THE (Far-From-Finished!) AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF SUN-DOWNER 1

(PLEASE DO NOT SHARE THIS DOCUMENT WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION FROM AUTHOR, EMAIL ADDRESS A FEW LINES DOWN, THANK YOU!) (Current Working Title) "Circles in the Waves (The Autobiography of a Crazy/Wisdom, Fumbling-Gringo Yogi)" By: “Sunny Sun-Downer” (Journalist Name/“Nom de Plume”) a.k.a... “Karma Jampa Yeshe Sonam Nyima” ("Dharma Name") (c) 2015 Steven Kenneth Downer (W.D.S./B.N.="Western Dysfunctional Society Birth Name”) (NOTE TO READER: IF THE FONT IS NOT BIG ENOUGH FOR YOU... [and if you are reading on a laptop] SIMPLY PLACE YOUR CURSOR OVER THE TEXT AND CLICK On the "Control" Button While Clicking ON THE " + " [PLUS] At The Same Time, AND IT WILL INCREASE THE FONT SIZE...) [ALSO- I DO NOT KNOW WHY It Is "ALL RUN TOGETHER" with no "Paragraph Breaks" as there are in my original text... Perhaps it is because micro-soft's "word" program, that i originally created this in, is "in conflict" with the "free text-maker" program I now use... or the "text-maker" is "in confict" witht the "goog-lay" blog-spot? MAYBE I'll Be Able To Fix THAT Soon? IDK! In "the mean-time," I am attempting to put " #P " at every paragraph break...] #P THIS “Rough Draft” IS A “Work In Progress”... It IS Wrought With “Typos” And “Richochet Pin-Ball Machine-Like Time Line Mix-Ups” And “Interjections”... Completion Of This Project Is Expected Some Time Soon- Or, As My Jah-maican Rasta Sistren And Bredren Say, “Soon Come..!” IT IS REVEALED “AS IS” (via this public access platform) AT THIS TIME Of The Author’s 50th Anniversary Of His Release From Western Dysfunctional Society’s Mind-Wash “High” School in 1972g.c. Those Who Know Him Will Most Likely NOT “Be Shocked” To Hear That All The Stories In This Work Are Quite True... Some Names Were Changed Due To “Long Term Memory Loss”... On THAT Note, If My Memory WAS Functioning Adequately Enough And You See Your Full Name In Here And Do Not Wish It To Be, Please email The Author At: conchustimes@ yahoo dot com And Let Him Know. Reproduction, And/Or Sharing By Any Means Without Permission Through Above email Address, [or other contact methods], Is Prohibited! THANK YOU For Your Understanding And Patience! P.S. The Story Begins In A “Movie Script Format” As That IS A Part Of My Fantasy... AND As Long As i’m “Fantasizing,” It Would Be Directed By Oliver Stone, Who I Met At A “Bodhisattva Of Compassion” Tibetan Buddhist Ritual Initiation In The 1990’s... With The Exception Of The “Turning Of The Millenium” Story At The Very End, And/Or A Couple Of Others, This “Auto-biographical Life Story” Has Not Progressed Much Past My Teen and Eary Twenties Years Of Experience In This, The Current (Hopi 4th) World..!) -SKD/Sunny Sun-Downer

(Image [by un-known photographer] of my "Fellow High Desert-Dweller" George Van Tassel, Dean Of The "College Of Universal Wisdom," and Creator Of "The Integratron" at Giant Rock in Landers California, Who, As Mentioned In The Following Work, My Parents and Our Family Attempted To Find Around 1965 [g.c. "gregorian calendar"] And Communicate With..! ) Opening Credits Music: “I think I’m going to Kathmandu… That’s what I really, really wanna do- If I ever get out of here…. I'm Going To Kathmandu! -Bob Seger, “Khatmandu” (First Scene) After a long day of ‘property maintenance’ (fancy words for raking pine needles, etc.) up in the nearby mountain town of Idyllwild, and the approximate hour-long drive down to the hot mineral pools in Desert Hot Springs, Sunny pulls into the Spa Hotel listening to Bob Seger’s “Kathmandu,” flashes on the locale that witnessed Shakyamuni Buddha’s “Christ-like” Sermon on the Mount, and then hurries to change into a swimsuit and submerges his exhausted, sore body into the hottest pool at the spa. He merges with the ecstasy of the first moment of the hot mineral water enacting freedom from the tension and soreness in his body, drifting away into the special joy of that experience. He then hears splashing water and opens his eyes to see two bald (Caucasian) women entering the same hot pool on this beautiful desert afternoon. “Are you Buddhists?” he smiles and asks as they sink into the hot water. “Yes” came the reply from the older woman, with smiling eyes. “My name’s ‘Sunny’… (he says as he joins his palms and bows) What are your names?” The one with the ‘Smiling Eyes’ said, “it’s Ruth.” The younger nun responded, “Jinpa.” “I’m Buddhist also… Tibetan lineage. What is yours?” “Theravadin, basically. We conduct Vipassana Meditation Retreats up in the High Desert of Joshua Tree,” said Ruth. “Joshua Tree… Wow! My parents first took me up there when I was about eight years old in the early Sixties. That was back when we practiced Hindu-style meditation…” (We'll return to the completion of this memory w/the Buddhist Teacher Ruth Dennison of Joshua Tree's Dhamma-Dena, by the end of the movie..!) (Cue Lady Diana Mukpo reading her quote): “In the hippie era, we used to talk about being ‘brought down,’ or things ‘being a downer, man.’ Rinpoche, however, talked about being ‘brought down to earth,’ or being grounded, as a very positive thing. I think he related to our marriage in that way.” -Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche’s wife, Lady Diana Mukpo in her book, “Dragon Thunder” I’ll start my story here, as I am a “Downer”… In this time around, I came into this world a Downer, literally: Steven Kenneth Downer. The name Downer comes from my ancestors in Scotland- the sheepherders in the lowlands. My sister Christina, who, in the year 2006 (of the gregorian calendar) left her physical form behind after 54 summers in this world, gave me the nickname “Sundowner” when we were teenagers, and it later became my ‘nom de plume’- my journalist name and later my business name in my career as a body worker (Sun-Downer Massage Therapy). One of the many meanings for “Sun-Downer” is that of an Australian Aborigine term for a wanderer, meaning “one whose home is where the sun goes down.” (Oddly enough, as I start to tell my life story, I find my “self,” around the time of the “Big Japanese Fukishima Earthquake-Tsunami-Meltdown Tri-Challenge,” traveling around in a little Japanese truck, sleeping in it, in between destinations, where the sun goes down…). Looking back on this incarnation, it does seem that I’ve been wandering and spreading some kind of “Metaphysical Sun-Light” to all the areas I wander in this lifetime, and I have had many friends tell me the same over the years. I learned a Hindu phrase early on in this life, especially as a teenager studying Baba Ram Dass’s 'Be Here Now'... “Aditya hridayam punyam, sarv shatru binay shenam,” which means “All evil vanishes in life, for the one who keeps the Sun in their heart,” which I instantly “took to heart.” Then, on May 24, 1974 (of the gregorian calendar), I took refuge in the Triple Gem (Buddha, Dharma and Sangha) with my Tibetan “root” teacher, or “Tsawi (root) Lama, Venerable Kalu Rinpoche after being a Bhakti Yogin in the lineage of Paramahansa Yogananda since kindergarten age. As I sat next to my high school friend Robert Vaughn in the Hollywood Hills on that Hollywood night, Ingrid Mcleod, the translator in the Refuge Ceremony, handed us our "Dharma names." Rinpoche said something to her in Tibetan, & she informed us that she had given us the wrong cards & that we needed to trade. I found this amazing in that the cards were folded & almost identical from the outside, but what I found even more amazing was that my name was to be “Karma Sonam Nyima,” or “SUN of Merit” of the Karma family, while the other card said nothing about the Sun. *( Probably should enter this later in the story? )* While on that topic, speaking of “magical displays of phenomena,” some dozen years later in 1986, I attended the big Chakrasamvara Initiation & Stupa dedication with Rinpoche in Santa Fe, New Mexico where a freak snowstorm dumped the most snow in thirty years for a November, which was preceded by the same event the week before up at Boulder, Colorado’s similar ceremony. The half-a-football-field-size tent, custom-built to fit on the Tibetan Kagyu Center’s big stupa- that so many had labored on for so long, had collapsed under the weight of the unusual early snow. Informed of this event, Rinpoche said “Good, that symbolizes the collapse of ego- I’ll pray for more snow..!” So then I found myself back in Southern California a week later up at the Santa Monica YMCA Summer Camp at Big Bear Lake (that my father, who grew up in Santa Monica, used to attend some five decades prior), engaged in a ten day retreat with Kalu Rinpoche. I asked him during the question & answer period “Are you going to make it snow here as well as Colorado and New Mexico?” He replied “I don’t know about it snowing outside, but the snowstorm of thoughts seems to be raging inside your head...” to raucous laughter in the meditation hall. I bowed, & said, “Touche’, Rinpoche!” (It did start snowing during the final Chenrezi Meditation at the end of the retreat, much to the dismay of the travelers who hadn’t brought snow chains for their car’s tires.) Now back to our program already in progress...* How did I get connected with this powerful path of instruction for the ‘terma-nation’* (sic- my double entendre’) of suffering in this lifetime and what are the “Circles in the Waves” that I refer to? ~(Post @ bottom of page)~ *”Termination” noun, “ending” etc. My second meaning with one of my “Sun-ifcations” comes from the Tibetan word “terma” meaning hidden dharma teaching, so the “terma-nation” refers to hidden dharma teachings being discovered and revealed in our own “nation” of America, where it was predicted in the eighth century by Padmasambhava, in the infamous quote, “When the Iron Bird flies, and horses run on wheels... The Tibetan people will be scattered like ants across the face of the earth, and the Buddha-dharma will come to the land of the Red People.” Well, perhaps I should start back at the beginning… From Saint Monica to the Good Park I was born in Los Angeles, California at Rose Hospital on January 8, (1-08..~!~) 1954, at 8:58pm, weighing 8 lbs. and 8 oz. (My Mother later told me that my lucky number was ‘8’). My first name was given to me in honor of my father, Steven Pope Downer, while my middle name, Kenneth, was given to me in honor of my grandfather, Ken Downer, a bohemian artist and Merchant Marine from Woodstock, New York. My first years were spent living with my parents and my sister, Christina Lee in Santa Monica near the border of the canal-filled city of Venice, where Jim Morrison would, a decade or so later, join up with keyboardist Ray Manzarek, drummer John Densmore & guitarist Robby Krieger (one of many great musicians whose birthday I was born on) to form the band “The Doors,” named after Aldous Huxley’s book, “the Doors of Perception,” and help my generation to “Break on Through to the Other Side” of “America's focus on materialism.” Their music, along with that of many other psychedelic musicians, would later play an important role in my life, from my formative years on to the present. Although I don’t consciously remember anything from this time period, it was an important era in my life, in that this was the beginning of my parents’ metaphysical research that occurred in a huge way, long before it became a world-wide trend to become known years later as the “New Age.” The path was being paved at this time by individuals like Swami Paramahansa Yogananda, the founder of Self-Realization Fellowship and Ramakrishna of the Vedanta Society, as well as Krishnamurti, all from India. Manly P. Hall and Madame H.P. Blavatsky (the sponsor of Krishnamurti coming to the West back in "Spiritual Pioneer Days of America,") had been popularizing metaphysical concepts through their Philosophical Society and Theosophical Society, respectively. Then, also were there individuals like author Christmas Humphreys from “across the pond” in the U.K., who offered the West one of the first translations of the "Hindu Bible," the Bhagavad Gita. On the Buddhist and Taoist front were those such as the Zen Scholar D.T. Suzuki, Sunryu Suzuki Roshi, Alan Watts, and Timothy Leary who helped bring the teachings to the West (with such works as the "Tibetan Book of the Dead"-Inspired "The Psychadelic Experience," etc.). I must add, of course, others like “Prabuphad,” or Swami A.C. Bhaktivedanta, founder of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, with its ‘airport-working, book-swinging Hare Krishna-chanting zealouts,” who many of my musical and counter-culture heroes like Allen Ginsberg, Big Brother & the Holding Co., Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Moby Grape, among others did a benefit concert for in the Sixties at the Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco, which I did not physically attend, but felt I was there "In Spirit," especially in that I ended up with one of the rare original posters decades later! At any rate, it was here in Santa Monica, near where my father’s mother, Mary Lee Pope lived, that my parents started their dabbling with meditation, past life research and channeling beings from “the other side,” as well as extra-terrestial beings, or “space angels” on this and inter-dimensional sides, etc. I grew up with the belief that, to think that out of the entire expanse of solar systems, within galaxy upon untold galaxy throughout the vast expanse of the universe- out of literally an uncountable amount of planets… that to think that ours was the only one with other “intelligent life” (“intelligent” being a still questionable concept in light of human-kinds’ “war mentality”)- was quite egotistical. In June of 2018g.c., i was searching the Inter-webs for some E.T. stuff, because of a book I saw on the "bay of e" auction site... "Secrets of Flying Saucer Propulsion." I found the book on line for free but didn't want to fill out the form to be able to read it, so i went back and found another similar book AND... found this account of my parents seeing saucers over the Santa Moinica Airport in 1954...!!! (My "Lover-Girl" heard me screaming because my heart almost stopped). It turns out I was just 3 months old when this happened, as reported in Orfeo Angelucci's 1955 book, "The Secret of the Saucers" (in the chapter titled, "How To Know A Saucer" and it referenced a Mr. Tyler, the owner of the airport who lived in a house insdide the airport there). "That same day similar reports were given to the Santa Monica Outlook newspaper by Mrs. Genevieve Downer and her husband, Steven; Lillian Colbary and her daughter, Marilyn, and Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Swalge, all of whom saw the mysterious objects over Tyler's house. It later developed that many other persons in the neighborhood had witnessed the phenomenon, although they hadn't phoned the newspaper." My conscious memory only goes back to the time after my parents had moved our family from Topanga Canyon and then Santa Monica, California, a couple of hours drive south to the expanding suburbia of Orange County, as that was where my Dad found work in the aerospace industry as an engineer. After a couple years here, in around 1959 (of the gregorian calendar), I remember “being forced” (ha-ha!) by our parents to travel on Sundays from our house in Buena Park to the city of Long Beach, to what looked like an old English castle overlooking the ocean on what was aptly-titled Ocean Blvd., in which was housed the closest Self-Realization (SRF) Church at the time. Here we learned the arts of meditation, yoga (called “re-energization exercises” in this version of Westernized Hinduism) and devotional chanting with the songs created in English by Yogananda. The chanting was particularly a wonderful experience, and seemed naturally heart-opening and familiar, almost like I was still attuned from before this lifetime... (And how us kids loved the chant that went, "...I will sing thy name, I will drink thy name, and get all drunk-oh with thy name..!" We would "hiccup" and pretend we were drunk... what fun!) My younger brother, Billy (born after the move to “The O.C.”), older sister Christy and myself were never happy about the hour drive, and we would tease and fight with each other in unconscious protest way too much for our parents liking. Sometimes we had to go on the even-farther car ride to Hollywood to the church on Sunset Blvd., and one time where the 5 freeway meets the 101, and you go into a little tunnel, my mother was looking in the mirror after having to deal with the “brats in the back seat,” and announced, “Oh no, I’m getting a grey hair!” Whenever we had to go back up there, at exactly that spot in the drive, my brother, sister or I would always shout “Here’s where Mom got a grey hair!” But us kids actually did look forward to going to that church a bit, because they had a vegetarian restaurant connected to it, and after the grown-up’s service and our Sunday School, we were allowed to order this dish which was actually more like a dessert, as it consisted of a bed of shredded lettuce upon which lay sliced bananas, topped with orange sherbert ice cream! Our dad would always order the same thing, the Curry Dish, and would always bore us with the same joke that he always told between there and the Encinitas “SRF Mushroom Burger Café” to the nun-waitresses in their saris: “That curry will cure anything you’ve got, and if you don’t have anything, it’ll give it you!” They would give him that (tolerant-after-hearing-it-before) loving chuckle and smile, and would also be bold enough to scold us kids if we didn’t eat the lettuce under the “dessert dinner.” It was at the Long Beach SRF church that I actually got my first introduction to the spirituality of the sport that would later in life become an ‘obession’… the sport of “surfing!” My parents befriended a young man after one service, and as he was one of Southern California’s first trend-setting ocean surfers, he was informing them as I listened in, about how he had had experiences of “God-Realization” while surfing and being enveloped by the wave (the particular experience I would long for and write songs about, that of “getting tubed!”) In another experience at around the same age, I had an interesting interaction with some sixties-era surfers when my family did the two hour drive south to the North San Diego County town of Encinitas in one of the SRF "Pilgrimages," as they were called. The SRF Retreat Center there houses a beautiful church that is surrounded by the world-famous "meditation gardens," as well as another one of the famous ""Mushroom Burger" vegetarian restaurants. This is all located on a big bluff above the Pacific Ocean that over-looks an equally-famous surfing spot, named by the local surfers, "Swami's," after "Swami Yogananda" and the center he established with its landmark "Huge Golden Lotus Flowers" adorning the wall that borders on the Pacific Coast Highway. Back then the way down the steep cliff just south of the center was by way of a very old and rickety staircase probably built by the surfers of the era. After the service and vegi-lunch, my brother Billy, my dad and I ventured down to the beach to watch them ride the waves at that famous "right-break" point. I remember that the stairs were wobbly and scary but we proceeded down them anyway, and near the bottom, maybe about ten feet above the beach, my brother somehow fell off and landed in the sand in such a way that he didn't really get hurt, but just really shaken up, of course. A couple of surfers came running over to ask if he was OK, and they were happy to see that he was basically OK. I was impressed with their compassion instead of what could have been "making fun of a stupid kid." (If they had been some of the makers of the stairs, they probably felt guilty, heh-heh!) It would be many years later that my dad would tell me that soon after that experience my parents engaged in a channeling session with the Spirit of Yogananda, who "reprimanded" my father for not being more protective of my brother, almost like a "spiritual big brother scolding his little brother!" At the time, I had no way of knowing that in another decade or so this area would become the location of many future spiritual chakra-activating, yogic, mother ocean-merging and life-learning experiences, between this realm and the inner space/dharmic realms- even to the extent of events such as involvement with extraterrestials (or "space angels" as i prefer to call them) that was, on at least one occasion, either truly experienced by myself and a "tribe" of my like-minded friends or else it was a "group hallucination" (the latter not being likely)! These, then, are the alusions, or "ah-lusions" (you will come to find that I am so fond of the Tibetan seed-syllable, "Ah" that I constantly morph it into my language usage) to "Waves" and "Circles" in them... Circles being a reference to their highly evolved and therefore non-polluting Space Craft, and Waves being a reference to "Waves of Energy" that the Angels, as well as "Earthly Surfers" (like myself) ride, Meta-physically and Physically. So, yes, a lot of my focus, as a youth, was devoted to the E.T./Space Angels with the "outer-world" manisfestion of their spacecraft, inspired by the "inner-world" experience of communication with them via my parents' channelling sessions- but, also, again using that word "devoted"... Devotion to my Hindu Gurus of the Yogananda Lineage played an equal part, as I'll adress later in greater detail. Later, as a teenager I even wrote a song called "Molecular Vibratory Frequency Change" w/the rhyme, "The Transition's going to be Radiantly Strange!" That "Strange Transition" started occurring to me when I was maybe a decade old, in the mid-Sixties, as I would have these other-worldly experiences with my family- such as searching the High Desert of Southern California for George Van Tassle's E.T.-designed "Integratron Rejuvenator/Time Machine/etc Vortex" near the "Giant Rock Airport," that had been the home of the "Flying Saucer Conventions," but at least getting to experience Edwin John Ding Le Mei's "Mentalphysics Institute!" Our contacts from the Etheric Realm connected to the physical planet Venus don't have "names" in the earthly sense, but in that WE need them, they took some on to add to the "frequency" that they go by between each other. At first, there were two: the female angel, who called herself "Fortina," and the male energy was named "Fortanon." Because of their consistent sense of humor, they introduced another later on, who, because she was a "younger angel," as in "teenager," they named "Thirteena." I'm not sure how many channeling, not to mention "automatic writing" sessions had occurred with them before they said we could meet them in the physical world, but they said it could happen if we went out to the "Integratron" in Landers, up above Joshua Tree in the High Desert, with no other directions given. So the following weekend all five of us headed up there, stopping in Joshua Tree at the Mentalphysics Institute, a spiritual retreat center created by author/metaphysican E. John Dingle (later re-named "Ding Le" after his journey to Tibet) that my parents had heard about. That alone was a memorable experience with its "Son of Frank Lloyd Wright-designed" buildings on the 600+ acre refuge, activating in me an "other-wordly" journey. For that "High" desert physical journey on that day, would have to suffice for us on our quest, as no one there knew of directions to the Integratron. We did head up northward to the "one-horse town" of Landers, where my Mother got laughed out of a bar that she went into for directions, with the patrons calling her a "UFO Wing-Nut" and such. My brother and sister and I got a kick out of seeing how angry she was upon her return to the car! After stopping once more in the desert night when my Dad got out with a flashlight to try and signal them that that was going to be their last chance, we retuned to Orange County, futilly giving up hope for our first meeting with those who had raised our hopes with the very fact that they knew of this high-desert Landers town in the first place, and who we had only seen from quite a distance. By "...from quite a distance," I mean this: one weekend I had gone out to Boy Scout Camp in Trabuco Canyon, near where my parents had previously taken us to the Vedanta Society's Retreat. My Dad came out to the camp on the second day, on Sunday and told me that during the previous evening's channeling session, they had instructed him to leave my prone Mom's side for a moment to go out to the back yard and look to the north, inbetween the phone wires. After doing this, he got quite a visual treat: there were a couple of saucers circling each other, above what would have been Southern California's Mt. Baldy. This news left me both mystified AND frustrated! I mean, the Boy Scout Camp thing was fun and all, but NOT worth missing something like THAT back at home! I had to accept that the tease was just a "test of my patience." (The wonderful thing about my Mom still being in her body at this time of writing- as I am not, as my parents were, that good of a "channel" for beings on the other side, is that when I read this recount to her recently in 2012, she corrected me by saying that when they first instructed my Dad to go out and look up to the north, he did NOT see them, so my Mom got up and walked out there to the back porch with the sliding glass doors, looked up and saw them between the phone wires, pointed and strongly said, "THERE!"