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The Early Days: (Editor's note: This interview took
place on March 12, 19th, in Sal and Louise's cabin at
Persimmon. SAL: You want to know about my relationship with Bubba in the Asbram? QUESTION: No, start from the very beginning, back in the old days. SAL: Well, we met in Scientology. QUESTION: How did you get into that? SAL: That story is not worth telling. The point was that my life had just fallen apart at the seams and I had left New York and gone to Las Vegas, Nevada. A cousin of mine was involved in Scientology. He told me about it and I got involved with it there, in Nevada. I was in Nevada for around ten months in 1967, and then I went back to New York in around January1968, and around March Bubba got involved with Scientology. I was the first person he met when he walked in the door, and we liked each other. I remember I went home and told this person I was with that I had met this fantastic guy, and he went home and spoke to Nina, and he said the same thing. We just had a good friendship, and it lasted all that time. I didn't have any suspicion of what he was up to. He had just gotten back from India from his first trip. I had no knowledge of that tradition of any kind Guru, Master, or anything like that. And he never communicated anything about it to me, either. That didn't come until after we left Scientology (we both worked for the organization). We went into business together for a while after we left Scientology. QUESTION: What kind of business? SAL: We were putting together companies for the purpose of underwriting stocks. By this time we had already gone through a tremendous drama with the Scientology organization, and he knew it was all bullshit. It took me more time. How I got hip is a really funny story. I was on the phone with him one time, and I was talk-ing about some "Upper Level" stuff or something like that and he said to me, "Sal, you believe that?" I must have laughed for about a half hour on the phone, you know, complete release from it. After that was when he started to communicate what he knew and understood. While we were in business, we were up at the offices one day, and this thing started going on a strange presence was in the room and this blue light came over his hands it was incredible. It was just me and him in the room. I was very much aware that there was something going on; there were strange feelings happening to me. At the same time it happened to Nina, Pat, and Louise in a different part of the city. All that day we had very strange experiences, and that was that Shakti manifestation beginning to move through him. He told me to read Autobiography of a Yogi, and that was my first introduction to anything like spiritual life. I was a student of Franklin Jones at the time, that's what he was called, but he was just always a friend. I used to travel from the Bronx to downtown Manhattan by subway to spend every weekend with Bubba, and I wouldn' t travel on a subway for anybody, ever. Something very interesting about that relationship was that it never took an overt conflict. You know how over a period of time, five, six years that you know anybody, some kind of conflict comes down between you but it never took on that form, ever, which is unique. Bubba was always very consistent in his relationship, all the time. He always had this sense of humor, this incredible sense of humor. I used to tell Louise, "If I could ever figure out the point of view that this guy is laughing from, I have a funny feeling that I would understand something very profound." He taught me for a long time before I understood what he was doing, both myself and Louise. He would just do outrageous things that would embarrass me or whatever and laugh about them, much the way he does right now. There was no way that I could acknowledge that relationship in the formal sense it wasn't right, it wasn't time to do that. He would just instruct at the level I could deal with. There were manifestations taking place, and I was aware of them. At one point they became very strong, and he sat for the first time in Satsang, or what is called Satsang now, at my house in the Bronx. QUESTION: When was that? SAL: Oh, 1969. Just before he left to go back to India, because the manifestations were taking place. I was having experiences, but he had never done anything formally. So he sat down one time, and this same power was manifesting. He sat and we all went into some form of meditation. When he saw that occurring, he wrote to Baba and asked him for a name, as you read in the book. He said he had to go to India, and the arrangements were made for him to go, and we took him to the airport and everything and we saw him off, and he left for maybe a month, three weeks, I don't know. QUESTION: That was in August of 1969? SAL: Right. This was the time he went alone, the time he got the internal instruction. It wasn't long after that, I think, that he moved into the loft in downtown New York. QUESTION: He went into a kind of seclusion, almost. SAL: Right, for around nine months or so. QUESTION: Was he seeing you during that time? SAL: Yes. frequently. He saw very few people. In fact the only people he probably did see were Louise and myself. QUESTION: Except for Pat and Nina, who were living there. SAL: Yes. That's when, as I was telling you, I used to travel from the Bronx by subway to see him. I remember we were fixing up the loft, it was a big loft, about sixty feet long by thirty feet wide; and we were painting the floors, you know, really fixing it up. It was really groovy. He was always working internally. You could observe that. He very rarely went out. Occasionally we would go out for walks together and come back. Then one day he called me down from the Bronx, and he told me that he was going to leave for India for good. He and Pat and Nina. That was it, he was just leaving the country. I remember him saying, "What the hell am I going to do in this place? The hell with it all. I've had it." It wasn't too long before that, you know in the book when he speaks of the incision in his head, that experience. I think it happened on a Friday night, because it was Saturday morning and I was down there. He was telling me about it, and