I first read The Knee when it was published, and immediately felt a separation in my consciousness between recognition and doubt that has never been satisfactorily resolved.

I visited the Melrose bookstore in 1972, but everyone had gone for the day except the clerk. I was a Zen student at the time, and had made a serious commitment to the practice, but Bubba haunted my dreams, mysteriously undermining my attempts to be a "spiritual" aspirant.

Prior to spending two years in a Zen monastery, I had spent 7 years in a Catholic seminary, studying for the priesthood, until I recognized the bankruptcy of that institution.

Since early childhood, my only desire was for God.

When several fellow monks visited Persimmon a couple of years later (in 1974), they came back with tales of Garbage and the Goddess, and so my wife & I visited to check out the scene.

We were "interviewed" by a number of truly arrogant assholes who convinced us that, whatever the merits might be of all the "we-are-not-a-cult talk", in fact we both clearly recognized that that was exactly what we had encountered.

However, a couple of years later we were shown the Difficult Man video, and it knocked me out. I got involved with a seed group, which eventually included Jack Garvey, a name that might be a blast from the past for some of you. He went out to Persimmon, joined the inner circle, and was making preparations for us to follow. A year later, he was back with the firm conviction that Bubba was an extraordinary con man who had developed arcane powers, which he used to amuse himself at the expense of the gullible (particularly attractive young women).

Much of the donated funds were used to buy huge amounts of drugs and booze for the non-stop partying that went on behind closed doors, often punctuated by secret videotaping of porn movies Bubba forced his students to make while others gathered around to humiliate the performers. Guns were carried by "body guards", and a double standard seemed to prevail.

This was quite a blow to me, and I backed away for awhile, unable to reconcile what I read of the teaching with what I heard from Jack, which, knowing Jack's integrity, I had no reason to doubt.

Several years later a yearning again arose in my heart for contact -- I can't explain it. A group was forming in Boston, led by Angelo Druda, and I became very involved for several years (much to my wife's dismay).

In March of 84, I went out to meet Da at the Mountain of Attention (formerly Persimmon). I was overwhelmed with emotion, and felt as if I had finally come home.

Well, after returning from the 1984 Mt. of Attention experience, I began to feel Da actually living me, almost as if by some kind of sympathetic alignment. I literally felt taken over, and that there was only one person present, and it wasn't "me", except when "i" got in the way. There was no limitation of space and time, and all arising appearances were merely superimpositions on immaculate consciousness itself. Everything, even ecstatic heart-bliss, continually dissolved in this wonder, especially any sense of personal doership and identity.

It remains perfectly clear to this day that nothing whatsoever makes a damn bit of difference - any more than last nite's fleeting dream-bites.

I was very involved with the group at that time, although it was made up, for the most part, with occupationally-challenged souls who nevertheless demonstrated a heart-pierced relationship to the master.

About a year later, as I was driving down the highway one September night, I was hit from behind by a speeding car, pushed through the guard-barrier and over a hill, and sent careening end over end through the air.

My first reaction was a certain knowledge that, not only was I going to die, but that it was going to be really ugly. As that instinctual fear arose, it was automatically dissolved in a prior realization of boundless Being, totally without any dimension of space/time -- my actual condition before any identification with an individual self going through any kind of experience.

When I finally landed across the highway against the side of another mountain, and having rolled over several times -- in the process somehow putting my foot through the floorboard of my car -- I felt the intense blessing presence of the One who had captured my heart, and I was overwhelmed with tears of communion.

The whole accident was like a minor and remote incident in the bliss of this grace. It is indescribable, and even now, the remembrance prompts a great swelling of feeling at my core, so that my tears flow freely in happiness and gratitude that The Great One manifests this heart-breaking Wonder!

I eventually noticed that motorists had stopped and run up the hill to my car, exclaiming that, having witnessed the accident, it was clearly a miracle that anyone could have survived such an experience.

When the ambulance arrived, the paramedics extricated me from the car with a shattered left foot, which I hadn't even noticed, and were immediately themselves overcome with profound transmission of the Mahashakti. This was not my projection -- they were smitten! They had no idea what was going on. They asked me. I told them God is gracious, to which they readily agreed.

They said that they had never encountered this kind of post-accident feeling before, and that they felt in the presence of something beyond their comprehension. There was a tremendous sense of love between us, and they were reluctant to end the ride to the emergency room. When I returned to the community, I was made aware of a number of simultaneous miraculous healings and lilas that had occurred at the time of the accident. I was even made aware that Da had indicated that a devotee with a shattered left foot had sat beside him that night.

The structures that we take to be reality are made in truth of the flimsiest stuff of mind, and countless worlds swirl within us. Words are so futile! Oh brothers and sisters, how I long for that vast embrace for all of us -- beyond mind, beyond any particle of judgment or identification. This play of our lives is so swallowed up by this Being -- our petty considerations so much like smoke in the wind. In this moment, only our loving is the appropriate response.

But I digress from this story (or vice versa).

After some months, my life circumstances changed, and my wife and I criss-crossed the continent in a number of career moves. We went through a number of crises, which greatly clarified the naked truth of our relationship. I was gracefully relieved of cultic identification with the community, and settled into a number of years of grounding this prior realization in the "mundane" sphere of the everyday world.

When I re-encountered the Da-world, I was truly saddened to see what had been happening. The whole focus had shifted to an increasingly incomprehensible literature that was far removed from any but the most academic analysis. And the Fiji experiment seemed to have reverted to a kind of jungle rot, like a second-rate movie scenario of an idealistic cult gone to seed around an increasingly mad charismatic leader who had become out of touch with the fundamental tenets of his own original teaching.

How could this have happened? Was I witnessing a repeat of the Osho trip? Had this magnificent teacher and teaching collapsed as a result of some obscure but intrinsic faultline that ran through the human personality of the master himself, and was only now finally emerging? Was this yet another teaching demonstration? Had Absolute Egohood supplanted Enlightenment, with bizarre claims of exclusivity of Realization, genuinely full-blown cultic demands on members, and total withdrawal from the world of the six billion "slugs"? Had this great opportunity been lost?

The answer is, I don't know. From perusing this web site, it seems to me that I am not alone in my suspicions that something is rotten in Adidam. Has Realization been corrupted and betrayed by the very human vehicle that is itself subject to inevitable corruption and betrayal, particularly after years of obvious abuse? This was clearly Osho's fate, and it now appears to be Da's. I have been greatly encouraged by the work of such people as Saniel Bonder, who, it seems, has brought the siddhi into the next generation where it can take fresh root.

Being itself is always attempting to break through into whatever receptacle opens to It. It seems to be an evolutionary thing -- and I believe the astonishing event of Da qualitatively moved us all forward. There is no end to the wonder and magnificence of the Divine. I bow down to Da as I bow down to the bird circling out the window, above the trees. May all beings be Blessed! All beings are Blessed! And as for the mind, which is your body -- let it go, let it go. This was his recommendation.

A Former Daist