializing in virtual reality software for websites. She was also a fantastic graphic artist, and she had digitally "painted" this fantasy place, and programmed all the rooms to be 3D, so visitors would be able to move from room to room, turn around inside the rooms and see all the walls of the room, etc. The virtual place contained a Music Hall (with a constantly updated diary of the ongoing, worldwide "Secret Samadhi" tour), an Art Gallery, a Chat Room, and a Meditation Hall, containing a picture of Adi Da on one of its walls, and a link to the Adidam website. (If you look carefully at the image above, you'll also notice Adi Da's face on the sun, and Ed's face is on the moon.) Part of my job as webmaster was keeping the content on all the "walls" of this virtual villa fresh and interesting over time.

We launched the site in March of 1997, and kept it updated pretty much every day.

It might have taken Ed only five minutes to send me all the "raw material" for the day! But then it would take me quite a bit longer to turn all of that into attractive, carefully edited diary entries, nicely laid out tour pictures, occasional audio clips, etc.

The site quickly won all kinds of awards for its innovative technology and for the quality of the design. An award from Web Magazine, for example, was accompanied by this review: "Maintained by Live's singer Ed Kowalczyk, Hole in the Universe is an all-out assault on your eyes, ears, and soul. Stunningly well-designed, the site posts daily tour diaries, interviews, backstage and early home photos of the band, and samples of art Ed enjoys."

On April 28, 1997, Adi Da visited and Blessed the website. Over the next few years, many young people would visit the site, see Adi Da's picture in the Meditation Hall, and follow the link to the Adidam site to learn more. In late 2000, Ed discontinued the site, and we all moved on to other projects.

As I look back now, many years later, I can say this: it was a very interesting missionary experiment while it lasted! Ed's site was a very large source of new visitors to the Adidam website.

And it was the earliest example of what I now think of as an Adidam "crossover site": where a lot of people interested in something other than Adi Da and Adidam — in this case, Live's music and Ed Kowalcyzk — run across Adi Da, and want to find out more about Him — and we provide a means for doing that. Later "crossover" experiments of this kind would include:

• people interested in modern art running across Adi Da's Image-Art (and then, in turn, Adi Da as Spiritual Master). In 2015, I would create The Ascent of Orpheus website (organized around Adi Da's exhibit, "The Ascent of Orpheus", at the Bargello National Museum in Italy) with this "crossover" notion in mind. The site itself is no longer online, but you can still sort of see what it looked like in the partial copy of the site saved by the Internet Archive.
• people interested in theater or experimental literature running across Adi Da's Orpheum Trilogy.
• people interested in world peace running across Adi Da's book, Not-Two Is Peace (or the associated website) and "the World-Friend Adi Da".
• people interested in diet running across Adi Da's book, Green Gorilla, or any of the devotee-run businesses stemming from it.
• etc.

In 2000, with the coming of the new millenium, another major "new door" opened, that would not have opened in my direction had I still been working within the Adidam Institution.

Bill Gladstone was a well-known book publisher and literary agent. He was the founder of Waterside Productions, a literary agency that mediated between authors and publishers. (I say "was" because he passed away on Dec. 27, 2023.) Bill was an amazingly creative guy. He was a pioneer, creating the "first" of a lot things, including the first "print on demand" book publishing company and the first eBook company.

Bill also was the guy who created the immensely popular "For Dummies" series of books, that were purposed toward taking complex subjects and making them accessible to large numbers of people. There are literally thousands of "For Dummies" books at this point, in nearly every area of human knowledge, and new ones are coming out all the time as new subjects appear that are complex and need explaining (e.g., witness their recent book, ChatGPT For Dummies).

As it turns out, Bill was also a spiritual seeker. He had worked with and represented well-known spiritual authors including Eckhart Tolle and Deepak Chopra, international peace advocate, Dr. Ervi Laszlo, environmental activist, Paul Ehrlich, and many other well-known authors. He very much appreciated Adi Da's Wisdom. But he knew that it was not written in a form that was acccessible to the general public the way books by Tolle and Chopra were.

