How many records did you make with Father Yod?

D: Well let's see, I think they're between the spirit of 76 band, which was the earlier band, which probably started around 1973. We started recording back then and then all the way through Ya Ho Wa 13 and then all the way through the next band Breath. I wasn't even in that one. 

We probably did about anywhere from 60 to 75 albums and recorded them in our garage. We turned it into a recording studio and we did our own artwork for our vinyl, and we had our vinyl pressed. We paid for them to be pressed at rainbow rainbow vinyl pressing. It still exists over on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. So we paid for all of that. We did it all ourselves. We did it all. Our music.

It was mostly in the spirit of 76. Those were my songs that I had written before coming to the family and a few in the family, and we rehearsed a lot and we performed around town, and then we went into spontaneity. We stopped doing rehearsed music. 

When we started doing the spirit of 76, with Father (Yod) backing. Father singing is like the albums you get are like, Contraction, Expansion, Kohoutech. Yeah, That's a rare one. If you see a vinyl of Kahoot tech, you have,  you found a gold mine.  

Well, and then we went into Penetration. That was Ya Ho Wa 13. The penetration sound is what I called it. And that was a three piece. Octavius on drums, sunflower and bass, me on guitar and Father on vocals, drum, kettle drum and gong. And he did a lot of whistling. I kind of suggested that style to him, to mix the ancient with the modern. 

The ancient gong and kettle drum and voice with the modern psychedelic guitars and drums and all that. And there's no vocal except for a little bit of Yod chanting the ancient name codename for the process of life and consciousness for all humanity. That's all that that word means. It's the four letters. Yo De Va Hu, they pronounce Jehovah. 

That was his name because he was just saying that all he is is fire, water, air, earth and spirit. And so he could only talk for himself. So. But we could say the same thing too, is what he was saying, you know, claim it for yourself, clearer, clearer yourself and, be one with the universe. 

Yeah, I see a lot of empowerment in the message of Father Yod. 

D: Yes, a lot of self power. But being the channel for a higher power which is within.  But you got to do it for yourself. It's just like you can't expect anyone to feed you. You gotta feed yourself.

When you're a baby, you're fed. But then when you mature, you have to feed yourself. So that's the same thing in knowledge. You have to feed yourself knowledge.

So you pressed all your own records, what did others seem to think of you guys — did you ever play shows with other bands?

D: No, he never played a show with another band. Yeah, although we did a show inside Diamondhead crater in Oahu. And there were other bands on the bill. Yeah, but it wasn't father. It was,  Tom DiLeo, one of fathers women who,  or sisters in the Source family, you know. And she danced and sang and and we backed her up. 

So that was about the only time we played with other bands, but we were. So nobody was doing the crazy psychedelic stuff. We were out of the box, you know? Wasn't like you could just put us in any bar, or a club, we had to select where we played or invent it or create it iin some way.

What about bands like Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band, did you guys ever cross paths with other more out-there bands of the time?

D: Yeah, yeah, they would consider that on the same level at the time. Yeah, definitely good. Good analogy there too.  only we, you know, father was the main lead singer for Ya Ho Wa 13, and he always sang spontaneous improv, wisdom, wisdom teaching. And he was sincerely singing to all of us as his children, all of humanity.

And even though Captain Beefheart also he did rehearse, but he also did a lot of spontaneous jamming. And he was psychedelic, for sure. He weaved in and out of it crazy stuff. And it was good, good, crazy good. It helped you get out of the box, you know? Everything. Same always, perfect or, whatever. Just,  new, different. Like nature. Every morning, the sunrise is a little bit different, you know? And that's the way our music was. We never repeated anything.

That's amazing.

D: It's true. He was right there on the cutting edge of consciousness. Yeah, it's like a sermon. Um, it's like being, played for. You know? You could play at any time, and it'll always do the trick.

What age were you when you got involved with the The Source family?

D:Well. Good question. On a physical level, I was 23. But, consciousness is quantum. And we could have met in other lifetimes, in other ways. We could have done the exact same thing in another lifetime. We could have done the same thing in a thousand lifetimes and not remembered at each time. 

