Gurdjieff & The New Age, Part X

From Franklin Jones To Adi Da Samraj, Part II

by William Patrick Patterson

In the late summer of 1966, Jones and Nina, now married at Rudi’s request, moved
to Philadelphia so he could enroll at a Lutheran seminary. Jones doesn’t make clear in the
first edition of The Knee of Listening why he left Rudi, but in a later edition he says that
Rudi sent him to the seminary after speaking with his father. In his youth, Jones had been
an acolyte in a Lutheran church, so that may have been a reason, but he had long since
fallen away from Christianity. But also, spiritual teachers sometimes do send their
students away when they can learn no more from them, but usually this is after many
years of study. That it happened after only a year-and-a-half suggests that perhaps Rudi
wanted to get rid of him. As Rudi said, “A teacher who is in personal conflict with a
student should release the student for both their sakes. Teaching should be a harmony of
learning between teacher and student.” Certainly Jones was a handful. Not only highly
intelligent and well-educated, Jones claimed that since infancy “I have always been
Seated in the ‘Bright.’... Even as a little child I recognized It and Knew It, and my life
was not a matter of anything else.”

Jones, for his part, saw

Rudi as “a kind of super-
parent.” He says his family,
which from his description
sounds rather dysfunctional,
rejected his experiencing of the
“Bright.” Later on, he writes
that “my own ordinary tendency
was to seek a loving connection
on which I could become
dependent. Where love was not
poured on me, I tended to
become angry and resentful. But
Rudi used, and even
intentionally stimulated, these
tendencies in me.”

Through Rudi’s insistence

on work, diet and exercise,
Jones’ weight fell from 230 lbs
to 170 lbs. The habits of the old
days weakened. “I would often
exploit the possibilities of sex,”
Jones says, “or become deeply
drunk on wine, engage in orgies
of eating, or smoke marijuana
for long hours.” (Unfortunately, they would later reappear once he began to teach.)

In the spring of 1967, while at the seminary, Jones suffered what doctors diagnosed
as an anxiety attack, but he believed it was a crisis in which he had died. Because of
Rudi’s stress on the practice of self-observation (oddly, the fundamental practice of self-
remembering, embodiment, is never mentioned either by Jones or Rudi in any of their
books), Jones believed he had observed his own death. This experience validated his
belief that the fundamental dilemma of all human seeking and suffering was that of a
separative and narcissistic avoidance of relationship with “the unqualified state of
reality.” Finding his superiors at the seminary didn’t agree with him, he then joined the
Eastern Orthodox Church with the idea of becoming a priest, only to learn that an ancient
canonical law prevented a man from becoming a priest if he is married to a divorced
woman, as Nina was.

The Death of Narcissus Denied

The religious avenue blocked, he and Nina returned to New York in the fall of
1967. He spoke to Rudi about what he took to be the death in him of Narcissus, but he
says Rudi also “tended to interpret my seminary experience negatively.” Thereafter, if not
before, he increasingly became aware of what he considered Rudi’s limitations. He found
Rudi’s conversation “a constant stream of strongly communicated moods, alternating
between talk of Spiritual life, his experiences in India, his Spiritual experience and
visions, and the perpetual absorption in business. His business was his principal Yoga.
And if you did not know or accept this about him, you could become angry at what
appeared to be his perpetual concern with business and the store.” Jones came to believe
that “Rudi was not himself prepared (ultimately and perfectly) to liberate others, or to
bring anyone to any truly high or otherwise ultimate Realization.”

One day at Rudi’s store Jones found some pamphlets of Rudi’s guru, Baba
Muktananda. He was determined to get to India once he read that Baba maintained
“Spiritual life is not a matter of egoic effort on the part of the disciple. It is a matter of the
Guru’s grace, the Guru’s free gift. The disciple needs only to come to the Guru and enjoy
the Guru’s grace. It is as easy as flowers in sunlight.” Learning that he and Nina could
receive a 90% discount in airfare after he earned a two-day vacation, he got a job with
Pan American Airways. He traded four days off with some fellow workers so that he
would have six days in all to travel to India and back. In April 1968 he and Nina went to
Baba’s ashram at Ganeshpuri, a few hours drive from Bombay. He meditated and chanted
and listened to Baba’s dialogues (all translated, for Baba spoke only Hindi) and had many
kundalini experiences, visions and the like. But Jones wasn’t satisfied. With typical
intensity he said, “When the last day arrived, I was desperate. I had come for more than
this. I had come for everything!”

