One thing I learned while working at Dawn Horse Press, is that many of Frank's devotees weren't reading his books.

I remember discussing Daist dharma with Angelo Druda, and I mentioned a section of The Enlightenment of the Whole Body. He looked at me blankly for a second and then confessed that he had never actually read that book. Further discussion revealed that while he had read The Knee of Listening, The Method of the Siddhas, and Garbage and the Goddess, he had not read much else of Frank's ouvre.

As I got to know more and more people in the community, it turned out that Angelo wasn't alone in this omission. Two reasons became apparent. First and foremost was the lack of time available for reading. Frank's devotees were on the run from morning to night, except for an hour or so of required meditation before his photograph. Additionally many at Angelo's level of commitment were catering to Da Free John's demands well into the night, leaving them sleep-deprived and strung out. Frank wasn't allowing his most devoted followers more than a fraction of the time needed to keep up with the voluminous outpourings of his mind.

The second reason was that many people didn't understand the books, even when they assiduously managed to read them. The excuse they gave me was that "Master Da is a spiritual genius whose experience is so far beyond ours, there's no way we can understand what he is saying."

This attitude was astonishing to those of us with inquiring intellects. The books were what had hooked us, and we looked forward to each new one almost like 60s music fans waiting for the next Beatles album. (Well, maybe that's exaggerating a bit, but you get what I mean.)

Frank's books in those days were great mind trips that inevitably seemed to stretch the boundaries of our spiritual knowledge. In my estimation, Frank's "late-time" tomes of the 1990s, where he lost himself in a forest of legalisms, Capital Letters and "By Me Only"'s, just don't compare.

For the record, here are the books that I worked on during my tenure at Dawn Horse Press. These listings are quoted from the Daist historical bibliography on the DaBase website:

THE BODILY SACRIFICE OF ATTENTION Introductory Talks on Radical Understanding and the Life of Divine Ignorance. By Da Free John. Only edition: 11/81. ISBN 0-913922-59-5. LOCCCN 82173032. (out of print)

"I" IS THE BODY OF LIFE Talks and Essays on the Art and Science of Equanimity and the Self-Transcending Process of Radical Understanding. By Da Free John. Only edition: 11/81. ISBN 0-913922-60-9. LOCCCN 82173477. (out of print)

THE SONG OF THE SELF SUPREME (ASHTAVAKRA GITA) The Classical Text of Atmadvaita. By Ashtavakra. Preface by Da Free John. Translation and Commentary by Radhakamal Mukerjee. Only edition: 1982. ISBN 0-913922-14-5. LOCCCN 74-24308. (out of print)

THE BODILY LOCATION OF HAPPINESS On the Incarnation of the Divine Person and the Transmission of Love-Bliss. By Da Free John. Only edition: 1/82, Second printing (color cover): 10/82. ISBN 0-913922-61-7. LOCCCN 82-70017. (in print)

RAW GORILLA The Principles of Regenerative Raw Diet Applied in True Spiritual Practice as lived by members of The Johannine Daist Communion under the guidance of the Divine Adept Da Free John. Prepared by The Radiant Life Clinic and Research Center based on the Wisdom Teaching of Da Free John. Only edition: 1/82. ISBN 0-913922-62-5. (out of print) (See THE EATING GORILLA COMES IN PEACE)

THE YOGA OF CONSIDERATION AND THE WAY THAT I TEACH By Da Free John. Only edition: 2/82. ISBN 0-913922-63-3. LOCCCN 82173445. (out of print)

NIRVANASARA Radical Transcendentalism and the Introduction of Advaitayana Buddhism. By Da Free John. Only edition: 4/82. ISBN 0-913922-65-X. LOCCCN 82172714. (out of print)

TRANSFIGURATION (diary with photos & quotes). 200pp. (out of print)

OPEN EYES The Revelation Of The World As God. A Tribute To Master Da Free John on the Tenth Commemorative Celebration of the World-Proclamation of The Way of Understanding. ©1982 The Johannine Daist Communion. Only edition: 4/82. 2nd printing: 11/82. ISBN 0-913922-64-1. LOCCCN 87208421. (photos & quotes) (out of print)

THE LIBERATOR (ELEUTHERIOS) By Da Free John. First edition: 7/82 (cloth), 9/82 (paper). ISBN 0-913922-66-8 (cloth). ISBN 0-913922-67-6 (paper). LOCCCN 83143036. New Standard Edition: 10/95. ISBN: (paper) 1-57097-011-4. LOCCCN: 94-074938. (in print)

I AM HAPPINESS A Rendering for Children of the Spiritual Adventure of Master Da Free John. Only edition: 7/82. ISBN 0-913922-68-4 (paper). LOCCCN 83190551. (in print)

THE HYMN OF THE MASTER A Confessional Recitation on the Mystery of the Spiritual Master, based on the principal verses of the Guru Gita, freely selected, rendered, and adapted by Master Da Free John. Only edition: 7/82. ©1982 The Johannine Daist Communion. ISBN 0-913922-69-2. LOCCCN 83189835. Introduction: 'Beyond the Cultic Tendency in Religion' 'Prologue'. 'The Hymn of the Master'. 'Epilogue'. (89 pp.). Based on the Guru Gita or "Hymn to the Guru," the ancient classic from the spiritual tradition of India. (out of print) (Becomes: HYMN OF THE TRUE HEART-MASTER, in print.)