And in order to pick up where we left off and not carry the burden of, harsh memories because there was always a lot of new when you're growing, you're always encountering a lot of stuff. Some of the stuff is stuff you regret. A lot of pain, a lot of errors.  and then you wake up later on, you look back and you go, oh, my God, I thought I was awake and I was still asleep. 

And when did you realize you were awake?

D: Oh,  I didn't, I don't think probably just yesterday or..

That's a good answer.

D: What I used to consider consciousness being awake. Then I realized that everything from a stone to light has consciousness contained within it of some degree. Because there's really only one consciousness, and one energy in the universe it is just one energy, you know? And, it just takes many forms and there's just one consciousness and it takes many forms. But then I realized that being awake as a human being meant that you had become aware of the unity of the universe, that it was one thing and that we were all co interdependent on everything that exists at the time, that we exist with everything. 

And so that's now that's my new awake definition. It's a unity consciousness. And then your heart is in it and your mind is in it. And that unites your heart and mind. And the mind struggles with that concept. But the heart accepts it immediately. If you think about it. It's a compassionate state of being. 

But, then the mind struggles and doubts and thinks you're just imagining bs, and everybody else goes, oh, here he comes. Airy fairy, mystical man. But, a lot of people in our circles up here are very much into unity consciousness.The Pacific Northwest of the United States is rocketing towards awareness and waking up. 

Very interesting. There are a lot of similarities there with what I have studied in Buddhism. It seems like there's one truth and there's a lot of different ways to to express it?

D: And experience it. So we all understand one.

Were you a musician before you came to the family? I love your guitar playing on the records. 

D: Yeah, well, it's hard to tell the difference between me and Zoroaster and Pythias. Unless you're well aware. And thank you, by the way.  I never played spontaneously before coming to the source family, and I don't, I think it all just kind of evolved as we were having fun together, just jamming.

And then we realized that there was a deeper fruit, a deeper, there was something deeper to get to in music that was more spiritual and living. And,  it was actually challenging to a lot of the players. I had done some practicing in that style. 

But before The Source Family, I just mainly considered myself a songwriter and maybe a troubadour, probably because the only way, you know, my songs required me to play them because other people weren't playing my songs. Of course, so I was kind of in a self-expression, and I realized I use it to survive on the streets. So I busked and I played at restaurants for my meals and tips and, I did a lot of that. 

And then I actually had a songwriting gig in Hollywood in 1968. I was 20 years old. I left Chicago, where I was raised, and went out to Hollywood and landed a job, songwriting for a company that managed many people like Roger Miller, Mary Tyler Moore, the Osmond Brothers, Jack Jones. He was another solo singer and the five man Electrical band. They're from Canada. They had a big song, signs everywhere, a sign, you know.  That was a hit. 

Anyhow, I had a few but I didn't have any songs recorded, but they paid me to song.Iit was, ironically, right down the street from the Source restaurant. But I hadn't recognized Father yet, and I had to go back. I went back to Chicago for a couple of years after I got busted in Hollywood for selling an ounce of,  sacred herb to an undercover narc and I went back to Chicago for a year. And ironically, you know, again, this is like what I was talking about earlier, the quantum stuff. 

I'm playing in a restaurant in Chicago, and the busboy loves my music. He loves my songs. And he invites me to come out and meet Father Yod because he was going to drive his car across country during the summer. So I went with him and I met Father in 1971 and It was so interesting that it was right down the street from where I had been.  I was hitchhiking in front of the source restaurant all the time and didn't know what was in there.

When you firs met Father, what was he like? Did you instantly recognize him as your guru?

D: Yeah. Great question. When I first came in 71, it happened to be on his birthday, and many of the people were celebrating, and it was a very high emotional time. And I could see everybody loved him very much, and I wasn't. I knew God was in everything, and they were kind of looking up to him. I wasn't used to the guru type of  method, and he was basically still teaching his father's method, which was Yogi Bhajan, teaching the Kundalini yoga and the Sikh, kind of a modernized Sikh version. 