it was interesting because to this day he hasn't written anything about it, nor have I ever heard him say it to anyone. But at that time he told me that the incision, the severing of that chakra, had never taken place before. It was an indication of a new form of teaching. He didn't use those exact words, but he knew then that something very unusual had taken place in consciousness that had never taken place ever before. QUESTION: Back then when he was teaching you, to what degree did he communicate from the point of view of understanding? Was there a transition? SAL: Oh, very definitely. But the transition is more in the posture of our relationship, in order for a form of instruction to take place. The transition in Bubba, it seems to me, the thing that I noticed most was that his mind disappeared. When I say 'his mind disappeared,' I mean, you can look at people, and if you look if their eyes there is a characteristic you can observe that is a personality. But if you look in Bubba's eyes, there isn t anything; it has disappeared. That was the transition. From the point of view of his personality or the way he acted in the world, no, I can't notice any transition. His form of behavior is the same. He has always been humorous. These parties aren't the only one's I've seen. QUESTION: In Bubba's sadhana he went through all these various lessons and at the same time, as he says in many ways and in different places, he was always brought back to the point of view of understanding. SAL: It is my feeling that he could have spoken to me from that, if I was in a position to warrant such a communication, but our relationship wasn't at that level. In other words, I wasn't developed enough to get that type of communication, nor did I have a frame of reference with which I could understand anything like that. But he always alleviated pressure from me. Every time I was uptight, as long as I went to see Franklin, everything was all right, either by what he said to me, or just being there, or whatever. (When I reflect back I call Bubba "Franklin," because at that time that's what I called him.) We had a tremendous amount of fun together, and we went through quite a bit. Before he left for India we had spoken about going to California. And I had decided to do that somewhere around July. I had even said to him that I would find some way even to go to India to be with him, still not knowing, you know, that level of it, but having that kind of attachment to him. I always had that kind of attachment to him. He knew of my relationship to him always. He has always known that I was his devotee. It just took me two or three years to catch on. So I got this letter from India saying that he would be in San Francisco within three or four weeks. Before he left he had written a letter to friends of his in San Francisco asking them if they would put us up somewhere. So he knew I was going to make that move out there, and he said that he would meet me. Right on schedule we just left the house, we left furniture, television set, everything. We just packed whatever we could take in the Volkswagen bus and we left. We got there and around a week later Bubba arrived. He stayed about a week and then he went down to Los Angeles for some reason, just like that, very abruptly. He said he was going to go down there and look for a place to stay. I didn't know what I was going to do at that point. I had been there for a while, and I stayed, I think, another couple of months. Then I decided to go back to New York and accumulate some money and then come back. I only had around $500 left. So I went back to New York and he moved to Los Angeles. That is when the event in the Vedanta Temple took place. I don't know how long after he moved to Los Angeles that it took place, but it was two and a half years I guess before I wound up coming out. There was a break of communication for a long time. It was the first time I was upset with him. I remember that I had gotten stuck and needed some money, and I wanted him to purchase a couple of airline tickets so I could fly the family back to New York and when I arrived in New York I would send him the money. But his American Express card, he said, was piled up or something like that. I couldn't deal with that, I couldn't accept it. It was a form of instruction and that is why I couldn't understand it, because I wasn't approaching him as Guru. Had I approached him as Guru, I would have understood immediately the position I was in. But he is incredible. I got a call from Nina about six, seven or eight months later. (I don't have the times all clear in my head.) But Nina called and said she was coming in on a shopping trip or something like that and asked if she could stay with us. Well, I have always been just clear out of my mind about Nina, and I was very happy to see her and do anything I could for her while she was there. Anyway that began the communication again, and I called Bubba right after that. I think at that time he probably had completed the book The Knee of Listening. Then we got involved trying to get it published. He was trying to do that already, and then I tried to help him with it. QUESTION: Was he sending it around or something? SAL: He was sending it around, and the attorney I was working with took the book and had it for a long period of time and did absolutely nothing with it. Then I started a corporation. I was going to publish it, but I blew twenty thousand dollars somewhere. LOUISE: Oh, that is a wonderful story! SAL: I had gotten back on drugs again and my life started to come down on me. It was really getting bad. Then at one point, after lots of communication, I began to fly to Los Angeles on weekends and spend time with Franklin, and he would come to New York for a couple of weeks at a time, specifically to work on Louise and myself. Not long after his last trip to New York my life just started going out the bottom. People were even making attempts on my life. Physically I was just shot to hell, drugs, women, my life was just coming to an end very rapidly. LOUISE: Very unhappy besides. He had everything he ever wanted and he was totally miserable! He had the power, he had the money, he had the position, he had the people. He had everything and