... helping my Dad to see them too!) BUT- ("All was NOT lost" heh-heh!) as soon there-after, one Sunday afternoon, I remember staying home from SRF Church with my Dad, because I had a head cold. I was lying on a chaise lounge in the backyard getting some sun, with my Dad nearby. He had his eyes closed for sometime, meditating I supposed, to tune into the experience the rest of the family was having at church, so I joined him. Well, it may have been a different "family" he was tuning into, in that he told me to open my eyes and look up in the sky to the North. I followed his lead, and to the shock of my normal "Third Dimension Senses," there they were! About four Silver Saucers, darting amongst each other in what appeared to be a "Celestial Football Scrimmage!" I was transfixed, exclaiming, "I see them!" It was shortly after that that my Mom showed up with my brother and sister, and We ALL got the Visual "TREAT of A LIFETIME!" (Why my parents hadn't invested in a high-powered camera with a zoom lens after that first time, I'll never know! Especially after we heard that one of those tabloids like the "National Enquirer" was offering a million dollars- equal to maybe a hundred million today... for proof of Extra Terrestials!) Then there was the time my brother, sister and I were kept home from school all day with our parents, with our bags packed, ready to be lifted up out of our backyard in the O.C., as the Big California Earthquake was about to happen... They didn't keep their appointment (of course, if they had, who knows? I may not still be here on Earth to tell this story!) I always believed that there was a change in the Earth's "Energy Grid Lines," much like the Native American "Medicine Man" Rolling Thunder claims in the biography of him by the same name, when he described how the San Francisco Peninsula was due to have a major earthquake back in the 1970's, but with the new consciousness emerging from all those engaging in meditation in the "New Age Movement" of the time, the negative energy dissipated. My Mom believes it was a difference in "Time Perception." (Again, this was her recent 2012g.c. recollection). In a late 50's channeling they were given very amazing information including instructions for the development of the ET's style of spacecraft ("flying saucers"), and were told to give it to Nasa (the National Areonautic and Space Administration). They tried searching the phone book for this Nasa, with no luck. The problem was, it turned out, NASA had not been formed yet, at least not made public! (Of course if that had occurred, I'm sure my parents would have been carted away, interrogated and indoctrinated to a degree that would have completely changed our experience! By the way, decades later I asked them where that info was and they said it had just "gotten lost in the shuffle of life," or some such story). Meanwhile, back on Earth, Beatle-Mania was sweeping America. My sister was crazy for Paul & I was just curious what it was all about and finally got to experience my first taste visually of the phenomena of "Rock and Roll," having experienced the Beatles on a Sunday night via the Ed Sullivan Show. When i first heard that a fellow classmate, Shelly, had gone to see their first movie, "A Hard Days Night" about 5 times, I was shocked! How could a ten-year-old spend all that money to go see a movie so many times? Well, I finally went to the local theater over by Knott's Berry Farm and had my mind blown just by the experience of something so identifiable with a creativity that was new, stimulating, fresh (...and soon to show us what "rebelious" meant)- something from OUR generation (i.e., a far cry from our Dad's love for Dean Martin's "Everybody Loves Somebody Sometime," which, oddly enough, knocked "A Hard Day's Night" out of the music chart's number one spot in the U.S. in 1964!) The closest thing us kids had gotten to being a bit "rebelious" was when we would put on our parents' Harry Belafonte album and dance around to "Back to Back" because we got to say a "swear word!" "Back to back and belly to belly, Don't give a DAMN I done it already!" (And little did I know Harry would become one of my later-in-life "Heroes of the Revolution" with his future comments about certain politicians, etc..!) One of my early memories of grade school was seeing my sister perform with her girlfriends, lip-sinching the Beatles' version of the Shirelle's "Boys," with my sister doing the Ringo lead vocals while banging with some little beaters on a toy drum. I was familiar with all the Beatles' big hit songs of the time, but this song was different. Because my sister was singing it the first time I heard it, it probably made it "less weird" than just "Ringo singing... "Talking about Boys..."(due to our "heterosexual programming" of the era). That experience may have not only been my first unknowing acceptance and appreciation of "doo-wap" style music, but this may have been the inspiration for my brother and I, along with a couple of other friends, to draw and cut out "guitars" on cardboard, then later a cardboard drum set, to try and be as cool as our older sister and her friends by lip-synching to Beatles songs too. Unfortunately, our project got put on hold for some time after my brother, coming back from the grocery store with a load of cardboard strapped on the back of my ten-speed bike, looked backwards as it started to fall off, and went off course ending up with a face-plant into some good size rocks in the planter- losing a couple of his front teeth ironically in front of a dentist office! It was a few years later, when I was about 13 years old in 1967, that my parents were "hip" enough to take my brother and sister and I to one of Orange County, California's first "Love-Ins" being held down at the ocean at Seal Beach. It was a group of maybe 3 or 4 dozen young people (but WAY older than me) sitting around in a big round formation laughing a lot and lighting these 'cigarettes' with normal filters but with twisted ends. I remember a guy had electronic keyboards that he was playing to other-worldly music (by the Beatles!), powered along with a sound system by a generator. One guy standing on the edge of the circle kept calling out to friends, and after getting their attention, would turn around to show them the back side of his t-shirt, which had the two "very offensive-at-the-time" words, "fuck you" in the shape of two lips... to "non-stop laughter" between them..! I'm not sure how my parents had heard about the Love-In, but I recalled a meeting in our living room some time earlier with a young man with longer hair named John. It was for them to get information about the journey to "See God" via "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," (LSD=lysergic acid diethylamide). Strangely enough, my parents might have heard that very song for the first time at the Love-in without even realizing it, as I don't even know if they knew that the music blaring from the speakers was from the album that had just been released that week (as I heard people saying), "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." Throughout my youth I had felt a little "ostracized" because of the church we went to. I couldn't really discuss it with schoolmates or other friends because it was just plain weird to most people and not accepted, so that made me feel "alienated" in our society to a great deal. Then, in '67 this album by the world's most popular rock n' roll band comes out with a very strange cover with a collage that incorparated the four main Self Realization Fellowship Gurus, indicating that the Beatles (influenced by "Sri George Harrison") had recently read Yogananda's autobiography and were impressed enough with the story to make these Indian Saints "World Famous" with their "Cross-cultural" pop-influence. They were turning everyone who had been paying attention to what was occurring at the San Francisco Bay Area's "Summer of Love" that year- turning them on further, on MANY levels, "metaphysical" and other-wise..! Regarding the cover of "Seargent Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band"- Situated on the cover in the upper right corner below Bob Dylan is the author of "Autobiography of a Yogi." In the upper left corner of the colllage, we see the serene face of Yogananda's Guru, Swami Sri Yukteswar Giri, who had been given the title, "Gyanavatar" (Incarnation of Wisdom). His guru was Lahiri Mahasaya, seen on the cover with his half-closed eyes peering out at us to the left of "Alice and the White Rabbit's" good friend, Lewis Carroll, in the third row from the top. Mahavatar Babaji, the guru of Lahiri Mahasaya can be found in the second row to the right of writer William S. Burroughs, and also to the right of Stan Laurel, who with his partner, Oliver Hardy brought great lauhter to my, especially when my Dad would imitate them. Mahavatar Babaji's image, like the rare "ability to be seen" in the Himalayan Mountains, is barely visible here. This head-of-the-Yogananda-Lineage with his sublime meditation-based-super-power of performing miracles, I would come to find soon enough, was a tremendous inspirational teacher, that I would come to "know" in a very strange, personal way..! Yes, Paramahansa and Sri Juketeshwar with their Indian looks and long hair, Mahavatar Babaji, also with his long hair and eyes upturned to "God," had a mission in the East that was coming to the West in the strangest of ways. But the bottom line for me, of this "Psychedelic Pop Music-New Age Messenger-Phenomena," including Paul McCartney's interview at the time talking about "this cat who hangs out in the Himalayas, named Babaji, who is an 'Agent for God,' " was that my "Young Yogic Awareness" was "vindicated" now in our "Western Dysfuntional Society!" A lot of young people, also, started coming to our church due to this "new" fame coming to the "ancient" technique of "Yoga" which translates as "Union," union with the "Divine Mother/Father" or simply "Great Spirit." I was renewed, and started practicing meditation and chanting the Yogananda "Inspirational Chants" with a new vigor. This meeting that I spoke of, with a young man named John and my parents, I have now come to realize, through watching videos on the inter-webs, was with one of the founders of the "Brotherhood of Eternal Love." The long-haired young man that came to "turn on" my parents, whose face and first name I always remembered since that evening when I was eleven years old, as none other than Johnny Griggs, of whom Tim Leary said "was not only his good friend, but also his 'spiritual guru' and 'the holiest man who has ever lived in this country.' " But Griggs was far more than Leary's guru. He had his own legally-registered church and used its tax-exempt status to establish 'Mystic Arts World,' a metaphysical bookstore, hippie boutique and head shop on PCH," (said Nick Schou recently*) if an Orange County California lad, who came to be one of the first "Johnny-L-Seeds," could be such! (See *Orange Sunshine: The Brotherhood of Eternal Love and Its Quest to Spread Peace, Love, and Acid to the World" by Nick Schou- although the movie also titled "Orange Sunshine," is just a BIT more accurate and less "sensational..." ). It was then decided that my Dad would take the first "journey," wihout my Mom, so he went up to Modjeska Canyon to their "Church" and had that "God Experience" before "L" became illegal in the state. He took a picture of Johnny while he was in that "Love-State/Dimension," and what seemed to be an enlightened state of awareness they had been searching for in their spiritual quest. After developing the photos, he showed my mom the "blissful" look on Johnny's face (I remember seeing it too, taken of him meditating on a rock above a bubbling little stream), and it was all enough to convince her to do it also. That experience, while enlightening for her as it had been on Steve's first time, caused him problems his second time around, as far as "re-entry" back into functioning in the "outer world." Appearently he didn't want to go back to work at his Aerospace Engineering job, but instead just wanted to "meditate on God" all the time. (insert memory here of "cosmic energy" causing "swaying back & forth" in silent meditation w/dad & brother many moons before the 'acid drop-out", in addition to devotional chanting "swaying!") Here is a little line that I've told friends over the decades about my family: Although we were one of the country's first "New Age Consciousness Families," with our natural quest to study and practice "Meditation, Yoga, Metaphysical Discussions, Channeling, Natural Foods, etc.," we could and did "fight, bicker, quarrel and tease" as much as any "good ol' American Dysfunctional Family of the Suburbs!" Along with this, and the saying, "Children learn what they live," my parents were not lacking in their proclivity of such negative, family-destroying activity. So, perhaps the "seeds" of the "D-Word" (Divorce) had been planted some time before, especially with my mom's justification that when my dad went off on business trips for a week or two at a time, she claimed that we kids were "respectful, obedient, went to bed on time, etc." but when my dad was there that it wasn't like that. So, as I recall, my mom thought that this new "Spaced-Outted-Ness" of my dad's was just about the "final straw" for their marriage, but was willing to give him a year or so to prove her different. In the meantime, the channelings had been occurring with regularity. On a related note, my first non-parental-involved "metaphysical, other-worldly experience" occurred with my brother and sister as we experimented with the "Ouija Board." After we confessed in all truth to each other that we we're definitely NOT moving the plastic gliding piece, we asked our questions and patiently waited out the spelling of the word answers. My main question was, "what was I in my last lifetime?" The slow response had us laughing: "A meat-cutter in Atlantis..." I was pretty sure I had had another lifetime since some ten or twenty-thousand earth years, AND I would've guessed that an advanced civilization such as Atlantis would have been mostly vegetarian, but what do I know? One thing I recall that REALLY blew my mind, was that my Mom told me that my Dad's consciousness was taken away to Venus for 'schooling' for at least a week, and to keep his body functioning there was an "Etheric Machine" with a "swirling purple-ray" placed in my parents bedroom for that purpose. Now that was a fun thing to know, and I almost saw it once or twice with my "third eye," I believe! Another story I remember from early on, in their first experimentation with "Astral Travel," was when my Dad did one of his first journeys, he floated up above our neighborhood, and saw a carnival with a ferris wheel. After his return, soon thereafter, he went down to the Thrifty Drug Store for something, which is a direction that he wouldn't normally travel going to work, so he hadn't been there for a while, and what do you know? There was the "carnival" complete with a ferris wheel in the parking lot there! He immediately thought how "Wow, this stuff really works!" Then there was the Kruschev and Red China incidents. At some point in the sixties Russian Premier Kruschev publicly declared that the Holy Bible was full of lies and that he did not believe in it. My parents supposedly did an out-of-body journey to communicate with his "higher self," and tell it that the Bible was a good thing. From what they told us later, it came out in the news that he retracted that statement to say that it was OK (at this point I'm not sure if this event can be coraborated). At another time, after Red China had successfully over-taken Tibet, the communist armies started to come close to India in a threatening manner. Especially with their new connection to the "Gurus' Motherland" of India in this lifetime, again my parents did their astral travelling to connect to the "high selves" of the Communist Leaders (probably a very hard thing to find!), and work their "magic." And once again, soon afer, the news announced the red armies' retreat. Was it "just a coincidence?" Or..? I imagine that the channeled "E.T. Space Angels" we're not that proficient as marriage counselors, for as I recall in 1967, my Mom went through with the divorce proceedings, and I'll always remember the pain of our nuclear family's universe being blown apart. One event just came to me- one time when my Dad was at work, my Mom was practicing "automatic writing" with the "angels" at the dinner table in the dining room. She let my brother and sister and I watch her draw the spacecrafts and drawings of what they looked like. This then led into a channelling session wherein, the one thing I truly remember them saying (especially because it struck us as so "odd") was that in the future, we would be traveling together through the universe, but that our dad wouldn't be with us. Why, we wondered? How could that be? Well, later on I understood what they meant. Because they could feel the energies that formed events, they could see our parents separating in the not-too-distant future, and this was their way of helping prepare us kids for that. So, to get through the saddest part of the experience- I'll say that I'll always remember my Dad, who we never saw drink booze, had brought home a six-pack of beer one evening after work, set it on the coffee table, started in to drinking them, with my brother and I sitting next to him as he hugged us and cried. Next on the agenda was my Mom's new social life, since she eventually wanted to start dating again. This new social scene that she entered, unbeknownst to her, was going to open up a new world for us kids in the most revolutionary way: "the PWP Years!" She joined this group with a "self-explanatory" name: "Parents Without Partners," and the introduction of kids who have "hate your parents for divorcing each other" issues, to other kids with similar issues, was playing with "teen-angst fire!" My Sis' Chris "led the charge" in getting involved with other teens in the group who were surging with "up-tight-society propogated" pent-up tensions, on top of the previously-mentioned "parent issues," let alone dysfunctional society's "teen angst!" At one social gathering, the teens went off on their own (and this, luckily, would be one of the few times Big Sis Chris let me "tag along"), and in one of the first "meetings" together, decided to make my boisterous sister the leader of their newly-formed clan. They proceeded to put her up up on some kind of concrete riser underneath these tall palm trees at this school we were at. They fanned her with palm fronds and proclaimed her "Queen of the S.P.E.R.M. Club." They had come up with that acronym on the spot, and it stood for: "Society for the Prevention of Eratic and Recalcitrant Mothers!" I still remember the names of some of them: Lynn, who had a Chevy Nova that was similar to my parents Nova station wagon- (the car I would later steal a key to and, at age 14, put two big yellow pages phone books on the driver's seat and drive it around our neighborhood while my parents were at work). There was John and Paul (there may have been a "Richard," but no George), and a Steve. These were the first "homosexual" guys I came to hang out with. My sister loved these people dearly, and they were the perfect outlet of the time for the "teenage rebellion" years. At another PWP outing, a picnic to Irvine Lake up in the hills above Orange County one Saturday, my sister liked a new teen named Mike that we met. Now around that time, going shopping with my parents to the Fedco Discount Department Store that we were members of because my Mom was a school teacher, & where, by the way- I saw my first drum set for sale (that created some "primal longing" in me), I came across a record album for sale that was so very strange, I didn't know what to think of it. It had a black guy, with two white guys in a circle, asking: "Are You Experienced?" Doing what? I wondered about this strange music group called the "Jimi Hendrix Experience"... I shrugged my shoulders and continued looking. Well it was at the PWP Picnic that day I got my first taste of that music. There was a live band playing in this bandshell next to the lake where people rented paddle boats to sail around the little lake. We were sitting up on the hill overlooking both, and we were smoking these tobacco cigarettes that he had and he asked us if we had ever gotten "high" by smoking incense? We said no, what was it like? He asked if we'd like to try it? So we shrugged our shoulders, and said "I guess..." He pulled out these little cone-shaped pieces of incense, and showed us how to hold it on the cigarette's cherry and inhale. So we tried doing this quite a few times, with no noticable effect, as far as I could tell. Then, the band started playing another song, and Mike starts getting REALLY excited, literally jumping up and down, shouting, "Do you know what this is?" We shook our heads, and said no. "It's Jimi Hendrix..! This is 'Fire!' " He just started dancing in place to "Let me stand next to your fire!" with its intense drum beat... I was sold! That in itself was the "High" we were looking for- incense be damned! We jumped up too and started dancing and smiling to the Hendrix groove for the first time (for me anyway)! The song had just come out and this band had already learned it. We were VERY impressed with their ability and song choice, because it was the 60's and we were beginning to rock! And it was all just planting seeds in me it seemed, seeds that would cause me to play these songs and many others later on in my life, on drums or guitar at many a jam session, open mic or concert. It was at that same Fedco Department Store where I had earlier "experieced" two guys, maybe around 18 or 19 years old playing on a drum set, as the other one strummed an electric guitar and sang in to a microphone, the song that had become a recent # 1 hit, "Hang On Sloopy" by the McCoys. I fell in love with the raw energy of rock n' roll, and with the idea of creating some of it on that "bitchin' " drum set that those guys were advertising in the "3-D." Ater much badgering (and probably a lot of "pledging of future chores"...) my parents spent the one hundred and fifty-or-so dollars to buy me my first "Made in Japan" (the "Made in China" of that era) "Meyer" Brand Drum Set..! I was in "Rock-n-Roller Heaven" and loved playing w/them after school and on weekends in the garage (with my parents later confessing that they got the drums for me as a way to help me "vent my frustrations and anger" After i heard THAT it really made me angry! "bud-dah-bump, shhhhh!" ). So, Anyway... Rock n' Roll Goals Were Being Excitedly Attempted: Iron Butterfly's "Inna-Gada-Da-Vida" Here I Come... HA! (But I never DID master THAT long drum solo, except the first minute or so..!) Then in the summer of 1968 came a "Rock Festival Experience"... my first opportunity, at the "tender age" of 14 Summers, to attend a sizeable festival, called the "Newport Pop Festival," that pre-empted by approximately a year, the big festival that would occur a year or so later in Woodstock, NY. While it didn't have quite the same number of number of acts, or quite the same number of attendees, this concert held at the Orange County Fairgrounds was quite notable, having about twenty name acts of the day (compared to the Woodstock Concert's thirty four music acts) and about 100,000 ticket holders (and a number of "gate-crashers" as well). Although called the "Newport" Pop Festival, technically it was held in Costa Mesa, which is just a "Stone(r)'s Throw" from Newport Beach, and I believe the promoters, Wesco Productions along with KHJ-AM Radio DJ "Humble Harve" wanted to capitalize on the name "Newport" and borrow from the "Legacy" of the famous East Coast "Newport Folk Festival." A more accurate name of course, would have been "The Laguna Pop Festival," in that far more hippies were coming out of that beach