You now have enough information to "connect the dots", and predict what happened next!

Bill received Adi Da's Darshan, and then, in conversation with Ruchiradama Sukhapur and Ruchiradana Nadikanta, offered his services to help Adi Da's Mission, specifically with the thought of finding a way to create something analogous to an "Adidam for Dummies" sequence of books, enabling Adidam to be accessible to a far wider group of people. The two Ruchiradamas had been at the 1995 meeting I had with Adi Da, introducing Him to the Web, and they remembered the extensive conversation we had had about creating "bridge" education between the world and Adidam. (Much more about that in the next chapter.) So they connected Bill with me.

Bill and I immediately hit it off. We started brainstorming at a mile a minute, me with all the ideas I had for what was needed, and him with all the means he could provide for achieving it. We converged on the idea of a series of books that provided a bridge between conventional notions of spirituality and the offering of Adidam. And that was how The Practical Spirituality Series was born.

Bill very much liked the various pieces I had written to date that made Adidam more accessible, and wanted me to be the one writing the series. I mentioned how, like the "For Dummies" series, such writing involved introducing people to many new concepts. But it also involved explicitly raising to consciousness and deprogramming them out of all kinds of knee-jerk reactions that our culture teaches them — anti-authoritarianism: one should never hand authority over one's life to another human being; anti-Gurism: all spiritual options involving a Guru must be cults with the Guru as cult leader; materialistic fulfillment as the purpose of one's life; claims that someone is God are always signs of megalomania; etc. Combined together, all these knee-jerk reactions caused them to brand Adidam as taboo and reject Adidam out of hand, much like Scientology, David Koresh, etc.

Bill agreed. He added that, even though he had never had to deal wih anything as intense as what I described while working on the "For Dummies" books, there were some analogous issues that had come up (since many of the "For Dummies" books were on technical subjects), like math phobia and technophobia, where people (particularly women) had a culturally instilled reluctance to engage the subject out of fear, and so part of the "For Dummies" education did require "deprogramming" them out of that fear, in addition to teaching them the necessary new concepts.

I showed Bill my current draft of a curriculum for a full-fledged prep school for Adidam that I had been developing. (I'll be saying much more about this prep school in the next chapter.) Based on the courses in my proposed curriculum, we came up with a 25-book eBook series on "Practical Spirituality".

Bill secured me a publishing deal through the third largest online bookseller at the time (after Amazon and Barnes & Noble), called Fatbrain.com (aka "Mighty Words"). Starting in January, 2000, I starting popping out one new ebook in the series every month. I was one of a small number of featured spiritual authors in the "spirituality" section of Mighty Words. I also created a website — practical-spirituality.com — to complement the publishers' site, and to be able to provide more elaborate presentations, additional content, etc. on my books.

It was a real ordeal to write an entire eBook every month (on top of my full-time web design work and my other services to the Adidam Mission), but it was a labor of love: I knew this had the potential to bring Adi Da and Adidam to many new people!

The books started selling really well, because they were written to be accessible to the general public, and they were being very prominently featured in the spiritual literature section of the third largest online bookstore. A lot of people became interested in Adidam through them — in other words, they actually started fulfilling the "bridge curriculum" purpose that Adi Da and I had discussed in 1995. Or, to put it in Bill's language, they actually started succeeding as "Adidam for Dummies" — able to reach people with very little prior spiritual education.

Unfortunately this great, sudden injection of energy into the "bridge education" project came to an abrupt end. You can see what happened just by typing fatbrain.com into your browser and seeing what happens. In September, 2000, the second largest online bookseller (Barnes & Noble) bought out the third largest online bookseller (Fatbrain.com), and the deal Bill had arranged between me and Fatbrain.com was dissolved.