But he also taught the Essene teachings of Edmond Bordeaux, a.k.a. the Essene Gospel of Peace. And he also was reading from the emerald tablets of Toth, the Atlantean. So it was kind of a combination of all of that, plus health. 

Because he was a nature boy with gypsy boots and Jack LaLanne and  a lot of the health nuts of the 1950s. And, Eden Abbess who wrote Nature Boy, that song was in that group as well. So father was like a synthesis of that. But what really motivated him to become a teacher was the hippie movement. He was probably in a very big transition when he went into the 3HO with Yogi Bhajan. 

And the hippie movement was still pretty charged in Los Angeles. So he wanted to offer. He saw them and as his children. And he offered them jobs at the restaurant and apartments and took care of a lot of people. And that's how the family started. But I didn't see him as my teacher at first in 71.

So I left for a year. I went around busking, and I had another band in the Bay area, with a songwriter from Chicago. Old friend of mine. His name was Frank Byner. And then I went to the first Rainbow Gathering at the Granby Junction, Colorado. Hitchhiked there and had no possessions except my guitar and the clothes on me, and had my mind blown at this 30,000 people gathering in the national forest, to declare peace on earth. And it's still happening every 4th of July here.

And many other countries have rainbow gatherings. Now, I'm sure Australia has one every year or two. Rainbow family of living light. I think you could look it up on the internet and there'll be a lot of history there.

And then I just wound up back in Los Angeles and,  they weren't chanting or singing. And when I came back, they were. And being Jewish, I was raised knowing that YaHoWa was a sacred word. And I had started studying the metaphysics embedded in the letters,  in the Hebrew letters. And, so it just, again, that quantum thing happened to me where what I had started to do, father had started to do and then when we came together, we found out we were both doing the same thing simultaneously. But he had much more advanced knowledge about it than I did, because he had been studying with Manly Palmer Hall. 

Oh, really? The Secret Teachings of All Ages… 

D: You got it. Yeah. A great book, huh?

Indeed, so he was studying under him?

D: Well, he sat at his feet. This was even before. Before Yogi Bhajan. Oh, well. And then. And then he went from Manly people, I think pretty much at the same time he started studying the tarot, with the builders of the atom, the Botta in Pasadena. Yeah. Botta bought dot dot dot, the atom builders of the atom. The atom is the inner temple. So he was studying tarot and Kabbalah. Hebrew metaphysics. 

And so, when I came back to say goodbye to my friend who brought me there from Chicago. I felt a little I was feeling a draw to join just because everybody looks so beautiful and healthy and they were practicing spirituality and all in white and meditating and eating healthy and having all of that. 

When I picture it, I imagine long hair, flowing robes, hippie men, women and children. What did the family look like?

D: Yeah. All that. Everybody in white. Everybody serving. Everybody was wearing Essene headdresses, smooth headdresses on top. And, yeah. It was mostly Caucasian. I don't know why, just because it was in Hollywood, you know, although all, all kinds of people were in Hollywood, our area was pretty close to kind of a wealthier neighborhood. We got lucky and found a house. It was a mansion,  and we rented it for $1,000 a month and all lived together there.

Wow.

D: Yeah. I think when I joined the source,  I joined. So I joined in 1972, on October 6th. Because I wanted to have a 24 over seven day rainbow gathering, and the Source family was the closest thing to it. I don't think I really understood my connection to father fully at that time, but I think he recognized me as an Aquarian Age being. 

Could you explain the meaning of the family? Everyone has their own special name, could you please explain these?

D: Everything was towards unity. He wanted to clear our slates, our memory banks, our genetic memory of the cultural indoctrination that he knew he was going to face in purifying us, to get to a place where we could relax into the core of our being. And so he was going to train us. He was a World War three or. Excuse me, that’s not yet. World War two, a decorated military hero. And he knew how. He knew how to train men. He rehabilitated Marines in World War two.

