After the November 3-4 celebration, we returned to our study groups in high spirits. Everyone in my San Francisco group had experienced an increased faith and optimism about Da Free John and the future of his work. We brushed aside rumors that had begun circulating about Frank's current "sexual considerations" as so much gossip.

In early December the Daist community put on a big public presentation at First Unitarian Church in S.F. The occasion was the celebration of Hanukkah and Christmas, and "The Free Communion Choir" sang traditional carols such as "O Come, All Ye Faithful", "Deck the Halls", and "Joy to the World" and the "Alleluia Chorus" from Handel's Messiah. As they sang "Joy to the World, the Lord is come, let earth receive her King..." you knew from the ardor in their voices that they weren't talking about Jesus Christ.

A pro-Jesus videotaped talk by Frank was shown, titled: "Jesus Was There to Awaken You to Truth: the Moral and Esoteric Teaching of Jesus". (This was 1979, you understand. Jesus wouldn't be officially demoted by Frank for another decade or so.)

A full boat of Daist heavies gave talks and slide-presentations: Paris Panico, Michael Wood, Bonnie Johnson, Saniel Bonder, and Dennis Duff.

Somewhere around this time we heard that Da Free John had moved to Hawaii, to his sanctuary on the island of Kauai, where he was giving esoteric instruction to his "Renunciates" and working on a new book which would be called The Lion Sutra.

Also around this time we heard that the house we had been renting in San Francisco had been sold, and we would need to find a new place to live. Immediately it occurred to us that it would be a great idea to move to Lake County, so that we could get more directly involved in the Daist community and be closer to the spiritual force we felt in that area.

Lake County is Pomo Indian territory. I had noticed as far back as the 1960s that I tended to have very powerful visions when visiting there -- including out-of-body experiences. I had long felt it was no accident that Satchidananda and then Franklin Jones established sanctuaries in Lake County. It was a spiritually potent spot, and "a good place to live."

So, in January 1980 I drove to the town of Clearlake, on the northern shore of the Lake, to talk to Daist Crane Kirkbride and others about our plan to move nearer to Vision Mound Sanctuary.

I was received very cordially at "Talking God Seminary", the community headquarters on Olympic Drive in the town of Clearlake. This low flat-roofed building included offices, a bookstore, and a large second floor meditation hall dominated by one of Frank's big guru chairs. A short distance down the street was another, smaller building, where the Dawn Horse Press was in operation.

Crane -- whom I came to like -- told me that because of the large number of new students coming into Daism, people were being discouraged from moving to Lake County...or even to California. Rather, they were encouraged to stay where they were and establish centers in those areas. The Master wanted to see his work begin to spread out across the country and the world. Politely yet firmly Crane told me I should stay in the Bay Area and get involved down there.

After leaving Crane I drove to Lakeport, the largest town on the lake. Lakeport still had a bit of a 19th century feeling clinging to it, whereas towns like Clearlake looked like they had been thrown together in a big hurry out of cement blocks, plywood, asbestos siding and house trailers. I had a friend who owned a small beach cottage in Lakeport. He had given me a key and told me I could stay there overnight.

That evening I picked up a local newspaper and opened it to the classifieds. My eye fell on promising "for rent" ad -- a location near the water, with beach rights, at quite a reasonable price. I called the number and found myself talking to a fellow writer who was leaving the area and wanted to rent her house to somebody that could be trusted. I drove to the house, which was in the Lower Lake area. It was a three-bedroom shake-roofed bungalow on a quiet hill overlooking the Lake. A road wound down to a private beach and boat dock that was shared by several landowners. The house was surrounded by black walnut trees, and there was an eagle's nest in a tall oak tree about a half-mile away. This was going to be our spot, I knew for sure.

The next morning I was driving back to San Francisco with a lease agreement in my pocket. I knew that as far as the Daists were concerned, I had broken an unwritten law by following my own destiny in this matter. A year or so later, I would learn that was in fact the case, when I stumbled on my "security file" in a cabinet crammed with such files at Talking God Seminary. My file included a report with the following paragraph:

To give you some background, Tom came up here in January and talked to us about moving. It was decided that no one should move here anymore but be directed to the Marin area. Tom returned to the city, told his wife that they would not be moving and then they both got very subjective together! Tom was put off and they decided that they should be able to move anywhere they wanted. ...Basically they want to be here where the "Presence" is very strong but do not want to be involved with any of the daily Church life...etc. etc.

So it goes. In February we completed our move to Lake County. On March 1st, Frank returned from Hawaii. The day he returned I had a most curious experience -- I woke up in the middle of the night and he was standing there, at the foot of the bed, dressed in a flannel shirt and khaki pants. There was a plainness to this apparition -- no lights or mystical feelings. I looked at him, he looked at me, and then he disappeared.