area around that time, heh-heh..! Laguna Canyon's infamous "B.o.E.L.'s (Brotherhood of Eternal Love) Mystic Arts World" even had a big booth at the festival..! This is a report from a site called "Everything Explained Today"... "The Newport Pop Festival 1968 The first Newport Pop Festival was held at the Orange County Fairgrounds in Costa Mesa, California on the weekend of August 3–4, 1968. It is believed to have been the first pop music concert with over 100,000 paid attendees. The 1968 event was originally scheduled to be held inside the Orange County Fairgrounds in an outdoor pavilion. The fairgrounds are on Newport Boulevard, just a short distance from Newport Beach (hence the name). The 1968 event's advance ticket sales were triple of what was expected, and it became evident that no area inside the fairgrounds could hold even 25,000 people, let alone the near 100,000 now predicted. In the last three days before the show, it was moved to one of the adjoining parking lots of the fairgrounds. Fencing, staging, sanitation, and food concessions had to be organized within just three days. Fencing in some areas consisted of wires with blankets and/or tarps thrown over as a visual block. People without tickets on the outside would "storm the fence" and got in for free. None of the commercial concessionaires were prepared for the event, and they all ran out of food and drink halfway through the first day. Water was provided throughout the event by garden hoses from inside the fairgrounds, but attendees had to provide their own containers and give up their viewing spot to reach the water. A broken water supply pipe provided a mud bath that a number of people jumped in, but people realized that the sun would bake the mud into a hard cover, so they stopped. There were plenty of porta-potties available at the rear of the hastily assembled "grounds." There was no shade in the primary viewing area, and partiers were sunburned. The weather was a typical August day in sunny Southern California. Those without hotel reservations had no place to stay. Fortunately, city officials alleviated some of the problems by designating a 32 acres area of the fairgrounds as an emergency campsite. They also brought in portable toilets and water tanks. This particular event launched some of the problems rock festival promoters would face in the future. Harvey "Humble Harve" Miller, a Top 40 disc jockey for 93 KHJ-AM in Los Angeles, was hired to promote the show and hosted the event with Wavy Gravy. Wesco Productions (West Coast Productions) consisted of Mark Robinson, Gary Schmidt and Al Schmidt, though Humble Harv was used in advertising for promotional purposes. Tom Neito of Scenic Sounds Productions also assisted in securing the fairgrounds, and was paid a fee and received some promotional billing. Robinson had been involved with Bob Blodget in staging a much smaller but similar weekend festival in 1967 in Los Angeles. There never was a second edition of this event and its prominence faded from memory until, on August 4, 2008, Jeff Overley penned a feature article for the Orange County Register that commemorated the event's 40th anniversary. The big hits with the crowd included Tiny Tim, Jefferson Airplane, Country Joe McDonald, The Chambers Brothers, and Steppenwolf." https://www.ocregister.com/2008/08/03/40-years-later-newport-pop-festival-reverberates/ And... Oddly enough, I can't seem to remember a whole lot from that experience that my big sister let me tag along to... But i DO remember some parts of the day..! Chris let me go to the Festival with her "PWP Friends" with one caveat... (that I'm SURE she didn't inform our mother of!) that I was not to "hang out" with her and her friends, to which i agreed, just thrilled to be nominated to go at all at that age!) Newport Pop Festival- Saturday, August 3, 1968: Alice Cooper (They played on a “side-stage,” and the whole band was called “Alice Cooper,” long before Vince Furnier adopted the moniker for himself!), Canned Heat, Chambers Brothers, Charles Lloyd Quartet, Country Joe and the Fish, Electric Flag, James Cotton Blues Band, Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Sonny & Cher, Steppenwolf, Tiny Tim. Sunday, August 4, 1968: Blue Cheer, Eric Burdon & The Animals, Grateful Dead, Illinois Speed Press, Iron Butterfly, Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service, The Byrds, Things to Come. " We only got to go on Saturday, because our “deal” with “Mom” was that she would let us go to the festival on that day, but we had to go to SRF church with her on Sunday. Then at around 15 years old, it was 1969 and I was hitch-hiking down to Laguna Beach quite a bit- Weekends & school holidays, and these became some of my first journeys out into the "outer-world-beyond-Buena-Park/Anaheim" on my own. I would read Yogananda's books like "Daily Affirmations" and get "high naturally" on chanting the SRF chants or the Hare KRSNA mantra while hitch-hiking down Hiway 39 (Beach Blvd.) starting at the southwest corner of Lincoln Blvd. and Beach, across from “Henry’s Livery” where, as a sub-teen, I first got to drive a little car, a “go-cart motor-powered” Model A replica, on Henry’s short “U-turn road.” Sometimes i would have the little 2 in. x 3 in. devotional booklets on Krishna or Buddha that came from India, and that you could buy for, like fifty cents from the SRF bookstore. It seemed to work, to me anyway, in that i would always eventually catch a ride w/interesting people, friendly and even "false-friendly," because I even remember getting a ride from two "long-hairs" in an old jalopy... who were 'over-friendly' and then asking me to score them some drugs... Luckily, I wasn't one of their "victims," as I told them I didn't know of anyone... just got high on 'god' as i could tell by their 'vibe' they were not cool..! I'll save more details on the rest of that story for later- (WRONG! I am about to tell it NOW!) including my getting pissed off at these same narcs when I was an "Eagle Scout" sponsored by the Buena Park Police Department, where the meetings were held in their basement... As later on I remember seeing the two "hippies" in an Eagle Scouts meeting telling us of their "busting hippie hitch-hiker" tales, and Self-Realization Fellowship Church being a 'drug-takers meeting spot,' at which point I stood up and shouted, "HEY, That's MY Church, and It IS NOT!" I sat down fuming, as everyone stared! That was my last involvement w/THAT group. Ironically, i had just cut my 'beyond collar-length hair short for involvement w/that group, and within a few days was going up to Haight-Ashbury on vacation w/my brother and Dad in his '64 VW Bus! Once there, my Dad let me hang out by myself, after agreeing to meet back at the car in a couple of hours. They went to the "Hippie Hill" and i hung out on Haight Street, wearing a long "military/marine coat" that was the "hippie fashion" of the day, but still feeling weird, for not "fitting in" in my mind, due to my short hair. Next thing i knew, a hippie brother asked me, "hey, do you want to buy some grass?" I told him no, but my attitude immediately changed, as i felt "accepted" and that i must look "cool" enough after all! (Another memory just kicked in, regarding my involvement with the “Eagle Scouts”..!) I have more to add to my reccollection of the “Yamaha Motor-bike” story. Randy was a fellow “Eagle Scout” that I acquired the motorcycle from for just around fifty bucks. He was “kicked out” of the Eagle Scouts, and here is how that happened. There was a “Scout Jamboree” weekend that we all went to at some park north of O.C., where camping was allowed. Randy was “stupid” enough to bring some weed that he had scored, in a baggie that he had in a “Mary Sees Chocolates” box. I suppose to look “cool” to me and another guy, he was kind of “bragging” about the “chocolate” he had that we would eat after dinner. I really wasn’t an official “stoner” yet, but I would just smile and nod, with no intention to join him in the experience, in, of all places- a camping weekend with the Eagle Scouts sponsored by the “Buena Park Police Department. ” I remember him returning to the tent that night after his “chocolate” consumption, and telling us how his “head was all tight!” (That was the first time I ever heard getting “stoned” described like that!) The only other thing I remember from that “Jamboree” was our learning how to start a fire without matches or a lighter (“native american style”) by hitting a “flint-stone” with the back side of a buck knife to create sparks... but we were taught a way to “cheat” by using good ol’ “steel wool,” which un-beknownst to us at that time, is quite flammable! So before the next Eagle Scout meeting, I was notified that I was required to show up about a half-hour early for a “special meeting.” When I did, I was shown into a room where an “interrigation” took place, as I was “implicated-by-association” with Randy. After questioning me about the “illegal mary-wanna” incident, I simply told them the truth: that I did not participate in the experimentation with the “devil weed,” and I guess they believed me. Randy was kicked out, but I was not. (Now back to Laguna Beach later on down the “time-line,” where I would definitely “get my head tight” ha ha!) I could always go hang-out at Mystic Arts World, or the Taco Bell across the street a half block away, at PCH and Cleo St. It was the era of the blossoming of Laguna's Hippie Village," fueled by good amount of dough from the canyon's pot, hashish and acid deals going down day and night... One evening, I was 'hanging out' there after my return to OC from Idyllwild where my dad had taken me, fresh from my 2nd "Newport Pop Festival" experience (the one that occurred June 21-23, 1969gc at Devonshire Downs in Northridge in the San Fernando Valley), to join the rest of the family at the cabin that my mom had rented while she was attending ISOMATA ("Idyllwld School of Music & the Arts," where i had my first experience with Instructor "Tom Fresh," someone who would play an instrumental role in my "Hopi Connection" many years later). I be-friended a hippie brother named Rick who I shared a joint with down on the beach that evening & then as MAW was closing up, we were hanging out on PCH. It getting close to 10 pm and the "heat" was starting to "rowst" people. I got nervous and told him I was worried because I was under 18. He thought for a second and said, "come on, I know somewhere we can go..." so we "hi-tailed" on foot out to the canyon. It may have been my first journey up there, and I was thrilled. We walked up Canyon Acres Street, and he pushed open a wooden gate on the left-side of this canyon house at the very end of the road. He introduced me to Peter, who had a very calm demeanor about him. Rick announced that we needed a place to crash, and the long-haired brother Peter nodded and asked if we wanted to puff a "J" to which we heartily agreed. It was such a warm feeling to be welcomed and freed from the fear of arrest and being taken to "juvey" (juvenile hall) which would have excacerbated the rough time I was going through in my "mother-hating-for-divorcing-my-dad" or whatever "teen-age-rebellion-angst" I was going through at the time, heh-heh! That meditation triangle is one I will always remember, only to be surpassed by what happened the next morning. Peter made a small fire outside & heated water in a small pot to cook brown rice for us to eat. As it cooked, we chatted about this and that, leading up to recent events- in this case, the Newport '69 Pop Festival. As that 3-day concert was my first experience with how terribly mean the police can be when "protecting & serving" the wealthy-class, I was still shaken by seeing first-hand, scenes like a peaceful long-haired hippie wearing a cowbay hat, carrying a gallon glass jug to the water faucet so he'd have drinking water inside the festival, with a helmeted cop running up behind him and smashing the jug while it was hanging from his hand, totally blowing the hippie's mind (NOT in a GOOD way) and shoving him in the back with the same night stick, to "disperse" the peaceful concert-goer! So I related that experience in our morning chat, talking about seeing an article about the festival on the cover of the Los Angeles Times, with a front page photo of a hippie, bent over and grimacing in extreme pain, getting pulled along by his long hair by a riot gear-adorned cop... when Peter annoucned, "Yeah, that was ME!" I became further stunned by the coincidence and empathy with what he must've gone through, after just peacefully minding his own business outside the festival fence! (WRITE ABOUT SWEETWATER HENDRIX BUMMER, SUNDAY REDEMPTION, ETC.) Another time (did i tell this 1 already?), on one of those trips in the Purple Falcon I was allowed to accompany Sis Chris and her BFF, Kathy Wilson down to Laguna Beach to hang out at Mystic Arts World ... It came to be night time and after hanging out there for a while, Chris and Kathy told me about a beach party at Scotchman's Cove (just north of Laguna) that we could go to and I said "OK, sure, why not..?" I remember after arriving and climbing down the cliff with them, I somehow ended up with a group of hippies who were drinking from a gallon bottle of wine, of which i did not partake, but heartily joined in the group "Om-ing" that was happening with them and their smiling, joy-filled faces. I remember the older (i'm guessing around early twenties?) and a shorter hippie woman "Cookie" was there with her very bushy and curly brown hair, and I became infatuated with her, but of course I was quite shy at approximately 16-summers-old. I had forgotten about and was not concerned about what Chris and Kathy were doing and continued to hang out in that ecstatic commraderie of 'the moment.' So imagine our surprise when we see some people with flashlights coming toward us from the south... and sure enough it's "Johnny Law" coming up to us- but not to harrass and rowst us (for once!), because they were on a "mission"... They had gotten a call about a possible "attempted rape" there on the beach that night. I walked over to where I thought my sister might be. I found her with this hippie guy she was lying next to, presumbably "making out" with (back in our day that meant "only kissing"... no more). I started to tell her about what was going on, when a couple of cops came up to them and started asking them questions. They were satisfied with the answers and that they had their clothes on under the beach blanket, and proceeded up the beach. Chris and her friend were lucky that night... Whew, what an enlightening and exciting one! Around this time that I was hitch-hiking down almost every weekend, one memorable Saturday- it must've been during the "May-June Gloom" (of 1970gc)... as it was quite overcast down in Laguna the whole day. I non-the-less had decided to go to the cliff above Main Beach on its north end, to trip on some mescaline and read Yogananda's writings. As I started to engage in that endeavor I noticed a tall, skinny long-haired brother hanging out there too, so i boldly walked up and befriended him. His name was John and he had hitch-hiked there from Hemet, a couple of hours inland. Our vibes clicked and he took me up on my offer to share some of the mescaline powder. In no time we were sitting there together, meditating to the words of "Metaphysical Meditations." After 2 or 3 hours of that, mixed with some devotional chanting and gentle musings on "enlightenment mind," we parted ways after exchanging contact info and my promise to come up to Idyllwild to meet his friends of a "psychedelic tribe" up there. As soon as I got out of tenth grade and summer vacation had begun, I hitched out and up to "Mile High" Idyllwild to look for John, who I found right away hanging out downtown outside of Dutton's Village Market, right across the street from where my birthday buddy, Elvis Presley, gets off the bus in front of the gas station & Idyllwild garage in the movie "KId Gallahad." John was learning the "art of busking"... playing his guitar and singing on street corners for spare change, but he had taken a break awhile before I arrived and had been holding a hit of orange sunshine in his fingers, contemplating taking it. But he said he was already starting to come on to it just from holding it for a while, absorbing it through the skin of his fingertips! He then agreed to walk with me the mile and a half or so above Idyllwild, to Fern Valley to introduce me to his friends that he'd told me about at "The 76 House." It was so-named because it sat on the corner of South Circle Drive and John Muir Trail, across the street from the other original gas station up there that was a Union 76 Gas Station (WAY before it became "Unocal," which was a conjunction of "Union 76" and "California"). The locals also called it the "Oat Mo House," which I'll get to in a moment... When we arrived I got to meet the brothers in various stages. Red-haired and bearded Henry was sitting on the floor playing guitar. Pablo was loading the strange-looking bamboo pot-pipe called a "bong." It was the first time I had ever heard that word. Some of these guys, like Lee, who I met next, had recently returned ("alive," thankfully) from Vietnam, and had brought their bamboo smoking tools with them. They would turn the weed into a powder and mix it with a little moisture in a wooden bowl to make a little ball out of it. After loading the little ball of weed and offering a prayer to the universe, they would ignite it and slowly dry it out as they inhaled the water-cooled smoke, then sucking all the ashes into the bong-water before cleaning the passage-way with a coat-hanger wire plunger, called a chugwa, I believe. Then "reinforcements" arrived- in the form of the tallest and longest-bearded one, Dennis, who just came back from scoring a brick, or "kilo" of pot that he had wrapped in a cloth under his arm- with another brother, Brent. After we sat and shared in communion with and appreciation of the weed, they gave me a printed little light-blue card, with a picture of a little man holding a chillum that had smoke rising from it, next to the beautifully-drawn block-letters "A U M." On the other side was the Hindu mantra for chanting while doing what we had just been doing, "Om Shiva Shankara Hari Hari Ganja"... also in beautifully-written caligraphy letters. Lord Shiva, of course, has been worshipped for centuries with such mantras, over in India and Nepal along with cannabis consumption, either in this previously mentioned form or in "bhang," a potent cannabis-infused beverage. I treasured that card and the love that had generated its offering to me... They asked if we wanted to join them for a meal to which we whole-heartedly agreed. It turned out to be a very simple one- just brown rice w/sesame salt and tamari soy sauce... but "all you can eat!" They were into "Macrobiotics" and shared the philosophy of George Osawa and his 'sanpaku' theory as we ate our simple macrobiotic-meal. Then brother Bruce and sister Sue showed up in their little VW bug. They lived over at "the Red House," and they we're as equally heart-loving as the others. The 76 House had some of Yogananda's books in their book case that was next to the stained-glass window that read, "Om Tao" in beautiful rainbow colors (but everyone that didn't know the "recently-coined & spiritually-charged hippie phrase" thought it was "OAT MO," as it reads from the outside, heh-heh...) I naturally wanted to connect with them on that level so told them I had been doing meditation and devotional "bhakti" chanting to the Self-Realization Guru Lineage since i was about five years old. Bruce asked "Do you want to see an image of our guru?" I said "Yes, of course," so he led me to the mantle over the fireplace that held the full color print of the Tibetan Thangka painting of the "16 Year-Old Padmasambhava" rising out of the lotus in a Himalayan Lake, put out around that time by the Nyingmapa Lama, Tarthang Tulku. Because of my "pre-conception," I suppose, of what a guru should look like, all "loving and blissful" perhaps- i had an 'adverse reaction' internally to this stern-looking image of a Tibetan saint, finding it to be very weirdly strange, almost sinister... perhaps bordering, dare i say it, on 'satanic' in my 'primitive beliefs of reality' mind, heh-heh! I think I ust muttered something like, "interesting," but asked no follow-up questions. Among other amazing connections, one was that in the house on the next morning i found the book, "Yoga Postures For Self-Awareness" by Swami Kriyananda, who had "defected" from SRF church to start his own "yoga commune" in No. California, "Ananda." I had basically just done the "yoga-related" SRF "recharging excercises" up to that point in my young life, so that was a "bonus" to get turned on to my 1st complete set of "hatha yoga" postures! I proceeded to do them outside in their little patio beneath the "MO OAT" glass and under a huge Ponderosa Pine tree. On a side note, one interesting little story i remember was from (probably) a "LOOK" magazine article on communes that included the Ananda Community, in the early 1970's. When the writer was in a market near Ananda in Grass Valley, a truck full of commune members pulled up into the parking lot and jumped out and headed toward the market. He overheard a conversation from two elderly woman inside, as one worriedly said to the other one, "Oh my goodness... are they hippies?" Her friend responded in a reassuring tone, "No dear- they're yogis..." to the first one’s sigh of "great relief!" Sometime after that introduction i found myself back up there and i acquired some doses of "Orange Sunshine" acid, (probably from "Johnny Sun-Shine") and i kept them in a paper mailing envelope. After a couple of days up there, i needed to get back to the Orange County. Bruce and Sue , it turned out, were going to go to the Ortega Hiway Hot Springs ( a destination back then for many hippies for soaking "in the raw" surrounded by mother nature) in their little VW bug. Because that is almost all the way to my parents' house in the "Good Park," i was over-joyed to learn that they would let me ride along! For "safety's sake," in case we got "rowsted" by "the Man" i kept the O.S. doses inbetween my sock and my ankle. When getting un-dressed to soak in the hot pool, i discovered that all the doses had melted (from my body-heat) into the paper of the envelope! (I didn’t realize that a plastic baggie would have been good to put the paper envelope in..!) "OH NO" i exclaimed to myself... "There goes THAT enterprize!" Jumping across the time span of the summers, during which "time" i had moved out of my parents' "nest" to the Encinitas area in North San Diego County, home of the SRF Retreat Center that i had visited with my parents as a child and that overlooked the ocean at what the local surfers labled "Swami's." I developed my surfing skills there and continued on my "Bhakti-Devotion" path that included my being a "vegetarian" which, un-beknownst to me was about to change. ( ALL THE PREVIOUS PARAGRAPHS EDITED ON 3/22/22gc) (THE FOLLOWING EDITED on 3/21/22gc. W/RE-TYPED SECTION AT END FROM WHAT WAS LOST FROM 2021gc LAP-TOP CRASH) It was also sometime recently before this time that my mother offered to pay for a "session" for me with her friend Brenda Crenshaw, a well-known-at-the-time Los Angeles-based psychic. I accepted her offer and drove to visit her in her "Victorian-style" house up there. One of the first things she asked me was if i knew about "Subud?" I said that i didn't, and she responded that she had picked up that i had some connection to it, as well as to "Zen" Buddhism. Among the other things she said, i remember that she asked if i played the piano, to which i said that no, i didn't. She asked if i played drums, to which i enthusiastically replied, "Yes, i LOVE playing drums!" ("One out 2 ain't bad" heh-heh!) She also said she saw a "Chinese Guide" above me. This confused me, as i was, at that time, mainly into Hindu-style Devotion as a spiritual path and saw only the Yogananda-lineage masters as my "guides," believing it would be that way for life. Much later on, i intuited that she may have been picking up on my "beyond-this-lifetime" connection to the Tibetan Teacher, "Padmasambhava, the Lotus-Born Guru." I had also recently done some art of the "mounain, water-fall, lake and nature" scenes i loved to create, with "Tibetan-style" clouds, a dwelling and sweat-lodge, a Native American tipi on the lake, and a "flying saucer" flying in the sky. After i showed it to her, she said that the clouds represented my “ancient (as in beyond-this-lifetime) connection” to "The White Brotherhood" and that to her, the tipi represented a "mask" and my connection to "The Stonehenge Druids"... (How