PREVIEW:
SPIRITUALITY HAPPENS
Four Major Turning Points In A Rather Eccentric Spiritual Journey: Some Brief Synopses
by Dennis L. Trunk
Part 3:
Radical Spirituality
or
A Room with A Guru
In 1972 I came into contact with the strangest and most impressive spiritual teacher I ever met. At the time I wanted a radical teaching, one that would bring about genuine spiritual awareness without using any kind of methodology or system. I had no idea what it would be, but the genie in the lamp, reality, manifested a possibility.
Unexpectedly, I was collared at a Taoist meditation hall by an acquaintance who was touting an American teacher as his latest "guru." He was known as a guru collector, so I wasn't very impressed. I took a flyer and left. But on a whim, probably mere curiosity, I decided to visit the teacher's combination bookstore and ashram on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles, where I bought his newly published book, The Knee of Listening.
His name was Franklin Jones, and his book was both an autobiography and a commentary on his radical spirituality. He was a young man, not much older than myself, and I identified immediately with his experiences, his discoveries and his frustrations with traditional forms of spirituality.
Similarly to Jiddhu Krishnamurti, but unlike most other spiritual teachers, he taught that all forms of searching, including the search for spiritual enlightenment, were futile and were themselves the source of spiritual ignorance. The search prevented the seeker from seeing and experiencing reality in the present moment as one's own blissful nature. As a result, he taught no methodology; instead, he prescribed understanding the search. Understanding was his fundamental teaching. Everything else he taught was peripheral to it and pointed back to it.
I felt that this extraordinary man embodied and reflected the teaching I had been wanting. But before I had an opportunity to meet him, one of those dramatic events occurred that I thought happened only to others.
One night while I sat alone reading the book, I looked up and noticed that the room was quiet and that outside noises had become muffled, as if the room had become wrapped in a cocoon. It was peculiar, because I lived in the Silverlake district not far from the busy Hollywood Freeway, and a distant background din was constant. Now it was gone. Puzzled, I went back to reading but then looked up again, wondering why I was suddenly feeling happy for no reason at all.
That was when I noticed a presence in the room. I couldn't see it, but I knew with absolute certainty that someone was standing only a few feet in front of me, and that the someone was the source of the happiness I felt. Since there was nothing to see, I went back to reading. After about half an hour, the presence and the muffling effect slowly evaporated. I never identified the presence, but several months later, when Franklin told me that he had meditated a mantric form into his book, I wondered if that explained the phenomenon and if he might have been the presence.
In those early days, the requirements for sitting with Franklin were simple: read the book and come to meditation meetings which were held three times a week. I knew that he had been a disciple of Swami Muktananda, a Siddha Yogi who manifested the powers of Kundalini Shakti, the spiritual energy described in yogic literature. I had also been warned in advance by his followers that the intensity of the Shakti during satsang (Sanscrit for association with truth) produced many physical and psychological effects. For some people they were unendurable; for everyone they created a crisis. Naturally, the warning piqued my curiosity. I wanted to see for myself whether any of the phenomena occurred.
On the surface, very little happened in satsang. In the incense-filled room immediately behind the store front, the followers and the curious sat quietly on the carpeted floor or leaned back against the walls with legs outstretched. After a brief wait, Franklin, dressed in loose clothing, entered the room from the back office, sat down in a casual lotus position on a wide chair and faced us in open-eyed meditation, staring straight ahead. We were not asked to meditate. Instead, Franklin meditated on us as a group and individually. We waited in silent expectation, hoping that a dramatic spiritual experience would descend upon us.
Often it did. Some of his followers, in apparent spontaneity, performed graceful mudras, slowly moving and posing their hands and arms, while others sniffed and snorted as if trying to clear their nasal passages. In yogic literature these were called kriyas, psycho-physical responses to the purifying movement of the Shakti. I never experienced any of the physical phenomena, but in varying degrees my mental activity seemed to be stirred and speeded up, as if by a strong stimulant. I would find my attention drawn to the abdominal area and focused vividly on physical and emotional reactions to my thoughts. At times the focus became so strong that my mind seemed to glow like an electrified filament. Inadvertently, I found myself meditating on the activity, intensely aware of it as a process in consciousness.