he was totally miserable. SAL: So I got a call from Franklin the day after an attempt had been made on my life, and he said, "Your life is in danger." So I said, "Yeah, you're telling me." But he knew. LOUISE: You know how he used to get Sal to call him? He used to come to Sal in his dreams. He used to be there when Sal was dreaming. He would say, "Yes, I had to do many weird things to get you to communicate to me. Remember?" SAL: There was always that form of communication going on between us. After that phone call I said, "Listen, I am working on a very big deal." I figured once I tied this one up it would have meant $400,000 or something like that. A lot of money. And with a government contract for many years. I said, "Let me tie this up, that will give us the money to publish the book and do everything, and I will come out. All I need is about six months." He said, "You haven't got six months." And I knew instantly that was true, that I didn't have six months to live. As soon as he told me that I called in my secretary and dictated my resignation with two weeks' notice and told her to make plane reservations for the day my resignation took effect. Louise stayed in New York. I just left with a couple of bags, and Louise sold off the car and took care of all the other things and came out a few weeks later. LOUISE: His whole life he had gotten down to this whole drama of trying to achieve this position, and he was right back to being on the street, walking around with a gun, dealing with junk again, fooling around with broads. The whole thing, and he had gotten absolutely nowhere. He was still at that level, it was incredible! QUESTION: Why were people specifically at this point trying to kill you? SAL: No reason, that's why I knew what Bubba said was true. QUESTION: You mean it was a mugger or something? SAL: One afternoon a guy in a bar tried to cut my throat with a knife, and then another guy who was crazy was waiting for me in the streets. I had to carry a pistol with me. It was really strange. At that point I left, and when I came here within eight weeks we started the book store. We were going to do a restaurant first but it just would have taken too much money. We were talking about it in terms of the work, you know, a vehicle. Then we just decided the hell with it, let's just open an Ashram. So that's what we did. Me and Bubba worked, that place was incredible. You wouldn't have believed what that place looked like. That place was three separate rooms, eight feet high. It had been a sewing machine embroidery place, dry cleaning place, chemical labs for developing, and every time somebody would come in they would just add what they would want in and never take anything else out. It took I'm telling you, truck loads of material to take all that was in there away. It wasn't just partitions with sheetrock, it was half-inch plywood with ten penny nails and three-by-threes. Pulling it out was absolutely incredible. You should have seen me and Bubba, we were absolutely black. I couldn't believe it. LOUISE: Sal hadn't done physical labor like that for ten years. He used to come home and just pass out, honestly, from exhaustion go to sleep. SAL: I was waiting for instruction, but that was the instruction. LOUISE: He actually wanted to kill Bubba. He used to become so infuriated. SAL: We actually worked for thirty days. LOUISE: He would never let up on him. SAL: We really physically busted our ass in that place. And he had endless, endless energy. It seemed like he could go forever without the slightest flinch. LOUISE: One time he fell over in his chair! QUESTION: What was this? LOUISE: The day he fell over in his chair, he just pushed his body to the point where he was totally exhausted. But he was okay, his body just couldn't keep up with him. SAL: He was ready to keep going. At that time we were working out of Bubba's house and our house. Satsang and all of that used to be in our house. QUESTION: How many people were there? LOUISE: Two old women... SAL: Yes, two old women, one other guy and us, that was it. And then after that Tom Riley, Elly Lincoln, John Krajewski. LOUISE: Those were funny, funny meetings. We would just be busting inside, really not knowing what the hell we were doing there or what was going on and not anybody had the balls to ask a question. Everybody would get silent and he had to work with us silently. He had no choice with us in the beginning. We just were so uptight we couldn't even ask a question. He used to bring a tape recorder and we would record silence, hours of silence. SAL: In the beginning days of the house he used to be happy to have the silence. Everybody used to come in talking about all kinds of stuff. One time every fell into some form of meditation, and he said that that was the first time that had happened. He had been working with these ladies for eight or nine months. They used to come from San Bernardino, seventy-five miles to see him. QUESTION: He had already written the book? SAL: Yes, but it wasn't out. We spent a fortune. I would always run out and xerox it. Every time it would cost us eleven dollars in xeroxing, and every time there was a new person I would go out and have it xeroxed and they would read it. Then we started the study groups over at my house and we would work from the manuscripts. This was when the Ashram was being built and it took a while to get it done. We rented the place on March 15, 1972, and we opened it up April 25, 1972, or something like that. Jerry Sheinfeld and John Krajewski thought that Bubba and I were rip off artists playing this whole game with them so that we could get them to paint the place for nothing. QUESTION: Too much! LOUISE: To work for no money. QUESTION: That was a hell of a con game. SAL: So I told Jerry after it was all over that he was right, you know? around twelve or thirteen people when the book store opened. LOUISE: We used to go home and say, "Hey, Bubba, there was ten people there tonight:' But then it was "Franklin," we didn't call him "Bubba" then. He would come to our house for Satsang. SAL: When we finally opened the place formally to the public, about twenty-five people showed up that night, different kinds of people. QUESTION: How did you announce those