strange was THAT!?) Just as with the Indian Sanskrit words like "karma," "guru," "mantra"... and "star-bux" (OOPS!) i mean, "yoga" (sorry- bad joke regarding how many "yoga centers" have sprouted up in cities and towns everywhere, in the fashion of the famous "every-couple-of’blocks" coffee drive-thru proliferation), the word "dharma" is fairly well-known to (& used by) more and more humans, not just from meditation &/or yoga center participation... but even, also, weirdly- to older "rock & rollers" of the 70's. Because, strangely enough, that was how i first heard the word- a word that i use almost daily now some 5 decades later! Here is how it happened- if i haven't mentioned it alreaady, by the time i was in junior high school (around age 14 maybe?) i'd tried smoking cannabis, (what we called "grass, weed, pot, etc." back then) , but by "high" school, i was vending it as well. One of my "customers" was a friend who was in the Ceramics Class taught by Mr. Jensen, a "shorter-than-most" instructor at Western, who had slightly longer hair, and who, rumor-had-it, was also a "stoner." The friend in his class, Craig, had perturbed my parents because after he spied "The Psychedelic Experience" book in my parents' book-case, he had me ask them if he and his friends could borrow it. They reluctantly agreed but only if it was agreed that he would replace it if anything happened to it, to which he willingly agreed! Well, sure enough, on their "trip," some grape juice had spilled on the book. After i told him to go to Mystic Arts World in Laguna Beach for another one, he made haste and came through right away to keep his word, much to my parents' happiness. Then soon after that "experience w/a happy outcome," he brought the latest Jethro Tull record over to share with me. He pulled it out and pointed to the first song, titled "Dharma For One," as he beamed at me through something i hadn't really experienced yet: an "enlightenment by rock n' roll smile!" Personally, i couldn't relate to it or the music all that much at the time. BUT- as we sometimes realize, mucisians, artists and the like, can be well "ah-head" of their times..! Around this time, i had acquired a '56 Chevy classic cruiser (that i'd traded for that Yamaha motor-cycle), and it was the first car i could call "my own" and i loved cruising around in that "tank!" But, sadly- i lost it in a moment that i look back and think: "how could i have been SO irresponsible!? I had wanted to start earning money in an "actual job, so i drove up to Fullerton, to where a friend had suggested i apply for one: Fender Guitar Works. I filled out the application, with no promise of getting hired, especially with no experience. When i returned to the car, i found that it had a flat tire, and, alas- no spare! I went back to the Fender office to ask if i could use their phone, and soon my mom and sister showed up to get me. When they asked what i would do about the car, i just shrugged and said, "i don't know..." I think my mom was secretly relieved that it wouldn't be taking up space in our drive-way. Bye-bye, Classic Cruiser! i had obtained a driver's license by then, but a few months earlier, when i had the motor-cycle, i just had "learner's permit," so i was driving it around illegally. And, as i recall, i was "barely" riding it at that, in that it had 2-cylinders, but only one was firing, so it took a while to get "up to speed." I had made my own "set of friends" through the PWP connection with friends like Craig Glemsur, Janice Jenkins, Linda France, Joan (who i remember wore those "cute John Lennon-style" eye glasses), Hugo, Shelly, and David Poteet, among others- all from the "Sunny Hills" area of Fullerton. I especially loved hanging out at David Poteet's house, as his mother was a hippie with her flowing loose-fitting dress, and dark afro-like hair. The Beatles "Abby Road" had just come out and we would smoke pot, dance and rock out to those dynamic songs. I especially remember "I Want You/She's So Heavy," at top volume, and it was especially cools as they had a big tree-filled back yard, with a patio and beautiful garden without close neighbors like we had in Buena Park's "Tract Home Suburbia." It was "Hippie-Heaven" right "Behind the (Conservative) Orange Curtain." They had a potter's wheel there and they all, it seemed, were into pottery, as i also loved to do. With the previous group of PWP friends, because they were more my sister's friends, i was more of a "tag-along" with my experience with them, but in THIS group, i was more "independent," you might say. There was another interesting side to things as well. In my sister's group, most of the young men were of the new-at-the-time "hippie/homosexual" leaning, and a couple of my first sexual awakening experiences occurred with them (other than the "Rosie Palm" as one of the labels was for our "right hand." Just as "Also-Fullerton/Sunny Hills Dweller" at the time, Jackson Browne used to sing, "Rosie you're all right, you wear my ring... When I turn out the light, I got to hand it to me...") This newer group though, while some were very likely "bi-sexual," most were "heterosexual," and... inspired by my "raging teen hormones," i was in "lust-love" with all the females! One afternoon after i'd ridden the bike up there, i was visiting with Janice, who already had her own apartment, and i was believe Craig was there too. Among other topics after getting stoned with them, i was probably extolling the virtues of my new Southern California Mountain experience, Idyllwild. We had such a good time smoking, talking and laughing, that time flew by and it had gotten late. We were so high that i guess Janice didn't want us to have to drive home like that, and offered to let us stay there. How could we refuse? ESPECIALLY because she had one of the "coolest" new things- a "water bed," and i, for one, had NOT slept on one yet! Well, we talked our-selves sleepy, and slowly "rocked our-selves asleep" (And here i'm reminded of yet ANOTHER Jackson Browne song, the "gospel-like," "Rock Me On The Water," that my future friend, Jiva, who had been to Jackson's beach-front house in Malibu, would tell me, was about his water bed over-looking the ocean!) What happened next i will never forget, because it was "a first'... i'm lying there sleeping next to Janice, Craig on the other side of her, and i'm having this dream of something like a big "sex doll" coming closer and closer to my "dream body." The next thing i know, i'm jolted awake by having a "nocturnal emission/orgasm!" WHEW! There i was, with goopy pants, praying i hadn't woken them up! The next day i set out to return home on the motorcycle, wearing my long -arm-fringe leather jacket (the one that would later be stolen back-stage at the Laguna Canyon Happening Christmas Festival!) and a white helmet that i'd put red and blue tape stripes to make it look somewhat like the (Peter Fonda "Easy Rider" movie) "American Flag" helmet. Needless to say, i was a rolling "pull-me-over-to-harrass" bill-board for The Man, and at one intersection as i turned left i saw a motorcycle cop in a gas station, and yes, that's what happened. After i was arrested for driving a motorcycle without a license, my dad had to come to the Fullerton Cop-Shop for me to get released. I remember that he was more upset with the cop and his lecture on "parental responsiblity" than he was with me... and THAT was FINE with me..! From then on (up until my future felony bust for possession of over 8 ounces of "devil weed"), whenever i was asked by a cop if i'd ever been arrested, i almost "proudly" responded, "Yes, for driving a motorcycle without a license when i was 15 years old!" So around this time i started spending weekends up in Idyllwild by hitch-hiking up there on Friday afternoons after getting out of school. Then, when summer arrived with the very pleasant So. Calif. weather, i vowed to myself to spend 2 weeks "in retreat," consisting of meditating, yoga asanas, chanting, eating natural (mostly granola) food, and "fasting" from all mind-altering substances, from psychedelic entheogens to "good ol' grass." I asked one of my "spiritually-inclined" friends from WHS, Dan Dehoag if he wanted to join me? His answer was, "Yes!" Meanwhile, "back at the ranch," there were two female high school friends that were part of the weekday evening "sundown sessions at WHS football field bleachers," where we would share some of the first veggie-burgers that i would bring in a box on the rack on the back of my 10-speed bike. We would smoke pot and chant "OMmmm" as the sun set behind the hills of "Lost Angeles," city of my birth. I believe Dan and i were in love with them, Dan with Wanda and i with Cheryl. That year of 1970, on June 14th, just as school had ended for summer break, the huge British band continuing to "take America by storm," ever since their "explosive" performance at venues from Montery Pop Festival to the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour on TV, "The Who," were coming back to So. Calif. With the Blues Image and Leon Russel opening up for them, they were going to perform at the huge home of Anaheim's baseball team the Angels- Anaheim Stadium. I got to go to the concert with those two "platonic girlfriends" who were also "best buds" of each other. I had the "pre-conception" that we would hang out together at the concert, but they both took swigs of one of the big gallon jugs of "apple juice" that was being passed around, and before i knew it they "floated away" without saying anything to me. Then i saw the guy who i would later find out was Johnny Gale, the leader of the "2nd Wave" of the Laguna Canyon based "Brotherhood of Eternal Love" that Rolling Stone magazine would later sensationalize as "The Hippie Mafia." He was wearing a leather vest with a psychedelic-style orange sun with the words "Orange Sunshine" embroidered on the back. He was handing out tabs of Orange Sunshine doses to anyone who put their hands out, all-the-while laughing non-stop. I would soon find out that the gallons of apple juice being passed around were also heavily dosed with the acid too. I hadn't drank any of it, so i just had a "stoned-out good time," although a bit sad that i wasn't hanging out with my "hOMe" girls. On the other hand, i was glad i didn't end up like the long-haired brother i saw after the concert had ended, being pursued into the bleachers and arrested for having lost all of his clothes! Soon after i found out that Cheryl and Wanda ended up driving around the local mountains and ended up at the Ortega Highway Hot Springs, getting home to their outraged parents at sunrise. Wanda's parents put her on serious "restriction" and forbade her to ever see Cheryl again. That was VERY heavy news to deal with for Cheryl (who was also put on serious restriction) and the two best friends never did end up talking again, from what I understood. The closest i can, in my mind, compare any of my life experiences to that, is having a big wedge driven between my blood brother and i in our 4 decades-old relationship (but THAT did not happen from a parental ultimatum...) Now speaking of rock groups, their influence on us and our inter-action with their music in our “daily lives”... another “experience” comes to mind. Due to “D.S.=dysfunctional society,” and especially its influence in the establishment ecucation systme, we hippie and “free-thinkers” were ostracized regulary by the “jocks” and their female counter-parts, i think they were labled, “soshes” (something to do with “social class,” and theirs being “above” ours, i believe). My first experience of the OPPOSITE experience occurred because of my “boldness” with my WHS English Literature teacher who was the “opposite” of my very cool teachers like Humanities instructor, Mr. Bill Patterson and the other teacher with long blond hair, Ms. _______?, who created “Xanadu”... the once-a-week lunch-time kind of “open mic” in which we would (without an actual “microphone”) share poetry, express our selves with our writing, or perhaps share a song with an acoustic guitar. I remember how my “Capricorn Brother,” long-haired Max Marmor, really turned everyone on with his cover of some “Crosby, Nills & Stash” songs, like “Suite: Judy Blue--Eyes,” their tributeS to Judy Collins. My Humanities Instructor Bill Patterson, was indeed ”a trip!” I still can’t believe how he was the first to turn me on to really eventually “getting” while, at the same time, and at first, “NOT getting,” Buddhism. In that class, he handed out a paper that my memory tells me was titled “the Treatise of the NOT TWO,” but upon searching for it these days, it seems to be titled, “Hsin Hsin Ming,” (“Faith in Mind”) by the 3rd Patriarch Of Chinese Zen, Seng Ts’an. After i read it, my “Hindu-Bhakti-Devotion” mentality of the time “short-circuited” and I just thought something like, “what is THIS crap?” I guess it didn’t make ANY sense to my “god-head-meditation-oriented” mind! Ponder, if you will, the poem that begins, “The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences...” (which i take to mean, “no pre-conceptions,” maybe)

“For the unified mind in accord with the Way, all self-centered striving ceases. Doubts and irresolutions vanish, and life in true faith is possible. With a single stroke we are freed from bondage; nothing clings to us and we hold to nothing. All is empty, clear, self-illuminating, with no exertion of the mind's power. Here thought, feeling, knowledge and imagination are of no value. In this world of Suchness, there is neither self nor other-than-self. To come directly into harmony with this reality, just simply say when doubts arise, "Not two". In this "not two", nothing is separate, nothing is excluded. No matter when or where, enlightenment means entering this truth. And this truth is beyond extension or diminution in time or space; in it, a single thought is ten thousand years.” It turns out that it is as close to Taoism as it is to Japanese “Zen” or Chinese “Chan” Buddhism, and its “Great Way” it not involved in the “game of opposites,” (which i take to mean, “self and other” i.e., “duality”). The great translation of the “Tao Te Ching,” by Timothy Leary, “The Psychedelic Prayers,” later became very dear to my heart as a spiritual tool of my “self” and to many of the “official” and “un-official” (like my “self”) members of the “Brotherhood of Eternal Love,” who coined the term or “mantra”... “Om Tao”..~!~ AND... Speaking of the “Brotherhood,” it may have well been some “brotherhood hashish” that I had acquired, that my Western High School bro’ Dave Norris told me was something Mr. Bill was interested in acquiring too! Now THAT “Blew My Mind,” so we drove up to the city of Orange together, as Dave knew where he lived and I did proceed to vend him a gram or two! And speaking of brother Dave (I can’t remember if i related THIS story yet), of how by my senior year there, after getting real tired of D.S. “low-life mentality” causing me to get beat up by a football jock for wearing “Beatle Boots” to school (& suffering subsequent “TMJ to this day”... but the one good thing that happened from that was my dad started teaching me karate!). Or on another occasion, getting “tripped from behind” by one them in the “forced jogging like sardines” line-up, with my jaw landing on another one’s heel, then getting sent to the nurse, bleeding and in pain, etc... The older P.E. (“Physical Education”) coach offered me a chance to be part of a special program then- wherein if you showed up an hour early before school started, you could “run laps” around the track by your-self! I gladly accepted, and THIS was the “fun part”... On the ‘Western” side of “Western’s Track” was a little concrete staircase to the next-door “tract homes,” and Dave’s house was within one minute’s “jog” of it. AND, that had been a house where, because his parents left early for work, we would meet to get stoned before school... BONUS! Mr. Patterson invited a female “Zen Buddhist Nun” from the “local mountain” Mt. Baldy Zen Center to speak to the students in the theater. (Dang again i cannot remember if i told this story already!) At the end of her “amazing-to-me” & “whacky/quirky” [for-lack-of-better-words] to most of the “straight/conservative” students in attendence talk, I was standing in the back and asked, “Are you vegetarian” (as I was at that time). She responded, “We Zen Buddhists eat ANYTHING!” to the ooohs and ahhhs of the audience. Then Mr. Patterson, who was standing next to me, starts elbowing me and whispering, “Ask her about drugs..!” “NO!” I responded, & kept refusing his badgering attempts to honor his request, as I already had the “dope dealer” rumors attached to me, and didn’t need the “publicity” or “validation!” Next thing I know, Mr. Bill is shouting out loud to her, “This kid back here wants to know your view on taking drugs,” as I tried to “hide in my shell!” She responded, “It’s simple... Drugs are for sick people!” That brought a good number of chuckles and even laughter, as her direct and straight-forward approach to everything I think enamored her to a LOT of students who can detect B.S. from society... Years later i payed a “surprise visit” to “Mr. Bill’s” class, and he ended up having me spontaneously teach his class about Tibetan Buddhism, including my studies of Tantric Yogic Breathing & its results! Around the same time, my English Literature teacher, Ms. Jane, was very “straight-laced,” conservative looking and expressed her self like-wise. We were studying The Odyssesy of Homer, and when i heard about the story of Ulysses a “light bulb” went on in my head, and i thought, “Wow this is just like the song ‘Tales of Brave Ulysess’ on the Cream album, Disraeli Gears i had recently purchased!” So i brought the LP to school and showed it to her. She was surprised and asked if she could borrow it? I totally agreed to that idea! After she took it home to listen to the song, at the next class, she had a record player set up in the class room and proceeded to pass out mimeographed paper of the lyrics that she had typed up. She thanked me in front of the class for calling it to her attention and we proceeded to ROCK out to CREAM in the CLASS-ROOM! All-Of-A-Sudden i WAS a high school student who was helping to create the MERGING of the WORLDS of “Straight” and “Hippie” (And, for a moment, I was, “Sitting On Top Of The World!” [for those of you who are not big “Cream Fans” you probably don’t get that little joke, but “Sitting...” was a song that Cream covered on one of their early albums] and... I guess you can’t “judge an instructor ‘book’ by its cover,” heh-heh! My sister Chris’s age meant she was a senior (her last year of High School) while i was a sophmore (10th grade). She would rarely, if ever, inter-act with me there (“D.S.” again)! One time though, where that wasn’t the case as i recall, was at a WHS “Carnival” on a Friday night, where she actually hung out with me for a moment, and the reason i remember was because she introduced me to her “class president,” Doug Fee, who was sitting on a 5 foot tall platform, that you might see people at a carnival sitting on ready to be ‘dunked’ into a tank from a baseball throw (but there was no tank or baseballs!) He was sitting there cross-legged on the platform staring forward, and she asked him what it was that he was doing? “Meditatiing” was his response, to which we both knowingly smiled, because here was yet ANOTHER “PDoDS”... or “Potential Destroyer of Dysfunctional Society!” Doug’s younger sister, Gail and i became friends, and i forget now what class we shared, but she accepted my invitation to do homework together in my room a few times. I was “in lust” with her and her thick, dark, “almost afro-like” long frizzy hair, but nothing ever “came” of it! I remember getting pretty stoned on hashish in the bamboo bong with her before attempting to figure out the school-work! I was fairly shy when it came to girls. In “High” School, Marlene S. was the closest i had ever come to having a “girl-friend” and that was VERY short-lived. It lasted longer in my mind than the night she joined me in my upper bunk (w/my brother sleeping below) after my sister woke me up to come join them out in the back-yard, with Marlene and her older sister Susan (who was in Chris’s class and one of her best friends), as they “tripped on mushrooms”... on a school night no less! After i hung out and sat next to her for a while, i took her by the hand and led her into my bed. I tried kissing her but she was too high, so instead she became the first young woman who’s pubic region i ever carressed- (again, though, nothing “came” of it either!) In the following “daze” at school there was no affectionate “vibe” or touching like people in a relationship engage in, so i guessed “that was that” heh-heh! “Love lost, such a cost, give me things that won’t get lost, like a coin that won’t get tossed... rolling home to you...” Those lyrics from Neil (“Not-Getting-Any”) Young-er would fill our ears a couple of years later in 1972gc. Next/Coming Attractions: Introduction by “Johnny Sun-shine” to Topanga Canyon, with all its “Love Animals Don’t Eat Them-Topanga Division” & “Jimi Hendrix/Chuck Wein Rainbow Bridge” Hippies..! One time I had come up to Idyllwild to vist John where he was care-taking a friend’s house down in what was called “The Banana Belt” out by “Inspiration Point,” (the area around ISOMATA that was so-named because it got the most sun of the Idyllwild Area, in that the big pine trees were fewer and thinner...) When I showed up, he was busy listening to the Pink Floyd’s LP, "UmmaGumma." All of a sudden i was amazed... getting turned on to this group for the first time with their songs that were YET, MORE SPACE-TRAVEL MUSIC! There was “Astronomy Domine,” “A Saucerful Of Secrets,” “Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun,” Etc... I was “En-TRANCE-d!” John was trying to learn to play some of it on his guitar. I found out that he was tripping, and so I joined him. We “journeyed” through a beautiful entheogenic and space-music inspired mental “Extra-Terrestial Experience” together on this beautiful afternoon in the beautiful So. Calif. mountains! Soon I would meet Susan Marshall, who was a room-mate, at the time, of this brother Tom, who was a leather-crafts worker too. (I ended up bringing him my small anvil to lend to him, and ended up leaving it there). After I showed him my “Third Eye Productions” leather hair barrettes, head-bands, necklaces, etc., a lot of which had some Hindu “OM,” or Egyptian “Ankh” (Eternal Life) symbols on them. Tom drew a picture of a symbol that was identical to the Ankh, but with 2 more bars underneath the top bar. He said is was the Mayan symbol for “weed” (or maybe we called it ‘grass” more then?). NOW THAT I had never seen before! They lived in an A-Frame cabin up by “Desert Sun School,” at the top of Saunders Meadow Road. Around the corner from that cabin, was a mountain hippie dwelling called “The Sun House” (probably because it also had a LOT of sun from fewer pine trees there as well), and it had a wooden sign in front with its name and little “sun image” painted on it. “VW Bus-Bob,” a long-haired flute-playing brother from Nebraska lived there, among other hippies. One of the first people I met there at the A-Frame was Susan’s friend, Larry, who was from Santa Barbara where part of the “Anti-Vietnam War Up-Rising” or what the establishment called a “Radical’s Riot” had just recently occurred in Isla Vista, where a Bank of America had been burned, and the National Guard was called out to assist in the law enforcement of the “Police State.” He told us that he was there and that the burning of the bank was actually an accident, when a fire in a barrel in front of the bank got out of control, I think because when they were trying to put it out, it rolled into the front of the bank, maybe? The only other memory of that time/place I have, was hanging out there and meeting another friend of Susan’s- an interesting brother who’s name was “Buddy” but he had a nick-name of “The Hobbit,” because he was a shorter fellow. He and a friend came walking up to the A-Frame as we were hanging out front, telling us that they had just hiked up all day from Hemet, because they had car trouble on their way up from L.A., and decided to continue their journey on foot... We were AMAZED, because THAT is ONE heck-of-a HIKE! Later on he would become a “professional gambler,” and a regular at the poker games hosted by one of the Grateful Dead’s lawyers, Hal Kant..! (I wouldn’t find out until maybe 4 decades later, that Susan had worked at the Los Angeles Free Press newspaper, for my future-close-friend & heart-brother, Art Kunkin! I was a subscriber right around this time when I was about 16 summers-old, but had no idea- it was never mentioned