But after the meditation was over, my vivid awareness would pass. Unfortunately, ordinary human consciousness is like a drugged sleep. Waking from it is very difficult and may involve drifting in and out of higher awareness over a long period. It took many sittings before I began to realize, even in a dim dream-like way, that I was seeing the nature of the search and of understanding at the same time. The activity of the search stood before me as if on a movie screen, and something coaxed me to be aware of it. It was all there - the entire teaching - not presented as a transient blissful experience, which Franklin was fully capable of granting, but as one complete, fulfilling, intuitive lesson about the nature of reality. Nothing was needed but to live constantly in that awareness as one's own true nature and to allow it to blossom into its fullness. Being shown this was a priceless and ultimate gift, but because it was subtle and arrived with little fanfare, its worth would not become obvious to me for a long time. Ironically, I kept looking for what I had already been shown from the very beginning. Such is the obsessive, dream-like nature of the search.
A session sometimes lasted no more than an hour or so, at the end of which Franklin would simply get up and leave the room. But frequently he would unfold his legs, sit back and either ask for questions or begin speaking. His second book, The Method of the Siddhas, was an edited compilation of these early recorded question and answer periods, during which several of my own questions were answered.
Franklin was a much better speaker than writer. In spite of his youth, semi-long hair, and clean-shaven, seemingly wide-eyed innocence, he spoke with the ease, authority and humor of someone much older.
His talks were usually funny, and among his most notable characteristics was his laughter. He laughed robustly and frequently, but not as others did. It was open and free-flowing, as if he was sharing some great cosmic joke with his listeners.
He never hesitated or seemed to search for answers or the right word. He was never distracted. Rather, he seemed only to pause long enough for an answer to arise fully in his mind as if from some other source, and then he would deliver it. His behavior in public speaking, as in all other situations, seemed to embody his teaching perfectly. Whatever happened, he remained fully present and in relationship - to people, to situations, to his surroundings. If Franklin had been asked, what makes you different from others, he could have answered, "I am present." But, as it was, he said that he was not different from anyone else, only that he was no longer involved in seeking of any kind.
Although Franklin tried to keep his disciples firmly grounded in the ordinary affairs of daily living, most were fascinated with Shakti phenomena. To some degree that was surprising, because the core and foundation of his esoteric teachings - the Heart (not the same as the astral chakra) and the Amrita Nadi - were more important and represented a higher level of spiritual awareness. However, their manifestations were much more subtle and intuitive. The Shakti attracted most of the attention.
How each of us responded to it was said to reflect our natural inclinations. Physically oriented people, for example, reacted physically, while the mentally oriented reacted mentally. In meditation, Franklin himself would sometimes raise his hands with the palms facing outward and fingers splayed, like a mime pressing against an invisible wall. At other times, he displayed facial grimaces and twitchings, and sometimes tears would run down his cheeks. For those inevitable disciples who feared that his tears reflected sadness, perhaps over their own inadequacies, Franklin assured them that the tears were only a physiological reaction to the flow of the energy.
The Shakti acted like a flame passing from candle to candle. I didn't realize that until the person who lived with me started having unusual experiences and asked me if the energy was "catching." When I asked Franklin, he assured me that it was. The experiences varied widely, but could include mild headaches, vivid spiritual dreams, spontaneous energy flow in the body, loud external cracking sounds, floral fragrances wafting from nowhere, and even the sense of a spiritual feminine presence, such as the Blessed Virgin.
