Chapter 1: Waking Up

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Whenever I go home, I'll invariably spend some time in my mom's storage space. It's like this ritual, looking through old journals and artifacts from childhood, pictures, birthday cards, old cassette tapes. You know, the kind of stuff you don't want to take with you, but don't really want to throw away either. It's been about 16 years since I left home, and about a year ago I was back in the storage space, and I picked up an old diary. Yeah, a diary.

Just bear with me. So, a lot of it is just 14-year-old me experimenting with language, mimicking books and poems I'd read. There's plenty of normal, angsty teenager stuff, feeling misunderstood, like I was special in a way others didn't quite get. But the diaries also contain these letters. Letters I had written to my parents' guru, Franklin Jones. I feel afraid to enter again into communion. I feel so far away.

My mind has been tricking me, finding something to preoccupy my time. Reading them is embarrassing, sure, but mostly I just feel bad for the kid that wrote them. I felt the pain of the social and conventional world fall away. My eyes closed. My impulse was to cry and grieve over all the horrible imprintations upon the heart. the body makes. But I realize soon after, by your grace, that this too is the ego. I love you forever. Beloved of my heart, love.

All the letters are in these spiral-bound notebooks. The pages still smell like the sandalwood incense that was always burning at our house. And I could almost see myself writing them, cross-legged in front of a framed photo of Franklin Jones, the guru we worshipped. i see how hard i was trying to understand jones's complicated doctrine to follow his instructions when i was a kid i truly believed that jones was our benevolent master a divine giver king

a god. When I grew up and left the group, I learned that many consider it a cult, and Jones, a cult leader, and that some of his followers accused him of brainwashing and sexual assault. Over the years, going through old journals and notebooks and other stuff my parents saved from that time, I started to wonder, what really happened? Did this spiritual experiment that I grew up in, did it in fact become a cult?

And if so, what does that make Jones's followers, like my parents and me? I've been circling around these questions for years, but I never got up the courage to actually try and answer them. Until now. We were seeking for the truth. Jones ran that thing with an iron hand. I just remember seeing his eyes looking at me and going, oh. Here's the money. You can have many spiritual experiences and be still an asshole. Unfortunately, that is true.

But I'm not a me, you see. I literally am you. I'm Jonathan Hirsch. This is Dear Franklin Jones. which is no longer a person, you see. There's nobody here, no Franklin Jones, nobody like you, you see. He's not here anymore. Totally absent. To start, we need to go back a bit.

to 1972, actually, when Jones was just starting out, giving some talks at a New Age bookstore on Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. This is before people start to call Jones a cult leader, before he's accused of sexual assault. And he's already got some pretty radical ideas. What a miracle. What a wonder. I am he. I am God. I am the adept in our generation. Before he has thousands of followers, or really any followers at all.

Back when Franklin Jones is just a man, and the United States is going through some huge changes. The Vietnam War, the struggles of the civil rights movement. Watergate, or forcing Americans to re-evaluate their relationship to government, human rights, race. What many Americans had taken as truth suddenly seems fragile and uncertain.

And in response to all of this, it becomes cool to seek alternative lifestyles, to experiment with spirituality, to have a guru. George Harrison has one. Allen Ginsberg, too. Even Elvis is reading and talking about this stuff. It becomes so popular, there's practically a dress code. Suit and tie, total square. Sandals, bell bottoms, long hair. Guaranteed that brother is hip to the east.

Seeking. This is where Franklin Jones appears. He looks like a lot of these other seekers, blends in with the whole Jesus Christ superstar vibe, wears silk pajama pants and paisley shirts. But when he talks, he's loud, brash, laughs a ton. And he records tapes of his speeches. And that storage unit my mom still has, there are dozens and dozens of them.

That is our situation now. This is the moment of happiness. And every future moment after death, beyond this world and other worlds, lower worlds, higher worlds, after worlds, no worlds, it is all the moment of infinite delight. As you can hear, Jones kind of specializes in talking in circles. In fact, one of the main things he tells his followers is that this spiritual search, their quest for truth and meaning, they're not doing it right. No.

You're not going to find happiness in religion or by changing your diet or fasting or meditating. Nasty little disciplines. All of that horseshit. Instead, Jones promises a new kind of non-religion religion. If you do what he says on everything from relationship to diet to sex, eventually you'll hold the secrets to enlightenment.

Over the years, this philosophy will intensify and change, as will the way he treats people. Some will call him abusive, hostile, even dangerous. Others will continue to see him as a gentle teacher.

and even a god. Many of these people will build their entire lives around him. People like my parents. Check. Okay. You ready for this, Mom? I'm ready. So one thing to know is that my family is not confrontational. We don't yell or really even question each other about our choices. And this is actually the first time my mom and I have really sat down and gone through what happened.

My name is Kathleen Lustman. I'm from Chicago. From Chicago, Illinois. Kathleen now lives in a small apartment outside of San Francisco. And I should say, I call my parents by their first names. They taught me to do this as a way to demonstrate that we were equal. Anyway, my mom's in her 60s now. She's thin, bleach blonde hair covered in a beanie, high angular cheekbones.