meetings? SAL: You know, through posters and things like that. It was interesting because in those days there was no screening process; the Monday night presentation was done with the tape on "Understanding." Have you ever tried to listen to the tape on Understanding"? It's not audible. It's really not audible. I used to give the Monday night presentation. People would come and ask questions and I didn't know that much of what was going on myself. QUESTION: What was the quality of your meditation at that period? SAL: Physical pain, emotional pain, everything, it was totally excruciating, indescribable. Bubba played me very, very straight. Super straight. Once all that physical work was done, we used to see him in the back of the book store and he wouldn' t even talk to me. We spent fifteen, even sixteen hours a day together and he would never even speak to me. He used every instrument to instruct. I was the type of guy that could never deal with details. So all he ever did was sit there and tell me to do this and this and have everyone else do this and this. Not only would I have to remember what I would have to do but what everyone else would have to do. I used to have to write it down. Then he would come in and open up his desk drawers and he would find paper clips turned in the wrong direction, and he would tell me about the drawers. It was absolutely incredible! There was a speck of paint that I had missed--he would notice everything, but no kind of emotion behind it, very casual. He would come over and he would say, "Don't forget to catch that thing over there." And he never forgot it, he absolutely never forgot it until I did it. Everything to the minutest detail! Everything had to be just so. The place was built crooked, I mean it was an old building, right? We were building these walls and it had to be absolutely perfect. We measured until I thought he was going to pull out a micrometer. Everything was absolutely perfect. He took my mind and just made it focus in, everything in detail. That is what I would deal with all the time, that was my sadhana all the time. Because of us being friends all of these years and my now having to assume a different posture in the relationship, he wouldn't even talk to me. Every time I would attempt to get that friendship thing on, the further away he would put me. QUESTION: (to Louise) Was anything happening to you? LOUISE: Well, I moved just because Sal was moving, and I entered the work because that was what Sal was doing. I read the book the first time and Bubba said, "What do you think of it?" I said, "I think it contradicts itself." And he didn't put me down. Then finally he was going on this trip to Hawaii, and he gave everyone in the Ashram a one-to-one interview with him. Well, now I had to speak to the man directly, you know. So when it came to talking to him I had to cop to it and that was it. I just told him I was full of shit. And he said, "Okay, now that we both know that, let's go on from that point," and that's when I finally started to get involved, but that was months after I was out here. During the first months I grew further and further away from Sal. It got to a point where he would be in one room and I would go in another room.
SAL: At that time the crisis of my internal patterns was taking place and Bubba didn't want to do anything at the level of life to distract me from that. I had to deal with it. It was tremendous because my patterns and emotional life are very violent. I had to deal with it myself. There were no conditions that he placed on me besides the structure of our relationship and the way he kept it. I went nowhere without him. If I went out for a pack of cigarettes when I first **came** out here, he would come to the store with me. He did not leave me alone for a long, long **time**.
So then the Ashram got started. There was still no screening process. In those days all you had to do was read the book. If you read the book you were allowed to come and sit with him. He worked with a yogic process in those days, which is unlike Satsang today. In the beginning he told me, "I only have about a year to work in this fashion." It was about one year when his adrenaline glands began to collapse on him and that was because of this yogic process that he was using to awaken people. It isn't the **same** kind of thing he communicates now in Satsang.
It is a different siddhi. My experiences of Then are completely different. My experience of it in those days was a fire, heat, a tremendous fire, a tremendous heat in the solar plexus, sort of **churning** of the whole mind; and that is what this siddhi used to work on all the time. My body would go on high temperatures, incredible pains, and it used to open up all the knots and stuff. That is how he used to work in those days, in silence.
QUESTION: (to Louise) Was the experience the same for you?
LOUISE: No, my experience was tremendous, my head was constantly busy, it used to just drive me crazy. I never was aware of the activity in my head until I sat in Satsang, and it used to totally freak me out; and Bubba said, "Louise, your head is like that all the time." I said, "What?" He said, "You are just becoming conscious of these things." It was awakening, you know. And I said, "Oh, man, this is incredible." I didn't go through much of those **chakra** experiences as Sal did or this shakti experience of feeling this fire and all that.
SAL: It was so intense sometimes that I would be sitting there in tremendous pain. Literally tremendous pain, excruciating pain. I mean when you get to a point where it's beyond screaming. It was very teacher-student more than it was Guru-devotee relationship. A lot of communication, a lot of explanation, but most of his communication was two-fold really. One to establish the dharma, establish the teaching and have that opportunity to talk; and the other, to keep the people interested long enough that the Siddhi could work. Because the true work is in that Siddhi, not in anything that he says. That was the condition that he dealt with, so he dealt with everybody at the level of the student. He never spoke of conductivity, he never spoke about any of those things. He wouldn't even acknowledge them. He always put things like that down.