In April, 1980 there was a big "Celebration of Divine Instruction" at the Sanctuary. Apparently we had already slipped through the cracks in the system -- because we received an invitation to attend.

At that time we were formally connected to Daism as "Friends" -- lay members "who are interested in the Teaching of Da Free John and wish to participate in educational and cultural activities." "Friends" were free to take up the spiritual practices of Daism, but not obliged to do so. "All Friends are informed of opportunities to serve Vision Mound Ceremony and receive a monthly newsletter.... A Practicing Friend becomes more directly involved with the activities of the culture of devotees."

It was, as they say, an easy time to get involved. Warm bodies were needed for all kinds of work, and as long as you were "interested in the Teaching of Da Free John" you could hang around and help out and even sit with Frank on occasion.

Frank had just published two small books: The Four Fundamental Questions and Compulsory Dancing. These were considered part of the new missionary effort to reach out to ordinary people who hadn't yet heard of Da Free John. The various presentations at the "Celebration of Divine Instruction" were of the same kind. The whole weekend was a kind of "Daism for Beginners" event, that included slide shows of the early days, talks and testimonials by long-time devotees, and "considerations" of the basic principles of Daism. We heard from such luminaries as Peter "Godfree" Roberts, Saniel Bonder, Steve Frappier, James Steinberg, Paris Panico, William Tsiknas, Susan Lesser, Franz Bakker, Dennis Duff and Jerry Sheinfeld. I was starting to get to know these people, and they me. I remember one lively exchange with Jerry Sheinfeld, who seemed one of the most open and friendly toward new people. I also remember a most curious event that occurred during a talk by William Tsiknas, who at that time was considered to be Frank's most advanced devotee.

Tsiknas was giving a talk in the Pavilion. As I recall it was something about how people don't realize just how sensitive Da Free John is to other people's emotions and mindforms. According to William, Frank is literally wounded and feels pain every time he meets another human being. We need to respect that sensitivity and not impose ourselves on him or put any kind of demand on him. At one point Tsiknas was looking out over the crowd, examining people. "Da Free John does not like middle class people," he said. Then his eye fell on me, a man with a beard. "He doesn't like hippies either," he said. As he spoke these words his right eye grew enormous and seemed to fly across the room until it was about a foot from my face! Wow, I thought, he really is advanced...either that or Da is using him as a channel.

A year or so later I would experience the same thing happening when I sat with Frank. I have been told by others that they too witnessed a similar phenomenon. Sometimes when he looks at you, his eye(s) grow absolutely huge and may appear to soar across the distance separating you from him.

Da Free John did not sit with us that weekend. As I recall there was another attempt by his long-time devotees to draw him out of his house, with fervent singing and chanting. But Frank wasn't having any that day.

Before we left we were given a tour of various "holy sites" on the sanctuary land. We visited Frank's private zoo and his vegetable gardens. We also got a guided tour of his new "museum" -- a collection of "artifacts from the beginning of Da Free John's Teaching Demonstration". These included the original manuscript of The Knee of Listening and various pieces of clothing he had worn since 1970. Also on display was the checkbook he used when he started the bookstore on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles. The cancelled checks were laid out neatly, and you could see Franklin Jones' backwards-slanting signature on each one.

There was a lot of time during the weekend to converse with the various Daist friends I had made since 1975. Gossip was swirling about a "sexual consideration" that was going on at the very moment, between Da Free John and his closest devotees. For the first time I heard one of the truly shocking allegations that was to surface later, in various reports, including an article later that year in a supermarket tabloid. I was told that Da Free John had allegedly ordered one of his wives (by that time everybody knew he had quite a few) to submit to being gang-raped by six or seven of his principle male devotees.

It pulled me apart that people were saying such things about Frank, whom I knew mainly from dreams and from spiritual illuminations I had had in his presence. Were these stories true or false? And if they were false, why would people speak such fabrications in the midst of a holy celebration? I left the sanctuary that day kind of stunned and disgusted.

Sadly, perhaps because of my respect for the person who told me this particular story, my instincts said the allegations were true. That incident caused me to immediately pull back again from Daism. We returned to our new home by the Lake and went on with our lives.

I had my own writing to do, I had just received a grant from the National Endowment of the Arts, and we were enjoying life at the beach and hiking the trails of Mendocino forest. And, after all, the Daists had told us they didn't want us in Lake County anyway.

That's how matters stood for a number of months, until dreams and visions of Frank intensified once again. At that point, sometime in the winter of 1980-81, I realized I needed to go straight into Daism and get as deeply involved as I could, so I could find out once and for all what it was all about.

(to be continued)