May 6, 2025 • 51 mins
In this episode of Cults and the Culting of America, host Scot Loyd and guest Jonathan Hirsch delve into the complexities of growing up in a cult-like environment, specifically under the influence of Franklin Jones. They explore the allure of charismatic leaders, the sacrifices made by children in these settings, and the long-term emotional impacts on individuals raised in such communities. Jonathan shares his personal journey, including the challenges of reconciling his upbringing with his current life, and the importance of understanding the experiences of cult kids. The conversation highlights the need for open discussions about the past and the recognition of the profound effects of parental choices on children.
Jonathan's Links:
Podcast: Dear Franklin Jones
Audiobook: The Mind is Burning
Daniella's Links:
You can read all about my story in my book, Uncultured-- buy signed copies here. https://bit.ly/SignedUncultured
For more info on me:
Patreon: https://bit.ly/YTPLanding
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:25):
Welcome to Cults and the Culting of America podcast.
My name is Scott Lloyd along with my friend.
As always, the knitting cult lady is here.
Daniela, how are you?
And I've been meaning to tell you, Scott, you gotta stop putting the the in front of myname.
So just knitting cult lady.
And I'm very specific about it because when people name themselves the something, this issomething we like point out in cults, you know?
(00:58):
We won't mention it for now.
Hey, I am thrilled to introduce Jonathan Hirsch to all of you.
Jonathan is wonderfully agreed to come on and share his story with us tonight.
Jonathan, welcome to Cults and the Culting of America.
Thank you so much for having me.
The Jonathan Hirsch in the flesh.
(01:19):
Appreciate the opportunity and looking forward to chatting.
Absolutely.
So I was reading a little bit of your story and apparently a lot of this happened in NorthCarolina.
Did I get that correct?
Close, Northern California.
uh
Wow.
Yeah, not too many, not too many sort of Eastern inspired religious cults in the in theNorth Carolina area that I'm familiar.
(01:45):
uh California, on the other hand, you have your pick of the litter.
So
so, so tell us, tell us what you were involved with and there in Northern California.
Well, I mean, I think as a kid, I was just involved in being a kid, you know, raised bytwo quite eccentric, motivated parents who I think many times over, and I feel even if
(02:10):
they were had both the capacity or the faculty at this moment to be asked this question,you know, what's your life about?
I think they would tell you it was about.
finding some kind of spiritual fulfillment, whether that was enlightenment or the othervague the truth or some version of the spiritual quest that many people of their
(02:35):
generation boomers were prioritized and made an important part of their personal history.
The simpler way of saying that is, you know, my parents placed an emphasis on spirituallife from the time I was a young person.
So I didn't know any different.
You know, I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area.
know, I went to a public school for the first.
(02:57):
Six years of of, you know, grade school, five, six years of grade school before we movedout of San Francisco, and I think, you know,
I didn't, I missed some of the details that would have revealed that my life was a lotdifferent than the average person.
The, you know, the fact that people didn't come over to our house.
the fact that we spent time with all of these, sort of spiritual congregants and on acrossthe Bay in Northern California, fact that we didn't go to churches.
(03:25):
I, I remember at one point I asked my parents to take me to churches because I was curiousabout what they were.
but I wasn't making any sort of distinguishment between what my life looked like versusthat.
And of course, you know, if people had come to our house to visit at that time, they wouldhave opened the front door and they would have seen right in the in the view of the front
(03:46):
door, a small couch with a life sized cardboard cutout of of an image of their of theirguru, Franklin Jones.
And so.
That was just normal life for me in the morning.
Yeah.
because growing up, and I used to tell my students in the classroom this, know, all of ushave that first experience, right?
(04:11):
When you spend the night over a friend's house or something and you come to therealization that families are different, they do things differently.
And what is necessarily normal to you may not be normal to anyone.
And I think all of us growing up in those
particular groups had that moment, right, where we discovered, wait a minute, know, this,what I'm experiencing isn't exactly normal.
(04:37):
I think that's exactly right.
And I think one of the reasons when you asked the question the way that you did, I triedto answer it from the vantage point of a child who had an evolving understanding of what
was going on because I think you are absolutely right that for any young person, what yousee is what you get.
(05:00):
And you don't really have a lot of time or resource at your disposal to be able todetermine what is or is not normal and what that means to you and whether or not you
believe the things that are in front of you.
just what you have.
And then it took a while, I think, for me to kind of make sense of.
(05:23):
how remarkably different my childhood was.
that became even more clear as my parents became more involved with Franklin Jones, theirguru, and then eventually taking me out of high school and us moving to Northern
California near the compound where the guru lived.
uh
bit about that particular group and Franklin Jones in particular.
(05:46):
Yeah, so Franklin Jones was a sort of spiritual guru teacher who published hisautobiography, The Knee of Listing in 1972, I believe that's the correct year.
And around that time opened up a bookstore on Melrose Avenue in Hollywood with the expresspurpose of sort of
promoting this new spiritual doctrine that was a combination of various different worldreligions.
(06:10):
It leaned heavily on the sort of guru worshiping practices of some of the Hindu andVedanta Indian spiritual practices, but then also Buddhism.
But I think what really attracted people to Franklin Jones, and I think
I could confidently say a number of these sort of charismatic kind of populist gurus ofthat era was the sense that he was kind of an approachable spiritual teacher.
(06:37):
So a lot of people like my parents in the seventies and into the early eighties were, youknow, enmeshed in the counterculture.
Many people felt that there was a kind of cultural divide.
much the way we talk about it today in a political sense, but really in a spiritual sensethat you had to make a decision between whether or not you were a yuppie or a square.
(06:59):
And I think for my parents, they found each other and bonded over their desire to have alife that wasn't about money and you know.
the nuclear family and conventional life.
And it almost was like a political statement, you know, to be something other than that.
(07:21):
And so, you know, Franklin Jones, who went by the name, went by a number of names over theyears, but Bubba Free John around this time was the name that he was known by, Da Free
John.
Franklin Jones was very appealing because he melded all of these different philosophiesand interests of theirs and people like them.
But he also presented as somebody who was very accessible to your average middle-classwhite boomer who was looking for this kind of alternative way of practicing spirituality,
(07:54):
of living.
This was somebody who could quote T.S.
Eliot alongside Ramana Maharshi.
This is somebody who could invoke these
much more time-honored spiritual traditions of the East, while also speaking to theculture of the moment or Western philosophical traditions.
(08:16):
And that was incredibly appealing to people like my dad and my mom, especially my dad.
And so, yes, go ahead.
just want to say like, this is part of the charisma that people talk about, right?
And you know, it has been said of the presidents that are specifically charismatic, right?
They make you feel like you're the only person in the room.
(08:36):
I just saw a meme right before we recorded this that said, you know, people are always,can journalists stop being surprised?
that the charismatic leaders are like personable when you meet them in person, likethey're charming, they're good at making you feel like you are the center of attention and
(08:57):
they're speaking to you, right?
Like he's gone out and he's got all this spiritual knowledge and now he's here and he'sspeaking to you and it makes you feel special.
Absolutely.
I mean, I think that was at the heart of what, you know, was appealing about FranklinJones, that sort of raw charisma.
(09:17):
and, and as has happened with a number of these teachers from this era, for whateverreason, and I think I get into it a little bit in my memoir, The Mind is Burning, and also
in the documentary podcast series I did originally about
about Franklin Jones, dear Franklin Jones, there was a digression from what appeared to bethe sort of amenable friend, bubba friend, Your spiritual guide to something far more
(09:54):
expansive and I think in many people's minds controlling.
characteristics of both his philosophy and the expectation of his practitioners.
So I feel like if you look at what he was saying in the seventies, you'd be like, okay,this is interesting.
This is not really that different than, know, I'm sure you could compare a couple of thelines and be like, is this John Lennon or is this Franklin Jones?
(10:17):
But then as the years went on, of course, it became more complicated than that.
Yeah, I've said this about the children of God before, right?
Like when they recruited all these people in the late 60s and early 70s and dropped out ofthe world, you know, people were, for example, questioning sexuality, right?
Like our country was questioning that sort of openly publicly for the first time.
(10:41):
And then they went away with that knowledge, right?
Like the whole world is questioning sexuality or, you know, our whole world.
And then
and then they isolated themselves from the world.
And then the guru took them down this bad path.
um But I think the other thing that's so interesting is when we look at these gurus, Iguarantee Frank Jones was always this person.
(11:06):
Was it Frank Jones?
Yeah, going all the way back.
somehow they convince people at the beginning that it's good.
You know, that it's like, and your parents are the primary target type of people, youknow, that like are just searching for a mission.
m
(11:27):
an interesting thought because I think, you know, Franklin Jones's cosmology increasinglyexpanded to include him in all features and aspects of life.
So when he was a spiritual friend, that was one thing.
But by the time my parents left, when I was about 16, he had, you know, as I mentioned,renamed himself.
