Adi Da Samraj’s Teaching has never been limited to conceptual ideas. It has always been more of an artistic enterprise, in which He “drew pictures” of the primal truths at the heart of the Spiritual Reality. When He fundamentally completed His written Teaching some years ago (summarized in His twenty-three Source Texts), He immediately became intensely concentrated on artistic work as His primary form of communication.

I'm with Adi Da: this issue of life — and art — is how to enter "the domain of intimacy — where people are involved with the profundity of fundamental human existence" . . .

How is one to separate the dross of life from what is essential to it? In Heideggerean terms, how is one to achieve authenticity in the midst of everydayness? . . . Adi Da shows us one way: by returning to the sensory self, in effect renewing it. I am suggesting that, whatever else they mean, Adi Da's photographs convey a radical consciousness of the primal body, which is invariably woman's body. It is the truly first body, the original body — the body in which we originated, in which every human body generates . . . Recovering one's sense of being a lived body through the living body of woman — indeed, by vicariously living the body of woman through Adi Da's photographs, which show just how successfully art can be an instrument of intimacy — one leaves the familiar everyday world behind to enter an unfamiliar paradise of the senses, which have a wisdom of their own . . .

Indeed, again and again Adi Da's photographs convey a sense of aesthetic as well as physical ecstasy. Virtually all of his images are masterpieces of abstraction — ecstatic visions of the female body that are simultaneously formal epiphanies. . . .

At once classic and iconoclastic, Adi Da's female nude becomes a spiritual emblem . . . She is that rare thing in modern art, the female not simply as seductive body, the victim of the so-called male gaze, but the female as a spiritual presence, embodying consciousness of "the profundity of fundamental human existence", to again quote Adi Da's words . . .

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. . . .

Adi Da's photographs are not only seductive but enlightening: contemplating them, we become conscious of the avatar that informs them, and with that our own inner light and depth.

Donald Kuspit
excerpts from his introduction to
the Quandra Loka exhibition catalog

The experience of Adi Da Samraj's work is not photographic in the traditional sense. Yes, the camera has a lens — that is its point of view, its point of you. But suppose the point of you disappears, for a sixtieth of a second. What happens?

His photography is about the time it takes for you to discover, to walk through, to lose balance in, the intrinsic architecture of his frames. Like music, it requires time.

The "instants" recorded by Adi Da Samraj are the clicks of a train leaving the station of the familiar. As you travel with him, you might lose yourself in the midst of blacks, of grays, of whites; and as you do this, you will recognize the space of his images as one of your own. The center has shifted. You are in the "bright room". We always were.

Michel Karman

David T. Hanson is Professor of Photography (retired) at the Rhode Island School of Design. His recent book of photographs, Waste Land: Meditations on a Ravaged Landscape, illustrates how beauty can be used to arouse our social conscience.

Adi Da's work breaks the traditional rules and conventions of standard photographic practice — not as a formalist exercise or to participate in the (conventional) games of the avant-garde, but rather as a means of creating true visionary art. There is in this work a refreshing sense of play, of experimentation, of pushing the medium to communicate the ineffable. Alchemical transformations are at work here.

I see these images as dreamscapes, as manifested ecstatic visions, as rich mythologies intricately weaving together the world and the Transcendent. Glimpses into a mysterious, enchanted world, these transformative visions are an answer to the question of how one might create a truly sacred art in our time.

In stark contrast to the cynicism that dominates much contemporary art, Adi Da's art is a deeply generous and compassionate gift to its viewers. Through his artwork, Adi Da is redefining the nature of art, returning art to its ancient, sacred origins. In his remarkable, transformative artwork, viewers are being given an opportunity to experience the ecstatic unity of creation. His images offer a truly rare opportunity for revelation.

David T. Hanson

Looking at this work, it seems to become possible again to raise the issue of an identity between truth and beauty, without the embarrassment this might normally cause in what we like to think of as a hardheaded and realistic age. This beauty is not seducing us into any kind of sentimentality or escapism, but is demonstrating its power to undo our ordinary objective thinking and to confront us with a sense of awe and mystery.

I can sum up the total effect this work has had on me in terms of a comparison with brilliant and warming sunshine flooding over the predominantly bleak landscape of contemporary culture, bringing with it a positive sense of release from the confusion and anxiety engendered within this environment. Adi Da Samraj has given us a new vision of what is possible with photography.

Adi Da is inviting us to see that art is capable of relating to the world in a way that reflects a truer understanding of reality than our present culture is willing to acknowledge. It is also clear that the spiritual nature of His art lies not in any idealistic consideration of what ought to be, but in its insistence that we open our eyes and see what is; that that requires us to enter into a relationship, one in which we accept the fact of mystery, but gain a greater sense of meaning, and of affirmation.

Jan Taylor

Jan Taylor is Professor of Art (retired) at the University of Ulster.

Whether you are looking at a landscape or closeup of a woman's face, Adi Da's rich and subtle black & white photos speak volumes about the human condition. His spontaneous and masterful use of in-camera multi-exposure allows his subjects to dissolve into luminescence or to cubistically shatter apart. In particular, his series "The Virgin Suite" literally moved me to tears. All non-essentials have been removed, except for three naked humans and a chair and ladder in a bare white room with an open skylight. Adi Da has stripped away all pretense from his subjects, as he leads them through a stunningly composed dance of longing, ecstasy, and pain of separation. His pictures of people are vulnerable, warm, and smooth, exuding an ethereal vitality that, combined with an exquisite sense of composition and a deep love of his subject, cross the boundaries of mere design into Great Art.