So, he knew we were all pretty much young hippie, emerging consciousness with a very great degree of Western, commercialized, abusive culture with all of us having a residual PTSD effect from, just being raised in a very abusive culture. I had been drafted into the Vietnam War at 17, but I was still in high school, so they couldn't take me, but I had to go in for my physical. And I had a football injury. So they wound up not taking me, which was very fortunate for me. 

You're lucky.

D: I couldn't have made it to find Father if I'd have been taken out. Mhm. Yeah. So, I was definitely a rebel.. I didn't see any point in joining my energy with the military industrial war complex, and was very happy to find the rainbow family and then to find Father and have a safe harbor for seven years. Well, so Father dressed this all in white. I mean, this was his movie. He was like a spiritual Cecil B DeMille, right?

He was brought out from Cincinnati as a young man to be the first Tarzan in the movies. But, they took someone else instead of him. I don't know which one. I think it was Elmo Lincoln or someone like that. Really old back going back way back to, like, the late 1930s, probably early 1930s. I don't know exactly.

So everything he was doing was getting us to be and behave as one being all with our different uniqueness, but with different jobs in the family, different responsibilities, but all contributing to the one, all contributing to one another. We learned how to serve one another.

We learned how to serve selflessly, and we learned how to serve selflessly and joyously, even when the job was difficult or gross. Running a restaurant can be pretty hard and messy. And we ran ourrestaurant. We had three. We had three shifts, 33 people it took to run the restaurant. And we had three different shifts of people. 

Three.

D: Yeah, we used that number.

Wow. Oh, was that calculated before?

D: No, it just turned out to be that way and we just took notice of it. That's powerful. Just like the hundred and 40 number. The 140 number shows up in the book of revelation.  it says 140 and 4000, and then later it says 144,000. So we took that to mean different,  expansions of the same tree, like the inner ring was the 140, which we considered ourselves to be the first gathered by father. And then he kind of saw the next phase of the movie was the expansion of the 140, helping to help 4000 more people, and then the 4000 would help 144,000 clear. Get clear of all of the military war industrial complex and, uh. 1s All the brainwashing and indoctrination in negativity.

So the view according to the family was that you were saving the world, right?

D: It was to save the whole world. Not just a fragment of it or one religious group or another. And this was his plan. He knew the plan had to unfold in a mathematically sacred, geometrical, way, because that conformed to the subconscious of nature. Rhythm, timing, seasons, cycles. That's why you breathe, eight breaths with one nostril and eight breaths with another nostril and so forth and so on. These are specific time and chakra locks that can be opened, petals that act. That's why they call them petals of the chakras is they can be opened. And so he taught us Kundalini yoga, which is the fastest way and the safest way to open the flowers of the seven chakras so that we could all be psychically and telepathically operating as one unit and one. 

And one of the methods was spontaneous creation of music that wasn't just jamming but had a direction and a purpose which nobody knew what it was until we started playing. And when you start playing, all of a sudden, it's amazing. It's like the sunrise. It's a new thing every morning, a little bit different. You hear things a little differently, you interpret things a little differently. 

But the point is, is that you join forces together. The musicians and all the people in the family knew when we went into the band room, it was like a nuclear experiment was going on because everybody in the family couldn't fit into the band room. It was like, yeah, you can only fit like maybe 20 extra people. And they would have to be really, like monkish. You have to just kind of shuffle in and sit yourself down inside in the circle of the musicians and not make a peep or move much because we were going to be focusing, without any distractions. That was a it was a ritual in 

It is really incredible music. When I listen to it, I think nothing modern could recreate this. You know, I'm a musician too, and I try and think if I could do something like this, and I just don't even. I think it's on another level entirely?

D: We had to train, brother. It didn't just... yeah, it took about a year of doing that before we started recording it.

That's probably a big element.

D: Big element. Big element.  All that unity stuff is all about unity and sanctifying. Sanctifying. Nobody could come up to our place where we lived unless they were personally invited. And then they were only allowed up there, during morning meditation or by special invitation.

So there weren't any people like householders or everyone had to live within the brotherhood?

