One might have thought that after receiving Bubba Free John's darshan, I would have been drawn closer to him. But such was not the case.

Shortly after sitting with Frank in 1976 I had the following dream:

DREAM. My daughter and I visit the Vedanta Temple in Los Angeles where Franklin Jones says he had his awakening. As we enter the building, I spit on the threshold, then we proceed through a spiral series of rooms. The place appears in the dream as a toy museum -- numerous mechanical dragons and serpents and stuffed Hindu gods and goddesses are on display.

Finally we arrive at the very center of the temple. There we find Frank's "goddess", the Mother Shakti with whom he says he experienced sexual union and ultimate realization. She is a nondescript doll sitting on a throne, holding a globe dangling on a chain. She is surrounded by thousands of other little stuffed dolls -- her "worshipers."

And then, a few days later, this one:

DREAM. Franklin Jones' autobiography is seen as a comic book about a young American who learned to draw electrical energy out of a hole in the ground. We see every cell in his body filling with radiant lightning. The figures of Superman and Batman move toward him from the right and left, and the three weld into one all-time super-being. Overhead in the clouds the circle of super-siddhas look down beneficently on their son. But they frown if he should think of dissolving the duality of their existence!

That funny dream was followed almost immediately by a remarkable vision that brought a definitive end to that period of my involvement with Franklin Jones:

DREAM. I return to my old family home to find that there is a meditation hall where the livingroom used to be. People are sitting in meditation, waiting for the arrival of a teacher. I enter and take my place among them.

The teacher arrives, a Chinese man about sixty years-old. There is no special chair to set him apart, and no one shows him any special honor other than turning to face him after he sits in the midst of the group. He doesn't preach or do anything other than just sit there.

Meditating on this man I begin to feel sick to my stomach. An incandescent scintilla of bliss appears in the center of my head and quickly expands into a sun of ecstatic awareness. The old teacher leaps up and comes over to me, just as I collapse on the floor.

He takes my head in his hands and performs various gestures over me. Then he leaps to his feet and enacts a nimble ritual which seems to be a combination of American Indian dance and eastern Indian yoga.

The intensity of the inner light gradually lessens until I am able to sit up. I feel almost normal, but there is an indelible sensation of bliss moving through my entire body.

The teacher sits back in his place, and the meditation session comes to an end. The disciples drift out of the hall, or gather around the old teacher to converse.

A few minutes later I discover the old Chinese teacher sitting next to me. But he has not moved from his spot! Apparently I have unconsciously gravitated in his direction after the meditation session.

I look at him shyly. Then I hear myself say, "I penetrated your consciousness with my intuition!" He nods. I understand that this is how "satsang" is supposed to work. The guru is simply present, and you reach into his consciousness with the power of intuition, to the best of your ability.

Our hands stray toward each other. It is as if we are in love. I find myself collapsing in an informal bow of surrender. He hugs me and lays his head against mine. The light starts to build in the center of my brain and I begin to feel sick.

I sit up. "It's happening again!" I withdraw from his touch and let the light subside. He offers me a minuscule pill made of silver and gold.

I swallow the pill and leave. Walking along the streets of my hometown, I am peaceful in a new way, a still and pure awareness that transcends the qualities of the left and the right and ascending and descending. I understand that the further transformation of the psyche will continue in reference to this newly opened center in myself.

In the succeeding weeks, this vision was followed by a number of similarly intense illuminations, without images or stories.

The net effect of these experiences was that my transference to Frank fell completely away. At least for the moment, he no longer seemed attractive to me. I went on with my spiritual life and let go of my involvement with Daism, such as it was.

By the middle of the year, I completed the Jungian analysis I had started two-and-a-half years before. Then I traveled to the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado, to teach a summer seminar in creative writing.

Naropa, as you may know, was founded by the Tibetan Buddhist Chogyam Trungpa, a tulku and abbot in the Kagyu tradition. Naropa's literature department was called "The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics" and was directed by Allen Ginsberg, who was in residence that summer, along with Philip Whalen, William S. Burroughs, Gregory Corso, and others. I was fortunate to be invited because I was associated with the so-called "New York School" of poets whom Allen had taken under his wing when he invited Anne Waldman to co-direct Naropa's literature school with him.

