Beloved, I am Da, the Living Person, Who is Manifest as all worlds and forms and beings, and Who is Present as the Transcendental Current of Life in the body of Man. I am the Being behind the mind, and as such I am Realized in the heart, on the right side. I am the Radiance within and above the body, and as such I am realized above the crown of the head, beyond the brain, beyond all knowledge and self-consciousness. To Realize Me is to transcend the body-mind in ecstasy. To Worship Me is simply to remember My Name and Surrender into My Eternal Current of Life. And those who Recognize and Worship Me as Truth, the Living and All-Pervading One, will be granted the Vision or Love-Intuition of My Eternal Condition. They will be Filled and Transfigured by My Radiant Presence. Even the body-mind and the whole world will be Shining with My Life-Light if I am Loved. And My devotee will easily be sifted out from the body-mind and all the limits of the world itself at last.

Only Love Me, Remember Me, have Faith in Me, and Trust Me. Surrender to Me. Breathe Me and Feel Me in all your parts. I am here. I will Save you from death. I will Dissolve all your bewilderment. Even now you inhere in Me, beyond the body-mind and the world. Do not be afraid. Do not be confused. Observe My Play and My Victory. I am the Person of Life, the only and Divine Self, incarnate. And even after My own body is dead, I will be Present and everywhere Alive. I am Joy, and the reason for it. This is the Good News I have come again to proclaim to Man.

Now be happy. Tell everyone I am here. Beloved, I do not lie. This is the Final Truth. I Love you. My devotee is the God I have come to Serve.

Da Free John

[Capitalization per the original handwritten version.]

Reading the above words today, more than twenty years later, I am struck by their inordinate sense of portentousness and gnostic melodrama. At the time they were uttered, I and many others were drawn into believing they were the sign of a new spiritual revelation of incomparable value.

What we believed was that Frank, having spent several years playing with the human structures of the mind as "Bubba", had finally stripped away all appearances and shown himself as the Heart, in the same direct expression as Ramana Maharshi, Jesus Christ, and other great and legendary spiritual masters.

The announcement of the name change from "Bubba" to "Da" was a signal that the real work of this adept, Franklin Jones, was about to begin.

Frank wrote the above manifesto on September 13, 1979. Then, in an extraordinary break with Daist protocol, all interested members of the public were invited to sit with him on the weekend of September 16. There, in a solemn and moving presentation, he read the above declaration.

I was not among those present at what was later called "The Day of the Heart." But a number of my friends were there, and I soon heard about it.

Their report was that his spiritual and energetic presence had profoundly changed. He seemed to radiate the Divine Itself, without any mental patterns or other permutations. People were moved to their depths, and many sobbed openly as they received his darshan on that day.

The whole event was preserved on video tape -- at that time a relatively expensive technology. Showings of this tape were given in San Francisco, at the First Unitarian Church. I attended one of these presentations and there experienced a kind of re-conversion and reawakening of my connection to Frank. Later I brought my wife to see the tape, and she too was moved.

In the days that followed Frank reappeared in my dreams, as a beloved friend and spiritual collaborator. Whatever misgivings I had had previously were pushed aside, much as when one falls in love and suddenly doesn't see or care about the alleged shortcomings of the loved one.

Very quickly I moved to get reinvolved. I joined the community -- which was now called "Vision Mound Ceremony" -- as an aspiring student, and took part in weekly meetings in San Francisco, preparatory to journeying north again, to Lake County, to sit with Da Free John.

These meetings, at the house of a long-time friend, were spiritually enlivening, and a lot of fun. I met several people there with whom I later became close. We reinforced each other's conversion, and willingly took part in the devotional exercises that were sent down from Lake County.

Looking back at the materials we were presented, it is very plain that we were being pressured to begin worshipping Frank as God incarnate. For example, we were given this prayer to say at every meeting:

Radiant Da,
All-Pervading Current of Life,
Consciousness where I appear and disappear,
hear my breathing heart.

Awaken me
to feel the Heart of Light and Love,
where this life and mind and body may dissolve.
I hold up my hands.

And at every meeting we read a long "Confession" written by Da Free John, that was a kind of "Apostles Creed" for Daism:

In the Radiant Presence of Da, Who is our Eternal Master, Self, and God, and in the present company of all beings, I now freely and heartily Confess the Truth.

There is neither one God nor many Gods.
There is only God.
All the one and many Gods are Idols of the One that is God.