But it was a very successful beginning, pointing the way to what we needed to grow into. And from January to September, 2000, I had succeeded in completing the first nine books of The Practical Spirituality Series. And because I had created my own site, practical-spirituality.com, for the associated "Practical Spirituality Press", the books remain available to this day, and are still helping people interested in spirituality become interested in Adidam, though the traffic to the site and the book sales are nothing like when the book were being featured on Fatbrain.com. Still, these books have helped pay the expenses for my work serving the Mission (like the bills associated with running the Adi Da Up Close site, etc.)

Here are just a few of the comments I received from readers around the world:

When I started my web design/programming company in 1997, an early insight I had was that everything I learned in developing commercial websites could then be applied to benefit the websites I created to serve the Adidam Mission — and that has proven to be true repeatedly, over the years.[5]

Here's a good example of applying something I learned in developing commercial websites to Adidam websites. As a global entity, Adidam is divided into geographical areas referred to as "regions". Many Adidam regions are assocated with countries (Holland, the United Kingdom, Germany, etc.) In a large country like the United States, there are multiple Adidam regions. In addition to being part of "global Adidam", each region has a regional center, and its own organizational structure (its own culture, its own community, etc.). In 2001, Adi Da asked that each of the regions of Adidam have its own regional website. That made a lot of sense, particularly from the perspective of the Adidam Web Mission, because, while someone might discover Adidam on the Web, they eventually would need to hook up with a particular region — to meet devotees face to face, attend events, participate in retreats, and so forth — and a regional website was an excellent contact point for that purpose.

The difficulty? The devotees in the Adidam Institution now responsible for Adidam websites had good hearts and excellent intentions, but they were not web professionals. By their estimate, they'd be able to create one regional site per year! While a couple of regions had devotees capable of building their own region's website, most did not. So, many of the regions got in touch with me, and asked whether I could do it, and how fast could I do it. Fortunately, because of my commercial web design experience, I was able to tell them I could create their sites very quickly. So I took the design of the official Adidam website at that time (2001), fashioned a "regional site" version of it, and started "popping out" regional websites, one every weekend! I ended up creating seven regional websites. It was grueling, exhausting work, but all the regions were able to fulfill Adi Da's Calling within short order, bring Him that good news, and start putting the regional sites to good use.

Over the decades that have passed since then, some of these regional sites have been replaced by newer versions, while others have disappeared (because the regions chose not to maintain them for various reasons). But two of those regional sites created back in 2001 (the first two below — click on the text to visit the actual sites) are still going!

AdidamAustralia.org	AdidamLakeCounty.org
AdidamOhio.org	AdidamDC.org
AdidamLA.org	AdidamNewEngland.org
AdidamSeattle.org

Click image to enlarge

A website for Not-Two Is Peace. In early July of 2006, I received a call from Rolf Carriere. Rolf is a former official with the United Nations (UNESCO, in particular). He has served Adi Da's World Work in many different capacities over the years. On this occasion, Rolf was calling me from Toronto, Canada, where he and Ruchiradama Nadikanta were presenting a paper on Adi Da's Teaching in His book, Not-Two Is Peace, at an international conference devoted to world peace. They were creating business cards to hand out, but they needed a web address on the card for the new book — and of course an actual website at that web address! It was Friday afternoon. Rolf asked me: could I put together a complete website before the end of the weekend (when the conference was ending)?

How could I say no?

It was an extraordinary ordeal, though. But the original Not-Two Is Peace website was up and running by the end of the weekend, complete with many chapters from Not-Two Is Peace, and many other related materials, in a simple but attractive website design based on Adi Da's multi-colored flag design for the Global Cooperative Forum (displayed on the cover of Not-Two Is Peace). Here is what the home page looked like:

click image to enlarge

A major article on Avatar Adi Da in Israel's second largest newspaper. I hardly had caught my breath after launching the Not-Two Is Peace website before another wonderful opportunity to serve Adi Da's World Work arose.