(11:49):
dozens of times and you know by the time we left you know the the philosophy of the momentin the group
compelled followers to believe, to practice and to worship him as a unique incarnation ofGod.
And in fact, not only that, but that the divine universal consciousness of the world hadsomehow decided that this specific body was to be an avatar or a unique incarnation of
(12:21):
divinity brought to sort of save
followers from the dark times or what they would have characterized.
I want to say mischaracterized, but it loosely interpreted this notion of the Kali Yugaaround, um which is like a...
process of deification, you know, like someone becoming a god.
(12:43):
And, you know, so, so what I was trying to say, so like, of course, the leader, right, hethrows out these things, he, the leader, the cult leader is always evolving their
worldview, their ideology, right, because they have to keep going, they have to keeptalking.
So it follows this path that
they don't know how their followers are gonna respond, right?
They throw out something that pushes the limit and then the followers respond and thenthey push it more and then the followers respond.
(13:09):
And in that way, everyone's building the organization kind of together and the ideologyand the worldview.
I just always note that, you know, it's very easy for people to think like it started offas this good thing, but.
Almost always, I I never have examples of like, when we go back, like, Frank Jones wantedto build a group and have people follow him, like from the beginning, guarantee, right?
(13:35):
Like, and the mission, the cult leader doesn't believe in the mission, right?
It's like, that's just the hook to get people with.
And then they like, build this thing together.
And it sounds like your parents had this sort of front row seat to what he,
what he built.
Yeah, yeah, they were there not not from the very beginning, but but pretty close.
(14:00):
You know, they had been sort of circling around his group and ideology for for a number ofyears before before they got him.
Jonathan, I find it interesting that you mentioned that at one point he took the nameBubba.
I grew up in the South and like every other person, it goes by Bubba.
Do you remember what that was about?
Was that just to make him more approachable, basically?
(14:22):
I think it was your, you know, your spiritual friend, your buddy, being a little bit, youknow, tongue in cheek about it.
But yes, I that was that was sort of the notion that it was like a a friend, you know.
And then over time, that philosophy began to expand, like I said, and digress.
And I appreciate Daniela's point about, you know, a sense or a premonition that
(14:45):
that these things were going to result in that outcome.
I'm not completely convinced that Franklin Jones had it all laid out that way, but I dothink that he had an insatiable need to.
perform whatever it was that he was performing that required people following him and hewanted it to be bigger and when it got bigger he had to be bigger than that and bigger
(15:10):
than that and and then you know where he landed is where he landed and I think you knowpart of what dear Franklin Jones the podcast that I made about about Franklin Jones and
about the group which included my parents it included
know, close followers of Jones, including one of his many wives, was trying, was seekingto understand both relaying for listeners, I think, what we rarely hear, which is a
(15:39):
keyhole view, life inside of a group like this, from the point of view of a child, all theway up until adulthood.
trying to make sense of what had happened.
So, you know, that was part of it, but it was also, you know, just trying to make sense ofprecisely how this group became, what it became, I think, when I did Dear Franklin Jones,
(15:59):
which feels like a lifetime ago.
When I did that series, I was not necessarily comfortable with the notion that what I hadbeen raised in was a cult.
And the term itself is complicated.
So even to this day, think how I think about that term, I think it's a discussion, it'smore of a less of a label, it's more of a label than a definition, if you will.
(16:23):
So all of that, I think, put me in a very exploratory frame of mind when I was lookinginto the group.
Jonathan, mentioned that you guys moved to Northern California.
How old were you when that happened and what convinced your parents that, we need to domore than just be a part of this group.
(16:44):
We need to buy in.
Well, my parents were both acupuncturists and, you know, they they practiced acupunctureon their on followers of the group.
They were part of this community.
We would go every Sunday to this little like office complex in Marin County.
(17:05):
just kind of in the outskirts of a town on the northern side of Marin County.
And there was this little industrial kind of corporate industrial park with all theselittle businesses.
And inside of one of them was where the Sangha or the congregation was.
And so every Sunday we would go and it would be, you know, maybe a hundred some odd peoplewho were part of the group who would attend.
And there'd be like ceremonies, which included like worship activities of worship directedat, you know, photographic representations of the guru.
(17:32):
but today that was sort of the extent of our community involvement.
Franklin Jones had properties and spaces all over the world.
He owned an Island in Naitamba, Fiji or Naitamba Island in Fiji.
which he had, received slash purchase, a little complicated from Raymond Burr, the actor,in the 19 late seventies, early eighties, forgive me on some of the dates, but.
(17:56):
He also had a compound, the original compound that he had developed for his followers wasin Northern California.
And so for many years he was living in Fiji.
You know, there's a lot of speculations as to why he spent so much time there.
I mean, if you owned an island in Fiji, you'd probably want to be there a lot too.
That's maybe one.
The second one being, you know, some people have said there was quite a bit of criticismof him in the press.
(18:18):
He was
headline news in the San Francisco Chronicle in 1986 because of civil suits allegingsexual abuse and assault and many other things that, you know, made national news.
And so I think he kind of went into hiding not too far, not too long after that.
But when he sort of resurfaced in northern California, it was on this compound in.
(18:41):
in Lake County and we were in San Francisco.
And so when he returned in the early 90s, I was like eight, nine, maybe 10 years old.
There became this sort of, it was a mobilizing force for all of the followers who weresort of in the area.
(19:06):
so soon enough,
My parents got involved in going up to some of those events and wanting to sort ofparticipate when Jones would give these sittings, these meditations with his followers.
And eventually they were offered what they saw as an opportunity to become his personalacupuncturist, which meant that they sort of had to be on call and to travel with him
(19:31):
wherever he went.
and so that meant I had to go with them.
and you know, I talk about it a bit in, in the memoir and also in, the podcast.
my, my father and I have over the years had a pretty fraught relationship.
I would say he's a little bit of a mini guru himself and, he gave me an ultimatum when Iwas.
(19:58):
about 11 years old, in which he said, you know, either you join up with our efforts,essentially, or you got to find some other place to live.
And that meant that I needed to take on the group's practices and their earnest aboutbeing involved with
(20:18):
an equivalent degree of vigor and enthusiasm, which when you're a small child still, youfeel like you have no other choice but to do.
You want to make your parents happy.
And so that's what I did.
And then I joined with them and eventually that led to them moving up to sort of fartherrural Northern California.
(20:40):
for a period of time before Franklin Jones decided that he no longer wanted to have themas their personal acupuncturists.
As far as they understood, that was because he was having a sexual relationship withanother acupuncturist in the group and wanted to pursue that.
And so, you know, a lot of what I talk about both in...
Dear Franklin Jones, and in the early part of my childhood is about those years of sort ofearnestly trying to participate in the practices of the group, trying to will myself into
(21:13):
belief, to reconcile what this man was proposing was the realities of life and the cosmoswith a deep sense of doubt about that.
while also living in like a considerable degree of isolation as a young person.
um So that's how the drama played out for me.
(21:35):
You know, it's so, it's so interesting that this interview landed on today because I'vebeen editing my chapter of my next book that is on first the one that's on the mission,
right?
Like how they hook people.
And then the next chapter is on self sacrifice.
And I specifically focus on like the children that are brought up in these earnesttraditions, right?
(21:59):
In these give everything traditions.
And it's like, you don't
get to grow up.
You don't get to like have a childhood.
Like you are expected to be this little tiny almost adult person and to be as striving forperfection, right?
As everyone around you working as hard, but also you're supposed to be developing who youare, you know, but these in these high control groups, like you're supposed to tamp down
(22:29):
your individuality.
It is the, in my opinion, most undervalued, under acknowledged aspect of the public'sinterrogation into the world of cults is the lives of the cult kids.
ah It's definitely like a life mission for me to find ways to bring them together becauseI'll say that, you know, if I'm fast forwarding here to
(22:56):
my life now, as the executive of a major media production company, I've helped producedozens of long-form documentary series.
We're here discussing all of this at a time when my memoir is coming out from the goodfolks at Simon & Schuster.
(23:17):
I've had an opportunity to report and tell stories.
And specifically stories of cults and cult-like groups for many, many years now.
And, you know, I think.
that has given me an opportunity to meet quite a few people like me.
And it was that process that made me recognize how little connection there is between thepeople who grow up in these groups with others whose experiences very much mirror their
(23:44):
own.
mean, if I'm just to give you guys the super cut of what comes to my mind when youmentioned that, Daniella, it's...
The young person who grew up in an extreme Pentecostal group who was forciblydeprogrammed, who spent his entire life trying to reconcile what had happened to him
(24:07):
versus where he was today.
And when I told him how much I could see his experience and how he was not alone, he justburst into tears.
or the time that I met and she's featured in a series I did last year called Scary Terry.
That was about Terry Hoffman, a cult you might be familiar with, the conscious developmentof mind, body and soul.
(24:28):
It's based in Dallas in the 1980s and 90s.
A woman who, the leader, Terry Hoffman, compelled her followers, a number of them, to...
right over their life insurance policies or wills to her shortly before those people tooktheir own lives.
