[6] Distinguishing his teaching from other religious traditions, Adi Da declared that he was a uniquely historic avatar and that the practice of devotional recognition-response to him, in conjunction with most fundamental self-understanding, was the sole means of awakening to seventh stage spiritual enlightenment for others.

In this exercise, he felt that he discovered a structure or "myth" that governed all human conscious awareness, a "schism in Reality" that was the "logic (or process) of separation itself, of enclosure and immunity, the source of all presumed self-identity".

[27]: 94  He understood this to be the same logic hidden in the ancient Greek myth of Narcissus, the adored child of the gods, who was condemned to the contemplation of his own image and suffered the fate of eternal separateness.

[40]: 88 [15]: 81 Feeling that Adi Da needed better grounding, Rudi insisted that he marry Nina, find steady employment, improve his physical health, end his drug use, and begin preparatory studies to enter the seminary.

[45] Disillusioned, he moved back to New York City and found employment with Pan American Airlines, hoping this might help him fulfill his desire to visit Swami Muktananda's ashram in India.

[7]: 85  In his autobiography, Adi Da related how he was granted shaktipat initiation, the awakening of the Kundalini Shakti that is said to reside at the base of the spine, which deepens the practice of Siddha Yoga meditation.

Adi Da returned to India for a month-long visit in early 1969, during which he received a handwritten (and formally translated) letter from Swami Muktananda, granting him the spiritual names Dhyanananda and Love-Ananda,[27]: 221–227  and authorizing him to initiate others into Siddha Yoga.

[48][15]: 81–82  In May 1970, Adi Da, Nina, and a friend named Pat Morley traveled to India for what they believed would be an indefinite period living at Swami Muktananda's ashram.

[24][15]: 82 [27]: 131 Adi Da wrote in his autobiography that in September 1970, while sitting in the Vedanta Society Temple in Hollywood,[15]: 82  he awakened fully into the state of perfect spiritual enlightenment that he called "The Bright".

He incorporated many elements of the guru-devotee relationship associated with the Kashmir Shaivite and Advaita Vedanta schools of Hinduism, but also expressed original insights and opinions about both spirituality and secular culture.

In 1973, Adi Da began to use more unconventional means of instruction, which he called "crazy wisdom", comparing it to a tradition of yogic adepts who employed seemingly un-spiritual methods to awaken disciples.

The text recounts a four-to-five-month "teaching demonstration" by Adi Da, in which he initiated and freely participated in a cycle of activities of a "celebratory" wild and ecstatic nature – an overturning of previous restrictions and conventional behaviours that was often accompanied by spontaneous displays of "spiritual power".

[15]: 90  Adi Da said that the emotional-sexual consideration was part of a radical overturning of conventional moral values and social contracts,[15]: 84–86, 89 [71] obliging devotees to confront their habitual patterns and emotional attachments.

[1] On Naitauba Island on January 11, 1986, while expressing deep distress at what he felt was the futility of his work, Adi Da described the feeling of the life-force leaving his body, before collapsing, going into convulsions and losing consciousness.

At The Mountain Of Attention Sanctuary he sat silently with over a thousand people, read from his book The Lion Sutra, and gave discourses calling on devotees to embrace the inherently renunciate, ego-transcending nature of the way he had given.

The ego—the "I" with whom each individual identifies—is not an entity, or even an idea or a concept; it is a "chronic and total psycho-physical Activity of self-contraction", locatable in feeling as a subtle but constant anxiety or stress, and recognizable in all manifestations of reactive emotion.

[88][89][85] Adi Da developed a schema called "the seven stages of life" which he says is a precise "mapping" of the potential developmental course of human spiritual experience as it unfolds through the gross, subtle, and causal dimensions of the being.

[91] In Adi Da's schema, the sixth stage or horizontal process is "the exclusion of all awareness of the 'outside' world (in both its gross and subtle dimensions), by 'secluding' oneself within the heart—in order to rest in the Divine Self", or Consciousness Itself.

[9] The practice of Adidam is defined by its emphasis on a devotional relationship to Adi Da, whom followers see as an enlightened source of transcendental spiritual transmission capable of awakening others to seventh stage divine realization.

[103][104] While the primary spiritual center of the church is Naitauba Island, Fiji, there are two officially designated ashrams, or "sanctuaries", belonging to Adidam in the United States, with another in Europe, and another in New Zealand.

Followers of Adidam have been ambitious and prolific in their dissemination of Adi Da's books and teachings; however, the church is estimated to have remained more or less constant at approximately 1,000 members worldwide since 1974, with a high rate of turnover among membership.

From 1980 to 1990, philosophical theorist and author Ken Wilber wrote a number of enthusiastic endorsements and forewords for Adi Da's books, including The Dawn Horse Testament, The Divine Emergence of the World-Teacher, and Scientific Proof of the Existence of God Will Soon Be Announced by the White House!

In an essay later analyzing what he had witnessed as well as Adi Da's subsequent career, he perceives a pattern of "abusive, manipulative, and self-centered" behavior, saying "does it necessarily follow that the individual who is 'liberated' is free to indulge in what appear to be egocentric, hurtful, and damaging actions in the name of spiritual freedom?

In part, critics point to his earlier message, strongly rejecting the necessity for any religious authority or belief, due to "enlightenment" being every individual's natural condition.

[106][116][117] University of Southern California religion professor Robert Ellwood wrote, "Accounts of life with [Adi Da] in his close-knit spiritual community [describe] extremes of asceticism and indulgence, of authoritarianism and antinomianism… Supporters of the alleged avatar rationalize such eccentricities as shock therapy for the sake of enlightenment".

[121] In investigative reports and interviews, some ex-members made numerous specific allegations of Adi Da forcing members to engage in psychologically, sexually, and physically abusive and humiliating behavior, as well as accusing the church of committing tax fraud.

[138] Kripal further wrote: In this historical American-Asian context, it is hardly surprising that serious ethical charges involving sexual abuse and authoritarian manipulation have been leveled at Adi Da and his community for very similar, if far more open and acknowledged, antinomian practices and ideas.

Bay Area journalistic reports from a single month in 1985 are especially salacious, and any full treatment of the erotic within Adidam would need to spend dozens of careful pages analyzing both the accuracy of the reports and the community's interpretation and understanding of the same events, the latter framed largely in the logic of "crazy wisdom", that is, the notion that the enlightened master can employ antinomian shock tactics that appear to be immoral or abusive in order to push his disciples into new forms of awareness and freedom.

Perhaps what is most remarkable about the case of Adidam is the simple fact that the community has never denied the most basic substance of the charges, that is, that sexual experimentation was indeed used in the ashrams and that some people experienced these as abusive, particularly in the Garbage and the Goddess Period, even if it has also differed consistently and strongly on their proper interpretation and meaning.

[139][140][141] Physician and homeopath Gabriel Cousens wrote an endorsement for Adi Da's biography The Promised God-Man Is Here, saying, "it has deepened my experience of Him as the Divine Gift established in the cosmic domain".