[Note: Parts 6 and 11 of this series had an HTML error which caused half the text to appear underlined when viewed in the Microsoft browser. Thanks to Mike L. for calling my attention to that problem.]

Before getting to the concluding events of this narrative, I offer here are a few random incidents from the 1981-82 period:

My wife worked for a little while at "Mound Builder", the community elementary school in Lake County. While there she was astonished to learn that children as young as age 5 were being taught to think of themselves as "Narcissus". Two or three times a day, between sessions of regular schoolwork, the children would be asked to confess to the group how they had behaved as "Narcissus". In their guileless way, they would struggle to come up with things they thought the adults wanted to hear.

The third day my wife was there, when the regular teacher had left the room, a little girl about 8-years-old turned to my wife and said, "We may look like we're happy, but we're not. We hate this school."

My wife's faith in Frank suffered a mortal blow from that incident. Here was first-hand evidence the Daists were indoctrinating their children in negative self-imaging, instead of nurturing their natural grace and spirituality. Like their parents, Frank wanted the kids to believe they were innately selfish and separating themselves from God. Like their parents, these kids would inevitably be turned into "Daist neurotics".

Bill Stranger was one of the people I used to meet at staff meetings of Laughing Man Magazine. The others I specifically remember were Saniel Bonder and David Todd. All three were "uptight", each in his own way. But Bill Stranger was definitely "the uptightest".

Once, only half-joking, I suggested to Bill that Bob Dylan had reached "fifth stage realization".

Stranger got very solemn and stern. "How dare you say such a thing of a mere entertainer? We take these matters very seriously, you know."

I argued my point with him a little, but it was hopeless. In 1982 Bill Stranger was the humorless essence of what it meant to be a Da cultist.

Later I had another run-in with him when I submitted articles that had been accepted for the magazine. He handed me a release form that said something like "for no compensation I agree to transfer all publishing rights and all other rights in these articles to Da Free John in perpetuity." I had an idea that I might use the articles as the basis for a book. So I attempted to "negotiate" with Bill, suggesting that I would be willing to donate one-time publication rights to the magazine.

Forget about it. He handed the articles back to me. "I guess we'll just put out the magazine without your articles," he said. And he did.

I wonder what established scholars like Georg Feuerstein had to sign when Frank published their works? Were they allowed to receive royalties and support themselves with their professional work?

This leads to the question: do greed and selfishness go with being a "guru"? Apparently in Frank's case they do. The three modern gurus I admire most -- Ammachi, Ramana Maharshi, and Meher Baba -- all seemed to lack such avariciousness, curiously enough.

Before he moved into The Manner of Flowers, Frank was living in a large residence directly across from "the hotel" on the sanctuary grounds. People used to gather outside his windows in the evenings and sing to him -- usually the songs that Ray Lynch had written praising Frank as God incarnate.

I never attended these devotion-fests, but by wife and I happened to be working at the sanctuary one evening and we stopped to listen to the singing.

Between songs, the singers (who were mostly women) would call out "Da! Da!" and utter profound sighs, like a chorus of Juliettes calling to their Romeo.

Suddenly a silhouette appeared in one of the windows. It was clearly Frank, and he had set up a lamp so that when he stood in front of it, his profile appeared in the window as a dark silhouette against a background of bright light.

Immediately the crowd of devotees broke in shrieks and moans. Some women fell to their knees. The singing recommenced, more enthusiastic than before. A few moments later, Frank disappeared from view.

The women howled and chanted, calling to their Beloved. "Da! Da! Show us yourself, Master!" On and on they sang, with rising passion. "Da! Da!"

Suddenly Frank appeared again, the same profile in silhouette. You could see his long hair and stubby nose. Immediately the emotional outburst reached a new crescendo.

"What if it's only a cardboard cutout of him?" I said to my wife.

"Even if it isn't, this is a joke," she said. "These people are nuts."

Frank did the disappearing/reappearing act one more time, and the devotees screamed in ecstasy. Some were laying on the ground, rolling around and shrieking like epileptics. I was afraid they were going to swallow their tongues or something.