When the ashram seemed to become a magnet for drama of various kinds, most disciples attributed it to the influence of the Shakti. In my relatively short time there, I witnessed a surprising number of events: damage from a fire in an adjoining store which had burned through to the ashram and blackened the walls, auto accidents in front of the building, a violence-prone bully who resisted leaving, marriage and relationship break-ups, and much more. But most of the drama took place inside individuals. It was easy to become absorbed in the spiritual experiences or obsessions incited by the Shakti, and in spite of Franklin's repeated warnings, many of his disciples did just that. They became experience junkies looking for relief from the various kinds of pain in their lives.
I was interested in the Shakti also, but mostly as a phenomenon. I already knew that most spiritual experience, no matter how interesting and entertaining, was a dead end. It seldom brought about permanent change. Instead, for the next few months, I focused as well as I could on Franklin's central teachings, which I found curiously elusive, confusing and maddening. At every opportunity I questioned him closely about the nature of understanding and other issues. And repeatedly he confirmed my conceptual grasp of his teachings. But in practice it seemed impossible to avoid falling into a methodology of observation and a reinforcement of separation. Mostly, I was working against my own mindset and training. But, as I later learned, another part of the problem was that I was wrestling too much with Franklin's choice of words and manner of verbal expression. For me, they did not always communicate his teaching as clearly as he intended. When I began to relax mentally and to trust more to my own intuition, many of the problems vanished and the living truth behind the words emerged.
Another kind of drama, not directly related to the Shakti, arose from constant change at the ashram and from the behavior of the disciples themselves. Just when everyone thought they knew their place, their job, their daily routine, their relationship to Franklin or the teachings, new announcements or some expression of dissatisfaction with the disciples would be made, and turmoil would ensue. The disciples tended to blame themselves, their seeking or their other inadequacies for the confusion, and each time they would fall into greater anxiety and self-absorption.
But it seemed to me that change was the rule of the place, the only true constant, and that the followers were not expected to become comfortable. As a result, I regarded the changes mostly as a distracting sideshow and tried to ignore them as much as possible. But it was not easy to buck the social pressure of the ashram. When relating to Franklin personally, I never had a problem. I liked him. He was well-educated, genial and reasonable. He always treated me considerately and tolerated my constant questioning; in fact, he never said a negative word to me or criticized me. But some of his disciples tended to be rigid, intolerant and authoritarian. When changes were announced, they could exert a strong pressure throughout the small community to conform immediately and without question.
There were other disturbing tendencies among the followers. To my disappointment, some of them, although superficially part of the counterculture, were racial bigots and political reactionaries. When I remarked one day that few blacks ever came to satsang, one disciple asserted that it was because blacks were not very spiritually evolved. None of the other disciples in the room spoke up to disagree. And when I pointed out that such a hostile attitude could, by itself, explain the absence of blacks, no one responded.
Around the same time, one of the disciples mentioned in a tone of approval that Franklin supported Richard Nixon because the country needed discipline. I didn't know whether that accurately reflected Franklin's opinion, but I responded that such a position would be politically naive, because Nixon and his anti-intellectual hardhat followers were not friendly to divergent thinking, particularly as represented by the counterculture and by the ashram. Their idea of discipline would be to drive people like Franklin and the rest of us out of the country. But only one person in the room had the courage to speak up and agree with me.
Unfortunately, few of the disciples showed any concern at all about the dangers of authoritarianism, or wanted to think critically, analytically and independently. In my experience, spirituality required freedom and individuality. An unquestioning follower in any discipline is always a follower. Franklin had achieved his understanding, not by following, but by always going his own way when he felt it was necessary. He learned all that he could from his spiritual teachers, but he also recognized their limitations and wasn't afraid to criticize them. Above all, he trusted his own spiritual inclinations. Those were among the reasons I admired him.
Although it often seemed that the periodic changes at the ashram were random, many of them were pre-planned and had a direction. Franklin had forewarned us repeatedly that the structure of the ashram would gradually become more formal and that it would eventually become more difficult for people to have personal contact with him. He wanted to be relieved of all day-to-day responsibility for running the ashram and to devote himself without restraint to pure spiritual expression. His disciples and the organization would become the external vehicle of his spiritual expression, and they alone would be available to the public. That made sense to me from an administrative view, but I felt deeply uneasy about having a relationship with a bureaucracy of disciples. I didn't trust how they would behave when Franklin did not personally oversee them.