And there were a couple of kids who grew up in that group who were featured in the serieswho only understood what had happened to them over time.
(24:53):
And the catharsis the two of us felt in talking about her own story and
realizing also at the end of that conversation how little of an opportunity this woman's25 years older than me, how few opportunities she's had in her life to actually have this
discussion with somebody else who had experienced the same thing.
(25:14):
There is a shared complexity in the experience of young people who grew up in these groupsbecause you inherit what your parents are pursuing.
My parents pursued this
spiritual path because it's what they wanted to do.
I was along for the ride.
um In the book, I of talk about this poem that has always sort of stuck with me.
(25:38):
One of my favorite Lawrence Ferlinghetti poems, Lawrence Ferlinghetti was for yourlisteners who may not be familiar, was a beatnik poet from the San Francisco area.
Obviously in the 1960s and 70s, he was essential in the foundation of City Lights Books,which was like this cultural hub for
the counterculture in the 60s.
And he describes in one of his later books, a sort of San Francisco icon, this guy, hedescribes in one of his later books, feeling like he was in the back seat of his parents'
(26:05):
eternity, reaching out to them.
And I remember hearing that line and thinking, wow, if that doesn't typify my experienceof my parents, don't know what does.
literally in the backseat watching their spiritual pursuit, their, really of theireternity, their eternal search for spiritual fulfillment.
(26:28):
And, and it is, yeah.
the cult baby experience.
I will die on this hill.
Most cult scholars have said that all cults are ultimately the same.
And I think that all cult baby experiences are ultimately the same.
(26:52):
And we can only encapsulate it in these things.
I talk about like,
having a childhood that has a mission, right?
And then having your parents sacrifice you for that mission, right?
Or having a childhood where you're like held back from the world or the culture that youwould otherwise be growing up in.
(27:13):
And actually Dr.
Janja Lalich did a book called Escaping Utopia, which is just specifically about this,what's called the SGA experience, the second generation experience of like,
the children who had to grow up and had to figure out all of us, as you talk about thathad to figure out like in reverse, like, oh, that's what we grew up in, right?
(27:39):
Like that's what happened.
how Scott was that Pentecostal boy you talked about, I think, you know.
exactly.
yeah, well, we should offline about that because you might be familiar with the story I'mtalking about.
Yeah, I appreciate you saying that, Danielle, I think.
I think one of the reasons the line stuck out to me and I instantly when I first read itknew that that typified me is that I recognize the profundity of their desires, you know.
(28:06):
young people may not have perspective, but it doesn't mean they're stupid.
Like I knew I understood why it was important.
Yeah.
that's part of why it is so hard for us cult babies when people are just like, that wasjust a cult, right?
Like you said earlier, like it's a label, but it's so much more complicated than that.
(28:27):
Like we know that our parents were genuine people, right?
Like we know that.
they thought they were doing something good and that they loved us in the best way theycould for the most part, right?
Obviously some people's parents in cults weren't that, but a lot of times, yeah, I likewhat you said about like you can recognize the profundity of their experience.
(28:50):
Like they really felt like they were doing this for a purpose and like doing the bestthing for you as well because they were putting you on this path.
well, and sort of to get us to the second half of this story, right, growing up in a cultand then also kind of coming to grips with what I've been writing about lately that gets
(29:15):
at that point, though, Danielle, you're absolutely right.
is not an overnight thing coming to an understanding of what
you experience in a group like this as a young person.
There's a story that actually is the reason for the title that I tell in In the Mind isBurning, which is about the time my parents house burned down when I was about 11, 12
(29:40):
years old and we were living in Marin County.
I was going to this was.
in between fifth and sixth grade, I guess, right around there.
And I was listening to the Giants game in the other room on a little radio next to my bed.
And my parents were sort of in this.
There was like a long hallway that connected us and the doors were closed and outside ofthe hallway was like the kitchen and then the and then the living room.
(30:04):
And I guess my parents had been in the other room in their bedroom.
And when they looked up, the smoke from the fireplace in the living room was like curdlingon the ceiling.
And they opened up the doors, the double doors from their bedroom to the living room, andthe whole thing was in flames.
And so they run out down this hallway that connected our two rooms to each other towardsthe front door, grab me, Kat, remember.
(30:33):
running around behind us and down the steps and out the door.
And the entire place was incinerated, like everything burned.
um And it's the middle of the night and we are in the carport of this apartment complexthat we live in.
And I'm sitting in the back seat and my mom and dad are in the front.
(30:55):
And, you know, there's
We're waiting for Blue Cross to arrive to sort of like provide us with a check and a placeto stay that night.
So a check for us to purchase basic goods like clothes and a place for us to stay until wefigured out what we were gonna do next.
(31:16):
And the police are there, firefighters to put out the fire, the burning house.
but we're sitting in the car sort of waiting for all this stuff to kind of be figured out.
And I remember my dad turning to my mom and saying something to the effect of, I guess wedidn't really need that stuff anyway.
(31:37):
and then he laughs, and then my mom laughs, and then because they're laughing, I laugh,and then the three of us in this absurd moment are sitting there laughing about...
losing everything.
And I think it says a lot about what my parents thought was important, that even if theyblew it, even if they fucked up and burned down the house, that wasn't what was important.
(32:01):
Their spiritual quest was what was important.
And I didn't know or understand anything about that at the time.
All I saw was that my parents were reacting to a stressful situation with humor.
And so when I was younger, in my early 20s, I remember writing about this experience.
(32:22):
And...
like framing it as something, this is before I was fully out about my experience in thegroup or before I'd gone to therapy or anything like that.
And I remember framing it in these like, you know, in like a sort of storytelling essay aslike a good thing, right?
Like as parents who were willing to let go of earthly possessions for their own happiness.
(32:47):
And then as they get older and I think about the process I went through,
with Dear Franklin Jones.
And then later when my dad got sick and having two boys of my own, it's a complete like,it's a tragedy that we took that moment not to acknowledge anything about the fears or
experiences I might've had as a young person.
(33:09):
to allay those to center the experience in a young child who doesn't know any different,but rather to sort of reframe it around their deeper philosophical search.
So, Daniela, to your point about like living a life that's based on a mission in whichself-sacrifice is required, that experience to me really typifies it.
(33:29):
And you know, the mind is burning is a phrase that comes from like a...
Buddhist text that my dad was quite fond of called the Adhita Sutra, which was the firesermon.
The idea that our attachment to ourself and worldly things was something to be sort oftranscended.
(33:53):
and you transcend that by letting go of those things.
in the process of letting go of those things is like a fire that burns you up.
And sort of in a bitter irony when my dad, the sort of long journey of our experiencingthis, but sort of the bitter irony of the fact is that my dad's own mind really did
consume him and does, you know, when he
(34:15):
was diagnosed with dementia.
And so, you know, there's a lot of layers to my experience of that moment, recognizingthat my dad prided more than anything this spiritual search only to find himself
completely without tether for, you know, the second half of his, practically the second,the last third of his life and he's still alive.
(34:38):
I'm on a tangent now, but like I guess the point I'm trying to make is that, you know, welearn over time, you know, what's important to us.
And and and I think experience taught me quite a bit about.
The kind of life I wanted to live, and I think when I understood that about myself, allthis other stuff started coming to the surface, and that was the inspiration for making
(35:01):
Dear Franklin Jones.
And when I made Dear Franklin Jones, my deepest desire was to have my parents acknowledgeone thing, which was that perhaps this spiritual journey that they'd been on was not a
(35:21):
linear
towards self, transcendence, but that maybe along the way there'd been a, you know, a, agoose chase or two that perhaps there were some mistakes.
not that they made them, but that you can make mistakes in life that can set you back.
I E you can give away all of your
(35:44):
like all of your resources, all of your life, no savings, no future whatsoever and spend25 years with a guru who eventually kicks you out because he's having an affair with
somebody else.
And perhaps there is some benefit to being able to say, hey, well, we make mistakes inlife and maybe we shouldn't have been in there that long or maybe we shouldn't have been
(36:05):
there at all.
And I think the existence of that question.
was one, something they were never able to answer, and two, something that ultimatelyestranged me from my father before he got sick.
Yeah, I was going to ask about that.
did they receive it when you started deconstructing, for lack of a better word, anduntethering yourself from this particular past?
(36:31):
What did that look like in your experience and in your relationships?
Well, think my dad, I'm not convinced he ever listened to it, but his best friend wasfeatured in the series and was a sort of bleed thinker scholar type person in the group.
And I think he communicated some of the details of what he thought was salient about theproject.
(36:56):
namely that he didn't think I did a good job at it.
And my dad took that as good enough reason.
I suspect they also got quite a bit of blowback from people in the group who probablyreached out to them directly with their feelings about it.
They felt maybe a little embarrassed or ashamed because even though they had left thegroup, they were still involved.
(37:17):
They were still sort of
entangled with members of the group, still friends with them, still hung out.