Strangely, on his return to New York, though he and Baba had a number of warm
exchanges of letters, Jones joined Scientology and became an auditor and trained to
become a teacher. There he met a young woman, Patricia Morley, who would come to
live with him and Nina and Sal Lucanias, with whom he became close friends. In taking
upper level courses to become “clear” and become a teacher, Jones saw Scientology as
the mind game that it was and left, taking Morley and Lucanias with him. The following
year he again went to Muktananda’s ashram, this time for four weeks. They had a brief
conversation upon his arrival. Near the end, Baba had told him he would become a
spiritual teacher of Siddha Yoga. He gave him a handwritten letter to that effect, the first
ever to a Westerner, and a Hindi name, “Dhyanananda,” meaning “one whose bliss is
realized in meditation.” Jones rejected the name (later he named himself “Bubba Free
John,” the word “Bubba” being what his father called him as a child) and spoke to Baba
of how during meditation “a spot of light had often appeared before me, sometimes black
or silver-gray, and sometimes blue.” Baba told him that “the spot only appears black
because of impurities.” (Later, after their falling out, Baba would call him “a dark yogi.”
And Jones would call Muktananda “a black magician.”)

During this time, Jones had numerous subtle and powerful experiences which he
began to see as:

A seemingly endless revelation of the forms of spiritual reality.... I was already

becoming aware of the inconclusiveness of all such experiences. Once the
problem of the mind had ceased to endear me, I began to intuit spiritual forms.
Then I acquired a new problem. The problem of spirituality. The matter of
freedom and real consciousness seemed somehow to depend on the attainment of
spiritual experience. Spiritual experiences of an ultimate kind seemed identical to
freedom and reality itself. Thus, I was driven to acquire them.... I began to feel:
‘This is not the point. This is not it. Reality is prior to all of this. Reality is my
own nature.” But the more this feeling arose in me the more aggressively these
experiences arose so that I again began to feel trapped. I felt as if my true path
was not Baba’s Siddha Yoga.

The Hell With It All

At the end of August Jones and the women returned to New York. During
meditation he sometimes experienced Bhagavan Nityananda, Baba’s guru, taking over his
subtle form. He had a number of experiences with the chakras and kundalini which
further increased his belief that all of this was the play of Shakti, and so he simply sat,
using no techniques, no special breathing or mantras or visualizations but simply inquired
of himself whenever anything arose—“Avoiding relationship.” (This, of course, seems
very much like Ramana Maharshi’s approach of asking “Who am I?” but Jones is
speaking of relationship not only with others but with the Divine.)

He rarely went out, but would occasionally go for walks with Lucanias. “One day
he called me and told me he was going to leave for India for good,” Lucanias says. “ He
and Pat and Nina. That was it, he was just leaving the country. I remember him saying,
‘What the hell am I going to do in this place? The hell with it all. I’ve had it.’” And so at
the end of May 1970 he and Nina and Pat left to return to the ashram and, as he says, “I
intended to place myself at Baba’s feet, to give him my household and my life.”
 The Virgin Mary Appears

At the ashram he was given the work of editing and refining the English translation
of Baba’s new book, while Nina typed the edited manuscript and Patricia cleaned rooms.
For Jones, there was a noticeable change at the ashram, which had become very public
and busy. It was crowded with Americans and Europeans. People had Shakti experiences,
but didn’t seem radically changed by it. Baba seemed to ignore him and, as he says,
“never said a personal word to me.” Besides the editing, Jones also worked in the garden,
where one day the Virgin Mary appeared to him. During the next two weeks she made
many appearances. Finally, she told him to leave and to go on a pilgrimage to the
Christian holy places in Jerusalem and Europe. Swami Nityananda, Baba’s long deceased
guru, also appeared to him and blessed him and told him that he belonged to the Virgin
now and should do as she said. After a stay of little more than three weeks, Jones and the
women left the ashram to take a pilgrimage to the holy shrines of the West.