A freelance Israeli journalist got in touch with me. His articles had appeared in The Washington Post, and most of the major newspapers in Israel. He let me know that he was interested in spirituality in general, and in Adi Da and the Way of Adidam, in particular. He had read a lot of my writing online about Adi Da, and had really enjoyed my Practical Spirituality Series, appreciating the way it served as a bridge to Adi Da and Adidam. He said if I could write a brief (4000 word), very accessible introduction to Adi Da and Adidam, he would translate it into Hebrew, and use his journalistic connections to submit it for publication to one of Israel's major newspapers.

This was too good an opportunity to pass up! So I said yes, and immediately got to work.

I knew that, in 2006, the only kind of article Adi Da would accept for such a purpose would be one that pulled no punches and directly communicated Him as the Divine Person. So that was the focus of my article, which was titled, "The Offering of Perfect Happiness: The Divine Incarnation, Life, and Work of Avatar Adi Da Samraj". The hardest part turned out to be the 4,000 word quota: how to say everything that needed to be said, and say it in an accessible manner, using only 4,000 words? I kept cutting out and shortening lines for a couple of days, until I finally got the piece under the limit, without removing anything essential.

Adi Da was aware of my writing this article, and the opportunity that it represented for His Mission and His Work with the world altogether. And so as soon as I finished, I sent Him the article. He reviewed it, reading it line by line. He didn't change a word, and Blessed it for release.

This very much surprised Ruchiridama Quandra Sukhapur! She had read the article (before giving it to Adi Da), and had seen that I had introduced new material that had never before been presented, demonstrating (through Adi Da's life history) that His life illustrated a Divine Descent, with Realizations taking place in the reverse order from traditional Spiritual Realizers. (See the figure below, from the article with arrows pointing in opposite directions.) She wasn't sure whether this was going to fly. But she was greatly relieved (as was I) when Beloved Adi Da approved it!

You can read (on the Adi Da Up Close site) a version of the article we submitted: The Offering of Perfect Happiness: The Divine Incarnation, Life, and Work of Avatar Adi Da Samraj. This is essentially the same article we submitted, but with some of the material I had been forced to cut out (because of the word quota) restored.

The article was then translated into Hebrew by the free-lance journalist, and we submitted it to Ma'ariv, the second largest newspaper in Israel. On July 23, 2006, Ma'ariv accepted the article for publication.

That date — July 23, 2006 — may ring a bell with many devotee readers. (We now refer to it with the number, “723”.) It is the date Adi Da has indicated has special significance relative to the future of the planet:

I have no doubt whatsoever that the Blessing-Power Adi Da associated with this date (as well as His direct Blessing Regard of the article, having read it line by line a few days before) expedited this article's very unlikely acceptance by a major, secular Israeli newspaper on that date![6]

I can also see now — looking back many years later with 20-20 hindsight — that there were immense forces in motion during the time around July 23, 2006, serving Adi Da's World Work. Among many other things, those forces were responsible for the presentation by Rolf Carriere and Ruchiradana Nadikanta of Adi Da's Teaching at the world peace conference in Toronto that July, and they were responsible for linking up the Israeli freelance journalist with me to get that article published in Ma'ariv.

The article was published a week later on July 30, 2006, and appeared on the front page of Ma'ariv's Lifestyles section, and also appeared on the Ma'ariv website, where it still resides. Altogether, the article (in its printed newspaper version and its online version) was read by several hundred thousand readers, according to the newspaper's own statistics.

The publication of such an unusual article — about a Spiritual Master who is an Incarnation of the Divine, and who offers Perfect Happiness, appearing in a prominent place in a major Israeli newspaper at the height of the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war (which ran from July 12, 2006 to August 14, 2006) — made news itself, appearing in some television news reports around the world. . . even as far away as Australia. My sister-in-law called us from Melbourne to let us know my article had just been mentioned on her TV nightly news!

Adi Da was very pleased with all this exposure, and called for us to replicate this degree of communication about His Offering on a regular basis.