People kind of came in and out of Franklin Jones's group.
A lot of people would feel scorned by him and then they would leave for a while and thenthey would come back because part of the premise of Jones's teaching was that he was this
crazy wise guru.
(37:41):
that has very specific historical precedent.
for this
the sake of not boring everybody with the whole history here, essentially the idea is thatlike, you know, a crazy wise teacher is somebody who challenges you, who makes you
uncomfortable, who does things that pushes you to your limits so that you can become likemore egoless.
(38:04):
So there was a lot of justifying of bad behavior under the name crazy wise.
And so I think, you know, even in Dear Franklin Jones, my dad says,
his opinion at the time.
is before he had been diagnosed with dementia before we really understood what was, know,he wasn't, wasn't, he was of sound mind at that time.
(38:25):
I talk a little bit about it in the book to sort of like knowing him and, did I lose youguys?
No, we're still here.
Now we're here.
sorry, I just had a little pop up there.
Where can I reset for y'all?
There was a
You know, there was a lot of justification of bad behavior within the group that wascouched under this notion of crazy wisdom teaching.
(38:48):
And in the podcast at one point, you know, I asked my dad sort of what he thinks aboutFranklin Jones, whether or not he's enlightened or not.
And my dad says, you know, you can be enlightened and still be an asshole.
And so in his mind.
Franklin Jones could do all these things as like an everyday person, but his spiritualperson was something much more profound and transcended any sort of behavior that you
(39:12):
might try to hold him to account for.
So I think he probably took up issue with the idea that I would try to hold Franklin Jonesto account for, you know, historical bad behavior that quite a few people were not
comfortable with and that I wanted answers about.
And so
You know, things did not really go well for us after that.
(39:33):
We.
We sort of agreed to disagree, which essentially meant we didn't talk about it and we saweach other increasingly less.
And, you know, the success of Dear Franklin Jones gave me an opportunity to continueproducing and making.
podcasts and audio documentaries, which eventually evolved into starting a productioncompany, which eventually evolved into the situation I'm in now.
(40:05):
And I think over those years, it was a sadness.
But I also think that the process of doing the podcast made things a lot.
more clear to me.
You know, I think they yeah, go ahead.
(40:26):
Yeah.
And Jonathan, think our listeners are gonna relate to this so much, because I think thisis another thing that is broadly shared in the cult kid experience, is we somehow think
that we're gonna go to our parents as adults and share our pain and be able to talk aboutwhat happened.
(40:48):
And I describe it as like,
you know, we're saying like, hey, they hurt us, right?
Like this group, like we were hurt.
And they keep saying, we didn't know, we didn't know, right?
And they get stuck on it.
And I, you know, and I say to them all the time, well, you know now, right?
(41:09):
Like, you know now.
And I am very fortunate to have a relationship with my mom.
Now the caveat is also that she was also born and raised in the cult.
So she's also decided to do the deconstruction.
But she has been able to like listen to her adult children without being defensive.
(41:31):
And like, that's all we want.
Usually, right?
We're not coming for a reckoning.
Like we just want to be heard.
I just wanted that little question to exist there in the world.
Just the existence of the question that maybe 25 years dedicated to this group and thisman wasn't exactly the way you wanted this thing to go.
(41:59):
And I think my dad's response to it was so disappointing.
to me on like a deep level that I don't think I was able to reconcile emotionally withthat.
And I was moving on with my life.
had a career, I had a family, a busy life.
(42:21):
And at some point I needed to assert that independence and autonomy, which required me tosee
the grisly parts of him without any.
Really, without any filter or without any aspiration for the different version, you know,they talk about that.
(42:42):
I'm going to butcher this, but, know, children of like emotionally immature parents, umyou know, this idea that when you're a child of an emotionally immature parent, you have
like a fantasy about reconciliation that has something to do with
your good behavior translating into their approval.
And I think I held out for that for a very, very long time.
(43:06):
But, my dad was, like I said earlier, a kind of mini guru of his own.
And I think he aspired to be like Franklin Jones and wanted some of the things thatFranklin Jones seemed to participate in.
as a, I guess you could say a bonus of the power structure that he had set up for himself,which included like multiple sexual partners and a sense of authority over others, men and
(43:32):
women, and an island in Fiji, you will, seven wives at one point.
And so I think, you know, my parents' relationship after they left the group devolvedpretty quickly.
particularly after my, you know, it was discovered my dad was spinning plates with half adozen other women.
And so, you know, my feelings on him were quite complicated when he got sick.
(43:56):
But unfortunately for him and for us, he didn't have anybody else.
So, you know, like so many people in this
moment in history as our adult parents are aging and living longer, things likeneurodegenerative diseases can significantly impair folks from being able to function on a
(44:18):
day-to-day level without support.
And then if that support, because that individual maybe didn't set themselves up for afuture because they were busy,
pursuing spiritual quests is not available, then it falls to the children, the so-calledsandwich generation, right?
The young people like my wife and I who were responsible for the care of an ailing parentwhile also trying to take care of small children ourselves.
(44:47):
And so, The Mind is Burning is about this last, you know, is about my childhood andeverything we discussed here, but it's also about this last seven-year period where
seven, eight year period where we've been responsible for Thomas's care and trying to cometo peace with everything that we've been through in that process has been a journey.
(45:14):
Jonathan, certainly your story resonates with so many aspects of my experience, Daniela'sexperience, and I imagine it resonates with lots of folks out there.
And so if they want to get in touch with you, if they want to listen to the podcast, ifthey want to purchase the book, what's the best way to find out what you're doing?
(45:37):
I feel like we've just scratched the surface, but we're running out of time.
We'll definitely have you back.
But yeah, but with.
some other, you know, there's other things to talk about.
just noticed in the background, I did a number of podcasts about, I don't know if we'redoing video or not, but like, I, I did a number of podcasts about some of these
controversial groups and would, you know, I'm sure that your, your listeners wouldappreciate, but sorry, I interrupted you to find out more about me.
(46:04):
I honestly, you can, you can find me anywhere.
the, the, the,
Jonathan Hirsch, I'm sure you guys have show notes.
We can put those in there.
But you know, the book is called The Mind is Burning, Losing My Father to Occult andDementia.
It's an audio book from Simon & Schuster Audio.
(46:25):
It's launching in two weeks.
So I'm going to be doing some some release events in San Francisco and Los Angeles forfolks who are interested.
The mind is burning dot com.
You can find
details about that.
I'm also on, you know, all of the platforms, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram.
You know, I'm happy to send links along there for folks to find me.
(46:46):
But the podcast is called Dear Franklin Jones, and that's available anywhere you listen.
And yeah, the book is called The Mind is Burning.
Get the story, y'all.
I just have one more question for you, Jonathan.
Do you think all these cult leaders are in the same signal chat where they're all givingeach other advice?
Now's the time to flee the country.
(47:07):
Now's the time to say God told you to sleep with someone's wife.
I mean, it's it's I, I could only hope that the world is that absurd because boy is it anabsurd world we live in and it wouldn't surprise me.
But I will say I do think it is sort of interesting when you look at and I guess who knowshow long I'll be talking about these kinds of groups because I'm getting a little bit
(47:29):
tired of this era.
But, you know, in the early 80s, Franklin Jones sits alongside a whole suite of
you know, charismatic gurus that, you know, includes Frederick Lenz, Rama, just pointingout there, I did a podcast series about who my parents actually were involved with before
(47:49):
Franklin Jones.
And then also gurus like Bhagwan Sri Rajneesh, who I'm sure your listeners are veryfamiliar with.
Popular Culture has sort of introduced a lot of people to through the Wild Wild Countrydoc.
All of these gurus kind of scratched that itch of the charismatic, accessible, spiritualteacher.
(48:12):
But I think a lot of what they proposed was possible or was almost supernatural abouttheir abilities based on their spiritual state.
For Rama, it was the golden light.
for Franklin Jones, was like literally being able to transmit enlightenment to somebodyelse in the form of spiritual powers or cities.
(48:34):
know, for Rajneesh, I don't even want to get into that.
like, you know, I think for all of these groups, there wasn't a lot of digital media.
There wasn't a lot of document.
Whereas I think now it's
you'd be harder to have the proliferation of some of the more fantastical ideas about whatthese gurus were capable of, because we just have a far more documented world today than
(49:07):
we did then, which is interesting to me.
Yeah, for sure.
I always say, mean, the internet, it's like the beginning of the end of a lot of cultsbecause it gets into that isolation.
But of course it creates its own problems and we know all about those.
just like, as you were explaining your story, I was just like, you know, thinking of ourguy.
(49:27):
And I think maybe a very good quote to leave our listeners with, I always call it myfavorite cult, like vaccine.
is Dr.
Yanya Lalish's quote.
She says, you know, do whatever you need to do for your own spirituality and religion, butthere are no gurus.
There are no gurus, boom.
That'll probably be the title of this episode.
(49:49):
Thank you so much for sharing with us.