Ginsberg, after traveling India, embracing Hinduism, and receiving an initiation from Muktananda, had found Chogyam Trungpa. Trungpa became his guru, and Tibetan Buddhism became his path. Philip Whalen, after living many years in Japan, had become a Zen priest. Burroughs, like Ginsberg, had embraced Buddhism -- his own peculiarly nihilistic interpretation of Buddhism. Corso's religion was bacchic -- he was a loud egomaniac who liked to make drunken scenes and be the center of attention.

At one point Ginsberg and Whalen and myself were having breakfast together, on the patio of the house Whalen had rented in Boulder. I asked Allen if he had heard of Bubba Free John (Franklin Jones). "Yes, I read one of his books. What do you think of him?" he asked.

"Oh, he's the real thing," I said.

Ginsberg nodded, accepting my assessment. "Unfortunately he's not easy to meet. I inquired about seeing him, but they make you jump through hoops." Allen went on to describe how he spent time with Muktananda, and how accessible and generous Muktananda had been. "I received a transmission and a mantra from Muktananda," he said.

I was able to meet Chogyam Trungpa that summer, and each of the following two summers that I taught at Naropa. I spent about an hour-and-a-half alone with him, answering his probing questions about myself and talking about the fate of Tibet and spiritual things in general. My sense of him was that he was not really in his body. I kept having this intuitive perception that he was located somewhere above and to my left, animating the body before me like a living puppet.

I liked him a lot. He was extremely alert and had a great sense of humor. I didn't like that he made people wait an hour or more when he was scheduled to give a public talk. I didn't like that he was romancing the young women who would kneel before him after his talks and gaze up at him with soulful eyes. I didn't like that he was an alcoholic -- people said he drank saki virtually non-stop from morning to night. And I didn't like his choice of second-in-command, Thomas Rich (Osel Tendzin), who came across as superficial and arrogant. Trungpa called Rich "one of the greatest examples of a practitioner who has followed the command of the Buddha and his guru...he is absolutely capable of imparting the message of buddhadharma to the rest of the world." But thirteen years later it was revealed that what Rich knowingly imparted to the world was the AIDS virus, to over a hundred sexual partners, both male and female. "Thinking I had some extraordinary means of protection," he said at the time, "I went ahead with my business as if something would take care of it for me." The Rich scandal nearly destroyed Naropa and severely damaged the Tibetan Buddhist community.

But in 1976 that was future history -- and meeting Trungpa helped me form a connection to Buddhism, which I began to study as soon as I returned to San Francisco.

Back home, making contact with old friends, I learned that Bubba had spent the summer secluded in his house, growing a beard and giving talks to a small group of devotees. This was the period known as "indoor summer", in which he came up with the koan-like formulation, "You don't know what anything is." First-rate pamphlets came out of that period -- You Don't Know What It IS and I Is the Body -- two of his finest talks in many people's estimation.

I read those pamphlets, and followed the newsletters that the Daist community mailed out on a regular basis. But I still felt no urge to get involved.

In February of 1977 my wife and I had the good fortune to attend the Ceremony of the Vajra Crown (also called the "Black Hat Ceremony") given by His Holiness the 16th Gyalwa Karmapa at Fort Mason in San Francisco. The Karmapas (there have been seventeen of them since the 12th century) are the leaders of the Kagyu sect of Tibetan Buddhism (Trungpa's order).

The Kagyu order is the medium of transmission of the meditative teachings known as mahamudra. These teachings were first developed through the spontaneous insight of the great Indian siddha Tilopa (988-1069). Their realization was passed down from guru to disciple through the great progenitors of the lineage: Naropa, Marpa, Milarepa and Gampopa, and successively through the sixteen Gyalwa Karmapas up to the present time. (from the booklet accompanying the Vajra Crown Ceremony)

If you are familiar with Tibetan Buddhism, you know that the names listed above represent a very heavy lineage, and the chance to receive a spiritual transmission handed down from Naropa and Milarepa is not something to be missed. The University Press 2-volume edition of The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa had been on my bookshelf since it was published in 1962.

There were, I am told, about seven hundred people in attendance at the ceremony. Several people have told me there experiences, and I will here relate my own.

