This was a time of overlapping events and many interactions occurring almost simultaneously. In the same space of time that I was working at Dawn Horse Press, I was also attending editorial meetings for Laughing Man Magazine, taking part in study groups, helping Susan Lesser edit a book about curing jet lag with "twirling", and working on Frank's new house, which he had given the peculiar name "The Manner of Flowers".

The house was not so much a new construction as an extravagant remodeling of the original house that stood on the spot. From the beginning Frank demanded that the structure of the original house be incorporated into the new one. The old house, he said, was permeated with his divine energy, and must not be torn down. This made for a very difficult job, architecturally, but the end result was quite impressive and expressive of the "tasteful yet ostentatious" manner that Frank favors. (The Manner of Flowers was designed by architect Antonio Descamps, a follower of Da Free John who, it is said, never became a formal student. Descamps died of AIDS in 1989 at age forty. His story is told at length and with great compassion in Saniel Bonder's biography of Frank, The Divine Emergence of the World Teacher.)

I was not involved in the general construction of The Manner of Flowers. Rather, both my wife and I were dragooned, together with hundreds of others, to do finishing work when Frank announced that he would be returning from Hawaii and he wanted the house completed by a certain date.

Most of this work involved sanding and staining the tremendous amount of visible woodwork throughout the house. The sanding was all done by hand, using about eight grades of sandpaper. (I remember that some square-sheet electrical sanders were in use, but the efficient orbital sander hadn't been invented yet.) Frank wanted the expensive hardwoods to have a finish as smooth as fine furniture. That meant a lot of dust and a lot of sweat and aching wrists on the part of devotees.

I remember standing on a stepladder working on the ceiling beams over the spot where Frank's bed would be placed. "Gee," I thought, "he's actually going to lie here every night and look up at these beams. I wonder if traces of my being here will have an effect on his dreams?" Those are the kinds of devotional thoughts with which we sustained ourselves as we slaved away, night after night, often working until 2 or 3 in the morning. Devotees would say that the woodwork would be saturated with our love, and that Master Da would feel this love all around him, as he walked through the rooms.

Among the people on the finishing crews that I got to know was Peter "Godfree" Roberts, the British man who famously was Frank's cook during the "Garbage and the Goddess" period. Peter loved his fame, such as it was, and would regale us endlessly with stories about the old days. He thought it was very funny that everyone in the community was forced to eat the "lacto-vegetarian diet", while he was cooking thick sirloin steaks for Frank almost every night. He quoted Frank saying things like "It takes a real man to eat a steak."

According to Peter, Frank's diet in those days was positively sumptuous. "I would sneak in the back door with the bags of caviar and French chocolates, and cook up a dinner of prime rib and chanterelles," he said. According to Roberts, Frank used to eat caviar by the bucketfull, washing it down with fine wines and his favorite whiskies.

One thing I clearly remember about Roberts is that he would make a show of hanging his jacket where everyone could see it, and then after he had sanded for twenty minutes or so he would disappear, only to reappear an hour or two later to retrieve the jacket and say goodnights.

Another person I met on that job was Hal Okun, who was in charge of installing the audio system in the house. Master Da wanted his favorite music to be heard throughout the house, but he made it very clear he didn't want "those big egoic speakers" staring at him. So Okun and his team came up with a system of many small speakers, embedded in the walls, wired to a central technology station hidden away in a closet. I am not sure how they got any bass out of those speakers, unless perhaps they figured out how to make the walls act as resonators.

The electrical wiring was the latest and greatest low-voltage remote control, where all lights and sockets were switched and dimmed from a central control panel connected by a network of thin wires running to every part of the house. From the control panel, the indirect lighting in every room could be tuned to the Master's mood.

One of the most amazing items was Frank's private toilet -- an imposing throne of black marble with a gold flush-handle. Next to it sat a tasteful black bidet, for the use of his ladies. The washstand in his private bath also had gold fixtures -- I was told they weren't plated -- they were real gold.

The residence was a palace fit for a king...or God incarnate. Walking through it one was left with no doubt that Daism was about nothing so much as the glorification of its leader.

The main room of The Manner of Flowers was fitted for darshan with a low dais and guru chair. Facing the chair was an enormous plate-glass window that looked out on Frank's gardens. The effect from outside the house was unintentionally funny -- it appeared exactly like the window of a department store, with Frank and his chair being the goods on display.

When Da Free John returned from Hawaii in October 1981, the pace of the work increased exponentially. More and more people were brought in to do the finish-work. Teams were working 24 hours a day. The foremen -- very sweet men who loved their Master dearly -- were haggard and almost incoherent, burnt out by months and months of non-stop labor.