I responded to Adi Da's Calling by immediately getting to work on the creation of a new site — Adi Da Up Close (this site) — which represents the culmination of all my best ideas (from 1994 on) for how to communicate Adi Da and Adidam to the world via the Web. With the help of a team of devotees, and with the support (and at the urging) of the leadership of the Adidam Holy Institution (who gave us access to the Adidam Archives during the initial development process), the Adidam Holy Samrajya, and the Ruchiradamas, we launched the new site a few months after the Israeli newspaper article, in February, 2007, and have been evolving it ever since.

I had four major goals for ensuring the website served the Adidam Mission most effectively:

• immersion
• inclusivity
• addressing the key questions halting a person's approach to Adi Da
• Repository for Divine Leelas

Immersion. One of the key things I have learned from decades of serving the Adidam Mission — as a face-to-face missionary; as the person in charge of the Worldwide Mission, receiving "reports from the field"; and through monitoring the responses of visitors to Adidam's websites — is that people generally need to spend extended time in Adi Da's Company in order to allow the miracle of recognition of Him as the Divine to occur — which then allows them to become His devotee.

The best way that can happen is when people immerse themselves in Adi Da via an extended, "face-to-face" retreat in the company of devotees — like the workshops and retreats I created during my time as head missionary in the Adidam New England region; or the "Where Is Happiness?" retreats and "Awaken to Brightness" retreats that are currently being offered.

But many people find the shift from discovering Adi Da online to participating in a regional retreat a very major step — so major that we lose most potentially interested people without our ever meeting them face to face (or ever knowing of their momentary interest) because Adidam's online Web presence has not engaged them sufficiently, or addressed their usually many questions sufficiently, and their attention wanders to other websites representing other spiritual directions.

So what I wanted to accomplish with the Adi Da Up Close site was to provide a space on the Web that was so full, rich, and compelling in its representation of Adi Da that interested people would spontaneously use the website to immerse themselves in Adi Da for an extended period of time, long enough to allow their hearts to be touched by Adi Da, and be moved to take the next step of face-to-face contact. If a website could be crafted to perform on its own (without human assistance) this essential kind of preliminary missionary work, it would greatly increase the number of prospective devotees that finally showed up at our physical doors.

It seems to be working! The feedback we have received from interested site visitors and my conversations with regional missionaries have led me to conclude that, for most new devotees of Adi Da, a period of immersion in the materials on the Adi Da Up Close site has been a key component of their process of becoming a devotee.

Here are just a few of the testimonials that describe or imply such an immersive, transformative experience upon visiting the site:

• "I absolutely love the Adi Da Up Close website. At times, I have to drag myself away — THANK YOU!"
• "I visit Adi Da Up Close a lot actually. It feels like spending time with Beloved: reading leelas about Him, everything that is on there, just spending time on the site because it reminds me of Him."
• "I've been reading a lot on your site, and it's so wonderful. I can really feel the spiritual energy from Da pouring off the computer screen through those stories. I could fall into meditation right here. Wow. Very inspiring stuff. Nearly in tears a couple of times."
• "This website is amazing! I spent like two hours on it last night. Incredible stories — nothing like hearing them straight from the devotee's mouth... awesome."

Inclusivity. One of the primary ways we've enabled the Adi Da Up Close site to provide an immersive experience is by making it inclusive.

In His brief human lifetime, Adi Da did something almost unprecedented: He created an entirely new spiritual tradition and culture from scratch, and in every human dimension. As Chögyam Trungpa astutely observed (commenting on Adidam), "It is tremendously difficult to begin a new tradition." It is amazing enough to describe that culture in all its fullness, but even more amazing to experience it in all its different dimensions. Every devotee who is "plugged in" to the culture and community of Adidam regularly benefits from and is enlivened by experiencing the incredible fullness of Adi Da and His Offering, in all its many dimensions: Adi Da's Darshan, His Wisdom-Teaching, the practice of the Way of Adidam Ruchiradam, the culture of Adidam, the community of Adidam, the Sacred Celebrations of Adidam, the music of Adidam, the food of Adidam, Adi Da's Image-Art, Adi Da's books, the CDs and DVDs of His Discourses, Adidam retreats, Adidam's Empowered Sanctuaries — on and on and on!