D: There were a few outside of the brotherhood mansions that we lived in. Because mostly because they had businesses that were helping to support the family. But, they needed to be out there, but, father named probably over a thousand people. Gave over a thousand people names and numbers. A lot of them didn't want to live or stay in the family, because it just wasn't going to work out for them. But a lot, a lot came and went. But they remain, they remained in loving connection to us. 

Was there any negativity or controversy in the group at the time?

D: Father said he couldn't handle any more than 140 because he was working with our negativity. He wasn't like, oh, join us and you'll be free, join us and you'll work hard to get free bootcamp. That's what he called it, really. I swear, that's what he called it. 

That's bizarre. 

D: He said we were a spiritual bootcamp and we were going to he was preparing us to be the spiritual shock troops for the Aquarian Age by our lifestyle. We gave birth to 50 children in the family without going to doctors or hospitals.

We celebrated it. We were. We were all there. Usually, if the mother didn't feel too self-conscious about what she was going through. Most of them didn't. They didn't mind because we saw it as a very beautiful and natural process, every bit of it. And we all wanted to learn how to deliver babies. Where to put your hand and what to feel for, and you know what to look for and how to avoid injuries and make it the best experience possible.  

And so the babies were usually born with a whole lot of really beautiful people all around. You know, laughing and breathing and saying God's name and praying and just all kinds of good energies, for a child to for me to, I think to be born and I would want to be born in that. 

Well, they say it takes a village to raise a child?

D: Father used to say that in a village or in a community, if something happens to the parents of a child, that the child doesn't feel the same shock because everybody is there and it's not going to lose its security or its its nourishment, or have nowhere to live or not know where it's going to go. It'll be in familiar surroundings and, and and it would just, you know, take the shock of the trauma.

What was the perspective on Cannabis?

D: I probably didn't start using it until I was about 20. 20 years old and I've always been moderate and everything. I could never drink much alcohol. I can never do too much acid. I only probably had about eight trips. I somehow. Maybe ecause I'm fiery. I used to have big red hair and, you know, I was already on fire. And I had a lot of spirit, spiritual mind going on.

Anyhow,I think the plant medicines are to help you break, have breakthroughs in the more extreme, like mushrooms and peyote and the sacred herb is one of one of the more friendly, less,  extremist, kind of a slow, slow awakening to certain aspects of yourself that remain blocked or dormant without it. And we're here. We're frankly here on a planet and, we eat a banana. Bananas are useful. Apples are useful to us. YWe're meant to consume the plant kingdom. And we can even go more rarefied. Some people are breathairians. 

On the extreme, but, sacred herb, we call it sacred herb, first of all. So, the word, we use the word sacred herb to cleanse any of the negative stigma with marijuana. Or, you know, cannabis is a good one. A good word, but it also has been used. And so we wanted to give it a higher vibrational name.

And so, Father said, let's call it the sacred herb. And then he used to give this quote, he said, this is a quote by Hermes Trismegistus, the third incarnation of Thoth the Atlantean and Hermes said in partaking of the grass of the Arabs, it did not give me the light. I had that a fourth time. What it did give me is the opportunity or the insight. That I could not have gained in ten lifetimes.

So, used properly. And we did have a method of using it and never more than one time of the day. And that was a six second inhale, which is more than I could even do then or even now, six seconds in the long run. But, yeah the most a six second inhale. And then we went into our breathing exercises and our morning meditation. And that enhanced the THC tremendously because we were infusing it with sacred mantra and with holy breath. 

And pure water, you always want to drink water when you partake of the fire fiery element to balance it. So we did have it down to a ritual. Only one person in the family kept all of our sacred herb, and he brought it to the morning meditation, where it was all we were all given our one toke. Usually by father, we would go up to him in a ritual way and he would serve it to us. 

And then we'd go to our meditation spot and, and sit in lotus position, because that's a tetrahedron. That's one of the sacred geometric shapes. It's the first three dimensional geometric shape. The tetrahedron, platonic solid,

I should say. Which is the underpinning of all organic matter. All matter actually is in some form of sacred geometric form. And so that was it. And then if we wanted to rekindle the high later on in the day because THC lasts in your system for weeks. So if you wanted to rekindle the energies of it, you just did. We used to have an exercise called the star exercise.