I've seen pictures of her when she was younger. As a kid, I always thought she could have been a model. Kathleen is the oldest of a big Irish Catholic family. And when she was growing up, her parents sent her to parochial schools. She used to tell me how, as punishment, the nuns would do crazy things. Like one time she threw something she'd written into the trash and they made her pick it out and eat it. Probably not surprising that she feels like she didn't get much out of the experience.

I wasn't inspired. I wasn't finding my way of education, which made me feel a bit like a failure, but I wasn't finding it. When 1969 comes around, Kathleen's 20 years old. And it's the height of American opposition to the Vietnam War. There are protests on the campus of her college, rioting on the streets of Chicago. A friend of hers comes back from Vietnam missing an ear.

Kathleen herself dated a young guy who'd been deployed. They wrote letters every week. Writing, writing, writing. Until one day... All of a sudden he disappeared. He was a sweetheart. He was just a sweetheart. He didn't... even know what he was going into. And I heard that he did two rounds of front line before he was killed. That year was one of the deadliest years of the war.

Almost 12,000 American soldiers died in 1969. You know, death is a way of changing all your priorities. I just felt it was such a useless war. Like many baby boomers, Vietnam started to make her question her life, her education, her country. What are we protecting? Her future. You know, it just made me think about everything.

Kathleen dropped out of college, got an admin job in Chicago, and walks to work she'd passed this spiritual bookstore. She signed up for a meditation class, did some yoga, started seeing a guy who was traveling to Nepal, buying and selling art. One day...

He was like, why don't you join me? I decided to go to Kathmandu because I wanted to study meditation. I wanted to study yoga. I wanted to study a lot of things that weren't available readily. Kathleen ended up staying in Nepal for years. She studied to become an acupuncturist.

and a night partied with expats, smoked weed. People called her Kathy Mandu. When I was a kid, my mom would tell me stories of those years. She says Nepal opened her eyes, that she saw poverty for the first time, and also that there was much more to life. and how much money you had. She'd gone about as far from where she'd been raised as she could get. And eventually, after eight years or so, she decided to come back home to the U.S.

So in 1980, Kathleen moves to San Francisco. She gets licensed as an acupuncturist, opens up a clinic, lives in a tiny apartment in Russian Hill overlooking the San Francisco Bay. But she's still looking for something more, something bigger than herself. Seeking. One day, she's walking around her neighborhood and she sees a poster. He was advertising that he was a meditation teacher. A handsome guy with a square jaw, white teeth, ringlet curls.

Not Franklin Jones, another guru. And he had passed lives in Tibet. And I was thinking, well, either he's crazy or he's for real. Kathleen decides to go see this guy at a Japanese temple in downtown San Francisco.

She's standing in the back of the room when the teacher comes in. You know how you get in a place and you can't wait to get out? You're always thinking, gee, if only I could get out and get a coffee or if I could, you know, if I could just get out of here a little bit, you know, maybe move around. Didn't want to move. And I couldn't remember a time where I didn't want to move.

So that in itself really spoke to me. She's transfixed. But at one point, she notices the person next to her. There's this dude back there. He's dressed like no one else. He had a suit jacket on. And a t-shirt and a shirt with his shirt kind of open more than Americans wear them. He's definitely a European guy. During intermission, Kathleen and this guy talk for a few minutes about the meditation teacher.

Is he for real? And that was our question to one another. We clicked as individuals, okay? She was eager to follow the path to liberty and awakening. This teacher isn't Franklin Jones. They hadn't found him yet. But my parents had found each other.

So don't worry about this microphone at all. I'll try not to. Yeah. This is my dad, Thomas. Now Thomas has gray hair and a beard. He's a little older than Kathleen and a little shorter. Where were you born, Dad? I was born in Budapest, Hungary. My dad describes himself as a truth seeker. It's all he's ever really cared about. He was born in Budapest, Hungary, in the middle of World War II. Okay, in Hungary, you were kind of confined to a certain role, a certain pigeonhole.

During World War II, Nazi forces occupied the country. Then, in 1945, when the war was over and the Nazis were defeated, the Soviets moved. where everything had to be clear with a certain ideological entity. And if you went beyond a certain thing, then you just disappeared. That happened to a lot of people.

An estimated 200,000 Hungarians were sent to Soviet work camps, including my grandfather. And by the time Thomas is a teenager, Hungary is living under full-on communism. That pigeonhole Thomas was talking about? started to feel like a prison. In the winter of 1954, Thomas and his older brother decide to leave. They take a train to the border and sneak into Austria during a changing of the guards. Eventually they're granted refugee status and come to the U.S.

I came here with a burning desire to be free, to be able to be who I wanted to be and not be afraid of saying it. And initially... You know, I was welcomed like a friggin' hero. At first, Thomas lives a pretty average American life. He finishes high school, joins the army, and after three years, he heads out west to be with his brother.