I remember one time he called me up and said, "I want you to go to San Francisco and close the Ashram down."
QUESTION: You had set up a center? When did that happen?
SAL: I guess about a year ago.
Question: When was the San Francisco center opened?
SAL: It wasn't open very long. It was only open for a couple of months. Bubba said, "Go up and tell the San Francisco people I want them here." So I went up there and took the Ashram apart, and two days later everybody had to move down. It wasn't too long after that that he said, "We are going to close this Ashram down." He said, "I'm not going to have a public life anymore." It was really a strange experience for me. I said, "Does this mean me too?" He said, "Oh, yes. That relationship doesn't exist anymore." There were a lot of people in the room and nobody knew what was being said to me, so I hung up the phone and before they said anything to me, I just walked outside. The first thing I had to deal with was--
LOUISE: Your own reaction.
SAL: Yes, before I could communicate it to anybody else.
QUESTION: Well, what was the outcome of that?
SAL: At that point I realized that my relationship had to exist beyond the physical life. I would have to maintain it. By the time I had walked around the corner and got back again I had sensed that and gotten through it. In other words I was willing to do that and not have it on a physical level. I knew I could maintain it.
QUESTION: Did he talk to you about that?
SAL: Bubba never talked to me about lessons he had given me. He still never does. That has been our relationship always. I have always had to see it and understand it for myself. I never went back to him and said, "this and this and this." It is very obvious if I have or have not understood from his point of view; if I haven't, I get it again. A lot of people think Bubba and I have a lot of conversations in private but it is not true.
QUESTION: Did he talk about insights that you gained in **lessons** that he had helped share with you before he became your Guru back in New York?
SAL: later on in joking conversation he talk about different things. Like he said something about how for two years he has been serious with me. But I have always known that. It never had to be said. It has just been a strange relationship like that. What I have understood about it has always been silent.
So anyway, he said he was going to close the Ashram, which was just a test. Of course, obviously, it was a test.
LOUISE: He stayed away a long time, remember? He said he wasn't coming back until we were straight.
SAL: He stayed away for a couple of months.
LOUISE: He didn't come down, he wouldn't visit us. He didn't do anything until we got it together.
SAL: The Ashram still has to get it together.
QUESTION: He said, "Get straight." What does that mean?
SAL: Realize who he is.
LOUISE: Yes, what our position is, what our relationship to him really is.
SAL: He said to me on the phone, "Close the Ashram unless you can find a better alternative to it." Meaning to get people with it. I had to call a meeting. I said, "Look, this is what he said, this is what we have to do. We have got to get it together." So we got it together, and I called him up and said this is what we have decided.
QUESTION: What did you decide?
SAL: I don't remember the details. Anyway, we assumed more responsibility.
LOUISE: I mean do you know how much Bubba used to do? He used to do everything. He even did the check writing, the ordering of the books. He did every single function in that place, every single one of them.
SAL: He wanted people to take on more responsibility and create the Ashram.
LOUISE: We were like, "Oh, it's too much." Here he was doing everything as well as teaching us. We would run the whole operation. It took us a long time to realize....
SAL: He even paid the rent!
QUESTION: Didn't Nina or Pat serve any of those functions?
LOUISE: No. The girls worked and Sal and Bubba were there**.** They took care of those things. Sal was selling books at the bookstore.
QUESTION: Let me go back here for just a second. What was it that you said, there were original people, there was a group and none of them are left?
SAL: We didn't say none of them were left. The experience of people before, the experience of the nature of the particular Siddhi active at that time was very forceful; it worked on a different level of life than the usual, so it was **immediately** felt and people would feel instantly groovy with it and then three or four days later go into a crisis. So he would always talk about this crisis, because he knew that the moment they had this contact, it wouldn't be more than a few days before they would fall into their minds again. Believe me you've got nothing going for you when it occurs, other than faith, and in those days you didn't have this long period of turn-around. First of all there were no conditions. People could be eating meat, smoking cigarettes.
LOUISE: The only thing you couldn't do was drugs.
SAL: Drugs, that was the only thing that had a taboo on it. People were just falling into their whole number. There was no recourse. They didn't have this living of the conditions and study courses and all of this to really help them understand anything. In other words the two aspects of the work are understanding and conductivity. The intelligence is founded in understanding, understanding even while this conductivity goes on. Narcissus is alive, and you must be able to understand at the level of life and enquire. So Bubba created a **formal** structure and people couldn't just approach him right off. It took a long time before they got to see him, before they had that kind of exposure.
QUESTION: These were the days when people would stand up and scream and run out of the room?
SAL: Oh, yes, run out, I have seen people run out of the place, challenge him; there have been times in the Ashram when I had to be there with a **baseball** bat.