But, before the launch of the Adi Da Up Close site in 2007, those people interested in Adi Da and Adidam (but who are not yet devotees) only were able to experience Adidam online in a fragmentary fashion: the main site (adidam.org) for a basic conceptual overview of everything; the Dawn Horse Press site for books, CDs, and DVDs; the Da Plastique site for Adi Da's Image-Art; the Laughing Man Institute site for current public courses being offered; the various regional sites for regional retreats, events, etc.

So one of the unique features of the Adi Da Up Close site is that it is an inclusive site (while still maintaining high quality), allowing visitors to get a real taste of, and immersion into, the fullness of the new spiritual tradition of Adidam and the richness of its cultural offering:

• The site doesn't only provide a conceptual overview of all the areas of Adidam; it also provides an actual experiential taste of all those areas. For example, the Image-Art section has a page for each of the exhibits Adi Da's Image-Art has appeared in; essays from art experts about His Image-Art; pictures of Adi Da at work on His Image-Art; videos about Adi Da's Image-Art; etc. The "Books of Adidam" section lists all the books, with cover images, book descriptions, essays by Adi Da on His Teaching and study of His Teaching; etc.
• The site also provides the latest news from every area of Adidam: the latest offerings from the Dawn Horse Press; news from Da Plastique on Adi Da's Image-Art; Adidam retreats occurring at the European Danda and around the world; classes offered by The Laughing Man Institute; screenings of the Conscious Light film; etc. In this sense, it is like a newspaper: it is not meant to replace all the other sites, but it is meant to provide a single, holistic account of what's happening in Adidam right now, and then direct the visitor to another website, as appropriate, for more details.
• The leelas and articles are drawn from hundreds of contributors, both devotees and non-devotees, based on Adi Da's principle (in Not-Two Is Peace) of everybody-all-at-once. The Adi Da Up Close site is also a vehicle that helps fulfill Adi Da's calling for every devotee to participate in the Adidam Misson, by drawing upon many forms of devotee contribution, from leelas, to articles, musical contributions, poetry, photography, videos, theatrical performances, dance performances, paintings, recitations, production expertise, books, glossary entries, food preparation instruction, professional commentary, editorial and proofreading skills, data entry skills, social network skills, etc.
• Similarly, the more than a thousand clips in the Audio/Video Library have been drawn from over a hundred sources and have been viewed (or listened to) more than four million times.

My intuition is this: the more inclusive, full, and rounded our communication (in a single, immersive session, or several such sessions) of Adi Da's Pattern — His extraordinarily comprehensive Offering, His Divine Leela, His Wisdom-Teaching, His Image-Art, the Empowered Sanctuaries, etc. — the more people will be able to recognize Him and respond to Him. May it be so!

Addressing the key questions halting a person's approach to Adi Da. I mentioned that people potentially interested in Adidam often visit our websites and move on without our even being aware of their (at least temporary) interest was because we didn't provide a Web presence that was sufficiently engaging on its own to allow for an extended immersion in Adi Da. (We invited them to our regions for events, but what they saw online wasn't sufficient to attract and move them to make that major step of a face-to-face encounter.) The other thing that I mentioned was that our Web presence didn't sufficiently address the many questions newcomers have about Adi Da and Adidam — another reason why most spiritual seekers move on.

So that was another major goal for the Adi Da Up Close site: to address the many questions that cause people to stop in their approach to Adi Da. Of course there are many practical questions that must be answered as well: Where is the Adidam regional center nearest to me? Who can I connect with in the nearest Adidam region? Etc. But the questions I'm talking about are associated with an emotional reaction of one sort or another: fear, anxiety, stress, doubt, etc.