by her!) One of the hippies hanging out at the Sun House, was a brother who grew up just a few blocks away from me in the B.P., Steve Hamilton, who later everyone called “Harpo” because his thick wirey hair gave him a look similar to “Harpo Marx,” and he had the sense of humor of a “Marx Brother!” By the next summer, Harpo and Susan, who had been “dating,” ended up renting a house together on Tahquitz Road, right on Strawberry Creek. It was called “Here ‘Tis” and a previous owner had made a big wooden sign over the entrance, with branches that spelled out those words. “Tahquitz” was the Spanish pronunciation, while the Native American pronunciation was “Tah-Queesh,” and it was the name of one of the local “dieties” of the local tribes. The legend of Tahqueesh is pretty amazing! (That legend is repeated here from the Cahuilla Tribe’s site, tahquitz canyon dot com) The Legend of Tahquitz Tahquitz was the first shaman created by Mukat, the creator of all things. Tahquitz had much power, and in the beginning he used his power for the good of all people. Tahquitz became the guardian spirit of all shamans and he gave them power to do good. But over time, Tahquitz began to use his power for selfish reasons. He began to use his power to harm the Cahuilla People. The people became angry, and they banished Tahquitz to this canyon that now bears his name. He made his home high in the San Jacinto Mountains in a secret cave below the towering rock known today as Tahquitz Peak. It is said that his spirit still lives in this canyon. He can sometimes be seen as a large green fireball streaking across the night sky. The strange rumblings heard deep within the San Jacinto Mountains, the shaking of the ground, and the crashing of boulders are all attributed to Tahquitz as he stomps about the canyon. When I first heard this legend, I was also informed that the Tribe forbids Native People from hiking or climbing up high where he dwells, as it might offend the Spirit Tahqueesh..! I became part of that “family” which was kind of like a “mini-commune,” with a “Norwalk Press” for making fresh organic carrot juice, racks for growing and consuming fresh sprouts and other natural food, while studying books like, Arnold Ehret’s “Mucus-less Diet,” and Herbert Shelton’s “Food-Combining Made Easy!” (w/its quirky sayings like, “Melons- Eat Them Alone, Or Leave Them Alone!”) I was eventually allowed to set up a little tent in the front yard, which was down-hill & out of view of the road. That summer, before I had set up that tent though, I remember hitch-hiking from the O.C. up to “The Hill” w/my “plutonic girl-friend” from Fullerton, Joannie Cap, of the “John Lennon-Look” Round Eye Glasses. (I was secretly in love with her, as I was with so many of my female friends, but again, too shy to act on it...) But my plan with her was to do the “powdered mescaline” that was prevelant up there everywhere, after we got up there... We got up there late on Friday night, and decided to do the trip together first thing in the morning. We slept next to each other on the living room floor in our sleeping bags. At sunrise, without getting out of our bags, we just swallowed one capsule of the mescaline each, set a good intention for our journey while holding hands, and then, because it was so early, drifted back to sleep. When we awoke in another hour or so, it was one of the strangest experiences of my life. Imagine when you were just born, and didn’t know where you were or who you were, and you were simply experiencing wild scintillating patterns of color flashing everywhere (what “now-ah-daze” I would classify as a “Bardo Thodol/Tibetan Book of the Dead” afte-death kind of experience!) Well, it was like THAT..! It took a good amount of time to feel the “notion of a self” again, and I think we just stayed close to those sleeping bags during it..! We soon constructed what was my first experience of a “sweat lodge” a few feet from Strawberry Creek. The big river rocks were heated up to glowing red in the fire-place, when we would dig them out with a pitch-fork and carefully carry them in a metal bucket down to the sweat lodge, where we would place thim in a pit, one at at time and then, quickly as possible before they cooled... took off our clothes and sat on towels inside, closed up the flaps, threw water and eucalyptus oil on them... breathed in the steam deeply and chanted our claustraphobia away with loud OM... OM MANI PADME HUM, etc. mantras or Peyote Songs maybe... after perhaps 20 or 30 minutes of chanting in the hot steam, and calling out to the anscestor-lineage-of-light-beings... we would give thanks, say “Ah Ho...” &/or “All My Relations!” and open the front flap (that always faced east BTW) and file out to go lay in the cool creek water. I will always remember brothers like Bruce rubbing the dowel around the rim of the Tibetan Dorje Bell to create those “space-ship wah-wah” sounds... an added auditory-sensation bonus to the bodily experience of the extremes of hot and cold, bringing you to that “ecstatic-heavenly state” (that took me back to a place like “Deep Creek Hot Springs” in my mind..!) Soon after that time, John started living in Topanga Canyon, and was renting the down-stairs space under the recently closed restaurant, “The Moonfire Inn.” The view of Topanga Creek from there was simply amazing, and the Inn was perched high above it. I was amazed as John opened the back sliding glass door, stepped out on a narrow ledge and proceeded to pee, which fell about fifty or sixty feet to the creek down below. I blurted out, “you just pee into the creek... isn’t that un-hygenic..?!” John responded, “my urine is as pure as the Himalayan snow!” “Oh, OK... yeah right...” I mumbled... and changed the topic. He had quite a bevy of new friends he had made among the “Topanga Hippies,” (most of whom were also members of the Topanga Division of the “Love Animals Don’t Eat Them” group, led by one “Louie Moonfire”), and a good number of them showed up while I was there. Dark bushy-haired Ricardo was a short Puerto Rican, Cricket had long sandy-brown/blonde hair and an equally long beard, “Jer-Om” had a short hair-cut and equally short beard, and John told me that his hair was just growing back from his “Krishna-devotee” look. Sean was also a sand-colored long-haired hippie, who had two young women with him all the time, Lynn a.k.a. “Day,” and Melody. Crickett was such a character- I will always remember him showing up from his shopping journey in Santa Monica where he had hit an “army surplus store” and purchased a 3 foot long machete’ in a canvas sheath. He wore it on his belt, and hitch-hiked back to Topanga like that... this long-haired and full-long-bearded hippie wearing a big machete’. “At least I couldn’t get arrested for “having a concealed weapon,” he declared! Hilarious! We all sat in a circle as John filled the hookah with primo hashish. We offered our prayers to the “Divine True Light of Love” or whatever the “Prayer du Jour” was at that moment, and passed the hose. I must have taken a fairly strong “hit” because the next thing I knew, my consciousness soared up out of my body, and I was looking down on the circle of fellow humans from about 25 feet above, maybe... Looking back now, I think it was my first “conscious astral projection,” albeit hashish-induced! There were many wild adventures I had up in Topanga Canyon, but one that stands out in particular was one that brought me my first “Moment of Warholian Fame...” Louie “Moon-fire” Marvin (an heir to the Singer Sewing machine fortune... or was it S & H Green Stamps? I always get them mixed up, JK LOL!) also owned a good amount of acreage at the top of “Tuna Canyon Road,” up above Topanga that had extensive views of the Pacific Ocean where he had built a huge circular structure with a fire pit in the center, that was called “The Moonfire Temple.” It was also where he kept a “zoo” of exotic animals including a camel, peacocks, a bull, pigs, dogs, cats, etc. One of his lovers, Martha, had a beautiful exotic parrot that would talk with her extensively as well. He had spent a good amount of time leading up to the Thanksgiving weekend in making these big (paper mache’ over chicken wire) “chicken and turkey” masks to fit over our heads to use at a Hollywood “KFC” (or what was called back then, “Kentucky Fried Chicken”) Protest against eating meat, for which he had sent out a “press release” in advance, to various “Lost Angeles” news agencies. So we loaded up the masks and protest signs, and a big (about 4 foot) paper mache’ “axe” that one of the “Love Animals Don’t Eat Them LADET-Cadets” would use to “chase us chickens and turkeys” around the KFC parking lot pretending to try and cut our heads off. The protest came off with chicken feathers flying off the masks, but other-wise with out a hitch, and it made for good “odd news” fodder. The brother who wielded the big fake “axe” wasn’t wearing a mask, and he was recognized by his family on the East Coast News! We then went back to Topanga Canyon to celebrate our successful day of protesting “Thanksgiving carnage!” Later, everyone went up to the Temple and I happened to be in the Moonfire Inn alone, when the phone, which was a “pay phone,” (remember those?) started ringing. I answered it and a voice said, “This is Lew Irwin... Is Louie Moonfire there?” I responded, that no, he had left for the evening. “Oh darn,” said Lew... “I wanted to get his report on what happened today down at the Hollywood KFC!” I responded, “Well I can tell you THAT!” Lew grew excited, saying , “OK Let me turn on the tape recorder, and if your story is good, we’ll run it!” I said “OK sounds good!” Lew began by asking for my name and my account of the protest... Later, Louie and a few of the “Cadets” showed back up and I said, “Hey it’s almost 6pm, do you have a radio?” They said yes, so I told them about the phone call, they fetched a portable radio and we listened as Lew introduced “Sundowner” of the “Topanga Canyon Love Animals Don’t Them” Protest Movement. At the end of the 2 or 3 minute report that went out on his nationally-syndicated radio news show, I was smiling real big when Louie smiled at me and said, “Yah did good, Sundowner!” And “Now For The Bad News” report... within a day or so a few of us started breaking out with big red “measle-like” sores on our bodies... And it was diagnosed that we had gotten infected from little cuts we received on our skin from the chicken wire under the big masks, whose chicken feathers contained “staphococculus” bacteria..! Martha, who was really knowledge-able regarding health issues, suggested we fast from food for a few days, while drinking blood-purifying organic carrot juice. We did as she suggested... IT WORKED! (ANOTHER Wild Story With A “HAPPY ENDING!”) “Tall Jim” and his lover-girl Annie were a couple of the “Cadets” who got the infection and were almost instantly healed from the “liquid orange-gold” and we bonded from the experience. We stayed in touch and they became partners with me in a fantasy project that winter, an “out-there space festival”... (not actually the name, but as I look back, the whole idea was “out there!”): a gathering out in Joshua Tree to contact and meet the “E.T. Angels” that I had been in contact with. (Maye I was just trying to pick up where Van Tassel’s “Flying Saucer Convention” left off?) Through brother Phil Alexander’s “Mother-Love Magazine” project (oh woah there is YET ANOTHER chapter coming... more “stories on top of stories!”), and because of our connection with Yogananda, I had met Ken Smith (really his “VERY unusual name!”) the lead singer for a Fullerton-based original song, spiritually-inspired music group, whose name was “Satyagraha.” It was borrowed from Mahatma Gandhi’s concept of “Satya-gratha” or “Truth-Force” that he invoked to “non-violently overthrow” British rule in India! I first experienced Satyagraha in the “free concerts” that occurred in the natural amphitheater of Fullerton’s “Hillcrest Park.” They would also play the Laguna Canyon Free Christmas Festival of 1970gc where ANOTHER chunk of my “15 minutes” got used up, heh-heh, when I read, from the stage, Yogananda’s words on Christ to over 20,000 hippies of the canyon and when I finished reading it, they were all pointing up to the sky..! (AND Yet Another Experience to share here... soon!) ANYway, Satyagraha’s “sound man/roadie”... yet another “long haired brother,” named Sam, had driven me up to Idyllwild in his classic 1960 Impala cruiser, so we had bonded (in fact, getting into our conversation a little TOO intensely, as the next thing we knew he was getting “pulled over” by the CHP and given a speeding ticket for going over 80 MPH!) He informed me that his mother owned a few acres on the northern border of Joshua Tree National Monument (before it became a “National Park”). When I automatically asked if we could have a “Flying Saucer Gathering” there, he said he would ask her... he did, and she agreed to it, without me ever meeting her! He showed us an arial photograph of the land, near the “Twentynine Palms Hiway,” a. k. a. “Hiway 62.” I drew up one of my “new age nature-scenes” w/a flying saucer streaking through the sky and came up with a “space-rap” for the back side. But something seemed missing... It was the “Angelic Energy,” which could be added from yet another of Louie Moonfire’s “girl-friends,” Samantha, and “yet another” beautiful “Cadet-Sister” that I had fallen in love with for THAT moment. She had “captivated me ” up at the Moonfire Inn, not only with her physcial beauty, but with her non-stop drawing of angelic beings floating-in-space, etc. SO when I was reviewing her art-work and asking for her involvement there, half way down to the creek, a “back-lash” occurred, as I didn’t know of Louie’s jealousy... The next thing I know he was shouting at me from half-way down the stairs between the old restaurant and John’s apartment, about how this was NOT a “free-love commune,” and “I better watch my step around there,” and other such “envy-based conflicting emotions” rap! I said, “Sure, sorry... OK..” But I DID get her beautiful art confirmed for the flyer! I got Phil’s connection at Cal State Fullerton, Harry, who worked in the Print Shop there, to print it up free of charge, and it was getting exciting! The “crazy” part was that I wanted to build a “geodesic dome” out there- made out of wooden struts and metal-strap hubs, although I had no experience with that kind of construction... Only the “how-to plans” from a “whole earth catalogue!” OK bear with me a moment as I tell you about my Yogananda-church heart-brother, Robert Rey from the “Holder Street Gang,” a division of the fictional “Buena Park Rats”... a big group of Buena Park Hippies who all meditated together at the SRF church, had a wild sense of humor and partied at the “Wig-Outs,” half-way between B.P. & Huntington Beach, at the Midway City American Legion Hall, among other select dance venues. Robert had a beautiful long-dark-frizzy-haired girlfriend by the name of Denise (who even “muled” my bag of mescaline tabs up to Idyllwild for me, when “the man” was “staking us out” at our hang-out at “Peak Park!”). Robert blew my mind one day when he invited me AND Denise to go with him to Hollywood to the “Whiskey A Go Go!” I had never been to a Hollywood night club, and had no idea minors were allowed, but he assured me they were. So off we went in his big green Dodge Ram truck, to see “Bobby Blue Bland” (who-ever THAT was!?) Well, I wasn’t into Bobby’s style of music so much, but I’m sure I loved his song, “Turn On Your Love-Light,” later a mainstay of the Grateful Dead, performed magnificantly by Pig Pen with all of his “free form improvising” of that classic and very dance-able song, performed to this day by his successors!) SO Robert was perplexed when I asked his permission to borrow his truck to take us, the wood and supplies out to Joshua Tree. “How am I supposed to get around?” he queried... “In my ’56 Chevy, bro’..!” And to that, he said, “OK... I guess so.” I put my flyers everywhere I could think of around Laguna Beach, Topanga Canyon, and places in Lost Angeles like the Bodhi Tree Bookstore. We had the directions to the dirt road off of Hiway 62 from Sam’s mother, so we headed out there one cold night. We took “the long road” up there for some reason, going out the 10 Freeway (instead of going up Hiway 62 through Morongo Valley, from just before Palm Springs, the quicker way- but what is “time,” anyway? I guess it was the only way I knew, maybe? “Maps? We don’t need no stinking road-map!”) We headed out towards Chiriaco Summit, but got off at the Mecca exit and headed north on what is called “The Utah Trail,” through Joshua Tree National Monument- It was free, back before they charged an entrance fee! Half-way out that road it started getting pretty cold in that truck cab, so I turned on the heater. Jim freaked out, shouting “NO! That is toxic air!” I never had heard that, and told him so... He said, “Turn it off or let us out NOW!” Sheez, OK, I thought, and concurred. We were in for a cold night, one way or the other! Once we got there, we magically found the road, and planted the wooden sign announcing the festival next to the hi-way. We got up to the land, built a camp-fire and proceeded to lose the “city mentality” and merge our minds with the “HIGH Desert View” of the universe! “Imagine my surpise” when no one showed up the next day. I was frustrated because we didn’t have enough people to set up the geodesic dome, and shared that emotion with them. I proposed we go back to the city to find more helpers! Jim agreed, but Annie said she wanted to stay, as she loved it out there! Jim said that she could stay there until we came back, but only if we left my dog Freddie with her for companion-ship and protection. (Oh yeah, did I mention that we had brought him along, heh-heh?) So we headed back, this time going west on Hiway 62 towards Morongo Valley, instead of the “Long Way Home!” We had to stop at the Thrifty Drug store in Yucca Valley for something (but I don’t think it was for their famous “5 cents a scoop” ice cream, as we were not into eating “junk food” which included dairy, the white flour in the cone, and especially... “SUGAR!”) As we walked up to the store, it blew my mind to see someone I knew from the “Topanga/Hollywood Hippies” that were all friends of good ol’ Laguna Friend, “Southern California Oracle Newspaper” artist, Star Shields, (who BTW was one of the Laguna Canyon Festival organizers who let me read to the crowd about Christ that coming Christmas!) It was Cherie’... who was also friends with “yet another” young woman I was in love with: “Earth-Star,” my fellow Capricorn, that I actually painted a big-sized reproduction of the Tarot Card, “The Magician,” for her birthday early that next year. Cherie’ was one of the teen-age girls that, with Earth-star, got to sit on stage at a recent “Dr. John The Night-Tripper” concert, waving colorful scarves as he performed his “New Ah-leans Ju-Ju Music!” I called out to say “HIGH” and ask if they- she and her male friend standing next to her, were coming out to the “E.T. Angels Festival?” She was riding this mechanical rocking horse, and she apparently didn’t hear me, so I came closer. She had a glazed look on her face, with half-open eyes. Her male friend, “Tony,” asked me not to bother her right now, winking, and put another dime in the rocking horse machine. “OHhhh...!” I thought, as my mind was boggled to instantly realize that she was experiencing “multiple orgasms” there in public, as long as he kept feeding it the dimes! (“If you got the dime, she has the time!” Sorry..!) So, we made the trip back to the O.C., and I grew more frustrated when I couldn’t find anyone willing to help us construct and erect the “G-dome” that was meant to attract the “E.T. Angel-Saucer Brothers & Sisters...” We headed back out and found Annie (with a sun-burned faceI) and Freddie, sitting next to the camp-fire, and because “absence makes the heart grow fonder,” we were all ecstatic to be safely with each other again. We meditated under the vast expanse of the universe, getting “high” enough naturally in that beautiful setting, to where it didn’t matter if no other humans and/or E.T.’s showed up to join us (that we could SEE with our physical EYES anyway, heh-heh!) So, that was my first attempt at creating a “festival” in this life-time, and I attempted it with almost no help, money, etc., but with plenty of “spiritual energy” and “inspired attempts” to connect humans with advanced civilizations who are not “plaqued” by “polluting greed and war mentality..!” Looking back, maybe it was because I never made it early on with my “nuclear family” or even later with my “spiritual family” to the Van Tassel’s “Flying Saucer Conventions” of the sixties, “Out There” in the “High Desert,” and therefore wanted to create one of my own?! OK, how about a “joke break..?” (But first of all, you need to know, if you don’t already, about the potential “psychedelic quality” of the liqueur called “absinthe...” So I add here a blurb from the web-site called “health-line...” “Absinthe, a liqueur, is a combination of spirits and herbs, mainly fennel, anise, and a type of wormwood called Artemisia absinthium. That’s what it’s named after.Van Gogh and Picasso were big fans of absinthe back in the day, along with other artists. Some believe that absinthe-induced hallucinations partly inspired some of their greatest works. These hallucinations were thought to be an effect of thujone, a compound in the type of wormwood used in absinthe...” OK, NOW for the JOKE: So this old merchant marine had just returned from Europe where he had acquired some absinthe liqueur and, warming up next to his fire-place was drinking it for the first time. His pet raven, up on the hearth, started squawking away... “Ah shut up you old bird,” he responded. “You need to mellow your angst, eh? Hey... I wonder what would happen if you tried some of THIS absinthe?” So he poured some in a shot glass and offered it to the bird, who checked it out and then slurped up a good amount ot it. All-of-a-sudden, it falls to the floor, starts flipping and flopping... and to the old sailor’s amazement, started growing gills in its chest and before he knew it, the bird had transformed into a FISH! Well... the point of the whole story is that, “Absinthe makes the heart grow flounder!” (Coming Soon:, some of my “HIPPIE JOKES..!”) Meanwhile, back in Topanga Canyon... (Another “cosmically concidental” occurrence just happened, because I took a break from writing to do the “Tibetan Book of the Dead” nightly prayers for my Idyllwid Heart-Brother “Kenny G.” [Dharma name: Karma Tinley Rabten], who left this world 3 weeks ago as of this writing. Before I took the break to do that “nightly duty” I have committed to for 49 days, I had been stirring up the next memory of my "teenage-daze" experience of Topanga Canyon, and the following one surfaced)... Besides the “animal-loving hippies,” I had also been meeting those that were involved in the production of the film “Rainbow Bridge,” (who were also mostly vegetarians, BTW) the infamous movie that featured Jimi Hendrix’s “2nd-to-Last” live concert in the U.S., filmed for the movie on the slope of Haleakala Volcano on the Hawaiian Island of Maui. After complaints that the original movie was “too long” and “dragged on and on” (with topics that many found “boring,” but I and many “new agers” loved!) Rhino Records re-released it with mainly the Jimi Hendrix-related parts, cutting it down from about 1 and 1/2 hours to about thirty minutes, (just the Hendrix Concert, I think?! ANYway in the original un-cut version (which I HIGHLY reccommend finding!), just before Jimi’s “love interest” played by Pat Hartley goes to Hawaii, it shows her walking through the night-life of the 1970gc “Sunset Strip,” when a hippie walks next to her, saying “Weed? Mushrooms? Acid?,” I believe was his line... Well, I got to know that actor, Steve Sutherland, there in Topanga, at the communal house where Ricardo and Cricket, among a few others, lived. One time after just getting to know him I was relating my being self-conscious about my blemish problems (as most teen-agers in a “junk-food diet-based” society are). Steve unabashedly told me that he believed when you get those skin eruptions, you should massage them just like you were “jerking off!” I think I just turned a little red and said, “OK...” I promptly changed the subject of our conversation... Thanks for waiting- here’s the “cosmically coincidental” part... What I read in the next prayer after that “flash-back” with Steve: From part of the instructions from the Tibetan Book of the Dead section titled: “The All-Determining Influence of Thought”: “However incorrect the ritual and improper the conduct of the priests performing thy funeral rites, [think], 'What! Mine own thoughts must be impure! How can it be possible that the words of the Buddha should be incorrect? It is like the reflection of the blemishes on mine own face which I see in a mirror; mine own thoughts must [indeed] be impure. As for these [i.e. the priests], the Sangha is their body, the Dharma their utterance, and in their mind they are the Buddha in reality: I will take refuge in them'.” -“Bardo Thodol” (from summum dot us web-site) Jumping ahead a into the future for a moment... After winning over Chuck’s confidence that I wasn’t just another “burned-out-hippie-flake-case” maybe... I was visiting with him at his amazing pad on Orange Grove St. in the beginning of the hills that house the big “HOLLYWOOD” sign... We were discussing “things meta-physical” when the phone rang, and after answering it with his greeting, Chuck grew silent for a while, mumbled something and said, goodbye. Then he took the Tibetan statue of “Maitreya” (Sanskrit) or “Jampa” (Tibetan), “Bodhi-sattva of Wisdom,” and just started staring into his statue-eyes for a while, as if going into a “trance.” I just sat there silently and “meditated with him. Then he set the “rupa” (statue) back up on his shelf, looked at me and spoke. “Brother Steve (Sutherland, who had played the “drug dealer” in his moive) just O.D.’d”..! There was nothing more that we could say... Just to keep mentally guiding him into the “Clear Light” on his next journey! Ah Ho... May It Be So..! I naturally wanted, especially since the film Rainbow Bridge begins with homage to the line of the Yogananda Guru-Lineage, to become friends with Chuck Wein, who claimed that the “OK for funding” and the “go-ahead” from Warner Brothers, occurred from he and his friends conducting “Astral Travel” to the souls of the execs there, to influence them to take on this project to help steer the human race away from war, pollution, etc., i.e. to speed-up the next phase of our “evolution!” Chuck’s connection with Jimi was also a big part of it. Chuck, a.k.a. “The Wizard,” conducts the famous interview with Jimi in the movie, where he got Jimi to “open up” about his own experiences with “Astral Travel,” and in other interviews, showed how Jimi was so psychic that he predicted his own death in a song: “Well, I'm up here in this womb I'm looking all around Well, I'm looking out my belly button window And I see a whole lot of frowns And I'm wondering if they don't want me around What seems to be the fuzz out there? Just what seems to be the hang? 