I will be watching the list to see your book on there.
And obviously listeners, you can find all of this information in our show notes oranywhere that you are watching this.
We will have it tagged.
Awesome.
Thank you.
Really appreciate the time, guys.
(50:11):
Absolutely.
And until next time, I'm Scott Lloyd for Daniela Mistenek Young, Knitting Cult Lady.
Not The, but Knitting Cult Lady.
And we'll see you on the next episode of Cults and the Culting of America.
Welcome to Cults and the Culting of America podcast.
My name is Scott Lloyd along with my friend.
As always, the knitting cult lady is here.
Daniela, how are you?
And I've been meaning to tell you, Scott, you gotta stop putting the the in front of myname.
So just knitting cult lady.
And I'm very specific about it because when people name themselves the something, this issomething we like point out in cults, you know?
(00:58):
We won't mention it for now.
Hey, I am thrilled to introduce Jonathan Hirsch to all of you.
Jonathan is wonderfully agreed to come on and share his story with us tonight.
Jonathan, welcome to Cults and the Culting of America.
Thank you so much for having me.
The Jonathan Hirsch in the flesh.
(01:19):
Appreciate the opportunity and looking forward to chatting.
Absolutely.
So I was reading a little bit of your story and apparently a lot of this happened in NorthCarolina.
Did I get that correct?
Close, Northern California.
uh
Wow.
Yeah, not too many, not too many sort of Eastern inspired religious cults in the in theNorth Carolina area that I'm familiar.
(01:45):
uh California, on the other hand, you have your pick of the litter.
So
so, so tell us, tell us what you were involved with and there in Northern California.
Well, I mean, I think as a kid, I was just involved in being a kid, you know, raised bytwo quite eccentric, motivated parents who I think many times over, and I feel even if
(02:10):
they were had both the capacity or the faculty at this moment to be asked this question,you know, what's your life about?
I think they would tell you it was about.
finding some kind of spiritual fulfillment, whether that was enlightenment or the othervague the truth or some version of the spiritual quest that many people of their
(02:35):
generation boomers were prioritized and made an important part of their personal history.
The simpler way of saying that is, you know, my parents placed an emphasis on spirituallife from the time I was a young person.
So I didn't know any different.
You know, I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area.
know, I went to a public school for the first.
(02:57):
Six years of of, you know, grade school, five, six years of grade school before we movedout of San Francisco, and I think, you know,
I didn't, I missed some of the details that would have revealed that my life was a lotdifferent than the average person.
The, you know, the fact that people didn't come over to our house.
the fact that we spent time with all of these, sort of spiritual congregants and on acrossthe Bay in Northern California, fact that we didn't go to churches.
(03:25):
I, I remember at one point I asked my parents to take me to churches because I was curiousabout what they were.
but I wasn't making any sort of distinguishment between what my life looked like versusthat.
And of course, you know, if people had come to our house to visit at that time, they wouldhave opened the front door and they would have seen right in the in the view of the front
(03:46):
door, a small couch with a life sized cardboard cutout of of an image of their of theirguru, Franklin Jones.
And so.
That was just normal life for me in the morning.
Yeah.
because growing up, and I used to tell my students in the classroom this, know, all of ushave that first experience, right?
(04:11):
When you spend the night over a friend's house or something and you come to therealization that families are different, they do things differently.
And what is necessarily normal to you may not be normal to anyone.
And I think all of us growing up in those
particular groups had that moment, right, where we discovered, wait a minute, know, this,what I'm experiencing isn't exactly normal.
(04:37):
I think that's exactly right.
And I think one of the reasons when you asked the question the way that you did, I triedto answer it from the vantage point of a child who had an evolving understanding of what
was going on because I think you are absolutely right that for any young person, what yousee is what you get.
(05:00):
And you don't really have a lot of time or resource at your disposal to be able todetermine what is or is not normal and what that means to you and whether or not you
believe the things that are in front of you.
just what you have.
And then it took a while, I think, for me to kind of make sense of.
(05:23):
how remarkably different my childhood was.
that became even more clear as my parents became more involved with Franklin Jones, theirguru, and then eventually taking me out of high school and us moving to Northern
California near the compound where the guru lived.
uh
bit about that particular group and Franklin Jones in particular.
(05:46):
Yeah, so Franklin Jones was a sort of spiritual guru teacher who published hisautobiography, The Knee of Listing in 1972, I believe that's the correct year.
And around that time opened up a bookstore on Melrose Avenue in Hollywood with the expresspurpose of sort of
promoting this new spiritual doctrine that was a combination of various different worldreligions.
(06:10):
It leaned heavily on the sort of guru worshiping practices of some of the Hindu andVedanta Indian spiritual practices, but then also Buddhism.
But I think what really attracted people to Franklin Jones, and I think
I could confidently say a number of these sort of charismatic kind of populist gurus ofthat era was the sense that he was kind of an approachable spiritual teacher.
(06:37):
So a lot of people like my parents in the seventies and into the early eighties were, youknow, enmeshed in the counterculture.
Many people felt that there was a kind of cultural divide.
much the way we talk about it today in a political sense, but really in a spiritual sensethat you had to make a decision between whether or not you were a yuppie or a square.
(06:59):
And I think for my parents, they found each other and bonded over their desire to have alife that wasn't about money and you know.
the nuclear family and conventional life.
And it almost was like a political statement, you know, to be something other than that.
(07:21):
And so, you know, Franklin Jones, who went by the name, went by a number of names over theyears, but Bubba Free John around this time was the name that he was known by, Da Free
John.
Franklin Jones was very appealing because he melded all of these different philosophiesand interests of theirs and people like them.
But he also presented as somebody who was very accessible to your average middle-classwhite boomer who was looking for this kind of alternative way of practicing spirituality,
(07:54):
of living.
This was somebody who could quote T.S.
Eliot alongside Ramana Maharshi.
This is somebody who could invoke these
much more time-honored spiritual traditions of the East, while also speaking to theculture of the moment or Western philosophical traditions.
(08:16):
And that was incredibly appealing to people like my dad and my mom, especially my dad.
And so, yes, go ahead.
just want to say like, this is part of the charisma that people talk about, right?
And you know, it has been said of the presidents that are specifically charismatic, right?
They make you feel like you're the only person in the room.
(08:36):
I just saw a meme right before we recorded this that said, you know, people are always,can journalists stop being surprised?
that the charismatic leaders are like personable when you meet them in person, likethey're charming, they're good at making you feel like you are the center of attention and
(08:57):
they're speaking to you, right?
Like he's gone out and he's got all this spiritual knowledge and now he's here and he'sspeaking to you and it makes you feel special.
Absolutely.
I mean, I think that was at the heart of what, you know, was appealing about FranklinJones, that sort of raw charisma.
(09:17):
and, and as has happened with a number of these teachers from this era, for whateverreason, and I think I get into it a little bit in my memoir, The Mind is Burning, and also
in the documentary podcast series I did originally about
about Franklin Jones, dear Franklin Jones, there was a digression from what appeared to bethe sort of amenable friend, bubba friend, Your spiritual guide to something far more
(09:54):
expansive and I think in many people's minds controlling.
characteristics of both his philosophy and the expectation of his practitioners.
So I feel like if you look at what he was saying in the seventies, you'd be like, okay,this is interesting.
This is not really that different than, know, I'm sure you could compare a couple of thelines and be like, is this John Lennon or is this Franklin Jones?
(10:17):
But then as the years went on, of course, it became more complicated than that.
Yeah, I've said this about the children of God before, right?
Like when they recruited all these people in the late 60s and early 70s and dropped out ofthe world, you know, people were, for example, questioning sexuality, right?
Like our country was questioning that sort of openly publicly for the first time.
(10:41):
And then they went away with that knowledge, right?
Like the whole world is questioning sexuality or, you know, our whole world.
And then
and then they isolated themselves from the world.
And then the guru took them down this bad path.
um But I think the other thing that's so interesting is when we look at these gurus, Iguarantee Frank Jones was always this person.
(11:06):
Was it Frank Jones?
Yeah, going all the way back.
somehow they convince people at the beginning that it's good.
You know, that it's like, and your parents are the primary target type of people, youknow, that like are just searching for a mission.
m
(11:27):
an interesting thought because I think, you know, Franklin Jones's cosmology increasinglyexpanded to include him in all features and aspects of life.
So when he was a spiritual friend, that was one thing.
But by the time my parents left, when I was about 16, he had, you know, as I mentioned,renamed himself.
(11:49):
dozens of times and you know by the time we left you know the the philosophy of the momentin the group
compelled followers to believe, to practice and to worship him as a unique incarnation ofGod.
And in fact, not only that, but that the divine universal consciousness of the world hadsomehow decided that this specific body was to be an avatar or a unique incarnation of
(12:21):
divinity brought to sort of save
followers from the dark times or what they would have characterized.
I want to say mischaracterized, but it loosely interpreted this notion of the Kali Yugaaround, um which is like a...
process of deification, you know, like someone becoming a god.