To give you a picture of what transpired, I will quote from the official description of the Vajra Crown Ceremony:

His Holiness the Gyalwa Karmapa sits on an elevated throne. He is surrounded by his monks and, beyond them, the audience. The monks begin to chant, acting as spokesmen for the entire gathering in a prolonged request that Karmapa assume his transcendental form of Avalokitesvara, the bodhisattva of compassion. (Ibid.)

One of the most important bodhisattvas in Mahayana Buddhism, Avalokitesvara is considered a supreme embodiment of compassion and wisdom. He is also considered an embodiment of the power of the buddha Amitabha, who is said to enlighten beings directly, by sharing his Buddha-mind with others.

The Vajra Crown Ceremony could be seen as evidence of the compassion of Avalokitesvara and Amitabha -- for within this ceremony transmission is directed toward to all who are present, not simply to those who have studied and practiced the Mahayana way.

In response to the supplication, His Holiness removes his hat and repeats the "om mani padme hum" mantra while telling his crystal rosary. At this time, he is opening himself and preparing to enter wholly and completely into his manifestation as Avalokitesvara, totally awakened and radiating the energy of compassion.

A true transmission, the meeting of minds between His Holiness and the audience, here becomes possible. But the audience should not remain passive. As His Holiness repeats the "mani" mantra, the audience should be fully attentive to him and permit its awareness to merge with his.

Having completed one hundred repetitions of the mantra, His holiness places the Vajra Crown on his head. This completes the link with his transcendental aspect and with the audience. His Holiness then removes the Crown and the ceremony is terminated by the chanting of the monks, dedicating the benefits arising from the ceremony to all sentient beings and asking for long life for His Holiness. (Ibid.)

It was said that the Vajra Crown (or "black hat") was woven from human hair, a gift from the Empress of China to an earlier incarnation of Karmapa.

We all understood that when the moment came that Karmapa put on this little hat, he would share his enlightened state with everyone in the room. Did that happen? Many people said they experienced nothing. Many people said yes, it definitely happened. I certainly felt a shift in consciousness, and a sudden sense of unobstructed joyfulness. It was just there, exquisitely subtle, nothing you could lock onto with your mind. Several of us looked at each other. "Did you feel that?" We all nodded.

Once the ceremony ended, everyone formed a line to file past Karmapa and receive his blessing. One by one we made our way to the front of the hall, past the chanting monks. When each person stepped in front of Karmapa's raised throne he would mutter a few words, give them a little tap on the head, and place a colored string around their necks.

When it was my turn, I stepped forward a little nervously and bowed to receive the blessing. Instead of a tap on the head, I felt Karmapa's huge hand grab my hair and jerk my head back so that I was suddenly looking straight up into his face.

What I saw simply left me breathless. Looking into his eyes I saw a mind that was impossibly huge, going out in all directions, with no feeling of limits. I knew without a doubt that I was looking into the eyes of a living Buddha. Those vast eyes studied me for a minute, then the hand jerked my head down, and the string was placed around my neck. The attendants led me away, to make room for the next person. As I moved away I felt pieces of myself falling off into a great unfathomable sea.

That night and for several nights thereafter I dreamt of Karmapa. That was twenty-five years ago. (The 16th Karmapa died in November, 1981.) I still dream of him occasionally to this day.

In won't go into an analysis here of what Karmapa represents, or even speak much about Buddhism. This little narrative is about my relationship with Franklin Jones aka Bubba Free John. I include the Karmapa experience in order to put the events surrounding Bubba into a bit of perspective, relative to the spiritual context of the times.

In the 1970s I felt the spirit coming at me from several directions at once -- Frank was hardly the "unique source" he pretended to be, nor was he superior to any of the other teachers and transmissions that appeared. Despite much of what he has said about himself, at that time he failed to demonstrate anything remotely comparable to the consciousness and transmission of Karmapa.

And that pretty much sums up how I felt about Frank through 1978 and most of 1979.

It wasn't until "The Day of Heart", in September 1979 -- the famous day when Frank announced his name would henceforth be "Da Free John" -- that I began to once again feel him pulling me in.

Curiously, I found myself unable to resist.

(to be continued)