That August, returning to the United States, they settled in Los Angeles. “I no
longer practiced in relationship to any of my human teachers,” Jones says. “Their
teachings had been exhausted in me, until there was no more seeking.... I was simply and
directly devoted to the perfect Enjoyment of unqualified Reality, the Very (and
unmoving) Self.” In late August he began to visit the Vedanta Society temple in
Hollywood. There the Divine Shakti appeared in person, he said, and they combined
“with One Another in Divine (and Motionless and spontaneously Yogic) ‘Sexual
Union.’” One day in early September, awaiting her appearance at the temple, he says he
suddenly “realized that I had Realized. The ‘Thing’ about the ‘Bright’ became Obvious. I
am Complete. I am the One Who Is Complete.”

Baba Does Not Approve

A month later, in early October, Baba had come to California. He was in the midst
of his first world tour, which was largely underwritten by Rudi. Jones reconciled with
Rudi and, in the company of a small group, told Baba about what he had realized at the
temple. A discussion of Consciousness followed. Jones, who had apparently not seen the
blue pearl that was the keystone of Baba’s experience and teaching, maintained that pure
consciousness “was not settled in the sahasrar (top of the head), or in any other extended
or functional level of the body-mind itself, but in the True Heart Itself—not the heart
chakra or the physical heart, but the Heart of Real Consciousness.” By this he seemed to
mean that it was not located in some part of the body, but the body-mind when
consciously realized appeared in the Heart which was the fullness of life itself, but what
he said wasn’t as clear. From Jones’ report of the meeting, Baba didn’t recognize this
distinction and so continued to speak about the stabilization of attention being in the heart
or the sahasrar, with Jones continuing to maintain that he had not been referring to where
attention was centered but to that perfect Realization that transcended attention itself,
with the implication that he had realized it. In Baba’s reply Jones felt that there “was
even an underlying suggestion that those who professed attainment must be regarded with
suspicion.”
Unperturbed, Jones pressed forward, speaking of Reality as prior to and
transcending all phenomenal experience. Baba cut him off, saying that such a way does
not lead to the highest Truth. “You are present as form. Why do you seek a way without
form?” demanded Baba. Jones felt Baba did not understand him. As Jones expressed it
later, “There was (from my point of view) no ‘personal’ disagreement between Baba and
me. It was only that Siddha Yoga (and even every kind of Yoga) had been truly
Completed in me, and I was drawn into the Absolute Knowledge that is the true, most
ultimate, and inherently most perfect Fulfillment of every way and every kind of Yoga
proposed in the ‘great (and always seeking) tradition’ of mankind.”

Kundalini Rising

Jones opened an ashram-bookstore in Hollywood, California, with the financial

help of Sal Lucanias. He adopted the style of Indian gurus, speaking from an elevated
chair, the room laden with colorful carpets, and flowers and incense in abundance. He
taught in the Indian tradition, his talk formal and somewhat stilted, and the kundalini
power ever emanating from him. Quickly gathering devotees, he created his church,
which he called The Dawn Horse Communion, later known as The Free Daist
Communion and today as Adidam. He began writing his spiritual memoir, The Knee of
Listening: The Early Life and Radical Spiritual Teachings of Franklin Jones.

Alan Watts was among those to whom the completed manuscript was sent for a
testimonial. Though Watts, a former
minister and a leading light of the
New Age who had been instrumental
in helping to introduce Zen Buddhism
to America, had never met Jones, he
was enthusiastic. “It is obvious,” he
wrote, “from all sorts of subtle details,
that Franklin Jones knows what IT’s
all about... a rare being.” The book
was published in July 1973, just
before Jones was to travel to India to
see Muktananda.

Earlier that April, Jones had told

his devotees he would soon take
another pilgrimage to India. “Just as
there is a vast spiritual process behind
this work and all true spiritual work,”
he explained, “there are also certain
individuals, Siddhas and others, who
are very directly involved with our
work. Muktananda is the only one
alive in the body, and it is very
important that I purify my connection
with him for the sake of the work
itself.”

