Adi Da’s retreat from the Real into a womb-like environment where his indulgence has free reign
Posted by Elias on Oct-2-99 12:01pm at Daism Forum
Yesterday I was re-reading Jim Chamberlain's book, Beware of the God, which recounts his years with Franklin Jones.
One of the stories Jim tells is called "Bye Bye Money":
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When my wife and I arrived in San Francisco to join the community we had savings of over $10,000 in the bank. As far as we were concerned, we were joining this community for life, and we were happy to contribute everything we had to it. After all, we were doing this to change the world.
First we were asked to donate $4000 to pay for a giant video viewer, which was cutting edge technology then. Then a man named Bill Krenz called me on the phone at the Dawn Horse Bookstore/Center and told me that Da had directed him to raise money to put a down payment on a piece of property adjacent to the sanctuary, and that they needed about $4000 urgently. That was fine with me. But when I got off the phone with Bill, Steve Frappier, the devotee in charge of the Center, told me that Bill's story about a piece of property was bullshit. Steve was part of Da's inner circle, so he knew. He said that they needed the money because Da was about to do some serious partying. I didn't care. They got the money.
The remainder of our savings account went to the community soon after that, for what I don't remember. Phase I members of the community tithed, meaning they donated about 10% of their incomes. Phase II members [Jim was Phase II] gave everything, getting housing, food, and $7.00 a month "walk-around money" in return.
...One day I got a call at the Center instructing me to meet another devotee at a nearby supermarket to do some shopping for Da, who was going to be staying for a few days at a house in Mill Valley. The woman I met at the supermarket told me that we were going to shop for party food, and we proceeded to spend a couple hundred dollars on candy, soda, potato chips, and other junk food.
I drove with the groceries to the Mill Valley house, and while carrying bags of groceries in, one of Da's wives came up to me wearing nothing but panties and a vest and acting very friendly. She asked me my name, and then asked me if I'd like some pot to take with me. I did a double take. This was the first I'd heard that Da's infamous parties included pot.
"We've got bags full of pot!" she said, confirming what Steve had told me about what that $4000 was earmarked for. "I'll get some for you."
She turned to go down a flight of stairs when another one of Da's wives walked up to her and said, "That's not a good idea." She ushered the friendly wife away. A few weeks later I heard that she left Da to return to a former boyfriend in her home town somewhere in the Midwest. Someone who lived in my household had been at Da's house and overheard him on the phone with her pleading with her for a half hour to come back to him. She didn't.
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Reading that little story got me thinking about how swiftly, after his "enlightenment", Frank gravitated to the requirements of his own comfort, the confiscation of others' property, the pleasures of the body, and a hedonistic life-style that lasts to this day.
I thought about his need for a tropical island experience -- a kind of "samadhi of the vital" -- where he and a few "intimates" can pursue the pleasure-principle undisturbed.
Indeed, Frank has skillfully pushed away the realities of life as it is lived by 99.999999999999999999 percent of the people on the planet, preferring to act out the age-old myth of a pampered god-king, his every want and desire fulfilled by willing sycophants.
OK...that's old news. That aspect of Daism has been soundly trashed from all sides.
What came to me now, however, was the thought that Frank is a descender -- he escapes from reality (including spiritual reality) by descending into the vital.
It's funny, because the man has always criticized "5th and 6th stage saints and yogis" who escape from this world by ascending into the spiritual realms of the sahasrar. Even a good old fashioned nirvakalpa samadhi ("formless ecstacy") is, in Frank's ignorant view, "limitation" -- a contraction from the Real, and self -indulgent unenlightenment!
In fifth state conditional Nirvikalpa Samadhi attention ascends beyond all conditional manifestation into the formless Matrix of the Spirit-Current or Divine Light infinitely above the world, the body, and the mind. ...[It] is a forced and temporary state of attention. ...It is produced by manipulation of attention and of the body-mind. [Love-Ananda Gita, page 766.]
But if you examine how Frank has "moved attention" after his own "enlightenment", a pattern of descent emerges -- the manipulation of the body-mind towards a conditional manifestation of infantile mental-physical self-gratification.
That is to say, his "spiritual" journey is one of seeking ever-more isolation and enclosure in a womb-like environment, where he will feel protected and cared for by others. The instruments of his search have been unvarnished greed, lust, thievery...and all forms of mental violence.
What does he "win" for his trouble? A bland boring existence walking on a beach in the South Pacific with a few of his buddies and girlfriends.
Whoa.
I imagine that minds like William Tsikinas, "smoothed out" by strolling in the surf and watching the sunsets, feel they have reached some pinnacle of spiritual experience and are the envy of the rest of the human race. Periodically snapshots of these "renunciates" lounging about their island paradise are published in the community magazines, to remind the overworked slaves what a grand destiny awaits devotees when they finally get the "yes, you're ready" nod from Frank.
All that Tsikinas and geeks like him have really accomplished though, is to rip off the energies of a few hundred marks in order to buy themselves a bit of samadhi of the senses...a day in the sunshine that will very soon be exhausted and over.
Frank and his mates' manipulation of the minds and lives of others to acquire a conditional heaven for themselves is, more than anything else, the definitive statement about what Franklin Jones is and what he is doing.
Frank has written a few interesting philosophical tracts, which largely function as consciousness-traps for the young and the weak-minded. But the lions share of his pitifully selfish existence has been spent on his own comfort and self-indulgence. In my view, he has given nothing of lasting value to the human race.
Frank will be remembered as the World Teacher of Hoggishness.
Just so.
Elias