I have mentioned in an earlier chapter that, in my face-to-face my missionary work, I discovered that there were literally hundreds of such unanswered questions that were halting people otherwise heart-attracted to Adi Da from coming closer to Adi Da and Adidam. And so a longterm goal of the Adi Da Up Close site is to provide a full address to many of those questions. It doesn't need to be exhaustive. It just needs to be comprehensive enough and deep enough to answer many of their major questions, and also make clear to interested people that we are obviously and genuinely willing to truly answer their questions — and, on that basis, they are moved to make the next step of visiting the nearest Adidam region, where they can learn more, face-to-face with devotees.

We have made a very good start on answering some of the most common questions, even the most difficult ones, on the Adi Da Up Close site:

• The need for a spiritual master. Much of what is called "spirituality" these days is a matter of do-it-yourself experiences, workshops, practices, etc. So a common question is: why is a spiritual master necessary? We address this in a variety of ways, including an introduction to the notion of a "Spiritual Transmission Master" — who transmits his or her Realization to others, and his or her devotees duplicate that Realization in their own case by tuning in on that Transmission and meditating on it repeatedly, over an extended period of time. (This concept is almost completely absent from most common notions of spirituality these days, as is the severe limit on what can be realized spiritually, without the help of a spiritual transmission master.) We more deeply explore the need for a Spiritual Transmission Master here, and then dedicate an entire section to a greater understanding of Adi Da's Spiritual Transmission.
• Spiritual claims. Many questions have to do with the various communications about Who Adi Da is, spiritually. Adidam's communication that He is a human incarnation of the Divine, "The Promised God-Man", "the Divine World-Teacher", "the First, Last, and only Seventh Stage Adept", etc. triggers a lot of reactivity in many people. So we have a section, Spiritual Recognition of Adi Da, devoted to answering such questions, including a very full article about the comprehensive, decades-long consideration that led Adi Da to the conclusion that He was the First, Last, and Only Seventh-Stage Adept.
• Negative websites. In the process of discovering Adi Da, a significant number of people run across "anti-Adi Da" websites that seek to combine decades-old newspaper clippings about long-dismissed lawsuits (and the associated "media circus" at the time), with stories of Adi Da's "Crazy Wise" play with devotees many years ago, into an argument against becoming Adi Da's devotee now. We have major sections of the site devoted to this subject, including Lawsuits, Media Circuses and "Anti-Adi Da" Websites, Adi Da's "Crazy-Wise" Play with His Devotees, etc.
• Money in Adidam. A lot of questions are about Adidam's use of money from devotees, for example, why there is a tithe requirement instead of a voluntary "pass the basket" approach. An entire section, Money In Adidam, is dedicated to such issues, including articles that get into details such as the difference between a new spiritual tradition with a few thousand members, still struggling to ensure its survival, and, say, the two thousand year old, multi-billion dollar Catholic Church, with its two billion members.
• Adi Da's Names. For some people, the fact that Adi Da kept changing His Name over the course of His Work with devotees is a source of confusion, so we gave a section about that: Adi Da's Names.
• Adi Da's ongoing Spiritual Work after His human lifetime. One of the biggest questions newcomers have is: of what use is Adi Da now that He is no longer alive? Of course devotees know very well that Adi Da is completely accessible now and eternally; but we have created a section for newcomers specifically devoted to Adi Da's ongoing Spiritual Work after His human lifetime.
• Etc.

I'm committed to continuing to flesh out this repository of answers to common questions over the remaining years of my life. This repository is not only useful for online newcomers interested in Adidam; it is also useful for devotees doing missionary work with newcomers in any of the Adidam regions, or devotees doing online missionary work.