In the move toward a more formal ashram structure, Franklin began to require discipline in his followers. He had been influenced in his early spiritual training by the idea that money, food and sex were primary issues to be dealt with at the physical level. As a result, he increasingly insisted that his followers work at regular jobs, control their eating habits and settle into a stable sexual relationship. Since I was not experiencing a problem in any of those areas - as Franklin himself agreed - I was not much concerned with them. But I found that part of his teaching peculiar and in many ways questionable, a case of "do as I say, not as I have done."
When dietary changes were implemented, as one example of the new discipline, a climate of opinion quickly formed among many of the disciples that everyone should clean out their refrigerators and kitchen cabinets and rush out to health food stores to buy new food and expensive nutrient supplements. Yet most of the disciples worked at low income jobs. I considered their behavior rash and foolish and expressed my impatience with it. But whether their mindless rush reflected Franklin's own intentions and attitudes I couldn't determine. When I told Franklin that I had no faith in the unregulated health food industry of the time or in the many charlatans who made unsubstantiated claims and preyed on the fears of the gullible, he disagreed mildly, saying only that mainstream authorities didn't seem to him any more reliable. But he was not insistent. And I did not change my diet.
The disciplinary focus on those issues, however, took an unacceptably bizarre turn when the ashram's leaders began to interview the disciples concerning their most intimate habits - such as how frequently they masturbated - and filed away their answers. That kind of invasive questioning would not be tolerated even in a strict religious order, as I knew from experience, and I considered it frightening and outrageous. I wondered who had access to those files and how they would be used.
For me, a breaking point had arrived. Although I respected Franklin as a genius in spirituality, I also knew that he was a fallible man with limits. Months had gone by and I had learned much - more, in fact, than I realized at the time. Of the many spiritual authorities and sources I had dealt with over the years, Franklin alone had spoken to me directly and deeply. He was genuine, substantial and, for me, ultimate. By comparison, all the rest had been only preparatory. But I was not at rest. I did not want to become part of a disciple collective, a worker in a hive, or a permanent follower. I had come to Franklin for direct personal spirituality. A lifetime of endless, tedious effort and servitude did not make sense. At one point I expressed this feeling to Franklin privately and told him that I felt understanding alone was sufficient. He didn't respond for a while, and when he did, his answer was equivocal. "Yes," he said, "but effort is still necessary." But at that time, the small, quiet inner voice that had always been my most reliable spiritual guide was telling me to leave.
Franklin once said that those who ended their relationship with him went back to zero. But I didn't believe that. I trusted that the true guru was within and that the external guru was only a manifestation of the inner. When I stopped by the ashram a few months later to buy a book, the disciple behind the counter chastised me in a distant, dreamy and blissful voice about how much I was missing since I had left. But I recalled that Franklin, through word and action, taught his disciples to remain awake and to be present to reality. The disciple's other-worldly mannerisms only confirmed the validity of my decision. My inner voice had not failed me. I never returned.
A Postscript
The life of the ashram moved on. Since those early days, Franklin has changed his name many times, his organization has branched out worldwide, his published writings have grown into a dense forest of verbiage little resembling the simplicity of his early teachings, and he has become a subject for reference, commentary, praise, and severe criticism by many writers, academic and otherwise. Those who never knew him often confidently and foolishly misinterpret his teachings. Those who knew him are often intensely polarized in their opinion of him. He predicted long ago that the world would come to view him as a paradox, and that has now become manifest. In the background I can hear Franklin's cosmic laughter.
Next:
Part 4: A Sudden Transformation
or
Doing Quantum Leaps on Mount San Jacinto
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Dennis L. Trunk
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