I typeset all of the above titles, either whole or in part. I was also put to work typesetting brochures and flyers, as well as articles for Laughing Man Magazine and other community publications.

In my work at Dawn Horse Press I was trained on the AM Varityper Comp/Set machine, which at the time was a high-end technology. The type fonts were on transparent discs which would whirl at high speed as a flashing beam of light responded to the keyboard, imprinting an image of each letter on photographic paper. After a text had been set, the paper would be removed from the machine and immersed in a chemical bath, where it developed like a photograph. This technology produced quite remarkable results, and became almost ubiquitous throughout the offset printing industry until it was surpassed in the late 1980s by other systems and by the deadly combination of the Apple Macintosh computer and the Hewlett Packard laser printer.

The actual typesetting work was somewhat more complicated than today's. Mouse input devices did not exist, there were no screen icons, and no point and click commands. Each change in font and font size, every line space, indent and paragraph return, every use of bold or italics had to be entered using typed codes.

This was not as difficult as it might seem -- most typesetters found that it didn't take long for these codes to be committed to memory, and keyboarding Frank's manuscripts became an interesting and enjoyable affair.

Most of our printing was done on a sheet-fed offset press housed in the same building where we edited, set type, and prepared graphics. For binding the books, in the evenings we would pile the printed sheets into vans and head for the town of Ukiah, where a professional printshop let us use their binding equipment during off hours. These "binding parties" were great fun, and led to strong feelings of camaraderie among the Dawn Horse Press crew.

Among the friendships I made while working at Dawn Horse Press, perhaps the closest was with Bill Krenz, who was the production manager during that time. Bill was a gentle soul, with a great sense of humor. He suffered from a strange undiagnosed malady -- his legs were covered with circular brown depressions, almost as if he had been branded. I felt real affection for Bill -- such that in later years it gave my heart pain when I learned how he was being used up and destroyed by Frank.

It was also during this time at Dawn Horse Press that I found myself closeted in a room with Nina Jones, working on the editing of several of the books listed above.

The first few days we worked together, I didn't realize who she was. She didn't look anything like the Nina Jones I knew from the photographs in The Knee of Listening and Garbage and the Goddess. She was extremely sweet and loving, with huge bright eyes and pale white skin that had the appearance of great age. Seeing her in juxtaposition to her early photographs, my impression was of someone who had become the helpless victim of a vampire.

A big part of our working together involved her plying me with questions about myself. It took me a while to catch on that she was acting as a go-between to Frank. He likes to collect information about his devotees, and I was no exception. (He also collects photographs -- one day I found myself being surreptitiously photographed by one of his photographers.)

Since I had attended Columbia University during the time that Frank was there, it became a big issue with Nina to find out as much as possible about my awareness of Frank during that time. I tried to put her off, telling her I really didn't know him, but she was insistent. Finally she communicated that Frank wanted me to write up my memories of that time.

Since he was two years ahead of me in college and ran with a different crowd, this was not easy. But as I plumbed the depths of my memories, I found had some startling recollections.

During my time at Columbia, there was a fellow I used to pass almost every day on the way to class, a short and stocky boy who was generally talking and laughing with his friends. I had never forgotten that boy, and I remember distinctly that I was very attracted to him, often having thoughts about how I might meet him. Now, all these years later, it suddenly dawned on me that this boy was in fact Franklin Jones. No doubt about it, it was him.

Being two years apart, we never shared any classes, and my own circle of friends never intersected with his, so we never met -- perhaps fortuitously.

The other aspect of that time that came back to me was a series of spiritual developments which I now realized paralleled psychological events that Frank described in The Knee of Listening. Apparently in some sense we were already in spiritual resonance during that time, or perhaps both feeling phenomena that were moving on archetypal planes beyond our individuality. I tried to relate something of this in the essay I wrote for Nina. I described my own spiritual crisis in college, and the breakthrough that came after I ran across a photograph of Ramakrishna in the school library. I tried to be as humble as possible in speaking of these things, even going so far as to suggest that Frank's "siddhi" was somehow having an effect on me during that time. (Now I know that wasn't the case. But when you are a Daist, the first order of business is to kiss up to the Man.)

One of the greatest revelations during my employment at the Dawn Horse Press was that Da Free John was micromanaging virtually every aspect of community life. Much of this was done through surrogates and his most trusted devotees. But one began to get a sense of whether a "community leader" was speaking from his or her own initiative, and when he/she was carrying out a directive from the boss.

The most direct evidence of Frank's involvement were the daily phone calls between his house and Bill Krenz, manager of the Press. Nina or someone else close to Frank would be making the call, but you always knew that Frank was standing behind them, because you could hear his voice coming over the phone from several feet away.

He would fuss about the most minor details of book production. More than once Frank himself got on the phone and screamed obscenities at Bill. On these occasions Bill would usually get an utterly abashed look and mutter "yes, Master" over and over. But I'll never forget the time he grinned and held the phone up so everyone could hear the torrent of abuse coming from the other end of the line.

What did my co-workers think and feel when they could hear their guru having screaming fits over such simple practical matters? Most of them seemed to take it in stride -- it was part of the paradox and "humorous theater" of Da Free John.

As for me, first-hand experience of Frank's fits was one factor, among many, that led to my eventually leaving him and going my own way.

(to be continued)