(12:43):
And, you know, so, so what I was trying to say, so like, of course, the leader, right, hethrows out these things, he, the leader, the cult leader is always evolving their
worldview, their ideology, right, because they have to keep going, they have to keeptalking.
So it follows this path that
they don't know how their followers are gonna respond, right?
They throw out something that pushes the limit and then the followers respond and thenthey push it more and then the followers respond.
(13:09):
And in that way, everyone's building the organization kind of together and the ideologyand the worldview.
I just always note that, you know, it's very easy for people to think like it started offas this good thing, but.
Almost always, I I never have examples of like, when we go back, like, Frank Jones wantedto build a group and have people follow him, like from the beginning, guarantee, right?
(13:35):
Like, and the mission, the cult leader doesn't believe in the mission, right?
It's like, that's just the hook to get people with.
And then they like, build this thing together.
And it sounds like your parents had this sort of front row seat to what he,
what he built.
Yeah, yeah, they were there not not from the very beginning, but but pretty close.
(14:00):
You know, they had been sort of circling around his group and ideology for for a number ofyears before before they got him.
Jonathan, I find it interesting that you mentioned that at one point he took the nameBubba.
I grew up in the South and like every other person, it goes by Bubba.
Do you remember what that was about?
Was that just to make him more approachable, basically?
(14:22):
I think it was your, you know, your spiritual friend, your buddy, being a little bit, youknow, tongue in cheek about it.
But yes, I that was that was sort of the notion that it was like a a friend, you know.
And then over time, that philosophy began to expand, like I said, and digress.
And I appreciate Daniela's point about, you know, a sense or a premonition that
(14:45):
that these things were going to result in that outcome.
I'm not completely convinced that Franklin Jones had it all laid out that way, but I dothink that he had an insatiable need to.
perform whatever it was that he was performing that required people following him and hewanted it to be bigger and when it got bigger he had to be bigger than that and bigger
(15:10):
than that and and then you know where he landed is where he landed and I think you knowpart of what dear Franklin Jones the podcast that I made about about Franklin Jones and
about the group which included my parents it included
know, close followers of Jones, including one of his many wives, was trying, was seekingto understand both relaying for listeners, I think, what we rarely hear, which is a
(15:39):
keyhole view, life inside of a group like this, from the point of view of a child, all theway up until adulthood.
trying to make sense of what had happened.
So, you know, that was part of it, but it was also, you know, just trying to make sense ofprecisely how this group became, what it became, I think, when I did Dear Franklin Jones,
(15:59):
which feels like a lifetime ago.
When I did that series, I was not necessarily comfortable with the notion that what I hadbeen raised in was a cult.
And the term itself is complicated.
So even to this day, think how I think about that term, I think it's a discussion, it'smore of a less of a label, it's more of a label than a definition, if you will.
(16:23):
So all of that, I think, put me in a very exploratory frame of mind when I was lookinginto the group.
Jonathan, mentioned that you guys moved to Northern California.
How old were you when that happened and what convinced your parents that, we need to domore than just be a part of this group.
(16:44):
We need to buy in.
Well, my parents were both acupuncturists and, you know, they they practiced acupunctureon their on followers of the group.
They were part of this community.
We would go every Sunday to this little like office complex in Marin County.
(17:05):
just kind of in the outskirts of a town on the northern side of Marin County.
And there was this little industrial kind of corporate industrial park with all theselittle businesses.
And inside of one of them was where the Sangha or the congregation was.
And so every Sunday we would go and it would be, you know, maybe a hundred some odd peoplewho were part of the group who would attend.
And there'd be like ceremonies, which included like worship activities of worship directedat, you know, photographic representations of the guru.
(17:32):
but today that was sort of the extent of our community involvement.
Franklin Jones had properties and spaces all over the world.
He owned an Island in Naitamba, Fiji or Naitamba Island in Fiji.
which he had, received slash purchase, a little complicated from Raymond Burr, the actor,in the 19 late seventies, early eighties, forgive me on some of the dates, but.
(17:56):
He also had a compound, the original compound that he had developed for his followers wasin Northern California.
And so for many years he was living in Fiji.
You know, there's a lot of speculations as to why he spent so much time there.
I mean, if you owned an island in Fiji, you'd probably want to be there a lot too.
That's maybe one.
The second one being, you know, some people have said there was quite a bit of criticismof him in the press.
(18:18):
He was
headline news in the San Francisco Chronicle in 1986 because of civil suits allegingsexual abuse and assault and many other things that, you know, made national news.
And so I think he kind of went into hiding not too far, not too long after that.
But when he sort of resurfaced in northern California, it was on this compound in.
(18:41):
in Lake County and we were in San Francisco.
And so when he returned in the early 90s, I was like eight, nine, maybe 10 years old.
There became this sort of, it was a mobilizing force for all of the followers who weresort of in the area.
(19:06):
so soon enough,
My parents got involved in going up to some of those events and wanting to sort ofparticipate when Jones would give these sittings, these meditations with his followers.
And eventually they were offered what they saw as an opportunity to become his personalacupuncturist, which meant that they sort of had to be on call and to travel with him
(19:31):
wherever he went.
and so that meant I had to go with them.
and you know, I talk about it a bit in, in the memoir and also in, the podcast.
my, my father and I have over the years had a pretty fraught relationship.
I would say he's a little bit of a mini guru himself and, he gave me an ultimatum when Iwas.
(19:58):
about 11 years old, in which he said, you know, either you join up with our efforts,essentially, or you got to find some other place to live.
And that meant that I needed to take on the group's practices and their earnest aboutbeing involved with
(20:18):
an equivalent degree of vigor and enthusiasm, which when you're a small child still, youfeel like you have no other choice but to do.
You want to make your parents happy.
And so that's what I did.
And then I joined with them and eventually that led to them moving up to sort of fartherrural Northern California.
(20:40):
for a period of time before Franklin Jones decided that he no longer wanted to have themas their personal acupuncturists.
As far as they understood, that was because he was having a sexual relationship withanother acupuncturist in the group and wanted to pursue that.
And so, you know, a lot of what I talk about both in...
Dear Franklin Jones, and in the early part of my childhood is about those years of sort ofearnestly trying to participate in the practices of the group, trying to will myself into
(21:13):
belief, to reconcile what this man was proposing was the realities of life and the cosmoswith a deep sense of doubt about that.
while also living in like a considerable degree of isolation as a young person.
um So that's how the drama played out for me.
(21:35):
You know, it's so, it's so interesting that this interview landed on today because I'vebeen editing my chapter of my next book that is on first the one that's on the mission,
right?
Like how they hook people.
And then the next chapter is on self sacrifice.
And I specifically focus on like the children that are brought up in these earnesttraditions, right?
(21:59):
In these give everything traditions.
And it's like, you don't
get to grow up.
You don't get to like have a childhood.
Like you are expected to be this little tiny almost adult person and to be as striving forperfection, right?
As everyone around you working as hard, but also you're supposed to be developing who youare, you know, but these in these high control groups, like you're supposed to tamp down
(22:29):
your individuality.
It is the, in my opinion, most undervalued, under acknowledged aspect of the public'sinterrogation into the world of cults is the lives of the cult kids.
ah It's definitely like a life mission for me to find ways to bring them together becauseI'll say that, you know, if I'm fast forwarding here to
(22:56):
my life now, as the executive of a major media production company, I've helped producedozens of long-form documentary series.
We're here discussing all of this at a time when my memoir is coming out from the goodfolks at Simon & Schuster.
(23:17):
I've had an opportunity to report and tell stories.
And specifically stories of cults and cult-like groups for many, many years now.
And, you know, I think.
that has given me an opportunity to meet quite a few people like me.
And it was that process that made me recognize how little connection there is between thepeople who grow up in these groups with others whose experiences very much mirror their
(23:44):
own.
mean, if I'm just to give you guys the super cut of what comes to my mind when youmentioned that, Daniella, it's...
The young person who grew up in an extreme Pentecostal group who was forciblydeprogrammed, who spent his entire life trying to reconcile what had happened to him
(24:07):
versus where he was today.
And when I told him how much I could see his experience and how he was not alone, he justburst into tears.
or the time that I met and she's featured in a series I did last year called Scary Terry.
That was about Terry Hoffman, a cult you might be familiar with, the conscious developmentof mind, body and soul.
(24:28):
It's based in Dallas in the 1980s and 90s.
A woman who, the leader, Terry Hoffman, compelled her followers, a number of them, to...
right over their life insurance policies or wills to her shortly before those people tooktheir own lives.
And there were a couple of kids who grew up in that group who were featured in the serieswho only understood what had happened to them over time.
(24:53):
And the catharsis the two of us felt in talking about her own story and
realizing also at the end of that conversation how little of an opportunity this woman's25 years older than me, how few opportunities she's had in her life to actually have this
discussion with somebody else who had experienced the same thing.
