A Companion to Adidam brings together a half-dozen scholars of New Religious Movements (NRMs) with a half-dozen of the many academic followers of Adi Da to produce a comprehensive study of a highly creative alternative spiritual group. In addition to chapters on such standard subjects as the movement’s history, membership profile, controversies and the like, Adidam examines unusual (for NRM studies) topics like Adidam’s architecture, and the art and literary productions of the founder. Prior studies of NRMs have largely ignored the cultural dimensions of such groups. There is also an untold story in Adi Da’s attempt to create a new spiritual tradition, a project that has been severely challenged by Adi Da’s passing in 2008. Though new religion specialists have been aware of this group for decades, and though Adi Da and his organization are generally acknowledged to be important, there have been no prior book-length treatments of this group, and few articles. This is the first published research on the current organization, its membership and the extensive corpus of literary and artistic works that Adi Da created over the past two dozen years.
