In Jungian analysis the first dream the patient brings is said to often prefigure the whole meaning of that person's analysis.

So it was that after first learning of Franklin Jones, and reading his book, I had several warning dreams. In retrospect the first showed in no uncertain terms what was going on, and predicted the entire future of my relationship with this man.

What follows is from a notebook I kept beginning in 1975:

DREAM: On the top floor of a building on Polk Street in San Francisco, people are gathered around Franklin Jones, who is speaking to each person in turn, altering his image to reflect some archetype or authority figure in their unconscious mind. He has got everyone in the group enthusiastically playing out their private reality in relation to him.

I circle the group to get a better look at their leader. He seems to notice me and shifts into a Christ-like pose, black beard and long black hair. Then he becomes a giant head protruding from the floor, which speaks as follows:

"When I was born there were signs in the heavens and among the stars. I am a prophet bringing peace to the world. I like to smoke lots of dope everyday."

At that point most of the middle-aged people get up and leave, but they are quickly replaced by young hippie types.

Then I am passing down through the floors of a building which begins beneath the head of this giant guru. On each floor I find trance-worlds of persona-games under the leadership of his chief disciples. The scenarios change, but the plot is always the same: in a group setting you are encouraged to express yourself freely, and no matter what you say or do, you automatically win lots of admiration. After you are hyped up on yourself, they bring on the heavies who tear you down with total disapproval! Your consciousness battered and confused, you are sent down to the next floor for further deprocessing. Each successive "theater of reality" is a drama of extremes -- no matter what role you identify with, a more powerful opposite appears to crush you.

From scholarship games on the top floors to sex and war on the lowest floors, it is all "maya" -- the never-ending conflict of opposites. The only way to avoid its destructive effect is to never have your sense of self exist in reference to love-hate feedback from the group or its leader.

Rather your power must exist relative to an inner sense of self which is serene, sure, and in touch with the Infinite. However, since nobody would buy into a school like this if he had such a point of reference, all the students fall victim to the wiles of the voracious guru and his henchmen! The deconditioning of consciousness continues floor by floor until you reach the street, where they take away the human husks in garbage trucks.

But in the dream, penetrating the whole treacherous illusion, I break out into the sunlight!

This is the second dream of the series of dreams which led up my getting involved with Frank:

DREAM. Eight young men sit around a lunch table in an art school cafeteria. None of us go to school here, we're just visiting. Seven of us are reading the Upanishads. The eighth, who is dark, asks me what will happen if he abandons himself to God. "You will become a mast!" I say jokingly. ["mast" -- pronounced "must" -- is an Indian term for a God-mad person.]

At that moment Franklin Jones enters wearing a white robe and a blue Phyrigian hat with gold trim. He strikes a few poses, climbs to a high place and stands immobile with his face hidden behind a little plastic curtain. He also poses with sunglasses. We are all interested to see that this fellow has gone bananas! "What's he going to to next?"

He comes down and circles our table, then addresses us in portentous tones. "You have been permitted to say beforehand the things I will do -- you are my prophets. There's enough role for everyone when I let it all flow through me... Seven of you are reading the Upanishads. I should have told you to vary your fare so we would have all the religions covered!"

Later I saw a picture on page 172 in the book Garbage and the Goddess where Frank is posing in sunglasses, very much as he appeared in my dream.

The fact that the dream mentions masts, and that Frank shows up acting completely nuts, seems to suggest that he might, at that time, have been something of a 5th stage mast. In fact, in my opinion he may still be a mast, whose "divine derangement" has taken the aspect of extreme ego-inflation.

At this point I had read The Knee of Listening, but other than that I knew little of Franklin Jones. But a friend of mine, "Theos", had met him, and he gave me glowing reports. "You really ought to check this guy out," he said.

I went downtown to the community's Polk Street bookstore to see the movie they were showing about him -- "A Difficult Man". Many of you have seen this film, I am sure. (It is no longer extant in its original form, all copies having been destroyed in the late 1970s.)

My notes from the time:

In this movie we see a handsome ebullient American in his late thirties, dressed in semi-Oriental attire, engaging his disciples in various activities of a religious and semireligious nature. We hear him giving philosophical discourses, we see him joking and laughing over dinner, we see his disciples groveling at his feet in abject surrender, and we see him "zapping" them with some kind of electric force that seems to emanate from his hands. These last demonstrations are most impressive, for the disciples are screaming and twisting as the force hits them, and later they testify as to how great it felt.

There was something both attractive and off-putting about Franklin Jones. He had a clear lack of humility, that was for sure. He seemed to be playing the role of a rock star -- a performer who was working the crowd.

That night Franklin Jones appeared while I was dreaming I was talking to my mother and father. He came from behind me, and his presence seemed more tangible than the dream itself, more real.

He began talking to me, and as he talked true insight congealed in my mind, and my spine began to twitch in the so-called "kriyas" of yogic purification. I turned to my parents and said, "He's really got it, he's the real thing!"

But my mother was sceptical. "What about the steak and champagne?" she asked. (Which is funny, because at the time I knew nothing of Frank's predilection for steak and champagne. Many years later Godfree Roberts would relate to me, eyes misty with nostalgia, his memory of the glory days in the 1970s when he cooked a steak almost every night for "Bubba".)

My mother was suspicious of Frank's apparent love of material wealth. So, in the dream, Franklin invited her to the "Victory Delicatessen" for steak and champagne. Over dinner he worked her over verbally, trying to release something in her, but without success.

"She's a hard nut to crack," he told me. As for the steak and champagne, "Peanut butter and Squirt are more to my taste!" said Frank.

Just before I woke up he asked me how I felt about him now -- did I still want to criticize him?

~E