(25:14):
There is a shared complexity in the experience of young people who grew up in these groupsbecause you inherit what your parents are pursuing.
My parents pursued this
spiritual path because it's what they wanted to do.
I was along for the ride.
um In the book, I of talk about this poem that has always sort of stuck with me.
(25:38):
One of my favorite Lawrence Ferlinghetti poems, Lawrence Ferlinghetti was for yourlisteners who may not be familiar, was a beatnik poet from the San Francisco area.
Obviously in the 1960s and 70s, he was essential in the foundation of City Lights Books,which was like this cultural hub for
the counterculture in the 60s.
And he describes in one of his later books, a sort of San Francisco icon, this guy, hedescribes in one of his later books, feeling like he was in the back seat of his parents'
(26:05):
eternity, reaching out to them.
And I remember hearing that line and thinking, wow, if that doesn't typify my experienceof my parents, don't know what does.
literally in the backseat watching their spiritual pursuit, their, really of theireternity, their eternal search for spiritual fulfillment.
(26:28):
And, and it is, yeah.
the cult baby experience.
I will die on this hill.
Most cult scholars have said that all cults are ultimately the same.
And I think that all cult baby experiences are ultimately the same.
(26:52):
And we can only encapsulate it in these things.
I talk about like,
having a childhood that has a mission, right?
And then having your parents sacrifice you for that mission, right?
Or having a childhood where you're like held back from the world or the culture that youwould otherwise be growing up in.
(27:13):
And actually Dr.
Janja Lalich did a book called Escaping Utopia, which is just specifically about this,what's called the SGA experience, the second generation experience of like,
the children who had to grow up and had to figure out all of us, as you talk about thathad to figure out like in reverse, like, oh, that's what we grew up in, right?
(27:39):
Like that's what happened.
how Scott was that Pentecostal boy you talked about, I think, you know.
exactly.
yeah, well, we should offline about that because you might be familiar with the story I'mtalking about.
Yeah, I appreciate you saying that, Danielle, I think.
I think one of the reasons the line stuck out to me and I instantly when I first read itknew that that typified me is that I recognize the profundity of their desires, you know.
(28:06):
young people may not have perspective, but it doesn't mean they're stupid.
Like I knew I understood why it was important.
Yeah.
that's part of why it is so hard for us cult babies when people are just like, that wasjust a cult, right?
Like you said earlier, like it's a label, but it's so much more complicated than that.
(28:27):
Like we know that our parents were genuine people, right?
Like we know that.
they thought they were doing something good and that they loved us in the best way theycould for the most part, right?
Obviously some people's parents in cults weren't that, but a lot of times, yeah, I likewhat you said about like you can recognize the profundity of their experience.
(28:50):
Like they really felt like they were doing this for a purpose and like doing the bestthing for you as well because they were putting you on this path.
well, and sort of to get us to the second half of this story, right, growing up in a cultand then also kind of coming to grips with what I've been writing about lately that gets
(29:15):
at that point, though, Danielle, you're absolutely right.
is not an overnight thing coming to an understanding of what
you experience in a group like this as a young person.
There's a story that actually is the reason for the title that I tell in In the Mind isBurning, which is about the time my parents house burned down when I was about 11, 12
(29:40):
years old and we were living in Marin County.
I was going to this was.
in between fifth and sixth grade, I guess, right around there.
And I was listening to the Giants game in the other room on a little radio next to my bed.
And my parents were sort of in this.
There was like a long hallway that connected us and the doors were closed and outside ofthe hallway was like the kitchen and then the and then the living room.
(30:04):
And I guess my parents had been in the other room in their bedroom.
And when they looked up, the smoke from the fireplace in the living room was like curdlingon the ceiling.
And they opened up the doors, the double doors from their bedroom to the living room, andthe whole thing was in flames.
And so they run out down this hallway that connected our two rooms to each other towardsthe front door, grab me, Kat, remember.
(30:33):
running around behind us and down the steps and out the door.
And the entire place was incinerated, like everything burned.
um And it's the middle of the night and we are in the carport of this apartment complexthat we live in.
And I'm sitting in the back seat and my mom and dad are in the front.
(30:55):
And, you know, there's
We're waiting for Blue Cross to arrive to sort of like provide us with a check and a placeto stay that night.
So a check for us to purchase basic goods like clothes and a place for us to stay until wefigured out what we were gonna do next.
(31:16):
And the police are there, firefighters to put out the fire, the burning house.
but we're sitting in the car sort of waiting for all this stuff to kind of be figured out.
And I remember my dad turning to my mom and saying something to the effect of, I guess wedidn't really need that stuff anyway.
(31:37):
and then he laughs, and then my mom laughs, and then because they're laughing, I laugh,and then the three of us in this absurd moment are sitting there laughing about...
losing everything.
And I think it says a lot about what my parents thought was important, that even if theyblew it, even if they fucked up and burned down the house, that wasn't what was important.
(32:01):
Their spiritual quest was what was important.
And I didn't know or understand anything about that at the time.
All I saw was that my parents were reacting to a stressful situation with humor.
And so when I was younger, in my early 20s, I remember writing about this experience.
(32:22):
And...
like framing it as something, this is before I was fully out about my experience in thegroup or before I'd gone to therapy or anything like that.
And I remember framing it in these like, you know, in like a sort of storytelling essay aslike a good thing, right?
Like as parents who were willing to let go of earthly possessions for their own happiness.
(32:47):
And then as they get older and I think about the process I went through,
with Dear Franklin Jones.
And then later when my dad got sick and having two boys of my own, it's a complete like,it's a tragedy that we took that moment not to acknowledge anything about the fears or
experiences I might've had as a young person.
(33:09):
to allay those to center the experience in a young child who doesn't know any different,but rather to sort of reframe it around their deeper philosophical search.
So, Daniela, to your point about like living a life that's based on a mission in whichself-sacrifice is required, that experience to me really typifies it.
(33:29):
And you know, the mind is burning is a phrase that comes from like a...
Buddhist text that my dad was quite fond of called the Adhita Sutra, which was the firesermon.
The idea that our attachment to ourself and worldly things was something to be sort oftranscended.
(33:53):
and you transcend that by letting go of those things.
in the process of letting go of those things is like a fire that burns you up.
And sort of in a bitter irony when my dad, the sort of long journey of our experiencingthis, but sort of the bitter irony of the fact is that my dad's own mind really did
consume him and does, you know, when he
(34:15):
was diagnosed with dementia.
And so, you know, there's a lot of layers to my experience of that moment, recognizingthat my dad prided more than anything this spiritual search only to find himself
completely without tether for, you know, the second half of his, practically the second,the last third of his life and he's still alive.
(34:38):
I'm on a tangent now, but like I guess the point I'm trying to make is that, you know, welearn over time, you know, what's important to us.
And and and I think experience taught me quite a bit about.
The kind of life I wanted to live, and I think when I understood that about myself, allthis other stuff started coming to the surface, and that was the inspiration for making
(35:01):
Dear Franklin Jones.
And when I made Dear Franklin Jones, my deepest desire was to have my parents acknowledgeone thing, which was that perhaps this spiritual journey that they'd been on was not a
(35:21):
linear
towards self, transcendence, but that maybe along the way there'd been a, you know, a, agoose chase or two that perhaps there were some mistakes.
not that they made them, but that you can make mistakes in life that can set you back.
I E you can give away all of your
(35:44):
like all of your resources, all of your life, no savings, no future whatsoever and spend25 years with a guru who eventually kicks you out because he's having an affair with
somebody else.
And perhaps there is some benefit to being able to say, hey, well, we make mistakes inlife and maybe we shouldn't have been in there that long or maybe we shouldn't have been
(36:05):
there at all.
And I think the existence of that question.
was one, something they were never able to answer, and two, something that ultimatelyestranged me from my father before he got sick.
Yeah, I was going to ask about that.
did they receive it when you started deconstructing, for lack of a better word, anduntethering yourself from this particular past?
(36:31):
What did that look like in your experience and in your relationships?
Well, think my dad, I'm not convinced he ever listened to it, but his best friend wasfeatured in the series and was a sort of bleed thinker scholar type person in the group.
And I think he communicated some of the details of what he thought was salient about theproject.
(36:56):
namely that he didn't think I did a good job at it.
And my dad took that as good enough reason.
I suspect they also got quite a bit of blowback from people in the group who probablyreached out to them directly with their feelings about it.
They felt maybe a little embarrassed or ashamed because even though they had left thegroup, they were still involved.
(37:17):
They were still sort of
entangled with members of the group, still friends with them, still hung out.
People kind of came in and out of Franklin Jones's group.
A lot of people would feel scorned by him and then they would leave for a while and thenthey would come back because part of the premise of Jones's teaching was that he was this
crazy wise guru.
(37:41):
that has very specific historical precedent.
for this
the sake of not boring everybody with the whole history here, essentially the idea is thatlike, you know, a crazy wise teacher is somebody who challenges you, who makes you
uncomfortable, who does things that pushes you to your limits so that you can become likemore egoless.