'cause you know if ya just don't want me this time around, Yeah I'll be glad to go back to spirit land And even take a longer rest, Before I'm coming down the chute again Man, I sure remember the last time, baby They were stlll hawkin' about me then So if you don't want me now, Make up your mind, where or when If you don't want me now, Give or take, you only got two hundred days 'cause I ain't coming down this way too much more again...” - (c) 1970 Jimi Hendrix, Belly-Button Window from the "Cry Of Love" LP “The Chute,” Chuck told me, referred to “the birth canal,” and he also told me that he “did the math” and figured out that that song was written aproximately 200 days before Jimi died..! (According to Chuck, Jimi didn’t O.D., but that his “Mafia-connected” manager, Michael Jeffrey, had Jimi murdered. Jeffrey not only was disgusted with Jimi wanting to leave “rock and roll” music to create jazz compilations with jazz-greats like Miles Davis, but more so because Jimi wanted out of his contract with him due to the fact that the relentless touring was “almost killing him,” and huge amounts of money kept disappearing as well. Chuck also believed that Michael thought that he could make a lot more money off of a “dead Jimi” than a “live one!” (All of these allegations are just off the “top of my head,” from things I remember that Chuck told me decades ago, but I WiLL try to include here an amazing interview with Chuck about Jimi, that appeared in my friend Art Kunkin’s Los Angeles Free Press newspaper around 1972gc, and I believe it validates the things I am sharing here!) IN THE MEAN-TIME, HERE Is An Interview that I just found, With My Heart-Brother Chuck Wein, Conducted By Someone Named Stewart W., also from 1972gc. (BTW, I wrote the above memories of Chuck talking with me about Jimi BEFORE I found the following interview, although after you read it, you might think I am not telling the truth here... but I am, and I assure you that it "blew my mind," to see it validating some of what I had just written!) NEW YORK – "The Wizard, an Aquarius, leaned back, exposing a split seam along the right leg of his deep purple satin trousers. He was relaxed as he reminisced about a departed friend. He had lived with him, explored the universe with him and toward the end recorded him on film. A Sagittarius with Capricorn rising and moon in Cancer: Jimi Hendrix. “Jimi started getting into the occult because it was a mirror of what he was experiencing around him. A month before we started filming in Hawaii I introduced him to a chick who was into color-sound healing. She was also an Arabian horse costume designer. In fact, she bought a horse with Jimi that is never to be ridden, who is called AXIS BOLD AS LOVE, and has a purple haze for a third eye. She trained the horse to respond to color and sound. “And she helped us plan the concert in the film. Everyone at the concert at Olowalu Volcano Crater was seated by their astrological signs so that Jimi could tune in on pockets of their energy. This chick helped me get it together with the colors and she got the shirt Jimi was wearing which was a turquoise and black medicine shirt from the Hopi reservation. She carried around a 300-page book of decoded Jimi Hendrix music. By that I mean she was into the molecular structure of the sounds. “She and Jimi would get together and talk about beaming out sounds over 5000 square miles and what effect it would have on people’s consciousness. He told her that he felt he had come from an asteroid belt off the coast of Mars, and that he was tuning people to energy that had just arrived here.” * * * Upon first encounter the Wizard appears unstuck in time. A living, breathing piece of late-Sixties Southern California acid strip memorabilia, landed unscathed (except for the ripped satin seam) in New York’s neurotic nouveau fall of ’72. Slowly the presence of this characterization fades, leaving the Wizard simply unstuck, as if from no particular time at all. His name is Chuck Wein, and his trade is directing and sometimes being in movies. Why he is called the Wizard is one of a number of questions he leaves unanswered, in the film called Rainbow Bridge, which he completed shooting in the summer of ’70, five weeks before Jimi Hendrix, who appears in the film, died. On the strength of that alone, Rainbow Bridge has become the most notable of the four films for which he has received a director’s credit. (The first three, My Hustler, Poor Little Rich Girl, and Prison, were done by Andy Warhol’s Factory.) “‘There was no time at which I had a script in my back pocket, no point at which I said, ‘I can get Hendrix to do this and Molly Bee to do that, and then all I have to do is go out to Old Mo Ostin [of Warner Reprise] because he’s a sucker for Hendrix and wants a little more music so he can make another million dollars, and Alan Jeffries [executive producer] won’t say no because he wants to make another million dollars, and Jimi won’t say no . . .’ because, well, if you read the old Jimi Hendrix song book where they ask him what his favorite color was and all that, he says what he wants to do is be on the silver screen. What he wanted from Rainbow Bridge was to be in the film without his guitar. He was like a little kid about that, sometimes saying, ‘Oh you just want me for my guitar.’ “I had known Jimi from New York and The Scene and I was living with [Pat] Hartley and Devon, who was Jimi’s girlfriend and the real Dolly Dagger. I was into reading Tarot cards and one night over at Jimi’s apartment I read the cards for Jimi and Mitch Mitchell and Billy Cox: Jimi started to tell me about being from an asteroid belt off the coast of Mars, so I said, ‘Stop and I’ll tell you about it because it’s a place I’ve seen three or four times clear as a bell.’ And that’s the point that the deal got on, which was that there was something manifesting that had to be worked out. And that something eventually became Rainbow Bridge.” Even a wizard, if he happens to be a filmmaker, needs front money to work out manifestations. Wein admits that having Hendrix doing the sound track helped. But there was more to be done. “A group of people meditated together for many months and traveled out of our bodies to many people who we wanted to contact to support the venture, and we prayed that they would realize the purpose of it and join in the activity. And this worked on the inner plane and spiritual level. Then when we went to see them we didn’t have that physical plane and emotional opposition. Our lower selves seemed to be transmuted, and theirs did too. Things went smoothly; people just popped up all over the place.” Warners popped up to the tune of $450,000. They were pleased with the sound track, but not with the picture. The Wizard remembers. “Warners was expecting some kind of political revolution and they wanted to be the documentors of that. They were pretty spaced out on that and it was hard for us to express what we were doing. A major purpose of ours was to remove the mass paranoia against the arrival of the Space Brothers, who are very universal beings, they’re totally loving, they would rather disintegrate their own form than change anything by force on Earth. But Warners wasn’t listening and so eventually we had to make a deal where we could own the film by getting them the front money back and letting them have the album.” This was accomplished for the most part from $250,000 given by Buzzy Bent, a La Jolla surfer and vegetarian who had worked himself up from busboy to the owner of a chain of surfer restaurants which specialize in meat dishes. The Alcyone Releasing Company was set up to distribute the Antahkarana Production, and over the last 18 months Rainbow Bridge has had spot showings in 15 cities. Reaction has been unusual. In Los Angeles 300 members of the Laguna Mystic Arts Brothers showed up for a screening and cheered and danced through the movie until the end when the cast visits a woman who has been in contact with the Space Brothers. She advises the cast to quit using LSD. The Laguna Arts Brothers jeered and staged a walkout. The next night they picketed the film as being anti-psychedelic drugs, but came in to watch the first 100 minutes, cheered and danced, then walked out again during the last ten. And in Houston, a lightning storm blacked out only the theater at which it was showing. Now it’s playing weekend midnight shows on New York’s Upper East Side to mixed responses. (A number of people are miffed by the fact that Hendrix’s image doesn’t appear on the screen until the second hour.) And the Wizard is in New York, letting himself become unstuck to float back and recall Jimi Hendrix’ involvement with Rainbow Bridge and the Space Brothers. * * * “Even before Jimi came out to Maui, if you looked at his bookshelf it was Secret Places of the Lion, Spacemen in the Ancient East, Secrets of the Andes, an underlined copy of the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Or look at his early lyrics, like ‘Bellybutton Window’ where he says, ‘I’m looking out my bellybutton window, And all I see are frowns, I guess people don’t want me around. Well I’m going back to the Spirit in 200 days, Give or take a few And I’m gonna rest up a little longer before I come down the chute again, Because they’re still talking about me from the last time’ Well, that’s the most profound statement about incarnation in rock that I’ve seen. “When you sat down with him, you didn’t have to say, ‘Hey, are you into this or that?’ His favorite way of communicating was to have you empty your subconscious of astral thought at him. If he thought he could get you into it, he would say to you – ‘Hey, have you ever been on a spaceship’ – or – ‘Hey you must be from Pluto.’ Jimi had seen a number of ships. They had a sighting at Woodstock. “He saw himself as a Gypsy in the Egyptian sense. Pyramidology. As a gypsy prince. He wanted to remove himself from the parochial racial attitudes and stuff like that. He wanted to get behind spiritual black social events, but there were a lot of people hitting on him. Trying to use that. And maybe where they were coming from wasn’t such a groovy place. But remember Jimi said, ‘I’ve been around this planet for a couple of thousand years. Maybe that’s why I’m so concerned.’ “When we were getting ready to shoot the scene with Jimi and Hartley and me, the I.A. Union crew was set up for six hours before we got there. And everytime we would start up there Jimi would say, ‘Let me get my guitar’ and I would say, ‘No, man, you said you wanted to do this without your guitar.’ We went through every kind of why-are-we-here riff until finally Jimi and Hartley get into an argument and I say. ‘Listen the crew’s been up there for eight hours. We have to do this now.’ So Jimi says, ‘Well OK, you do it then.’ So Hartley and I went upstairs ourselves, because we felt there was something crucial about it. We were really down, but we started the camera rolling, and Jimi comes walking down the aisle with a bottle of rose wine in his hand. “I asked Jimi if he had been doing any astral traveling and he said, ‘Yes, I went down to the Oasis of Souls. There’s a lot of wrath going on there but not much emotion. And next thing I know I’m on a battlefield in Vietnam helping up a Viet Cong soldier, but it’s not a body, it’s another vibe, another soul. It’s crystal clear, bright as day. And then I’m back at the Oasis of Souls, and they turn the page and I’m down the side of the page with all the sankes and all the night social workers with knapsacks on their backs yelling, “Curb service, curb service, get your dollar bills, curb service,” and then the third eye was right in the middle of the pyramid, and then next thing I know I’m walking across the desert, all alone on my way home – but then I see Cleopatra.’ “‘Actually,’ he said, ‘then I was Cleopatra. Cleopatra was there demanding fetishes of me. “Give me this or that or I’ll kick your ass.” And then I say, “Hey, Cleo, let’s get together. You’re a woman, and I’m a man.” She was there with her raven hair, lying there, and I said, “Let’s get together and buy a meal on the side of Vesuvius and raise grapes,” and I choked on the wine.’ “And you know,” continued the Wizard, “that’s like Dionysus, choking on the wine. That’s exactly what happened to Jimi five weeks later. He choked on wine. Somebody put acid in some wine and when he was trying to come down from it and, uh, lying on his back on his bed he started to vomit and choked on his own vomit. “The day after Jimi died, I was lying on Huntington Beach and all the kids had transistors and all his music was being played on the radio. And I heard Jimi’s voice saying, ‘Hey, that’s my music, they’re still playing my music.’ And I tried to communicate to him in my thoughts. ‘Yeah, they’re still playing your music, it’s just that you’re not in the physical anymore.’ A lot of people who die do not know that they are dead, and hang around the scene of the accident or whatever.” Said the Wizard." THIS Is A Photo Of My Mountain Mentor/Heart-Brother Kenny G./Karma T. R., Recently "Gone Beyond" Into The "Bliss/Void/Fusion Of The Heart Realm" Eh Ma Ho/How Wonderful! (Photo by "Karma Tinley Rabten")

In this "Rainbow Bridge" Movie Promo Ad... my good friend "Baron Bingen" meditates in the "Vajra ( in Buddhist Tantra terminology, "Full Lotus" in Hindu yoga terms) Posture" in a white tuxedo, while the "Asian Couple" perform the Martial Art "Tai Chi"... The "Ten of Cups" Tarot Card shows the "Rainbow as the connection between heaven and earth, Jimi Jams and "Bikini-clad" Pat Hartley dances to his live "Music from the Jupiterian Moons" on the slope of Haleakala Volcano..! And, here- “Against my better judgement,” heh-heh, [although, being an ‘old surfer,’ i did like the review of the surfing segments] is a ‘review’ of the movie found on the IMDB...) “The "Rainbow Bridge" is the Bridge between God and Man- and/or the heart and the mind, a term, antahkarana, in Sanskrit or a yoga. This rather pretentious title for a "cosmic surfing film" features surfing by Mike Hynson, a surfer who's model (surfboard) with low rails resembles a thin Phil Edwards model ( of ‘Endless Summer’ movie fame), and his Maui buddy Les Potts (w/the hashish inside the surfboard scene) at small Maalea (highlighted by a George Greenough-inspired inside the tube looking out sequence), a red-hot David Nuuiwha (U.S. Champion) doing sideslips and smooth turns, B.K.(Sunset beach legend [“Barry Kaniapuni?” -ed.] ), Herbie Fletcher (the guy perpetually arching on the nose off the point at San Onofre), and others filmed upside down and backwards to resemble a drug experience. Surfing is used as a metaphor for "the spirit of 1969" or peak of the counter-culture or drug deluded "revolution" that a few of us experienced. The film explored sexuality, drugs, yoga, aliens from space, music, ecology, nutrition, astrology, and science during an extended "rap" discussion by an ensemble of acid laced hippies, a philosophic young follower of yoga, an obviously deluded earth-mother talking about our "space brothers", and an interesting scientist (“Dr. Bronner”). Of course, the best rap is by a drunken Jimi Hendrix, which is printed on the inside sleeve of the out of print "Rainbow Bridge" album on Warner-Brothers (label). You can find it for about $25 on EBAY. The film features "Dolly Dagger" as she arrives in Los Angeles, hitchikes to San Diego airport, down the Pacific Coast Highway through Laguna and San Clemente, past Black's and Swami's, enroute to Hawaii. She has been sent to "inspect" the Rainbow Bridge Meditation Center on Maui to make sure no one is wasting money, which is a laugh. During this trip the film mixes sound and scenery to pull off visual metaphors. For example, you hear a 747 airplane as a seagull takes off from the beach, a dog barking as a drill instructor marches recruits, et. al. Once on Maui, Dolly Dagger gets high, and pops around talking drivel with the other hippies. She is obviously an uneducated moron, and was a famous groupy. If you read a few of the books on Jimi Hendrix, one of them documents in her in detail. She is most famous for her ability to score drugs and sucking the blood from the finger of Mick Jagger. She is also buck-toothed and ugly. How did Hendrix fall in love with her? Anyways, the film climaxes with an outdoor concert by Jimi Hendrix. This is Hendrix at his best, near the end of his days, as Mitch Mitchell slams at the drums along with the lackluster bass of Billy Cox. Despite the absence of Noel Redding; this is the best footage of Hendrix in concert you will ever see. If you are a Hendrix fan, I suggest you fast-forward to the concert. If you want to see the surfing, there isn't much. The film needs to cut everything but the surfing and the concert. The soundtrack album on Warner Brother is worth buying, too.” -Steve Wimer ...Well OK Then, “One Person” (or one surfer)’s take on the film, I guess. (BTW, “Steve W.” was “way off” on Hartley being “Dolly Dagger”... The Real “Dolly Dagger” was one of Jimi’s early-on domineering girlfriends, his confidant and "fashion-influencer," etc... “Devon Wilson,” from New York..!) (In another "side-bar," here is the story [from loudersound dot com] about her and how the famous "Dolly Dagger" song was written)... "Jimi Hendrix's Dolly Dagger: the story behind the song By Bill DeMain How London’s famous clock tower and a Jimi Hendrix groupie inspired his last great song, Dolly Dagger "Early one morning in August 1969, bassist Billy Cox was sitting on the patio of the house in upstate New York that he was sharing with Jimi Hendrix and drummer Mitch Mitchell. Looking out at the cows grazing in the nearby pasture, Cox thumbed a four-note pattern over and over through his amp. “I’d put some new strings on, and I’m playing ‘doodoo-dum-dum’ – the chime of Big Ben,” Cox tells Classic Rock. “Jimi’s room was right above, and the window flew open. He said: ‘Hold it! Keep playing that, don’t stop!’ He comes down in his undershorts and grabs his guitar, then he completes the riff. That was the formation of Dolly Dagger.” Hendrix, Cox, Mitchell and assorted friends were at the Shokan House to prepare for playing at the Woodstock Festival. “But really, Jimi rented that place to get his head together, and bringing Billy in was essential to the whole musical vibe,” engineer Eddie Kramer tells us. “We were hooked at the hip musically,” Cox says with a laugh. “We’d been in the 101st Airborne together. Twenty minutes after we first met we were jamming. One reason that Jimi called me after all those years is that my mind was an archive of the riffs that we’d created in the past.” “They were writing a lot,” says Kramer. “I remember dragging a four-track tape machine up there, and Dolly Dagger was one of the demos we worked on. Then we cut a version of it at the Record Plant, which was meh. We finally nailed it at Electric Lady. It’s all part of the experience, no pun intended, of how Jimi would work through a song to get it right. And Dolly Dagger is a complex song.” With hindsight the song’s complexity is fitting for the woman who inspired the lyrics. Devon Wilson was born in Milwaukee in 1943 and ran away from home as a teenager. “She was a mixed-race kid, on the streets all her life,” Cox explains. Devon drifted to New York City, where she became part of the nightclub scene. That’s where she met Hendrix. “They had a really close relationship,” says Kramer. “Devon was a presence. Very beautiful, very commanding, with quite an edge to her. But she was funny.” Devon kept Jimi happy by scoring drugs for him and procuring girls for threesomes. But as they grew closer, she expected to be his number one. “Devon used to hang out on the sessions, and try not to say too much,” says Kramer. “But she was used to a lot of attention. When Jimi was in the middle of recording, sometimes it would be very difficult to give her attention.” It was this dynamic that led to the episode at the centre of the song’s lyric. On November 27, 1969, Jimi’s twenty-seventh birthday, he and Devon went to see the Rolling Stones at Madison Square Garden. Since it was his birthday, Jimi half-expected to sit in with his friends. But Mick Jagger was wary of being upstaged, so it didn’t happen. Afterwards Devon hosted a party for the Stones at a luxurious apartment she’d borrowed. All night she flirted shamelessly with Jagger in front of Hendrix. Mick’s rivalry with Jimi extended beyond the stage. A few years earlier, Jimi had tried to pull Jagger’s girlfriend Marianne Faithfull. At some point, Jagger nicked his finger. Rather than get a bandage, Devon licked off the blood. “That’s where the line ‘She drinks the blood from a jagged edge’ came from,” says Kramer. After the song’s basic rhythm track was cut at Electric Lady studios, Jimi layered on more guitars, backing vocals and foot stomps. Dolly Dagger was intended for the follow-up to Band Of Gypsys, but ended up being hijacked for a film soundtrack put together by Hendrix’s manager Mike Jeffery. As explored in the documentary Music, Money And Madness: Hendrix In Maui, the film, Rainbow Bridge, was a mishmash of underhanded deals and unscripted silliness. Its only redeeming features were the scenery and Jimi’s killer performance. It was on the side of a dormant volcano called Haleakala, which means ‘house of the sun’,” Cox says. “I remember as we walked to the stage, Jimi looked at me and said: ‘Man, this is strange. Do you feel that vibration?’ It had a lot of energy. But when we went on, it was magic. Jimi was in charge. I think I could’ve played with one hand because it was so spiritual.” Dolly Dagger was first released on October 9, 1971 on the posthumously released Rainbow Bridge album, then as a single on October 23. Jimi didn’t live to see the release of the film or the soundtrack (he died on September 18, 1970). The funkier new direction suggested by Dolly Dagger added another question mark to his story. “If he’d lived, I think he’d have his own empire,” Kramer says. “He would’ve straightened his life out, found great new musical directions. His place in history would be even greater than it is now.” “Jimi was a cosmic messenger who saw music as a means to bring people together,” Cox says. “He was global before the rest of the world was global. His music is as relevant in the twenty-first century as it was in the twentieth. And it’ll probably be relevant in the twenty-second and twenty-third centuries.” As for Dolly Dagger herself, Devon Wilson met an untimely end when she fell from an eighth-storey window of the Chelsea Hotel in 1971. What did she think of the song that made her part of history? “In a perverse sort of way, she probably dug it,” says Kramer. “It’s not so much that it stroked her ego, as it revealed something about her. Even though it had some negative aspects, hey, imagine being in 1970 and having Jimi Hendrix write a song about you!” (Music, Money And Madness: Hendrix In Maui and the accompanying album Live In Maui are out now via Experience Hendrix LLC in partnership with Legacy Recordings). So the movie was finshed and released by 1972gc. I had, in late 1971gc, talked to my high school counselor who had informed me that if I wanted to leave Western High a half year early, that I could do that, as I had earned enough “credits.” I said something like, “You don’t have to tell me THAT twice!” I was READY, ABLE and WILLING for my FREEDOM from the vast suburban tract-home “conservative waste-land” of Orange County. #P Before I left, I had invited Chuck to my parent’s house to metaphysically network with me... Rainbow Bridge had just debuted across America with limited success. I had an idea to show it in cities where it had not been shown, starting in Arizona. To my surprise he visited with me there very soon. I told him about my involvement with different members of the “Laguna-tic Tribe,” the out-skirts of the “Brotherhood (and Sisterhood) Of Eternal Love,” with their Head-Shops like “Mystic Arts World,” “Limebread,” “The Family Store,” Etc. He told me that he could show me sites in Laguna Canyon where there had been ancient Lemurian carvings. We sat in the back-yard (where I had once sat with my parents watching our “Angelic Venusian-Connected” space ships cavorting over Mt. Baldy) and he told me of space ships that he called “scout ships,” that appear as “comets”... momentarily appearing, streaking across the heavens and then disappearing back into another dimension to avoid alerting the human’s military. I related different experiences I had had with my parent’s channeling and asked about Charlot Blob, the Venusian Angel connection featured at the end of the movie. He told me she lived down in Vista, North San Diego County. I proposed the idea of my taking the movie on tour, and he must have liked everything I had told him about my own personal “Rainbow Bridge-like Life,” because he was warming up to the idea, even telling me I should go to Sauguaro National Monument when I was down by Tuscon, which he called the “Tusk-of-the-One,” heh-heh! He said those cactus, like Joshua Trees, act as antannae for sending cosmic energy into our "earth mother." #P So, because he had an extra copy of the 16 millimeter filmstrip and told me to drive up to Hollywood and pick it up. I was in “hippie heaven!” I decided I would “preview” it with my friends in Laguna... One of the beautiful ladies I knew in Laguna from the “Love Animals” tribe was called “Jan Light.” I first knew her when she was living near the Sound Spectrum Record Store on Calliope St., and as with so many lovely Laguna Ladies, I had a “major crush” on her and remember her often smoking the little cigarettes from India called “Bidis,” because they were wrapped in the leaf of the Bidi tree, which was like a natural menthol, and they were a big sell at head shops in Laguna. She worked with Kent Kelly, who I first knew when he had a little “head shop” in Mystic Arts World and he called himself one of the “managers” there. When she worked with him it was later on at his store called “Limebread.” She also rented a room in his small house in Laguna Canyon on Woodland Drive, one of the original “Brotherhood Central” streets. To impress her and “score some points” with her I guess, I offered to show the film in their house there. They whole-heartedly agreed with the idea. The night we showed it in their small living room, one of the “sitting-room only” crowd lit up a reefer, and Kent kind of “freaked out,” demanding I stop the movie. He scolded the person who did that as he pulled out and sprayed some “Ozium,” the famous “de-odorizer,” everywhere. What some didn’t know was that he was on probation and couldn’t take a chance on “the Man” busting him, but he sure had let them know now! We started the movie back up, which was being shown on a sheet, and the sheet was over the front doors, which were glass “french doors.” And sure enough, for that reason, it had attracted the attention of a Laguna Beach Police Dept. cruiser! There was a rap on the door, and Kent once again, shouted “Stop the movie!” Long story short, Kent welcomed the cop in, as per the rules of his probation, and a search of the place occurred. The cop found some of Jan’s Bidi smokes in her room and she had to explain to him what a tobacco-enclosed “Bidi Cigarette” was. He believed her... how could he not believe Jan speaking so calmly with those “Light-filled Eyes” of hers! He left us to our movie showing, and I assure you that no one fell asleep after THAT “adrenaline rush..!” Through my working at Laguna’s “LADET=Love Animals Don’t Eat Them” Restaurant, I had met airbrush artists John and Chris and they had invited me to come down to visit and stay with them in Encinitas in North Sandy-Ego County. That is where I headed, and a whole new world of experience opened up for me, and as it turned out, that meant BOTH “good and bad!” John taught me how to air-brush, and the first stencil I cut out was from a drawing I did of Shakyamuni Buddha. I air-brushed a few, and I ended up giving one of them to Baba Ram Dass (Richard Alpert) at the Wilshire Ebell Theater after a “kirtan” he led at that big concert to “Benefit Timothy Leary’s Legal Expenses.” I was sitting on stage with a big group of “chanting devotees,” and after he finished his “devotional chanting” session he walked by me on his way out when I offered him the sheet with the airbrushed Buddha. He took it, smiled really big at me and then he touched the top of my head. Perhaps because I was “spiritually high” from the bhakti/devotional chanting, it is possible that I imagined what happened next... but I just felt a wave of ecstatic bliss envelop me, accompanied by a scintillating light that penetrated me. Could I have just received a hit of “shakti” from a “darshan” with a fellow “gringo?” (At that time, I thought only Indian Gurus could do that!) The next morning in Topanga Canyon, above the “Food Chakra” was where I went looking for him to continue the “darshan experience,” and that was when I found Allen Ginsberg instead, who had also performed in the chanting puja the night before (I believe I may have already related THAT experience!) Then I ended up moving down to North San Diego County and became the “Surfing Yogi” Of Encinitas, living a couple of blocks from “Swami’s” (SRF) Church and Meditation Gardens, above the famous surfing spot. #P (I just found this from up near the beginning and decided to move it down here where it correlates with the time frame a little more...) Jumping across the time span of the summers, during which "time" i had moved out of my parents' "nest" to the Encinitas area in North San Diego County, home of the SRF Retreat Center that i had visited with my parents as a child and that overlooked the ocean at what the local surfers labled "Swami's." I developed my surfing skills there and continued on my "Bhakti-Devotion" path that included my being a "vegetarian" which, un-beknownst to me was about to change. It was approx. 1974gc, and i had become a room-mate just a couple of blocks north of the SRF Retreat, at the home of Sandy Brown, who was a waitress, a meditation-practitioner and a cool, well-tanned "surfer girl," with dark brunette curls. She told me stories of being with Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche (CTR) back East, and another Kagyupa Tibetan Lama, Tsewang Jurme (later changed to “Tsenjur Rinpoche” by HH 16th Karmapa) up in Vancouver, B.C. Probably from my "20-something infatuation" with her (that did remain "plutonic," by the way), but also due to my burgeoning interest in the Tibetan Buddha-dharma, Sandy and my friend from Los Angeles, Scott "Jiva" Dickerson and i ended up hitch-hiking at her prompting to a Brentwood Presbyterian Church Conference Grounds in L.A., to experience a talk with Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche that she had just found out about. As many came to know sooner or later, the rinpoche often would arrive "fashionably late" to many of his talks (already "well-lubricated," probably with “sake” i found out some time later), in which time he later told his students they should be getting "grounded" in meditation... BUT of course, most took advantage of the 'time' to catch-up with friends, etc. And speaking of friends, i was about to make a couple of them in the middle of that 'clamour!' I saw an old friend not far away, and shouted out a greeting to which i added, "i'm living in Encinitas now!" Soon after that, a guy right behind us says to me "you live in Encinitas? So do we..." pointing to his friend next to him. I became instant friends w/surfer-like brother by the name of Michael Cory (and later I found out his “dharma name” was “Minjur”) and his friend, Charlie Higgins. We exchanged phone numbers promising to contact each other again soon. Later on, at the end of the talk, called "The Path of Tantra," I had a memorable experience when i got up my nerve to ask the Rinpoche a question during the "Q and A". I boldy asked, "Rinpoche, how does one regard the 5 senses on the Path of Tantra?" He peered at me deeply with an intense gaze through his eye-glasses and responded, "I touch, I smell, I see, I hear... NO PROBLEM!" To which i gave a dumb-founded look that was followed by uprorius laughter from the hall of current & future dharma-students! (I think i felt like “Flakey Foont,” a character in R. Crumb's "Zap Comix" being short-changed by his guru, "Mr. Natural!) But i later realized that that moment, much like another with CTR when i received an even MORE PROFOUND answer to one of my queries*, contained a transference of the “awakened state” to this one, regardless of how open my "vessel" was to receive it- it DID occur... with him, as with oher profound Tibetan &/or Chinese Teachers, especially in the not-too-distant future meetings with teachers like Yogi C. M. Chen, my future "Tsawi (root) Lama," Ven. Kalu Rinpoche and HH Gyalwa Karmapa the 16th! *('reminder to writer'... insert around 1975 experience... OK he responds to him-“self,” here it is!)- After taking a bus, maybe, up to visit Yogi Chen and to bring peyote cactus to a "friend to vend," Peter, who I had met on a previous journey to absorb Master Chen's wisdom... I saw a flyer & went to the event: CTR's talk in Oakland called, "The Open Secret." When, at the end, I boldy once again, this time w/microphone in hand (so i imagine it was recorded?) said something like, "Rinpoche, you spoke of the ego being like a 'thorn in one's side'... (he nodded) So, can you tell me, what happens with the 'thorn?' Does oneself pull it out... does the guru pull it out- or does it just fall out?" He peered at me again, looking deeply through me as if he might lay the simple method-answer on me right then and there... BUT, instead, he responded: "Fat Chance!" Again, my puzzled look after the initial shock of being "short changed again" (in my limited-ego’s view!) occurred, and the hall once again erupted into big laughter! (reprise of “refuge story” Josephine Chuey..! (Her name just popped backed into my concsciousness, after trying to remember it for a while). She and her husband, Robert (I believe) were hosting Ven. Kalu Rinpoche at their hilltop home that over-looked all of Los Angeles, for one of Southern California's first "Tibetan Buddhist Refuge Ceremonies." (I will always remember the date: May 24, 1974g.c.) After meeting up with Michael Cory in North San Diego County, I really took it to heart when he insisted that I should travel the 2 hour-drive up to L.A. to receive a "dharma name" from the Rinpoche ( and BTW- he was skillful in not calling it a "taking refuge" ceremony, as he probably knew people might "balk" at that suggestion that requires a lengthy explanation). I went up with my high school buddy Robert ( who I had done some "psychedelic tripping" with back then and we had stayed in touch. He was more of a student of Taoism, but was curious about this “Tibetan thing”...). Because we weren't used to the rigors of L.A. traffic, we arrived maybe an hour late. The Refuge Ceremony had just ended and they were about to begin the Chenrezik ("Bodhisattva of Compassion") Initiation & Meditation Practice, led by Rinpoche. After finding out we had missed what appeared to me to be a very important dharmic event, I pleaded with Lama Ken McCleod to ask the Rinpoche if he would do it for Robert and I. Ken was really exasperated with the idea, but somehow the "bodhisattva" in him allowed him to ask the Rinpoche, who agreed to do another quick Refuge Ceremony for us, with Ken's wife Ingrid translating. I'm guessing that Lama Ken used that time to give the assembled newly Southern California Dharma Students some extra instruction and a quetion & answer session. In our Refuge Ceremony, which was extremely powerful as we sat just ten feet or so away from Ven. Kalu Rinpoche, we received these yellow cards with an Buddha image on the front, and a good amount of English... and Tibetan script w/English phonetics printed next to it. This consisted of a Refuge Prayer, a second one, the "Dedication of Merit" prayer and on the back were hand-printed Tibetan names with the English translation... Ingrid handed the cards to us, with Rinpoche watching... he spoke to her in Tibetan, and she told us she handed us the wrong cards & that we should exchange them with each other. Mine was "Karma Sonam Nyima"... (Karma Family, “SUN of Merit”). I don't remember what Robert's "dharma name" was but it did not have any thing to do with the "Sun"... my future "journalist name," Sun-Downer, & close to my eternal nick-name, "Sunny!" Back to the big living room with expansive views from the Hollywood Hills to the Pacific Ocean, where most everyone was awaiting their first "Bodhisattva of Compassion Meditation" experience. #P Another interesting thing I recall from that evening was later on in the middle of my first experience of the Bodhisattva of Compassion (Chenrezik) Meditation. Just after the initiation ceremony for the same, in what had been an otherwise calm evening, a wind came through the open window and tossed things around on the shrine, and Rinpoche didn’t seem to bat an eyelash, continuing his Tibetan chanting as dharma students scrambled to get the photos off the ground and back up on the shrine.... I remember how I really dug this kind of “magical display” and his non-reaction to the phenomena. There was just his continuing, uninterrupted with the puja. To elaborate even further... speaking of “magical displays of phenomena,” some dozen years later in 1986, I attended the big Chakrasamvara Initiation & Stupa dedication with Rinpoche in Santa Fe, New Mexico where a freak snowstorm dumped the most snow in thirty years for a November, which was preceded by the same event the week before up at Boulder, Colorado’s similar ceremony. The half-a-football-field-size tent, custom-built to fit on the Tibetan Kagyu Center’s big stupa- that so many had labored on for so long, had collapsed under the weight of the unusual early snow. Informed of this event, Rinpoche said “Good, that symbolizes the collapse of ego- I’ll pray for more snow..!” So then I found myself back in Southern California a week later up at the Santa Monica YMCA Summer Camp at Big Bear Lake (that my father, who grew up in Santa Monica, used to attend some five decades prior), engaged in a ten day retreat with Kalu Rinpoche. I asked him during the question & answer period “Are you going to make it snow here as well as Colorado and New Mexico?” He replied “I don’t know about it snowing outside, but the snowstorm of thoughts seems to be raging inside your head...” to raucous laughter in the meditation hall. I bowed, & said, “Touche’, Rinpoche!” (It did start snowing during the final Chenrezi Meditation at the end of the retreat, much to the dismay of the travelers who hadn’t brought snow chains for their car’s tires.) Now back to our program already in progress...* Michael Cory (who I will refer by his “dhama name,” Minjur), who I originally met with his friend Charlie Higgins, at Ven. Chogyam Trungpa’s talk in Brentwood, became fast friends and “dharma brothers.” He had somehow met (through the “dharma network”) a Chinese teacher, Master Yogi C.M. Chen, who lived at 2108 Shattuck Ave, No. 4 Berkeley, Calif. He was an amazing teacher who had 27 teachers himself, including H.H. the 16th Karmapa who he was very good friends with. Yogi Chen was working for the Chinese Government in some capacity and was working in Tibet when the Communists took power in China. Ironically, earlier in his life he had been school-mates with Mow-sey Dung, and they used to debate politics. He did not want to live under a Communist Government, so he abandoned his home country to stay in Tibet where he studied dharma with many teachers and practiced meditation. He even became, like Tibet’s Poet-Saint Milarepa, a cave dweller to conduct his meditation retreats. He told us that he lived in one where a mountain lion lived in the back part of the cave and it was friendly to him! One amazing experience that he related to us was when, in another cave out in the “middle of nowhere,” he was experiencing some hunger, so he interruped his dharma practice session to try to cook some rice. It was raining and very moist and he tried and tried to get a fire going with no success. He said to himself, “OK I might starve, but I will continue to meditate.” His faith in his practice was that strong. After meditating for some time, he was totally suprised when a woman walked in, started the fire for him and left, all without saying a word! He thanked the “Miraculous Magic Of the Buddha-dharma” for the help that he received from this “goddess,” and had a filling meal! #P I was baking “Natural Carob Fudge Brownies” and selling them to the health food stores to survive, and getting up very early for “Dawn Patrol,” as the surfers called it, to get the best waves. It was at Encinitas Natural Foods on “I Street” that i met Janet (Graves), who was a waitress there. I was strongly attracted to her, and eventually asked her if she might like to accompany me on a “psychedelic camping trip” on the North Side of Mount Palomar, to the approximately 100 foot high waterfall called “Clearwater,” that I had gone to with my high school friends Skip Chenard and Randy Beaver. She said, “Yes...” We drove out there in her classic old “Impala Station Wagon,” and hiked up to the falls. That evening we ate dried peyote cactus, meditated together for a good while, past the sunset... and then got in our sleeping bags, held hands and looked at the star-filled sky and entered a beautiful universe of love together. We hugged and hugged and then started making love, and I gave her my heart-filled communication of how I would love to enter into her, but that it was entirely up to her. She thought about it for a moment, and confided, “I want you in me..” The rest is “Downer-Graves” history... as we (spoiler alert!) ended up having a wonderful son together a couple of years later, Bodhi Nyima (Sun) Lee.. I promise to get into more details of THAT era momentarily, but I just found this “ancient article” that I wrote in 1977, almost a year after he was born, that I sent to the “East-West Jounal” magazine, a “new age” style of magazine that was in direct “competition” for reader-ship with the magazine actually called, “The New Age Journal,” heh-heh! #P Dear E.W.J. The article, “Surfing Inner and Outer Waves,” from the October issue was really well-received. I have been going to school and working in a Natural Foods Resaurant here in Boulder, Colorado for five months now. Being basically a “surfer at heart,” I can’t tell you what a blessing it was to come across David Kerr’s article. Being also into (Buddhist) meditation for ten years, and into surfing for four years now, I have always connected with the energy that a wave puts out as being very sacred. Many surfers now-a-days don’t recognize this connection and subsequently indulge in immaturity and violence toward fellow surfers. There have been numerous reportings of this tendancy in surfing magazines, including clashes from surfing enthusiasts from a variety of different countries. A new direction in their consciousness and recognition of the results of mental and physical karma would tremendously help these “lost” surfing brothers to find their way to “surfing’s pure and clear light!” #P Needless to say, articles like this one by David will play a definite part in the unwinding of many surfers’ "uptight egos." If, as David points out, individuals like (famous surfer) Richard Brewer of Hawaii are “Zen Buddhist Amateurs,” this will influence thousands of surfers (not to mention “inland sidewalk surfers”) to work toward discovering their “enlightenment nature.” This is due to the fact that Brewer, among others, is one of the “masters” of surfboard shaping and design, and therefore inluences and sets the trends of the surfing multitudes. Ths is the unfoldment of the experience that will revolutionize surfing and liberate it from the “mind-poisons of greed, hatred, envy, etc.” #P I’ll never forget the instructions we received from our good friend the Vietnamese Buddhist Priest, Nguang (Wong), as we sat in Yogananda’s Meditation Retreat Garden, over-looking “Swami’s,” one of Southern California’s magical surfing spots. "In the practice of Vipassana (or 'Insight') Meditation, one experiences relating to not only what is perceived, but also to its implications- the object and the space around it." #P To quote Ven. Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche (Myth of Freedom, pg. 58) “The Buddha’s demontstrations of basic sanity were spontaneous. He did not preach or teach in the ordinary sense, but as he unfolded, the energy of compassion and the endless resources of generosity developed within him and people began to find this out. That kind of activity of the Buddha is the ‘Vipashyana Practice’ that we are attempting. It is realizing that space contains matter, that matter makes no demands on space and space makes no demands on matter. It is a reciprocal and open situation. Everything is based on compassion and openness. The Dharma (that the Buddha) taught was passionless, without aggression. Passion is graspng, holding on to your territory. Spirituality, or the Vipashyana perspective is a panoramic situation in which you can come and go freely and your relationship with the world is open. It is the ultimate non-violence.” #P The Hinayana Monk Wong told us that with practice, we could carry this meditation-gained insight into daily life situations, citing surfing and skateboarding as examples. The experiance of realizing "no separation" between surfer and wave, or ‘becoming one with the wave,’ as David puts it, reminds me of works by Alan Watts and adequately describes what the “awakened surfer” experiences when he/she surrenders the ego for something much more profound and greater than his/her “self.” It’s that “Ah-inspiring” energy that makes so many surfers long to get inside the wave’s crystal-like tube, where-in lies the opportunity to transcend duality in the physical realm. David’s description of the perfect morning in Puerto Rico is what many of our dreams are made of. I would like to thank him for his fine article, and as I’ll be leaving Boulder (and my learning session at Naropa Institute) very soon to return to the West Coast, I appreciate the much-needed inspiration that vitalizes my connection with “Our Mother Ocean!” #P I would like to invite any surfers involved with or interested in Buddhist Meditation to write me concerning plans to form a group called the ‘Samadhi Surfing Society.’ Any other ideas? Thank You, Yeshey (Jampa Yeshay, “Triple S” **** High Saint Way, Buena Park Calif. 