Strangely, given the lack of agreement in their 1970 interchange, Jones’ idea of
purifying their connection was to ask Muktananda to give him formal recognition of his
realization of Maha Siddha, which, in effect, would make his realization equal to that of
Muktananda’s. To structure the conversation, Jones wrote four questions that were a
continuation of their previous dialogue, which in a yogic way was reminiscent of
medieval theologians debating how many angels could stand on the head of a pin. The
questions were translated into Hindi and given to Muktananda before they spoke. A tape
recording was made that was later published as “A Confrontation of Dharmas” in Jones’
magazine The Dawn Horse. The image of the dawn horse had appeared to him on a deep,
subtle level that he felt was archetypal and he made it his own ever after.

Jones’ first two questions dealt with whether the experiencing of consciousness by
the jnanis, the sages, was the same as what yogis call Maha-Shakti, and whether
consciousness is stabilized in the sahasrar, as Muktananda held, or on the right side of the
heart as Ramana Maharshi had said. Muktananda prefaced his answer by warning Jones
that he had the habit of talking candidly, so he hoped that Jones wouldn’t think he was
trying to hurt his feelings, but “if you wish to know the secrets of the scriptures, then
your attitude must be appropriate.”

With that as the context, Muktananda then introduced the question of the duality
between the seer and the seen. Are they the same or different? The two, Jones answered,
conventionally speaking, are simply modifications of one Reality. Muktananda, pressing
the point, asked are they the same Reality, or two different forms? The latter, Jones said.
They are the same, Muktananda declared, and told him “I will explain it to you.” Saying
that while the means are different the experience of a jnani and a yogi are identical.
“Only a kindergarten student of Vedanta,” Muktananda replied, “holds the notion that the
mind is form. One who thoroughly understands Vedanta realizes the mind is not only
mind; the mind is nothing but the Lord.”

Disagreement

Jones’ third question was about whether or not the two different ways, that of the
jnanis and that of the yogis, is equal. Muktananda told him that “when you have full
realization of the sahasrar...it is the place of highest effulgence.” Jones disagreed saying
that the jnanis say the sahasrar is but the reflection of the Heart. Muktananda tells him
here are two kinds of jnanis: “One has experienced the highest Reality in the sahasrar.
The other is a mere scholar who has read books.” Jones then spoke of Ramana
Maharshi’s experience. Said Muktananda, “If Ramana Maharshi said that it is the heart, I
say that it is the sahasrar, and for a person like you, it is not appropriate to get caught in a
conflict.... The most important thing is be certain of yourself. One must be genuine in his
worship of the Guru, and if you try to cheat the Guru, then you only cheat yourself.”

With this, Muktananda ended the discussion, so Jones never got to ask his final
question as to whether Muktananda would formally acknowledge him as a Maha-Siddhi,
but, given Muktananda’s attitude and answers, it would have been negative. In leaving,
with all ties between him and Muktananda severed, Jones did not salute Muktananda by
bowing as had been his custom, but simply stood up and left, departing the ashram within
an hour. He was now on his own. Henceforth he would be known by the name he gave
himself “Bubba Free John.”

Returning to America, he no longer taught in the usual formal Indian fashion but
adoped a “crazy-wisdom” style which would allow his devotees to see themselves with
all their antics and avoidances in the flesh. This meant erotic, ongoing Tantric parties
with plenty of beer, cigarettes, junk food, dope, sex and rock ’n’ roll, with Bubba
supplying the good cheer and the powerful force of his kundalini creating visions, kriyas,
and heart openings. The following year the partying moved to Cobb Mountain in
Northern California, where Bubba’s church had bought Siegler Springs, a rundown, 43-
acre hot springs, which he renamed “Persimmon.” The number of his devotees had now
grown to about 150. He had amazing power. Remembers one person who was there:

Bubba walked into the Satsang Hall and looked around at everyone. Within
seconds, a silver/whitish disc-shaped light deep in my head—in the forehead
region—began clicking on and off and then I began seeing a raining of drops of
light descending in the room! Whoa! Also, we spent time in the Bathhouse with
Bubba. Someone put a flotation device in the pool and I held it as Bubba got on.
Then pushed him around. Again, I saw a rain of energy. At another Satsang
occasion with Bubba I felt a current of
energy partially rise up my spine,
stopping at my chest. I felt a melting
sensation and suddenly saw the room
blasted by blue/green colors!