Dean Foster

My self-constricted ego bristles at the implied Messianism of the title, "The Promised God-Man. . ." — yet if God-consciousness is fully present as a liberating force in human form, why should there by any equivocating?

I've been inspired by Adi Da's writings for many years. He is a contemporary spiritual Hero, offering his transcendental gifts to a culture without a tradition for or even "taste" for Avatars . . . yet he bears the burdens of sagehood with persistence and love. . . .

Adi Da's photographic art explores an exciting new way of being through seeing!

Alex Grey

Alex Grey is a renowned artist, and the author of Transfigurations and Sacred Mirrors and The Mission of Art. 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 and the New Museum in NYC, the Grand Palais in Paris, the Sao Paulo Biennial in Brazil, the Centro Culturale Zittele in Venice, Italy, University Galleries of the University of Illinois, and La Luz de Jesus Gallery in Los Angeles.

Adi Da's Art is a paradoxical experience, a multi-dimensional one, a revelatory one, a liberating one, an ordeal also, a participation that is extraordinary. . . . In my opinion, this is utterly a Work of great genius, completely original and inspiring, a great gift to humanity, human culture and the world of art.

Ron Fouts

The Wild Heart Journal recently featured an article on "Art is Love", that communicates Adi Da Samraj's Wisdom on art and love.

Art Is Love article:
       web page          pdf file

Nick Poutsma — Freelance photographer Nick Poutsma's online gallery includes images of nudes, landscapes, people, travel, commercial, infrared, and other unusual photos.

Poutsma's current photographic work has been greatly inspired by the photographic work of his Spiritual Master, Adi Da Samraj.

By 1989, after having spent some years studying Adi Da's teachings and having grown utterly weary of the commercial photography scene, I closed my studio and moved to the Fiji Islands in the South Pacific, to live and practice a spiritual way of life under the direct guidance of Adi Da Samraj. I remained there for ten years, which were the greatest and most valuable years of my life to date. My principal work while I was living in Fiji was photography, shooting for the many publications and books of Adidam.

In 1999, I returned to California at the same time as Adi Da returned to another of His ashrams in California. Here, Adi Da began taking photographs for the first time, as a means of granting spiritual instruction through images. Within a few short years, he had compiled some 5000 extraordinary art images. It was His work that inspired me to once again take up my own photography, this time approaching it purely as a form of art and pleasure and making them available to others.

Nick Poutsma

Bindu Jewelry — Bindu Jewelry is the culminating work of over thirty years creative endeavor of artist jeweler Candace Stolley. From 1966 the artist worked primarily in welded bronze because of the creative freedom this medium gave her. In 1991 Stolley spent a year on retreat with Adi Da Samraj at the Hermitage Ashram in Fiji. Shortly thereafter she noticed a great deepening in her creative process and a heightened sensitivity to every element of her jewelry design. This spontaneous refinement of her artistic sensitivity called for refined materials, new techniques and an intensely transformative process. The resulting metamorphosis into precious metals produced Bindu Jewelry. Bindu Jewelry was featured in ORNAMENT, America's top art jewelry magazine, Fall 1997.

Candace Stolley tells of visions that she had over thirty years ago:

I saw Holy Places and a community of very ordinary looking people with whom I experienced non separation and the same self forgetting swoon of Love. I longed to know that Love always, and would often put my head down on my work bench and cry in longing. Then in a most unforgettable dream I met an American man who was short, round and in His mid 30's. It was Adi Da Samraj, still unknown to me. His Embrace drew me into a profound state of spiritual unity and then showed me that nothing in any dimension of existence could compare. At the end of that dream the Spiritual Presence and Power, I would later become more familiar with in the Company of Adi Da Samraj, descended into me and concentrated in my hands.

It was the late 60's as I began my art jewelry in earnest. When at last I found and came into the Company of Adi Da Samraj in 1979, my heart was spiritually blasted open at its deepest core. I saw clearly that all is God and perfect already. And as Adi Da walked slowly away, the Presence and Power of God Walked before my eyes.

Soon I was using my jewelry skills to serve Adi Da. I was thrilled to have finally found such as a potent way to feel the Love-Bliss-Happiness with which I am in Love, that had first come to me as the 'Conscious Light' of the Maha Bindu, but now came as Adi Da's Blessing with each service offering of my work . The exchange has grown my work greatly as Adi Da constantly guided me to out-grow limits in my work. Eventually (never having heard the story, but knowing my heart perfectly), Adi Da offered the name 'Bindu' for my jewelry.

Color and Substance — Color and Substance is a portfolio of custom jewelry and original art. Jeff Polson is a goldsmith who creates jewelry and adornments made of gold, platinum, and gemstones. Nara Wood paints watercolors on silk, and oils on canvas. They have created a special line of Adidam jewelry for remembrance of Avatar Adi Da Samraj in the traditional devotional manner.