LOUISE: Actually protecting Bubba from people! Sal would be walking around with this bat or calling the police.
SAL: Those were strange days. They were all crazy; those nuts would come in there and they would want to kill him.
LOUISE: They would come in there and I didn't know why--
QUESTION: Well, you feel all that if you are really crazy...
SAL: Yes, that's right. Bubba intensifies everything. So if people are nuts that condition is intensified, and thereby uncontrollable at that point. So he had to straighten their condition out first. That is when he started the conditions.
LOUISE: It was a little over a year ago, because we were on that diet for a whole year before we finally were able to break it in November.
QUESTION: And it was before that or right after that he left you for a few months?
SAL: It was during that time. We were living the conditions, and then he created this situation where he left for a few months. It was a testing period for people. Anyway, people got it together. It was just another stage of the work. People took on a little responsibility. Neil was there and he was getting the book out and taking on those responsibilities. We started giving out the responsibilities at that time, and the work was changing all the time. Each position and the level of intensity would change. It was always fluctuating, always moving; you could never place it anywhere. He would rip it off from underneath you at any point. Then it came time when we started to expand, a lot more people came in.
QUESTION: They still had access to him immediately?
SAL: No, at that point there was screening, but it still wasn't as stiff as it is now. There was no student course. There were certain conditions to live and if you lived them or agreed to live them it was all right. Maybe you had to live them for a week. I don't think the interviews were formal either.
QUESTION: This was when the interview service process began?
SAL: Bubba did all the interviews. We would just get the information and bring it to him and he would make the recommendation. He had time so he would always do it through people so that they would learn how to do it, and that's how the interview thing started. Then he implemented the course. One day he said, "We are going to have a course." It was incredible sadhana for me because I had to take The Knee of Listening and go through it in detail and take out of it all of the points that were significant in terms of understanding, broke it up into thirty sections, just incredible detail. I would take what I had done and give it to this other guy who had a Master's Degree in English Literature, and he would put in the sub-points, the supporting points around it, and that would be my notes to give the course with. There were no course tapes in those days. I would just work from these notes and talk, and they would be taped. Then there is another set of notes which will be used for the **correspondence** course. When Bubba used to talk before those tapes were made, I used to interpret what he said. There are two sets of notes--the notes that I took directly and then interpretive notes on the course, my interpretation of what he means. That's going to become the second part when the correspondence course comes out.
Then I did it a third time, and that is when we started recording. **That's** what you are hearing now in the student course. I did the course around three times in three months in succession.
LOUISE: When did he break us up into all those categories, remember?
SAL: There were categories in those days, "novices," "disciples," and so on. All of that became a trip and a game in the Ashram, and he just dissolved it.
QUESTION: How long did that exist?
LOUISE: A couple of months, maybe four months at the most. We used to carry on that whole operation out of this little room in the back of the place on Melrose Avenue, the little room that became the flower room, eighteen by twenty feet.....Sal's desk, my desk, Neil's desk, Bubba's desk. It used to be one on top of the other. We even worked in the Satsang Hall. Wherever there was space, we worked.
SAL: We were carrying on a lot of functions. Well, when we broke it up we filled five thousand square feet with what we were doing in that little room! We didn't even realize it ourselves. I was doing so many things I never realized I was doing until I started delegating responsibilities, and I'd see it took ten or twelve people. That was very good sadhana for me--from being someone who avoided doing anything at all, I wound up doing so many things that I didn't realize I was doing them anymore. He just keeps laying it on you, there's just no end to a person's capacity to do things, and he absolutely demands that you do it with leisure, without pressure. Without getting involved. You know, you get on a trip with it. Because he'll always call you on it; as soon as he saw you getting serious about it and concerned about it, boom! He would let us know that we were serious and really involved with it, and that we should lighten up.
QUESTION: Did he make fun of you?
LOUISE: He's great at that, he's great at mimicking you. I remember once I was so upset at Sal I wanted a divorce, and I went to him....and he got hysterical! Absolutely hysterical!
SAL: He would always say and do the right thing at the right time, all the time. One thing that I was always certain about was that he would really maintain the relationship; he always loved me, all the time. And I always knew it. What do **you* think kept me there? Absolutely nothing else would keep me there. He was always attentive to me, he always knew what my needs were. Absolutely incredible .
LOUISE: But that's for everybody.
SAL: Of course.
LOUISE: If you're there and open to it, he gives you absolutely everything you need, teaches you everything. All you have to do is remain open to him, just give him the room to do it, and he will just do everything for you.
SAL: I have this rash on my foot, or I'm worried about this problem...I mean every aspect of my life, he knew. He knew about me and he was attentive, telling me to take care of this and do that. It's just like being fondled and taken and completely handled, your life is completely handled and there's nothing else to worn about. It's things like that that are just undeniable and really unmistakable. No matter what he did you always knew that, in some way. Not even by anything he might say, but you always knew that. If he hugged you, you'd just be out of your mind.