At that point we left for home.

It was one more incident that demonstrated what a bizarre cult Daism was becoming.

One morning I came to work at Dawn Horse Press and the fellow who ran the offset press wasn't there. We called his house, but there was no answer. So we drove over to see if he was ok.

The house was empty -- all the furniture was gone. The landlord was there cleaning up. He told us that the man and his wife had packed up and left in the middle of the night.

I remember this man as an extremely likable fellow. We had eaten lunch with him just the day before, and he never mentioned a word about leaving.

Another ex-Daist hits the highway.

One of my associates at Dawn Horse Press (whose name I no longer remember) lent me a thin manuscript called "Cook's Book". It was a collection of sayings by Neem Karoli Baba, recorded between February and December 1971. I recall that he asked me to return it, but for some reason it is still in my possession. (If he is reading this, please contact me and I will send it to you.)

The sayings are mostly common sense things and spiritual platitudes. (e.g., "Give up money and all wealth is yours." ..."He who knows God knows everything." etc.)

More original:

The saint's heart melts like butter. It melts even more than butter. Butter only melts when near heat -- a saint's heart melts when anyone else's heart comes near the fire.

Neem Karoli's statements in the manuscript about drugs and LSD are also interesting. He was the guru of Ram Dass (Dr. Richard Alpert), and the first time they met, Alpert gave him 900 micrograms of LSD. That story is recounted here.

LSD is not true samadhi. LSD is yogi medicine. It is better to be always concentrated on God than to take LSD. It is good for the world, but not spiritual. It was known in the Kulu Valley but it's been lost.

LSD should not be taken in a hot climate. It should be taken in the cold in a quiet place, alone, with shanti [inner peace]. It allows one to come into the room and pranam to Christ, but after two hours you must leave. The best medicine is to love Christ.

One of the books that I typeset at Dawn Horse Press was The Bodily Sacrifice of Attention. The book is subtitled "Introductory Talks on Radical Understanding and the Life of Divine Ignorance." I was assigned the task of choosing a quote for the back cover of the book, and also for a mail-order solicitation that I personally designed and typeset.

The quote that I chose pretty much sums up what I felt was the essential truth of Frank's early teaching. In fact, you could probably take this one book, The Bodily Sacrifice of Attention, and just throw away everything that came after it, with the possible exception of The Da Upanishad. You might even build a whole psychology of the spirit on just this one quote:

The usual man thinks that Enlightenment is the having of a vision. Enlightenment is the most subtle, or tacit, unspeakable understanding. It is the Bodhicitta, the ultimate Realization of Being, the ultimate Wisdom. On its basis, all kinds of radiant transformations may develop, but the Realization itself is so fundamental, so tacit, so simple, so direct, so obvious, so transcendental, that it is not identified with any phenomenon of experience or knowledge. The means of the transmission of this Realization is an awakened individual, the Spiritual Master, but the Realization is most tacit, perfect, simple, direct, and obvious. When you can come to the point of acknowledging the Divine Identity and Condition of manifest existence, then you are Enlightened.

The difference between Enlightenment and ordinary existence is the capacity to recognize the ordinariness, to understand ordinary existence as it is, to realize its purity, its Ultimate or Transcendental Condition, to recognize it. States of mind, states of body and the body's relations are just a very subtle transformation of your consciousness, the very energy of being. Isn't it obvious? Because of a transformation of consciousness everything has jelled, everything has become fixed in visibility, contact, difference. And on the basis of contact and difference, you develop the philosophy of otherness and concepts of God and impulses toward phenomena, but you must understand the most fundamental state or origin of all the things to which you respond, with which you become involved, with which you identify, on the basis of which you establish your drama of life.

What is the Reality of this moment? Nothing but conscious energy. Everything is a modification of it. Isn't that obvious?

To become established in that most tacit understanding is Enlightenment. That is it!

-- Da Free John, The Bodily Sacrifice of Attention