The deception behind a requirement for devotees to donate blood to fund Adi Da's private expenses caused this ex-member to lose faith.
“Why I Left Bubba Free John’s Community … The First Time”
by Pachelbel
The year was 1979 (or possibly 1980). At the time I was considered an “advanced practitioner” of Bubba Free John’s teachings. I was one of a handful of such individuals selected for participation in the first advanced “sexuality” course and, a few months before, had been chosen – in the one and only experiment of actual “democracy” in the history of the community as far as I’m aware – as a member of the “Pastoral Service Order” (or “PSO”), an elite priestly group of devotees elected directly by the membership as their spiritual mentors or “pastors” within the community. For the past 4 or 5 years, I had been a trusted editor of Bubba’s teachings and occasional, marginal, quasi-member of BFJ’s inner circle.
At the time I was living independently for the first time since entering the community, a new phase in the history of the fellowship itself following the disastrous communal experiment called the “Free Communion Order” (or “FCO”). I had also recently made my first true independent career advancement – I had entered the community with naïve ideas about becoming a renunciate yogi or professional contemplative (which was disallowed for everyone but Bubba, his wives and his drinking pals) – and was the director of a prestigious graduate school in Northern California where I worked all day before going to the Land to serve all night and every weekend.
During this period, Miguel (Mike) Wood, Jim Steinberg and (I believe) Bill Stranger gave a talk to the FCO members at the administrative center in Clearlake Highlands to announce the first ever initiative of the community to get involved in philanthropic activities to address social issues. As a former social activist, and someone who had always chafed privately at the lack of social concern characteristic of the community, I was absolutely delighted by this sudden and unexpected new direction initiated by BFJ. “Democracy”? “Charity to others”? I was beside myself with joy.
The topic of the presentation that afternoon was BFJ’s decision to involve the entire membership in a special service project serving “the world” at large. The form this would take would be a massive “blood donation” drive, known as the “blood drive”. A deal had been struck between the FCO and a major blood and plasma donation center in San Francisco. We were informed that, with no exceptions, EVERYONE was required to participate on a weekly or bi-weekly basis as a form of service to the Guru.
While I loved the idea of demonstrating a broader social commitment as an alternative to the traditionally self-centered focus of the community, I was resistant – having a dread fear of needles – of this new form of “sadhana” being forced on the community. I was not alone. Bill Krenz, a longtime higher up in the community, and I believe at the time, its chief financial officer, eloquently voiced the concerns I believe most of the hundred or so devotees present in that room held that day. While not a close friend of Bill’s, I truly appreciated his courage in expressing my private qualms about the initiative.
A few nights later, I had the “privilege” of editing a transcript of the post-presentation reporting of Miguel, Jim, Bill et al to BFJ. Bill Krenz’s remarks were a topic of hot discussion. I recall reading, in a state of shock and dismay, as Bubba savaged Krenz for raising what I, in good conscience, could only view as intelligent and meaningful issues that concerned the collective interests of community members. I recall, distinctly and specifically, that Bubba called Krenz a “sociopathic personality” for even daring to raise these issues publicly, then launched into page after page of raging diatribe against Krenz and giving his own novel and wrongheaded interpretation and teaching about the nature of the sociopathic or psychopathic personality.
I cannot overstate the private crisis this awakened in me. First, I felt his view of Krenz’s remarks were utterly misguided and inappropriate. Secondly, as someone with professional expertise in the field of psychology, his definition of “sociopaths” was completely and utterly stupid and wrong. He was making this shit up! My reactions to Bubba’s fallible and vindictive point of view provoked a deep crisis in my faith in my “guru”. His credibility was damaged for me in that instant, and from that moment I began to interpret his actions in a more objective light for the first time.
My newfound skepticism, which I hid from everyone, including my wife, advanced quickly in the following months, fed by a couple of critical events in my life. The first was my meeting with Joshua Baran, one of the producers of the movie “The Day After” and, at that time, a founder of a Berkeley organization called “Sorting It Out.” Josh, a former ordained Buddhist monk, had founded SIO to facilitate healing for, at the time (during the Jonestown era), hundreds and eventually thousands of disenfranchised devotees of various cult leaders in the Bay Area. He had worked with devotees of Jim Jones as well as Scientology, the Krishnas, and the Moonies (devotees of Sung Myung Moon) and most if not all the major cults so popular in the Bay Area throughout the late 60s and 70s. I met Josh at a major public event I put together for my graduate school, which he attended as an extended education student. When he discovered that I was an active member of BFJ’s community he became wide-eyed and took me aside privately for a lengthy discussion. He told me that SIO was seeing more of Bubba’s devotees than any other cult of that time and that, surprisingly to him, they were by far the “MOST DAMAGED” former cult members of any group in the Bay Area.
While I was still a dedicated member, in spite of the recent Krenz manuscript, I argued my case to him as fervently as I could. But in the end, Josh had me: The fish always stinks from the head down. In the end, given my background in politics, I found it difficult to argue his point. If there was a tight-lipped, highly authoritarian cult around BFJ – his so-called “intimates” – perhaps, as Josh suggested, Bubba held some degree of responsibility for that fact. Perhaps, as allegedly omniscient Supreme Divine Maha-Siddha and Savior of the Universe, this responsibility was even more than a little.