If the parties in Hollywood had pushed

the envelope, these at Persimmon went well
beyond it. The intent, Bubba would later
explain, was to break through all the binding
ego attachments of the so-called person, his
and her narcissistic life of money, food and
sex, as well as “spiritual experiences.”

These experiences meant nothing, he told

them.

One of the traditional images of

spiritual life that has come down for
centuries is the ladder, the way of
ascent to the place beyond, to heaven,
to the Divine above the world. The
ladder, along with other such
archetypes, is the image of attainment,
 the image of the perfect change of state. It is absolutely false, and yet it is the
principal archetype of spirituality and religion! The Divine is not apart and above
and elsewhere, to be attained at another time in the midst of some condition or
another that you may or may not imagine. That is not the Truth. The Truth is the
present One, the absolute Divine that may not be attained, that may not be
ascended to, that does not even descend upon you, but which is perfectly and
already your present Condition.

In particular, Bubba attacked the “cult of pairs” and notions of marriage in

particular, which he said only serves the seeking and separateness which at root are the
denial of the Divinity of the simple here and now. Of all the partying, which lasted from
March to early July, when the night that shattered everything would later be known as the
“Saturday Night Massacre.” To prepare devotees, Bubba first told them:

The instant you marry, you must discard it. Otherwise marriage is another cultic
form, a sex contract, in which you become medievally involved with personality
forms, making yourself strategically unavailable to the rest of life, and again
mutually create the sensation of separate existence, including “poor me” or
“fantastic me.”... The cult of marriage is a principal obstacle in the affair of the
spiritual Community, because the common theater of marriage is a fundamental
instrument for locking out the life-energy, the ecstatic life-communication, from
other beings.

Bubba then broke up couples and marriages and began what was called the “sexual
theater,” that of switching partners, instituting orgies and making pornographic movies. It
pushed many to personal crises and opened some to subtle and powerful experiencings
and visions. If these were taken personally, it would only increase the sense of
separateness, of personal specialness. Bubba took no prisoners:

The Divine vision is just the asshole of the Goddess, except it is not recognized as
such by seekers. They think, “oh, it is the Lord.” They couldn’t care less about the
Lord, because to know the Lord would require them to be obliterated. The Lord in
Truth requires the sacrifice of self-existence. Nobody wants such a thing. They
want the Goddess, who will pamper them, and fuck them, and delight them. That
is what people want.

For there to be experience there had to be an experiencer and if that was anything
more than pure Self-observation then the devotee was entranced with the Goddess
[phenomenal experience] and not recognizing the Absolute. Said Bubba:

Rudi used to tell me to surrender, but that is not the principle. Muktananda used to
say, “Yield to the Goddess,” and that is not the principle. The Goddess used to
say, “Yield to me,” and I fucked her brains loose....What is required of you is this
sacrifice, and sacrifice only becomes possible under the influence of the perfect
Siddhi of God, not under the influence of any of the manifest siddhis of the
Goddess.
 At the end of the crazy wisdom days, Bubba reminded devotees that “What I do is
not the way I am, but the way I teach.” He was showing them who they really were, and
in actually seeing themselves and not who they imagined themselves to be their spiritual
development would be quickened. While the sexual theater would be repeated, it
apparently never was as pervasive or so strongly accompanied by his demonstration of
yogic powers. The rampant sex, for the most part it is claimed, became limited to
Bubba’s “esoteric order,” while those outside it led a rather strict life of discipline, work,
diet, exercise, meditation and service. “My only Purpose,” he told devotees, “out of
Sympathy for you all, is to stay here long enough to Do what I have come to Do, which is
to create this immense Mandala of Transmission for the sake of those who live now and
those who will live in the future.” He withdrew to a large extent and devoted himself to
writing—his output would grow to some 70 books, of which 23 were considered “Source
Texts.”