(38:04):
So there was a lot of justifying of bad behavior under the name crazy wise.
And so I think, you know, even in Dear Franklin Jones, my dad says,
his opinion at the time.
is before he had been diagnosed with dementia before we really understood what was, know,he wasn't, wasn't, he was of sound mind at that time.
(38:25):
I talk a little bit about it in the book to sort of like knowing him and, did I lose youguys?
No, we're still here.
Now we're here.
sorry, I just had a little pop up there.
Where can I reset for y'all?
There was a
You know, there was a lot of justification of bad behavior within the group that wascouched under this notion of crazy wisdom teaching.
(38:48):
And in the podcast at one point, you know, I asked my dad sort of what he thinks aboutFranklin Jones, whether or not he's enlightened or not.
And my dad says, you know, you can be enlightened and still be an asshole.
And so in his mind.
Franklin Jones could do all these things as like an everyday person, but his spiritualperson was something much more profound and transcended any sort of behavior that you
(39:12):
might try to hold him to account for.
So I think he probably took up issue with the idea that I would try to hold Franklin Jonesto account for, you know, historical bad behavior that quite a few people were not
comfortable with and that I wanted answers about.
And so
You know, things did not really go well for us after that.
(39:33):
We.
We sort of agreed to disagree, which essentially meant we didn't talk about it and we saweach other increasingly less.
And, you know, the success of Dear Franklin Jones gave me an opportunity to continueproducing and making.
podcasts and audio documentaries, which eventually evolved into starting a productioncompany, which eventually evolved into the situation I'm in now.
(40:05):
And I think over those years, it was a sadness.
But I also think that the process of doing the podcast made things a lot.
more clear to me.
You know, I think they yeah, go ahead.
(40:26):
Yeah.
And Jonathan, think our listeners are gonna relate to this so much, because I think thisis another thing that is broadly shared in the cult kid experience, is we somehow think
that we're gonna go to our parents as adults and share our pain and be able to talk aboutwhat happened.
(40:48):
And I describe it as like,
you know, we're saying like, hey, they hurt us, right?
Like this group, like we were hurt.
And they keep saying, we didn't know, we didn't know, right?
And they get stuck on it.
And I, you know, and I say to them all the time, well, you know now, right?
(41:09):
Like, you know now.
And I am very fortunate to have a relationship with my mom.
Now the caveat is also that she was also born and raised in the cult.
So she's also decided to do the deconstruction.
But she has been able to like listen to her adult children without being defensive.
(41:31):
And like, that's all we want.
Usually, right?
We're not coming for a reckoning.
Like we just want to be heard.
I just wanted that little question to exist there in the world.
Just the existence of the question that maybe 25 years dedicated to this group and thisman wasn't exactly the way you wanted this thing to go.
(41:59):
And I think my dad's response to it was so disappointing.
to me on like a deep level that I don't think I was able to reconcile emotionally withthat.
And I was moving on with my life.
had a career, I had a family, a busy life.
(42:21):
And at some point I needed to assert that independence and autonomy, which required me tosee
the grisly parts of him without any.
Really, without any filter or without any aspiration for the different version, you know,they talk about that.
(42:42):
I'm going to butcher this, but, know, children of like emotionally immature parents, umyou know, this idea that when you're a child of an emotionally immature parent, you have
like a fantasy about reconciliation that has something to do with
your good behavior translating into their approval.
And I think I held out for that for a very, very long time.
(43:06):
But, my dad was, like I said earlier, a kind of mini guru of his own.
And I think he aspired to be like Franklin Jones and wanted some of the things thatFranklin Jones seemed to participate in.
as a, I guess you could say a bonus of the power structure that he had set up for himself,which included like multiple sexual partners and a sense of authority over others, men and
(43:32):
women, and an island in Fiji, you will, seven wives at one point.
And so I think, you know, my parents' relationship after they left the group devolvedpretty quickly.
particularly after my, you know, it was discovered my dad was spinning plates with half adozen other women.
And so, you know, my feelings on him were quite complicated when he got sick.
(43:56):
But unfortunately for him and for us, he didn't have anybody else.
So, you know, like so many people in this
moment in history as our adult parents are aging and living longer, things likeneurodegenerative diseases can significantly impair folks from being able to function on a
(44:18):
day-to-day level without support.
And then if that support, because that individual maybe didn't set themselves up for afuture because they were busy,
pursuing spiritual quests is not available, then it falls to the children, the so-calledsandwich generation, right?
The young people like my wife and I who were responsible for the care of an ailing parentwhile also trying to take care of small children ourselves.
(44:47):
And so, The Mind is Burning is about this last, you know, is about my childhood andeverything we discussed here, but it's also about this last seven-year period where
seven, eight year period where we've been responsible for Thomas's care and trying to cometo peace with everything that we've been through in that process has been a journey.
(45:14):
Jonathan, certainly your story resonates with so many aspects of my experience, Daniela'sexperience, and I imagine it resonates with lots of folks out there.
And so if they want to get in touch with you, if they want to listen to the podcast, ifthey want to purchase the book, what's the best way to find out what you're doing?
(45:37):
I feel like we've just scratched the surface, but we're running out of time.
We'll definitely have you back.
But yeah, but with.
some other, you know, there's other things to talk about.
just noticed in the background, I did a number of podcasts about, I don't know if we'redoing video or not, but like, I, I did a number of podcasts about some of these
controversial groups and would, you know, I'm sure that your, your listeners wouldappreciate, but sorry, I interrupted you to find out more about me.
(46:04):
I honestly, you can, you can find me anywhere.
the, the, the,
Jonathan Hirsch, I'm sure you guys have show notes.
We can put those in there.
But you know, the book is called The Mind is Burning, Losing My Father to Occult andDementia.
It's an audio book from Simon & Schuster Audio.
(46:25):
It's launching in two weeks.
So I'm going to be doing some some release events in San Francisco and Los Angeles forfolks who are interested.
The mind is burning dot com.
You can find
details about that.
I'm also on, you know, all of the platforms, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram.
You know, I'm happy to send links along there for folks to find me.
(46:46):
But the podcast is called Dear Franklin Jones, and that's available anywhere you listen.
And yeah, the book is called The Mind is Burning.
Get the story, y'all.
I just have one more question for you, Jonathan.
Do you think all these cult leaders are in the same signal chat where they're all givingeach other advice?
Now's the time to flee the country.
(47:07):
Now's the time to say God told you to sleep with someone's wife.
I mean, it's it's I, I could only hope that the world is that absurd because boy is it anabsurd world we live in and it wouldn't surprise me.
But I will say I do think it is sort of interesting when you look at and I guess who knowshow long I'll be talking about these kinds of groups because I'm getting a little bit
(47:29):
tired of this era.
But, you know, in the early 80s, Franklin Jones sits alongside a whole suite of
you know, charismatic gurus that, you know, includes Frederick Lenz, Rama, just pointingout there, I did a podcast series about who my parents actually were involved with before
(47:49):
Franklin Jones.
And then also gurus like Bhagwan Sri Rajneesh, who I'm sure your listeners are veryfamiliar with.
Popular Culture has sort of introduced a lot of people to through the Wild Wild Countrydoc.
All of these gurus kind of scratched that itch of the charismatic, accessible, spiritualteacher.
(48:12):
But I think a lot of what they proposed was possible or was almost supernatural abouttheir abilities based on their spiritual state.
For Rama, it was the golden light.
for Franklin Jones, was like literally being able to transmit enlightenment to somebodyelse in the form of spiritual powers or cities.
(48:34):
know, for Rajneesh, I don't even want to get into that.
like, you know, I think for all of these groups, there wasn't a lot of digital media.
There wasn't a lot of document.
Whereas I think now it's
you'd be harder to have the proliferation of some of the more fantastical ideas about whatthese gurus were capable of, because we just have a far more documented world today than
(49:07):
we did then, which is interesting to me.
Yeah, for sure.
I always say, mean, the internet, it's like the beginning of the end of a lot of cultsbecause it gets into that isolation.
But of course it creates its own problems and we know all about those.
just like, as you were explaining your story, I was just like, you know, thinking of ourguy.
(49:27):
And I think maybe a very good quote to leave our listeners with, I always call it myfavorite cult, like vaccine.
is Dr.
Yanya Lalish's quote.
She says, you know, do whatever you need to do for your own spirituality and religion, butthere are no gurus.
There are no gurus, boom.
That'll probably be the title of this episode.
(49:49):
Thank you so much for sharing with us.
I will be watching the list to see your book on there.
And obviously listeners, you can find all of this information in our show notes oranywhere that you are watching this.
We will have it tagged.
Awesome.
Thank you.
Really appreciate the time, guys.
(50:11):
Absolutely.
And until next time, I'm Scott Lloyd for Daniela Mistenek Young, Knitting Cult Lady.
Not The, but Knitting Cult Lady.
And we'll see you on the next episode of Cults and the Culting of America.
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