"The true yogi is a wild, terrifying being, a fire. There is nothing gentlemanly about the true yogi. There is nothing gentlemanly about the Lord. As long as you want to be a gentleman, or a gentlewoman, you can carry on your endless karmic destiny in limitation, but you will never live the life truly. You will piddle around in dimensions like this one, which are nothing but excrement compared to the Divine Light. They amount to nothing, all complications and struggles. There is very little pleasure in it. If this world became a world of devotees, it would become a different place, and in the community of devotees it will be a different.

"But the Lord is wild, the Lord is a vast fire, not a gentleman. As soon as the Lord makes His contact with you, He works for your dissolution. You must yield the body. Your cells must yield. Only then are you fit for the Divine Yoga. When you have no other commitments, when you have nothing to withhold, then I enter your life."

-- Bubba Free John    

As I became more and more fascinated with Franklin Jones, I found myself bumping into people I knew who had joined his spiritual community. Often they were people I hadn't seen in years. Suddenly there we'd be, and my friend would be sharing his experiences with me, telling me about life in the ashram. When I would question whether it was all for real, my friend would say "Man, you just don't understand the power of this guy! He is for real."

There were other events, subtle and hard to describe, which made me feel as if Frank was watching me every second of the day, creating humorous counterplay to my thoughts and emotions. Being a confirmed Jungian, I concluded that an archetype had constellated in my unconscious psyche, and that I was projecting it upon Franklin Jones. I wondered how long it will take me to integrate it.

To "integrate" an archetype means to penetrate its facade with discernment and consciousness, and reabsorb its energy back into your wholeness. In fact, an archetype never actually leaves your wholeness, but you first learn of its existence when you "find it" by projecting its psychic energy onto someone or something outside yourself. This is exactly how the "outer" guru -- who is in reality no more than a symbol of the deep Self -- comes to be known.

When the outer guru appears, not only are you bound by a simple transference to a man or woman who is more conscious than yourself, but you are bound by your relationship to your deeper Self, which appears to be firmly present as the "other."

The test is to awaken to (or re-integrate) this Self as consciousness. It's not an easy task, but the good guru will make it easier by being totally giving and un-possessive relative to the projections he or she is receiving. In fact, the real guru's "job" is to puncture your transference in such a way as to make you conscious of the entire mental process of projection/transference (or "maya" as it is called in the East).

Anyway, for me an archetype seemed to have constellated, showing itself as synchronistic events, powerful dreams and fascination. That and my reading of his books brought me day by day closer to meeting Franklin Jones.

I paid some money, filled out a bunch of forms, took the "No Remedy Course", did the required reading, and participated in discussions. At those gatherings in late 1975 in San Francisco, there were five or six of us "approaching the community", taking the No Remedy Course at the same time. One of the group would go on to become one of Frank's nine wives and bear his child.

Finally, after demonstrating our sincerity, we were allowed to go to "Persimmon" -- Bubba Free John's sanctuary in Lake County, California, for two weekends of study and work with the community, and "sitting" with the Master himself.

But both weekends I went to visit him, Frank wasn't there. He had needed a break, apparently, and decided to take a little vacation with a few people from his inner circle to Acapulco.

This may have been unfortunate, but it gave me the opportunity to somewhat objectively present, and observe what kind of people he had attracted, as well as the environment that he had constructed around himself.

What I saw neither pleased nor displeased me. I met people who, like myself, had felt the call through dreams and visions. Mostly I met average young Americans who were caught up in what Frank called the "theater" of community life, enthusiastically fulfilling the guru's demands and memorizing his philosophy.

Frank may not have been physically present, but his voice was everywhere, via tape recordings playing over loudspeakers. Morning to night, non-stop, we were treated to his lectures. During one meal it was announced that Bubba had sent a very special audio tape from Acupulco, where he was vacationing. It was a tape of a dinner party, complete with the sound of dishes and silverware, and glasses being filled. Frank was falling down drunk, his speech slurred, and saying the most outrageous and funny things. To a new recruit like myself, it was quite a shocking performance -- and yet also somehow inspiring. Listening to it I felt myself begin a process of rationalizing his "offensive" behavior. Somehow my mind was putting together my belief in the guy with the fact that he tended to push behavioral limits. I felt that my dream of "the play of opposites" in him explained it, ofcourse.

The first weekend I was there, I met a nice-looking woman who said she had been with Frank since the very beginning, in Los Angeles. I was somewhat taken aback when she invited me to join her in the sack -- "my sleeping bag is big enough for two," she said. I demurred, and she became insistent. "Everybody here does it with everybody," she said. She became very cold and unfriendly when I politely turned down her invitation.

Another devotee was showing a few of us around the grounds. He took us into a room that had been set up as a nightclub. "This is where we party," he said. "Sometimes we set up cameras, dress up in costumes, and make movies."

Another interesting incident occurred at the bath-house -- a high temperature pool fed by the hot springs that bubble up from the ground at this old resort. There I saw Frank's number-two man put the sexual-make on a young woman who had recently joined the group. He was wearing the same little skull cap that Frank favored, and he was "guruing" this woman who was clearly in awe of him. He was, after all, one of the major "stars" of the book Garbage and the Goddess. I listened a little astonished as he gave her a patronizing lecture about enlightenment and enveloped her with his personality.

In fact, a lot of people were "playing guru" to the newbies. I gathered that they felt Frank meant them all to become "just like him", so they assumed that by copying his mannerisms, his speech, and his way of treating other people, in short order they would "be like Bubba."

Unfortunately, he was "the original", and they were only second-hand copies. They had abdicated their thinking to him, and they mimicked his voice and gestures and dress as well. I had to laugh the first time we were brought to "the Pavillion" to do aerobic exercises and yoga with the entire community. Virtually every one of the men was wearing the same "speedo" underwear that Frank favored!

It was no surprise then, to learn that ashram life included traditional power games and pecking orders. The Daists were very into "dealing" with one another -- a term which basically meant playing the bully or pressuring the other person at all times -- exactly as Frank did. (Something they do to this day.)

And there it was. In my opinion Daism in 1975 had all the elements of a full-blown cult. I had made myself present at the ashram chiefly because I wanted to meet Frank and see how he fit with the extraordinary person I had met in dreams. That didn't happen, and I learned things that put me off on the group.

A few days later, after returning home, I dreamt that Bubba Free John was jealous and angry with me and acting in a most infantile fashion. Curious.

And then, quite unexpectedly I got a chance to sit with him.

(to be continued)