Part III continued in The Gurdjieff Journal #49

Notes

1. Lutheran seminary. In the original 1972 edition of The Knee of Listening, Jones gives
no reason why suddenly in1966 he and Nina moved to Philadelphia so he could enter a
Lutheran seminary. However, in The Method of the Siddhas (Los Angeles: Dawn Horse
Press, 1973), p. 52, he says, “Rudi had me going to seminaries, where I studied Christian
theology, masses of historical literature, ancient languages, all kinds of things in which I
had no fundamental interest. I had to live in Protestant and Orthodox seminaries, but I
was not a Christian.”

2. A teacher who is in personal conflict. Swami Rudrananda, Spiritual Cannibalism

(New York: Links Books, 1973), p. 43.

3. Seated in the “Bright.” Jones, The Knee of Listening (Middletown, CA: Dawn Horse
Press, 1995), p. 34.

4. A kind of super-parent. Jones, p. 192.

5. Raised in a family. Jones, p. 34. He says that because love was “the premise of our life
together” they were all free to be so “reckless, stupid, unfeeling, uncommunicative,
unhappy, and separate!”

6. My own ordinary tendency. Jones, p. 168.

7. I would often exploit. Jones, p. 105.

8. Self-remembering. Rudi had spent five years in the Work before leaving for Pak
Subuh, who introduced him to opening to kundalini. He then went to India where he met
Swami Nityananda and later his disciple Swami Muktananda, both of whose teaching
was founded on the kundalini experience. So his teaching was a mélange of these three
approaches. Rudi never mentions self-remembering in the one book he published,
Spiritual Cannibalism, nor is it mentioned in the two books of his talks published after
his death in 1973, Rudi, In His Own Words and Entering Infinity. In the many books that
Jones would publish during his lifetime, it is not apparent that he ever mentions it.

9. Tended to interpret. Jones, The Knee of Listening, 1973 ed., p. 66.

10. A constant stream. Jones, The Knee of Listening, 1992 ed., p. 151.

11. He was not himself prepared. Jones, 1992 ed., p. 192.

12. Spiritual life. Jones, p. 207.

13. When the last day arrived. Jones, p. 217.

14. “Bubba” being what his father called him as a child. Comment by Louise Lucanias,
“The Early Days: An Interview with Sal and Louise Lucanias,” The Dawn Horse, vol. 1,
no. 1, May 1974.

15. A spot of light. Jones, The Knee of Listening, 1972 ed., pp. 101–102.

16. Endless revelation of the forms. Jones, 1972 ed., pp. 102–103.

17. One day he called me. Lucanias.

18. I intended to place myself. Jones, 1972 ed., p. 122.

19. Baba never said a personal word to me. Jones, 1992 ed., p. 297.

20. I no longer practiced in relationship to any of my human teachers. Jones 1992 ed., p.
353.

21. Sexual Union. Jones, 1992 ed., p 356.

22. I understood most perfectly. Jones, 1992 ed., p. 357.

23. Present State. Jones, 1992, ed., p. 373.

24. It was not settled in the shasrar. Jones, 1992 ed., p. 373-76.

25. It was only that Siddha Yoga. Jones, 1992 ed., p. 383.

26. A Confrontation of Dharmas. The Dawn Horse magazine, vol. 2 no. 2, 1975.
www.Lightmind.com/impermanence/Library/knee/appendix2.html

27. Feet are in the Heart of Self-nature. Hence the title of Jones’ book, The Knee of
Listening. Ponder it.

28. Bubba walked into the Satsang Hall. “A Forest Wanderer’s Notes: Notes for the
Peavine Upanishad.” http://atiasrama.wordpress.com

29. One of the traditional images. Bubba Free John, Garbage and the Goddess, p. 109.

30. The instant you marry. Bubba Free John, Garbage and the Goddess (Lower Lake,
CA: Dawn Horse Press, 1974), p. 16, p. 31.

31. The Divine vision. Bubba Free John, p. 112.

32. Rudi used to tell me. Bubba Free John, pp. 106-07.

33. My only Purpose. Andrew Rawlinson, The Book of Enlightened Masters, (Chicago:
Carus Publishing Company, 1997), p. 229.

First printed in The Gurdjieff Journal.

William Patrick Patterson is the author of seven books on The Fourth Way, the latest of
which is "Spiritual Survival in a Radically Changing WorldTime."