This reawakening of my social-justice-oriented consciousness, which I’d abandoned years before in order to enter the community, was coincident with the Blood Drive itself, now well underway.
It’s hard for me to believe the Blood Drive has hardly even been mentioned after all these years by so-called dissidents, as it was one of the most damaging experiments in the history of the community. Imagine this:
Once or twice a week, nearly every member of the community – hundreds of students, including entire families – drove from wherever they lived in the Bay Area, including some from Lake County (a 4-hour round trip) – to a shabby, ghetto neighborhood in San Francisco (in the Mission District, if I recall) in order to literally give their blood (actually, “plasma”) for the sake of the practice. It was decided to give plasma, as it was possible to give plasma repeatedly several times a week, which could not be done with whole blood. (Note: The funds for their plasma were donated back to the Fellowship as part of a major fundraising campaign. Naturally, this financial angle was NEVER publicly mentioned to the participants, only the socially-conscious service angle.)
The bottom line was that once or even twice each week, literally hundreds of these brave and good-hearted souls would fill a large auditorium, equipped like a wartime hospital ward, lying on their backs for hours on sterile tables with HUGE 22 gauge needles stuck in their arms – literally draining the life out of them!
As a member of the newly formed PSO, one of my quasi-official duties was to counsel community members and keep their eyes on “practice” as they underwent this intense and painful weekly ordeal. But how could I in good conscience watch their courage and misery and ask them to “transcend” their pain and discomfort? It wasn’t long before this broke my heart. It turned my stomach, too.
What really turned my stomach, though, was something totally unexpected: I learned, from close friends who were more integrally involved in Bubba’s intimate circle, that the entire Blood Drive, and the reasons publicly given for it, were a complete and utter fraud!
I was told, privately and confidentially, by at least two of Bubba’s closest intimates (whose names I will not reveal, although I now for the first time reveal their secret), that the real and actual reason for the Blood Drive was not to for any high-minded public service at all, but was a strategy devised by Bubba and his misogynistic drinking and sex buddies to create a secret “slush fund” of approximately $10,000 per month needed for the sole purpose of funding Bubba’s sexual orgies at the Mountain of Attention (formerly Persimmon). Specifically, the funds were used to purchase expensive liquor (including Dom Perignon, by the case full), the finest caviar, illegal drugs (including everything from psychedelic mushrooms to “poppers” which were popular with gays in SF at the time, called “rush”), dildos (a world-class collection), and crotch-less panties, all of which were standard props for Bubba’s parties with his intimates for at least as long as I’d known him. (Note: To my knowledge, this practice continued unabated after Bubba used BSR Electronics founder Neal Stewart’s fortune to purchase Raymond Burr’s island in Fiji – to avoid American legal authorities – and was at least one reason my friend Patty Duff (Patricia Masters), with whom I had lived in communal housing – see her sworn affidavit in the Beverly O’Mahoney lawsuit – had finally decided to leave the community. According to a close mutual friend who had served with her before leaving herself, Patty had been responsible for making arrangements to illegally smuggle such items into Fiji in false-bottomed boats as a key service function – overseen directly by Bubba’s wives and household - before she left.)
When I discovered that such a huge and indecent fraud had been forced upon the well-intentioned members freely sacrificing their blood plasma each week, my faith in Bubba and my entire commitment to the community and teaching fractured completely and came under a dark cloud.
I privately aired my discovery to Josh Baran, who encouraged me to do the “right thing” and bring this sordid experiment to an abrupt end. He offered to put me in contact with major media contacts in the Bay Area. He also told me that if I didn’t do what was required, he would.
Armed with his practical and moral support, and with his figurative gun to my head, I privately confronted one of my “superiors” in the community, a close friend and member of Bubba’s circle. In short, I told her what I knew and that if Bubba didn’t immediately stop the Blood Drive, I was thinking seriously of talking to the media. I knew she’d take the warning directly to him. And naturally, it created quite a ruckus! I was pulled aside in a room at the hotel so my superiors could “deal with me”. But I was adamant and, surprisingly, I never received any notes from Bubba. But within a matter of days, the Blood Drive was abruptly cancelled, with some lame public excuse given. And so was the PSO. And, to my knowledge, no other experiment with “democracy” or “social service to the world” has taken place within the community since.
It was only a matter of time before I left the community, one of the most heart-wrenching events of my life. But that, too, was only for a time. Not long thereafter, the “new, improved” leadership of the community, now undergoing a massive restructuring of the administration, contacted me to tell me that Bubba – like Stalin or Chairman Mao - had “purged” the organization of corrupt leaders (his pals, whom he labeled publicly as “cultists” while privately continuing to party with them) and that he was turning now to “people like (me)” to set his house in order. “Bubba says that new leadership, people with vision like you,” the new President of the Board (my old friend Brian O’Mahoney) told me, “are needed to regenerate the Community.” It was only a matter of time till I found myself back in the community, at the very center of the action, and for the very first time actually getting “paid” for it!
But that, as they say, is another story ….