90620) (*East West Journal- I can’t tell you how it would help our “consciousness-raising effort” if you would print this article. So many of my friends and their friends- surfers or not... and so many others have been reading E.W.J. for years! Om Mani Padme Hum, Yeshay) #P As of this writing... (May 27, 2024gc) a few days ago it was the 1 year anniversary of the passing of my teacher Ven. Thrangu Rinpoche, who gave me permission to lead and teach about the “Bodhisattva of Compassion Meditation.” On the Tibetan Celebration of Buddha’s Birth, Enlightenment & Parinirvana (passing) called “Saga Dawa,” it was also the 50th anniversary of what I mentioned at the beginning of this tome... my “taking refuge” in the “3 Jewels” of the Buddha, Dharma and the Sangha with Ven. Kalu Rinpoche, and my first experience of the “Bodhisattva” meditation on May 24, 1974gc... #P So I had various experiences through 1974 to ’75gc with Minjur, for instance, one time he had just come from the house of an elderly woman-friend of his, who was a Yogananda devotee, and who he would meditate with and listen to and sing Self Realization Fellowship devotional chants with. This time it was the song, “King of the Infinite,” that contained the line, “Oh thou King of the Infinite, I behold thee in samadhi... in joy and in more joy, in the light of mellow joy...” That was, of course, a chant I knew well, having sung it in the 60’s at Long Beach SRF Sunday School and later as a teen-ager in Fullerton. Minjur was exited and could barely contain his joy as he described his vision there and then proclaimed, “Karmapa is KING of the INFINITE!” #P Minjur was the one who had encouraged me strongly to go receive a “dharma name” and subsequently “take refuge” in the 3 jewels with Ven. Kalu Rinpoche, which was a very profound life-changing event. So I was prone to take more of his advice when he encouraged me to do a “solitary 3-day retreat,” in my room where I was living at the time in an apartment with my surfer-friend Glen, just a couple of blocks from the SRF center, and where I could check the surf every morning at Swami’s with a 3 minute walk to the bluff. I chose to do the “retreat” on a week-end after I had filled all the ’carob fudge brownie” orders I could for the week. #P Besides basic shamatha and vipashyana meditation, I would do practices like doing prostrations to the 3 Jewels represented in my small shrine I had set up in that room. With joined palms, as I had been instructed, i would touch them to my forehead, then my throat center and finally to my heart center, while chanting the mantra I had been given by Yogi Chen, “Namo Guru-bay, Namo Buddhay-ah, Namo Dharmay-ah, Namo Sangay-yah...” This roughly translates into english as, “I take refuge in the Guru (‘Teacher’), I take refuge in the Buddha, I take refuge in the Dharma, I take refuge in the Sangha...” (I would later be given a more elaborate Tibetan version, with a slightly “more complicated”envisioning task!) #P I would also study dharma books, like the “new-to-me” Yogi Chen Booklets that he had published to give to students and libraries, always for free. Also, the main dharma book that I remember studying was “The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation,” (The Story of Tibet’s 2nd Buddha, Padmasambhava) by the same author who translated the “Tibetan Boook of the Dead” into english, Evans-Wentz (who, by coincidence, lived his final years in San Diego County and who Minjur had studied extensively... more on THAT later too!) . #P On the Sunday, the third day I remember writing one of my first “dharma poems,” after meditating on “emptiness.” It involved the lines, ”...See tea-cup... See tea-pot. Tea-pot is empty... Tea-cup is empty. Pouring emptiness into emptiness...” I remember later on when I had traveled up north and visited Yogi Chen, I read the poem to him. He immediately be-rated it, saying something like, “You can NOT talk about emptiness, when you have had no TRUE EXPERIENCE of emptiness!” (OK, “back to the drawing board” I guess, heh-heh!) #P That Sunday night, there was a rain-storm, not a big one, but nice to hear the rain on my 3rd night. Then on the following morning, of course I was up at sunrise and anxious to see if there were any waves on my first chance in a few days to experience Mother Ocean’s gift to surfers. Oh man was I excited as I ran to the bluff, noticing the wind was blowing “off shore,” which meant that if there were any wave action, they would be in beautiful form. And, sure enough, there was “head-high sets” coming in, and really knew that yet because there was NO ONE out there. I ran back to get my board and wet-suit and was out there in no time to experience my lead role in the “Samadhi Surfing Society Sea of Dharma-Waves!” I was just ecstatically surfing beautiful, un-crowded waves in the 3-D, after “surfing waves of dharma” in my “3-Day Retreat Mandala..!” It felt like a “reward” for my diligence in perservering through my first “Self-Appointed Buddhist Retreat Experience.” There would be many more to come over the years! #P Before long, I had a flyer up in the health-food and book stores announcing a weekly Buddhist meditation, and that took a while to attract any interest in that mostly “hindu, new agey” community, heh-heh. But I do feel I got an “A for Effort!” #P It was not long before Minjur had sponsored a trip for Master Yogi Chen to come down to give us teachings in Southern California. I remember the informal gathering at Minjur’s parents’ house on Passiflora Street in Leaucadia. Instead of sitting on the floor where most others sat, I was bold enough to sit on this two-seater couch, right next to him. The “brash move” paid off, “metaphysically,” you could say, because when, in the middle of the talk when he was refering to the “3 Vajras of Body, Speech and Mind” (where you place your folded hands at the forhead, throat and heart centers, as when doing prostrations) he reached over toward me and touched my 3 centers in demonstration. I immediately experienced an “ecstatic expansion” in my consciousness, filling the entire room with that “scintilating light” again. I was NOT expecting THAT deep “bliss-filled” darshan experience in front of a bunch of others. When I returned to normal state of consciousness, I thought, “Man, I am one lucky buddhist yogi now!” heh-heh... #P In the Sixties, Yogi Chen made the treacherous journey across the Himalayan Mountains on foot and ended up dwelling in Kalimpong, India, right next to “Darjeeling” (a “corruption” of the Tibetan words Dorje “Diamond Scepter” and “Ling” or Place, so it was the “Magic Place of the Dorje!” This place, famous for its tea production, was a “hot-bed” of many Tibetan Lamas and their families who had also escaped on foot from Chinese persecution, and now lived in the realative safety of the Indian foot-hills of the Himalayan region. One story that showed the great humor of Yogi Chen’s good friend, H.H. the 16th Gyalwa Karmapa, was when he once sent a message to Yogi Chen in Kalimpong, asking him to come to visit him in the not-too-distant monastary at Rumtek. He responded, “I am sorry but I cannot visit you, as I have committed to undertaking a 25 year retreat here.” The 16th Karmapa sent a message back to him, saying “come late at night... no one will see you!” #p One of the many wonderful teachings that Yogi Chen introduced us to was the “Dragon King Sutra,” with its mantra revealed in that book-let, “Om Dro-Da Dro-Da Maha Dro-Da Hung So Ha!” I would then “tune in” to the “Dragon King” (or “King of Nagas” who held the “Wish-fulfilling Gem” in his claws) with that mantra often, especially when I was surfing, because he taught that the legendary Dragon King dwelled in the ocean. Yogi Chen woud conduct offerings of “Precious Vases” filled with substances like gems and sacred herbs and such to the Dragon King, who he claimed followed him to the West Coast of America from China! #P My age-old, friend Baba Bhagavan Das (“Injee name” Michael Riggs), the “Be Here Now Ram Das-Famous” surfer from Laguna Beach who took Richard Alpert to meet Maharaj-Ji and have his life changed into “Baba Ram Das,” would visit with Yogi Chen when he was on his Indian pilgrimage. Yogi Chen told me about those times when Baba Das would chant to him some Hindu chants about the Divine Mother, Kali Ma and other chants, maybe to Shiva and Ram, etc. Yogi Chen woud respond by singing Goddess Tara and Shakyamuni Buddha mantras back at him. #P And quite similar to the story in Be Here Now when Ram Dass witnessed the Guru consuming massive amounts of LSD with no visible effect on him, some hippies came to Yogi Chen seeking his “guidance” for one of their acid trips. Guru Yogi Chen had never heard of the drug, but it was not illegal and after they explained that it would help them to experience enlightenment, he agreed to do it with them. They ingested the LSD and he told me that they all sat in a circle with him for many hours trying to meditate, but mostly just tripping, smiling, and laughing a lot. Yogi Chen just sat in silent meditation the whole time. Afterwards when the hippies had come down they asked him what he thought of the experience and he responded, “it was just a very small bit of ‘dummo’...” (Dummo is the mystic heat that tantric yogis develop with meditation and breathing practices that they can melt the snow around them with!) I had a friend named “Tabla Paul,” (a “gringo musician” adept who is a professional Indian tabla player) and when hanging out and making music with him in the 1980’s I found out he was there when this all happened, and he confirmed everything as related!) (SO... I have been searching for a spot to insert this on 3/26/2024gc, and this is at the point of the “last written entry” SO Why Not Here..? Especially because i just sent this out to my fellow meditator-friends of Southern California) “Many of U have probably noticed the "email signature" at the bottom of the dharma-related emails i send out... It is from Ven. Gyaltrul Rinpoche that many of Us know and have experienced a special brand of "helpful cutting thru the ego" on our journey thru samsara "this time around"... through his teachings or simple inter-action, when he would come down to visit Us in Idyllwild, or to Desert Hot Springs &/Or other So. Cal. locales in the past couple of decades. One such memory with "Crazy Jake," as he named him-"self"... (ed.- a story for another moment. On second thought, why not "NOW?" In an "ah-musing moment" that I heard about, one time Gyaltrul Rinpoche went from Yeshe Nyingpo with some of his students into the nearby town of Ashland, Oregon. By chance, he befriended a "home-free person," who offered the Rinpoche a peacock feather he had been holding. Rinpoche asked the man his name, and he looked at him squarely and responded, "I'm Crazy Jake, what's your name?" Gyaltrul Rinpoche laughed and said, "Well that is MY NAME Too!")... So that "one such memory" was when at one of the times that I sponsored one of the Amazing "Tara Dances"... a "terma-revelation" from Anahata & Prema, to Idyllwild... and we invited him to the Tara Dance, he immediately responded with THIS "verbal lightning bolt"- "I See Tara Dancing In Every Molecule All The Time, So Why Would I Take The Time To Come To Your Tara Dance?" ("Oucho, Groucho!") (I believe I heard that Rinpoche was close friends with one of my main teachers, the Chinese Master Yogi C.M. Chen, author of "Buddhist Meditation- Systematic and Practical"... "Discriminations Between Hindu and Buddhist Tantras," among the many hundreds of his literary works, and who I relate many magical stories of in my "auto-biography!") The 16th HH Karmapa was also a close friend of "Yogi Chen" and has said that Master Chen was an incarnation of "Taranatha Tulku" (1575-1634) whose parinirvana day is April 6th. Yogi Chen has written much about Goddess Tara, Including "Hymns to Tara," and "The 21 Taras," etc. These teachings, and even a special request page for "Powa" (Soul Transference) Prayers for any loved ones entering that transition can be viewed at Yogichen.org We Will Focus On Goddess Tara and These Wonderful Teachers THIS EVENING (and BTW the Rigpa Tibetan Calendar states that Ven. Gyaltrul Rinpoche lived from 1925 to March 26th, 2023gc..!) The "Hi-Desert Dharma Center Of The Thousand Buddhas of the Ten Directions" Will "Dance With Tara" This Evening at Approx. 6:30PM PT..! (Please Join Our Zoom Meeting...) https://www.rigpawiki.org/index.php?title=Gyatrul_Rinpoche "Suffering is very kind to you. If you don't have suffering, you will not turn from attraction to cyclic existence, which means you will never be free. It's as simple as that." -Ven. Gyatrul Rinpoche "May All Beings Be Happy and Free from the Causes of Suffering!" S.K. "Sunny" Sun-Downer #P #P I was baking “Natural Carob Fudge Brownies” and selling them to the health food stores to survive, and getting up very early for “Dawn Patrol,” as the surfers called it, to get the best waves. It was at Encinitas Natural Foods on “I Street” that i met Janet (Graves), who was a waitress there. I was strongly attracted to her, and eventually asked her if she might like to accompany me on a “psychedelic camping trip” on the North Side of Mount Palomar, to the approximately 100 foot high waterfall called “Clearwater,” that I had gone to with my high school friends Skip Chenard and Randy Beaver. She said, “Yes...” We drove out there in her classic old “Impala Station Wagon,” and hiked up to the falls. That evening we ate dried peyote cactus, meditated together for a good while, past the sunset... and then got in our sleeping bags, held hands and looked at the star-filled sky and entered a beautiful universe of love together. We hugged and hugged and then started making love, and I gave her my heart-filled communication of how I would love to enter into her, but that it was entirely up to her. She thought about it for a moment, and confided, “I want you in me..” The rest is “Downer-Graves” history... as we (spoiler alert!) ended up having a wonderful son together a couple of years later, Bodhi Nyima (Sun) Lee.. I promise to get into more details of THAT era momentarily, but I just found this “ancient article” that I wrote in 1977, almost a year after he was born, that I sent to the “East-West Jounal” magazine, a “new age” style of magazine that was in direct “competition” for reader-ship with the magazine actually called, “The New Age Journal,” heh-heh! #P Dear E.W.J. The article, “Surfing Inner and Outer Waves,” from the October issue was really well-received. I have been going to school and working in a Natural Foods Resaurant here in Boulder, Colorado for five months now. Being basically a “surfer at heart,” I can’t tell you what a blessing it was to come across David Kerr’s article. Being also into (Buddhist) meditation for ten years, and into surfing for four years now, I have always connected with the energy that a wave puts out as being very sacred. Many surfers now-a-days don’t recognize this connection and subsequently indulge in immaturity and violence toward fellow surfers. There have been numerous reportings of this tendancy in surfing magazines, including clashes from surfing enthusiasts from a variety of different countries. A new direction in their consciousness and recognition of the results of mental and physical karma would tremendously help these “lost” surfing brothers to find their way to “surfing’s pure and clear light!” #P Needless to say, articles like this one by David will play a definite part in the unwinding of many surfers’ "uptight egos." If, as David points out, individuals like (famous surfer) Richard Brewer of Hawaii are “Zen Buddhist Amateurs,” this will influence thousands of surfers (not to mention “inland sidewalk surfers”) to work toward discovering their “enlightenment nature.” This is due to the fact that Brewer, among others, is one of the “masters” of surfboard shaping and design, and therefore inluences and sets the trends of the surfing multitudes. Ths is the unfoldment of the experience that will revolutionize surfing and liberate it from the “mind-poisons of greed, hatred, envy, etc.” #P I’ll never forget the instructions we received from our good friend the Vietnamese Buddhist Priest, Nguang (Wong), as we sat in Yogananda’s Meditation Retreat Garden, over-looking “Swami’s,” one of Southern California’s magical surfing spots. "In the practice of Vipassana (or 'Insight') Meditation, one experiences relating to not only what is perceived, but also to its implications- the object and the space around it." #P To quote Ven. Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche (Myth of Freedom, pg. 58) “The Buddha’s demontstrations of basic sanity were spontaneous. He did not preach or teach in the ordinary sense, but as he unfolded, the energy of compassion and the endless resources of generosity developed within him and people began to find this out. That kind of activity of the Buddha is the ‘Vipashyana Practice’ that we are attempting. It is realizing that space contains matter, that matter makes no demands on space and space makes no demands on matter. It is a reciprocal and open situation. Everything is based on compassion and openness. The Dharma (that the Buddha) taught was passionless, without aggression. Passion is graspng, holding on to your territory. Spirituality, or the Vipashyana perspective is a panoramic situation in which you can come and go freely and your relationship with the world is open. It is the ultimate non-violence.” #P The Hinayana Monk Wong told us that with practice, we could carry this meditation-gained insight into daily life situations, citing surfing and skateboarding as examples. The experiance of realizing "no separation" between surfer and wave, or ‘becoming one with the wave,’ as David puts it, reminds me of works by Alan Watts and adequately describes what the “awakened surfer” experiences when he/she surrenders the ego for something much more profound and greater than his/her “self.” It’s that “Ah-inspiring” energy that makes so many surfers long to get inside the wave’s crystal-like tube, where-in lies the opportunity to transcend duality in the physical realm. David’s description of the perfect morning in Puerto Rico is what many of our dreams are made of. I would like to thank him for his fine article, and as I’ll be leaving Boulder (and my learning session at Naropa Institute) very soon to return to the West Coast, I appreciate the much-needed inspiration that vitalizes my connection with “Our Mother Ocean!” #P I would like to invite any surfers involved with or interested in Buddhist Meditation to write me concerning plans to form a group called the ‘Samadhi Surfing Society.’ Any other ideas? Thank You, Yeshey (Jampa Yeshay, “Triple S” **** High Saint Way, Buena Park Calif. 90620) (*East West Journal- I can’t tell you how it would help our “consciousness-raising effort” if you would print this article. So many of my friends and their friends- surfers... and so many others have been reading E.W.J. for years! Om Mani Padme Hum, Yeshay) #P During our "court-ship" era, Janet and I went to a concert at the "Sandy-Ego Sports Arena" with one of our favorite rock groups, Jefferson Starship. Their "Red Octopus" album had just come out, with the very "psychedeic violin-playing" of brother Papa John Creach, that seemed to "tune-up the chakras!" We also did some "chakra tune-up medicine," in the form of crystal mescaline, before the show. In the middle of the show we got so excited that we stood up on our chairs to better feel the experience. This long-haired guy immediately behind us was shouting at us to get down (so he coud see better I guess). We were so high that we ignored him. The next thing I know, he put his cigarette lighter up to the back of my head and set part of my long hair on fire! I was shocked and angered! We definitely got down then and I cussed at him, and wanted to attack him at first, but my "peace-loving hippie side" won out! We stayed down off the chairs and tried to have a good time. #P We definitely did THAT, because I remember that at one point the band was, especially with the help of brother Papa John Creech, creating this huge "space-ship lift-off" sound it seemed, and I experienced a "HUGE SWIRLING SWASTIKA" of "Rainbow-Light Energy" swiring above the band... maybe it was "the mescaline talking," but I honestly believed we were going to be lifted up into the "mother ship" at that point! (Once again, found up near the beginning and re-located down to the more correlating time period here..."Pin-ball Richochet Bounce-Alert” Moved from quoting Neil's "Not-so-Young-now" lyric "love lost, such a cost...") Now, speaking of “classic rock lyrics,” I would be, in just a few short years (1976gc), creating a “star child” with my now “ecstasy wife” (or “ex-wife” for short) to song lyrics like Marty Balin singing, ”...I might have to move heaven and earth just to prove it to you, baby... So we’re making love, and I feel the Power, and you feel the Power... Then there's really nothing we can't do (Grace Slick in parenthasis): (you know we could, you know we could) If we wanted to, baby (baby) (You know we could, you know we could) We could exist on the stars It'd be so easy Now, baby All we gotta do (Baby, baby, baby, oh, baby) Is get a little faith in you (baby, oh baby)” - “Miracles” (Written by: Marty Balin and Maryyn J Buchwald, From Jefferson Starship’s Album: “Red Octopus” Released: 1975gc) You will most likely get why I’m bringing in this memory momentarily... after time travelling “Back AND Forth” a few decades.. In around 1970gc, PAUL KANTNER, (NOT to be confused with my good friend and fellow “counter-culture activist” Author/Comedian PAUL KRASSNER, who I did an amazing 2-Part Interview with, published by the Desert Valley Star newspaper AND elsewhere here on my blog in JULY 2009gc. Also you can look for my amazing and lengthy interview with Paul Krassner, “Los Angeles Free Press Creator/Editor” Art Kunkin & others on my youtube channel, Sundowner108..!) #P SO- Paul Kantner, one of the other “Co-Pilots” of Jefferson Starship, wrote a song with David Crosby (almost an epilogue to their “Wooden Ships”) titled “Have You Seen The Saucers,” which REALLY turned me on while “Opening Up My Imagination” AND “Spiritual Chakra-Centers” through the rock music of “The Starship." Posted on “Reddit” under the topic, “UFO’s,” (A community for discussion related to Unidentified Flying Objects. Share your sightings, experiences, news, and investigations. We aim to elevate good research while maintaining healthy skepticism) by Some-one Called: “Counter-Underground” “Have you Seen the Saucers?” By Jefferson Airplane is, in my opinion, one of the most ardent pro-ET contact songs ever recorded. The passionate lyrics combine the themes of eco-consciousness with flying saucers and a need to extend sisterhood and brotherhood to “the people out there.” (Some Of The Lyrics Are...) “Have you seen the saucers? Have you seen the saucers? Do you know the people out there Who aren't happy with the way that we care For the Earth Mother? Have you seen the saucers? Tranquility Base There goes the neighborhood American garbage dumped in space And no room left for brotherhood... Your mother needs you, now she's getting old Her face was pretty, but you let her go Have you seen our saucers? Star children on the back road to salvation Children of the forest and child of the Woodstock nation You gotta care for the needs of your planet Catch the dawn that once was there First-born atomic generation Open the door, don't you know that's what it's for? Hey, come and join us on the other side of the sun” -Paul Kantner, David Crosby (c) Grunt Music SO- re-capping: This song REALLY turned me on while “Opening Up My Imagination” AND “Spiritual Chakra-Centers” through the rock music.of Paul and the Jefferson Airplane/Starship. Therefore I ALWAYS held that music and its creators in the “HIGHEST” regard, and when I last chatted with Mr. KANTNER backstage after the “Starship” concdrt at the Agoura “Canyon Club,” (right after the millenium kicked in so that we were partying like it was no longer 1999gc!), he had had his usual clear liquid spirits (vodka?) during his performance and most likely had “quite a booze-buzz on”... THAT is what I want to believe, because after all of his songwriting, I felt that I could propose to him one of my “bucket list” items: to ask him if he was interested in communicating with my “Venusian Extra-Terrestial Angel” Friends, through my mother Gena, who would be in her “Physical Temple” for another decade at that “time and space...” So I boldly went where probably “No Jefferson Airpane/Starship Rock Music Fan Had Gone Before” and asked him if he was interested... His face tightened up with an angry expression, and he scowled, “Now you’re scaring me!” As he turned and stormed off, I just shrugged and thought, “oh well... I tried!” Having left his body and this Earth Mother in 2016gc, I just want to believe that his “Light Body” is laughing with me at the whole incident NOW as he ZOOMS OFF in his “Crystal-Light Ship!,” Heh-Heh..! TO BE CONTINUED..~!~