These two purposes served by the Adi Da Up Close site — addressing questions that halt progress in the relationship with Adi Da; and helping people to immerse themselves in Adi Da — are two of the primary goals of the Adidam Mission, and they are complementary. Immersion in Adi Da is what allows Him to bring about the miracle of recognition of Him as the Divine, which then allows someone to become His devotee and begin practice of the Way of Adidam. A person's core questions are the primary obstacle keeping them from immersing themselves in Adi Da, and allowing the miracle of recognition of Him to occur. They are an expression of each individual's self-contraction, and the particular questions that hang up a particular individual reflect their particular background (cultural, religious, spiritual, oedipal, character type, etc.). They are a major reason that person remains a "thimble", even when the Ocean is pouring on him or her. It is our job as Adidam missionaries to address the questions sufficiently fully that the interested person will allow themselves to be immersed in Adi Da for an extended period, and allow His miracle to take place — after which those questions will no longer feel very significant. As I concluded in my earlier face-to-face missionary work, we are there not so much to answer every last question that an individual might raise (there is no end to that!); rather, we are there to exorcise the questions, so they no longer possess the person so much that they block the reception of Adi Da's Spiritual Transmission.

Repository for Divine Leelas. Adi Da always told His devotees that His human lifetime would not last forever, and, therefore, during that lifetime, He had to create the means by which He could be found spiritually, for all time. This was one of the primary purposes of His human life. And His Divine Leela — the stories of His Life and Work with devotees — is an important means for finding Him:

Another major purpose of the Adi Da Up Close website is to serve as the primary online repository for the stories of Adi Da's Divine Leelas. Currently the site contains several hundred stories. We invite anyone whose life has benefitted from Adi Da's Incarnation here and His Blessing-Power to send us your story, so we may add it to this ever-growing repository!

Part III, Chapter 4

FOOTNOTES

[1]		Originally, much of the business of the Adidam Institution took place in offices that were located at the Mountain Of Attention Sanctuary. Huge Helper, the building that historically had been the hotel for the hot springs resort that preceded the Mountain Of Attention, was the primary workplace. What became apparent to Adi Da over time was how the conducting of business on the Sanctuary was actually draining the Sanctuary of its Spiritual potency. For this reason (among others), Adi Da had to re-empower the Mountain Of Attention Sanctuary several times, by physically visiting the Sanctuary and intentionally re-installing Himself at each holy site. Eventually, Adi Da established a principle that no business should be conducted on the Sanctuary. Those living at or serving the Sanctuary should have their entire attention on their devotional response to Adi Da, thus serving the continued Spiritual empowerment of the Sanctuary. So this is why I had to move off the Sanctuary if I was going to start a commercial web business. More about the protecting the Spiritual empowerment of the Adidam Sanctuaries here.
[2]		I actually told some of this story about an angel visiting me in my earlier chapter on "A Greater-Than-Material Universe". But here I'm also providing the context for the story.
[3]		Here are just a couple of the many references that elaborate on the meaning of the angel number 28: link 1 and link 2.
[4]		From Steve Morse, "Live's Quest With All The Energy Of Previous Albums, Live Shows Its Spiritual Side On 'Secret Samadhi'", February 26, 1997, The Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Washington.
[5]		And the "reverse flow" was true too: my Web service to Adi Da would benefit my commercial web business as well. For example, Adi Da's interest in paperweights as "icons of happiness", and His subsequent associations with various paperweight artists and websites (assisted in some cases by me) led to my developing relationships with prominent members of the paperweight community. This led to my becoming the webmaster for the website (paperweight.org) of the primary paperweight organization in the world — The Paperweight Collectors Association — for a decade or so, until they finally switched over to a website whose content they could manage themselves, without professional help.
[6]		The newspaper was secular, which, in itself, made the article's acceptance very unlikely. But just as significant: Israel's primary religion (by far) is Judaism. And the very first of Judaism's "Ten Commandments" is "You shall have no other gods before me". And here was an article whose primary communication was that Adi Da is the Incarnation of the Divine in human form! For many Jews, such a communication would be felt as blasphemous. This same form of "blasphemy" — declaring equivalence with God: "I and the Father are one." (John 10:30) — was one of the major accusations brought against Jesus, leading to his crucifixion.

Part III, Chapter 4