We would stand in a star man position, and we put our heads back, do the breath of fire, and. that would reactivate the THC in your head would light up. And you could go through the rest of the day without that third or fourth cup of coffee or caffeine or whatever.

So we had a card that we used to carry with us that had our name and said, we belong to the brotherhood of the source, we belong, or we were members of the brotherhood of the source. And that sacred herb was one was our sacrament. So I have proof that sacred herb has been my sacrament for 45 or 46 years now. 

I call it that and I've always called it that. And I try to encourage people to give it a higher frequency than, than just loving it. But actually have a mental image of it that it's sacred and treat it sacredly,

How did outsiders perceive members of the Source Family?

D: I can't speak for everybody, of course, but in general, that which was outside of the family was in, if you weren't in some form of communal health oriented group, we felt bad for you that you weren't linking up with other people to help yourself improve. We thought we were unique. Which it turns out we are. 

Some of us took it to our egos and others just realized we were doing something in a very synthesized Western type of a way that hadn't been done before, that's why we called ourselves Aquarian Age people, because all the other practices that were pretty much out there were considered by us as being the from the previous age.

We were trying to set up something that was going to rocket. People who joined very quickly, raise their frequencies and sustain them on a very high level. Together. So doing it together is really a key. Not having others to do this with makes it almost impossible. It's like it has to be a group thing. So we saw, that's how pretty much we saw everyone outside the family. And it was all. Everything's in by degrees, of course. People saw us, everything from angels on earth to potential Manson family. 

Bbecause that happened within, like, the same year that father started the Source. 69’ I think it was when Manson murders happened. So it seems like it almost seems like there was like a polarity of the most negative and the most positive happening in Hollywood at that time. 

With your name having “Family” in it, did you ever get confused for the Manson Family?

D: No. We weren't. We might have been called the source family by people then, but we were really the brotherhood of the source at that time. Well, that probably saved a lot of confusion, then. Well, the fact that we were serving people on Sunset Boulevard, the highest vibration of food from midnight from eight in the morning till midnight, made us be very beloved to most of the people of Hollywood. But there were definitely a few very angry parents and very angry friends who didn't let it go. 

Then when a lot of the family dispersed and a lot of the people went back to some of their families, they were given a lot of hard times. They weren't all welcomed, like, everything's rosy now. 

Did anti-cult deprogrammers ever try to de-convert members of the group?

D: A couple of times. Steve Allen started the talk show scene, his son, I forget what his name was.His name was universal man in the family. But his son was in the family, and,  our family, the source and, Steve Allen came to try to get him out or persuade him to leave, other other parents did. Many of them would come to the restaurant. They weren't allowed up at the house. And their child would come and meet him at the restaurant and talk, that was about it. But it was mostly positive towards us. 

Yeah, to this day, even though a lot of a lot of stuff happened in our travels, going from Hollywood to Hawaii, then kicked out of Hawaii and sent back to San Francisco and then went back to Hawaii and and we had to wear civilian clothes so they wouldn't know it was us coming back. And we had to sneak around a lot of places to exist.

Would you say the brotherhood of the source is still alive, or is it something that was put to bed and now is more of a universal concept?

D: I would say the latter, there's a couple of us who would probably, maybe a few that would unify again in some way. I don't think we know each other any longer very well. And you know, as source members. But a lot of people have remained friends, very close friends. But we had a whole other identity is the point I'm getting at in the source family. 

We were really different then, and now it's 40 something years later. We've had family, we've raised families and  made a bunch of other friends. So I'd have to say it was meant to be that we were to merge back into civilization, secular life. And I think this could be the process of gathering the 4000, the next ring of the family. I see it that way. A lot of other members drop the whole concept of anything I'm talking about right now.

I'm probably one of the only ones that you know is hanging on. I'm probably considered a dinosaur now, but I see, I see in my thinking a very effective way to prepare for another gathering and maintaining a mindset that is kind of religious and kind of spiritual and kind of hinging off of something happening that hasn't happened yet on the planet.