LOUISE: Oh, I used to love to get hugged.
SAL: In those days everybody filed into the back and everybody would hug him before they'd leave, after Satsang.
LOUISE: He'd be absolutely exhausted, I'm sure, every single time, because we'd just wipe him out. This happened for months before we finally started **acknowledging** him by bowing to him. But our form of **acknowledgment** then was to go up and get a big bear hug from him. And we used to just, well, "Going to get my goodie, going to get my goodie,** **"and that's when he did the thing about the dog and the bone. Then he said that bowing would be the form of **acknowledgment** from then on, instead of all this physical contact.
SAL: The greatest change, even more significant than the transition in 1970, that I've ever noticed, that was so obvious and so potent, was when he came back from India the time that he went with Jerry.
QUESTION: Have we got up to there in talking or are we skipping around?
LOUISE: No, we're skipping around.
SAL: He moved out of there and then we got that other place, the other Ashram, at 731 North La Brea in Hollywood. Believe it or not, we'd only been in there since August. The lease was from July, July 3Oth.... we were there five months.
LOUISE: And now he's moved us again.
SAL: That's when the conditions were really in force and the interviews were going strong. That's when you guys came around.
QUESTION: I noticed a dramatic change when he came back. The first interview I had after he arrived back, there was just so much presence, it was amazing.
SAL: Something happened. I couldn't with any kind of real knowledge tell you what it was, I could only tell you what it was from my own experience. What I think occurred was a purification of his work. He had said to me one time that he had to clear up his karrnatic relationships with those things and people there. But I think he went to those holy places and he...I think Bubba Free John first of all became Bubba Free John in India. He came into his own. He went there and saw what he had to see and certain things happened relative to the development of his work in the world. That trip had to be made, and that's when he became Bubba Free John; when he came back there was no Franklin Jones. There really was no Franklin Jones; no way.
QUESTION: Was he Franklin Jones up to that point?
LOUISE: We used to call him Guru. It was so hard because you really couldn't call him Franklin anymore. A lot of people got into the habit of calling him Guru. As a title, you know, instead of saying Franklin, because we knew that was out of place now.
SAL: I called him Frank for a long time, I was always calling him Frank.
LOUISE: And then he wrote to us and his name was Bubba, signed Bubba Free John. It was so great....even Guru wasn't right; it was too formal and that wasn't our relationship. It was a formal relationship, but there was something very intimate about it, and "Guru" didn't carry that intimacy. But Bubba....I mean, that's so fantastic, that name.
QUESTION: Was that his family' s nickname for him?
LOUISE: Yes, his father has called him "Bubba" ever since he was a child. Then he took "Franklin Jones" and made it "Free John."
SAL: I think that was in conjunction with a certain change that went on there with him. Because when he came back, I was at the airport, he walked into the airport, and a force walked into that airport that absolutely blew my mind completely out the back door. I can't describe to you what happened to me in that instant. It's almost like he had become God.
QUESTION: "Almost like!"
SAL: Well, what I'm saying to you is that from every indication he had become God in 1970, you follow what I'm saying? But when a guy comes into that maturity, that's it. It's the transition between being a boy and being a man. You know that turning point, right? But at the level of Divinity. That was my impression of it; when he walked out there, it was like, "Let no man touch me." That's exactly what was communicated.
LOUISE: It was such a dramatic, dramatic moment.
SAL: It was a dramatic moment because the significance was, it wasn't just his arrival, it was his arrival! You know what I mean? It was a different type, it was something else that arrived, because Franklin Jones died there. Something did occur there; Bubba never spoke much about it, so I 'm just giving you my internal experience.
LOUISE: The teaching took on a new level.
SAL: Like when Rudi died, it took on a new level; something happened, and there was a change in the work. Almost as if, by that force leaving, something moved in and made another force more powerful.
QUESTION: What were the effects on the Ashram as the dharma or teaching changed? Bubba first began talking about conductivity around the turn of the year, and things in the Ashram obviously changed around that time.
SAL: Bubba has said that usually when he speaks about something, it's because it 's already occurred. He produces the manifestation in the person first, and then he says something about it. For a time there after he came back, things were different. I remember two and a half years ago, when I first came out here, I was sitting in Bubba's house and he said to me, "You know," he says, "I'm ready to dissolve." He looked forward to the day when he could become a babbling fool. Literally be dragged out in the middle of the floor for Satsang and then be carted away in a wheelbarrow. When he came back from India this time, **that's** exactly what began to happen. Slowly but surely now, disciples were developed.