Everyone hoped Frank would visit the house while we were working, but at first he stayed in seclusion, working on his manuscripts and issuing his usual stream of complaints. And then one day he began making surprise visits. Friends described to me how he just walked right in while they were painting and sanding, and people gasped and fell to the floor, swooning at the sight of him. His energy would sweep over the room, leaving everyone breathless. Then he would tell people to keep working, and he would walk around giving hugs, cracking jokes and poking fun at individuals.

One time my wife and daughter were there, working the late shift. I was at home. Suddenly my wife heard my voice saying "Get out of there. Come home right away." She put down her tools, took my daughter's hand, and they said goodbyes and left. The next day we learned that Da Free John had made one of his surprise visits not ten minutes after she departed. A curious event, considering that I had no awareness of sending such a message and my wife was seriously disappointed that she missed a chance to meet Frank close up!

When it came time for Frank to move into the Manner of Flowers, the yards and gardens were still mostly mounded dirt and sod. But the interior of the house was finished, and he was anxious to get on with the decorating and the installation of furniture. One day I received a phone call from a woman in the community with whom I had become close. "He's moving in," she said. "If you want to meet him, get your ass up to the sanctuary."

So I dropped what I was doing at Dawn Horse Press, leaped into my car and drove the 20 or so miles to The Mountain of Attention (the new name Frank gave the sanctuary in 1981).

As I hurried up the walk to the Manner of Flowers, I was met by Nina Jones, with whom I had recently been editing some of Frank's manuscripts. She wanted to know where I was going. I told her that the call had gone out to come to the sanctuary and help with the move-in. She looked concerned. I looked over at the house and saw that the front door was tightly closed -- it had always been wide open during the construction.

Nina led me over to a crew that was working with shovels and rakes in the garden in front of the house. Billy Tsiknas, who was called Daji Bodha at that time, was in charge of the crew. Billy handed me a shovel and we proceeded to work the soil. As we worked, we kept one eye on the big plate glass window, wondering if we would catch a glimpse of Da Free John, whom we all knew was inside the building at that very moment.

Sure enough, a few minutes later Frank entered the main room, carrying a handful of colored scarves. We stopped work immediately and turned to receive his darshan.

As we watched, Frank walked around the big room, holding up different scarves, apparently to test how certain colors looked against the woodwork. Presumably he was choosing colors for curtains, but I am not sure. He was completely visible to us through the glass -- there was no obscuring reflection at all. He was wearing shorts and a tie-dyed shirt. As I recall he was not wearing shoes.

Right away I noticed something about him that I hadn't perceived from his photographs or from the times I had sat in mediation with him. There was a tremendous self-consciousness about the way he moved, as if he was exquisitely aware that everybody was watching him. I remember at the time thinking exactly these words: "He is the most self-conscious person I have every seen." And he didn't seem very masculine at all -- in fact he moved in the kind of mincing walk one has associated with certain anima-possessed homosexuals.

But by this time I had seen him walking on several occasions, so I can't say that his manner was anything more than a reflection of his state of mind at that moment. Maybe he was putting us on.

We watched as he put down the colored scarves and took up an American Indian mask. He went around the room trying different spots on the wall to hang the mask. He had someone hold the mask in one place and he stepped back to see how it looked. He nodded, and they put a bit of tape on the wall to mark the spot. Then Frank disappeared into the bedroom, which was directly behind the main room.

Daji Bodha sent me around back of the house to work in a fenced-in area that would be a secluded garden where Frank could read and work on his manuscripts. There was still a lot of shoveling to do there, as well as pulling rocks out of the soil.

I worked for awhile, thinking about Da Free John. The image of him mincing about with a handful of scarves had not been particularly edifying. I wondered what I was doing here. Where was God in all of this?

At that moment a curious thing happened. A great shaft of light shot up out of the roof of the house, arced through the air, and came down on top of me! Suddenly I was standing there, shovel in hand, enclosed in a bell of spiritual light and energy. The experience was quite profound and quite unexpected. It enfolded me in samadhi, and I was swept away into an ocean of bliss.

After awhile I put down my shovel, picked up my jacket, and headed home. I saw that the front door of The Manner of Flowers was now wide open, and people were going in and out. The open door seemed to be an invitation, and I thought of going in and throwing myself at his feet. But making that kind of scene seemed unrelated to the samadhi I was experiencing, so instead I walked to my car and drove home.

(to be continued)