Adi Da was born in New York at the outbreak of World War II. From 1983 he lived principally in Fiji and became a Fijian citizen. The author of over sixty books on spirituality and a prolific artist, he also had profound attention for world affairs, particularly during the last decade of his life, as summarized in Not-Two Is Peace.
Adi Da was born in a unique spiritual state. As a young man, he immersed himself in the traditions of human wisdom and spirituality. His Western studies included university degrees--in philosophy from Columbia and in literature from Stanford. Following his university years, he intensively engaged both Western and Eastern forms of spiritual practice.
In 1970, at the age of thirty, Adi Da was re-established in the illumined condition he had known in his earliest life. He began to offer formal instruction in spiritual practice to those who came to him, creating (out of a free interactive participation with his devotees) what is now an unprecedented body of spiritual, philosophical, and practical writings (find the most current offerings at the Dawn Horse Press website), as well as an immense body of visual art (the website dedicated to Adi Da’s art is called Daplastique). In 2007, his artwork was exhibited at the 52nd Venice Biennale, and subsequently in several other exhibitions, including in Florence, New York, and Los Angeles.
As spiritual teacher, artist, and "World Friend", Adi Da is not a conventional figure. He is not political in any ordinary sense of the word. Rather, his address to humanity comes from his lifelong communication of the truth of human existence. He is making clear the species-endangering forces of limitation in our world, the means to go beyond them, and the great urgency of this "going beyond".