LOUISE: It took us a while to realize...we always thought it was a terrible thing that he was turning over these things, but it always meant that we were now prepared for a more intense level of the work. We were finally responding and becoming responsible. In the beginning it was kind of frightening, but then we got to understand.
SAL: Every time he let a function go, he took on a heavier function. He's always said, "I have to do my work," as if all he was doing wasn't his work. It isn't. The creation of this Ashram, the verbal instruction...all of that isn't his work. His work is just to be God. He has to be free of all vital functions. At the moment he still has some writing to do.
Right now, though, the real instruction is in the way we're living. I think that living in a **communal** type set-up, being thrown together and having to deal with each other without the structure and the relief of your own privacy is enough to make anyone want to get straight. You know that if people are straight, you can live together like this. If they're not it's really messed up. This is part of that instruction, part of what has to be understood. People want to get the other people straight, when all they have to do is get themselves straight and live that humor. There's a tendency to get very serious, get angry with one another, become righteous with one another. A new type of intelligence **must**?? be developed.
LOUISE: You've got no choice.
SAL: You have to resort to something very intelligent in order to deal with all this. The only thing that can really deal with it is Satsang, that form of humor. So you say something to somebody and it's joking, but you 're really **humorous** about it. That frees the other person. If you get angry with that other person, that creates a reaction to you. If you don't deal with it at all, it just remains intact. So only Satsang is going to dissolve it.
QUESTION: Is there a process of deepening of humor in the community?
LOUISE: There was absolutely no humor in the beginning. Absolutely none. The beginning was one tremendous crunch. We lived that crunch and suffered it until we finally let it go, you know?
SAL: There is no question in my mind that the people who are coming in now enjoy a level of this work that it took us a long, long time to achieve, simply because there are other people living it. There' s a **community** living Satsang so it makes it very possible, very easy for people to move through.
QUESTION: And it will get more that way.
SAL: Sure. Sure it will. The beginnings of it were very, very, very difficult. I mean, really tough. For a year, no light, no **humor**, nothing.
LOUISE: You could even hear it in the tone of Bubba's voice. I mean, to get us to laugh he would have to do things like the Funny Farm skit or the Avon lady...and we were all just sitting there, suffering there. It was incredible.
SAL: People come into the community and they find a group that's fairly straight and living Satsang, and it's easy to be around such people. It's like having the opportunity to be around Bubba all the time. Because in those days, he's one person, how many people could be around him all the time? So we were stuck with one a other's suffering. Now we have people here who are relatively free, enjoy a certain humor all the time, and can laugh a little bit and get you to laugh a little bit. So, it makes it cool. His plan is to have a full community of people who are **humorous** and at the level of life sort of playing a certain game for the public at large. But it's that kind of intensity.....so that if a guy comes on the land, his mind just gets swept out the door; he hasn't got a prayer!
LOUISE: I remember what Sal used to say, what used to happen when he used to walk into Bubba's house.
SAL: Yeah, I used to fly out to Los Angeles and walk into his house and my mind would just be left at the door, and I wouldn't pick it up until I left the house to go back. This was before we came out here, before there was an Ashram, when I used to fly out here to sit with him on weekends. It was just incredible, the things that used to take place!
That' s the real function of the community, that kind of Satsang, that kind of Intensity. It's very hard to be unstraight in front of straight people. It's very obvious to you, so you either fade away into the darkness or you get straight very quick. And that is what the value of the **community** is. If you've got sixty, seventy, eighty people, and they have matured to the stage of devotee after three or four or five years or whatever...imagine having three, four, five hundred people line that! It's incredible! I mean this guy is not here to write a Bible. You know what I mean? And just disappear and leave one or two cats. He's going to do a job, there no question in my mind about that. I mean absolutely none.
What's going to happen in this work, from my point of view, is going to change the course of this planet for the next ten thousand years at a minimum. I mean, really change it around. He wants to give people an opportunity to have recourse to Satsang forever on this plane, to create a holy place where the Siddhi can manifest and a community can maintain the dharma. In other words, where the vital function of the Guru as a **community** can live Satsang and keep that force alive, forever, on this plane, so that people have an alternative to the suffering of life. Whereas prior to this there have only been the completed ones who have popped up in various parts of the world at various times, and two or three people got lucky enough to be near them, and that was the end of it. But he wants to establish it forever on this plane. It was funny, one night he said, "It's not just unfortunate to be unenlightened, it's inappropriate." That was a great line. Like he couldn't see any reason why everybody couldn't be enlightened.
LOUISE: Because you assume you're not, you assume you're on the other end of the boat.
SAL: He says it's the most natural condition.
LOUISE: Yes, he said the other day, "There's nothing to save....you're already saved." SAL: That was really good. That was a really good communication; I don't know how many people comprehended it, or at what level they comprehended it. But those that are his, are his, and they ain't going nowhere. I mean, he already knows that. When we find it out, the whole game is over . |
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