It's the late 60s. He gets a job in Santa Monica. And for a few years, he just kind of hangs out. You meet one girl. You meet another girl. Tell me about when you... started to get interested in spirit alternative forms of spirituality how did all that come about for you um S-D. Thomas dropped acid, and he says it changed the way he saw the world.

It was a spiritual experience. Experience, okay, I put it, it's experience. It's not just, it's not spirituality. It's just a spiritual experience. Consciousness just... brings out and you're no longer this, you know, quivering mortal. You don't know what it is, but you know you're something other than that. Thomas says it's like... He saw a flash of light out of the corner of his eye. But when he turned around, it was gone. And he's left with his average American life.

Thomas marries one of the women he met, lands a steady job working for Northwest Airlines. They move to Honolulu with their newborn son. But that something he saw? Eventually it came back. One night... Thomas is walking his dog on the beach in Honolulu. And this Belgian shepherd. He takes a couple steps out the front door, and then, the way he describes it, just wakes up.

Like you had been sleeping all of a sudden I was no longer The ego and closed in a shell that disappeared My dad says this is the moment he dedicates his life. to searching for truth. After that, it's all he can think about, all he cares about. He moves his family back to San Francisco, and one day, he's in the break room at work and sees the same flyer my mom saw.

the curly-haired teacher offering meditation classes. So he goes. And sitting in the back next to Kathleen, looking out at this guy, calls himself Rama, everything shifts. Like I said, this isn't Franklin Jones. Rama's just their gateway guru. It was lovely to be in his company. It just felt okay.

The sky may have fallen, but you would feel okay with Rama. After about a year of hanging out with Rama, Thomas and his first wife separate. And Kathleen and Thomas start taking these spiritual road trips. They go on long group walks in the desert in Southern California, among brush and cactus, underneath the stars. We certainly loved following this quest.

We were seeking for the truth. I love these stories of my parents. They're so hopeful and idealistic. After about a year, though, this other guru moves with a bunch of his followers to New York.

Thomas and Kathleen go in search of a new teacher. And eventually, they find one. Their guru. Franklin Jones. Have you all heard about the dreaded gombu? or the impossible three-day thumb and finger problem. Have you all heard about this one? See, nobody tells you these things except me. It's 1982, and Franklin Jones has been going by a few different names. First, he was Bubba, then Bubba Free John, then Da Free John, then Adi Da. Later, he'll name himself Adi Da Samraj.

which basically means the original giver king in Sanskrit. Yeah, it's a lot. For the sake of clarity, for this story, I'm going to stick with his birth name, Franklin Jones. First time I saw him, I was... In his physical company? Oh yeah, that was wonderful. What was it like? Yeah, it was really good. When Thomas and Kathleen find Franklin Jones, Kathleen's working as an acupuncturist along with Thomas, who she's been training.

She says he has a knack for it. They move into this house on the top of a hill outside of Oakland with a view of the ocean. On Sundays, Thomas goes down to the farmer's market and buys a flat of strawberries. They eat breakfast together and go for long walks.

Sometimes Thomas recites his favorite poems for her, like The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot. Other times they just stretch out together on the floor of their living room and listen to the tapes Jones has made of himself. We were on a path. And it's hard to explain how that would be so, but it was. And one of the things I think I said to Thomas at that time is, I'd really love to have a child. He goes, okay.

So before we know it, I'm pregnant, you know, and I had the most glorious pregnancy that any human being could ever want. They're also taking classes together based on Jones's teachings. The classes are small, maybe 10 people. They discuss everything, how to cook, what to eat, their sexuality, their jobs, how to raise their kids. Nothing is off limits. And so Thomas and I, we... Yeah, and we entered the community and we were taking classes and before long the teacher shows up.

in sex or pleasure the body and the life force are overwhelmed in in laughter the mind is overwhelmed in god realization the self is overwhelmed Then at the end of 1984 on New Year's Eve, Thomas and Kathleen have a baby. Me. When my son was born, I can remember... At some point, we'd be driving around in the car, and we'd be listening to Adi Da in this humor. His laughter was so deep and expansive that I had never heard.

before in my human existence. I just loved it. For most of my life, Jones has been like a family secret. This isolated community, hippie parents on a never-ending quest, an enigmatic guru accused of doing some pretty horrible stuff. I never talked to anyone about it, for fear of what people might think of me. Of us.

But the thing is, I was a kid for most of this. And in some ways, I never fully understood what went on in Jones' group. For the longest time, I didn't even want to know. But recently, I've allowed myself to wonder what living in the shadow of this man really meant. Who was Franklin Jones? Where did he come from? And why did we follow him? Now, it's time to find out.

Dear Franklin Jones is reported and produced by me, Jonathan Hirsch, along with Ashley Kleek and Annie Aviles. Our associate producer is Nora Lind. Our senior producer is John Asante. Our executive producers are Chris Bannon and Jenny Radelet. Special editorial guidance from Peter Clowney. Thanks to the great sound engineers Casey Holford and Eric Jorgensen. Original music by Ray Lynch. And thanks to Country Joe and The Fish for use of their song, Death Sound.

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