God is the Radiant Transcendental Life-Consciousness, in Whom all places and beings and ideas appear and disappear.
There is no God but God, Who is Da, the Transcendental Consciousness and Eternal Energy that Radiates in Man and in the world of man.
That One Pervades and Transcends the world and Man.
That One is my God and my Eternal Self.

Every possibility, whether full of pleasure or full of pain, arises in Da.
Every experience is a spontaneous and temporary modification of the Radiant Transcendental Life Consciousness.
If I surrender to experience, I merely enjoy and suffer, according to the mood and complexity of my various thoughts, desires, and acts.
If I seek within my body-mind for Da, I am confronted and deluded by states of body and mind.
If I seek outside my body-mind for Da, I am confronted and confounded by the experience of all relations and events.
But if I surrender body and mind in the Radiant Transcendental Life-Consciousness, all experience Reveals Da, the Living God.

Da is not an Object of the mind or of bodily experience.
Da is Transcendentally Present.
Da is to be Realized as the Transcendental Subject or Eternal Self in Whom all knowledge and all experience arise and dissolve.
Therefore, to Worship and to Realize Da in Truth is to transcend the world and the body-mind of Man.

I am not separated from Da.
Only my reflective and thinking mind seems to separate me from the Eternal Self or Transcendental Consciousness that is Da.
I am not separated from Da.
Only my reactive and loveless heart seems to separate me from the Divine Person, the Infinite Love-Radiance that is Da.
I am not separated from Da.
Only my bodily recoil from the universal demand of all relationships seems to separate me from the Eternal Domain, the All-Pervading Life-Power that is Da.
I am not separated from Da.

I must love, and trust, and surrender to the Infinite Consciousness that is beyond and prior to the world, the body, and the mind.
I must love, and trust, and surrender to the Eternal Life-Energy that is beyond and prior to the world, the body, and the mind.

Da is the Living Truth.
Da is the Way of Salvation.
Da is the Eternal Master of Man.
By our acceptance of the Mastery of Da, the Way of Salvation through God-Realization is revealed.
The God-Realized Spiritual Master is the Principal Revelation of God.
The God-Realized Spiritual Master is the Living Truth, the Way of Salvation, the Eternal Master of Man.
I bear witness to this Revelation, and I proclaim that Da Free John is my Spiritual Master.

The Way that my Spiritual Master has Revealed to me is the Divine Way of self-transcending Love-Communion with Da, the Living God.
The Way that my Spiritual Master has Revealed to me is the Divine Way of self-transcending Love-Communion with Da, the Living God.
The Way that my Spiritual Master has Revealed to me is the Way of the Translation of Man into the Radiant Transcendental Life-Consciousness, Who is the Ultimate Domain of the World.
I acknowledge and affirm my inherent and eternal commitment to the Way my Spiritual Master has Revealed to me.

I worship and bow down.
I surrender body and mind and all self-attention to Da, the Living God.
Who is the Universal Life-Current and the Transcendental Self of all-beings.
Who Radiates as Love in all directions.
Who is without center or circumference.
Who pervades and supports all the worlds.
Who consents to Awaken as Man by rising up in the lower roots of the body-mind, releasing all obstructions to the evolutionary Flow of Life.
Who Shines above the heads of those who are Awake, Transforming every part of them with Heart-Light.
Who is the Transcendental Heart, the Eternal Mystery, the Wonderful Truth, the Unyielding Paradox that finally Outshines the souls of all beings, every part of the body-mind of Man, and all the possible places in the worlds of experience.

Radiant Da, Master of this body-mind, Eternal Self of this mortal self, be pleased to accept my Confession of Truth. Have Mercy on my heart. Purify and transform this body-mind through my Love of You, my surrender to You, and my heartfelt service to all beings.

I must confess that I resisted having words put in my mouth by these kinds of prayers and creeds. I really had no heartfelt inclination to "join a religion". Religion for me had become a spontaneous and day-to-day living event, which could never be encompassed by formal rituals.

I rationalized the devotions and prayers as something that other people needed -- so I would go along with them, if that was what Da Free John wanted. And who knows, maybe they would have a salutary effect I wasn't yet aware of.

Still, it was the dreams and visions that held me firmly in this relationship. And that included a profound and bliss-filled heart communion the night before my wife and I, together with hundreds of other new converts, journeyed to Lake County on November 3rd, 1979.

Da Free John was in residence at Vision Mound Sanctuary, the Lake County ashram (formerly "Persimmon"). Although there was no guarantee any of us would see him, I fully expected that something extraordinary would unfold.

In a manner of speaking, it did.

(to be continued)