Written for my 1976 B.A. Portfolio for Antioch

Linked from Home, Caravan/Farm, Communities and Social Action

1. Describe the learning setting. Include where it took place, the role of other persons who were involved with you, and any materials and methods employed which assisted your learning.

I was a student of Stephen Gaskin for almost three years. The settings included Monday Night Class in San Francisco, the Caravan from San Francisco to Tennessee, and the first seven months of the Farm in Summertown, Tennessee. I must assume my reader does not know anything about Stephen Gaskin, and therefore will fill in some historical information on his career before I met him in 1969.

Stephen was an English teacher at San Francisco State College, working as a teaching assistant to S.I. Hayakawa in General Semantics. He noticed that a lot of his students were dropping out of school, taking LSD, and moving to the Haight-Ashbury. He wanted to find out what was going on, and ended up taking LSD himself. He felt that he became enlightened, and that if he were to just sit where he was and tell the truth, everything that he had ever wanted would come to him.
He married one of his students and started teaching in the experimental college. The first three semesters the class was called: “Magic, God, and Einstein,” “North American White Witchcraft,” and “Experiments in Unified Field Theory.” The class combed the religious and magical literature of the world searching for parallels to their experiences of being stoned and moving energy together. During the riots on the campus the class moved to Glide Memorial Church, where they were located when I first heard of them.

In 1969 I was living in Berkeley and playing in a band called The Phoenix. I was reading Gurdjieff and Ouspensky. Both of them were saying that you can go just so far in the work of reaching higher consciousness without a teacher. I began looking for such a teacher. Soon after I started looking, Tom Hart, the other drummer in the band, said he had attended a meeting in the basement of Glide Memorial Church where everybody sat around and said “OM” together and then when it was silent this man answered everybody’s questions about everything. This sounded like what I was looking for.

I hesitated to commit myself about going for a couple of weeks, and by the time I decided to go the class had moved to the Straight Theatre, on Haight Street, partially because there were now too many people to fit in the basement at Glide, and partially because they wanted to try to “clean up the vibes” on Haight Street. This was in March of 1969.

Finally I had Tom take me to the class. There I saw hundreds of long hair hippie types very calmly filing into the theatre, and it seemed that everybody knew everybody else and greeted each other very warmly and calmly. There was lots of mellow laughter. I stood with Tom in the back of the theatre, amazed and attracted by what I saw. Eventually everybody had quieted down and a fellow sitting toward the front of the room raised a ram’s horn to his mouth and blew a loud clear note. Everybody said “OM” to the sound of the note. This went on for a long time and the sound became increasingly harmonious and engulfing. Finally I felt I was the only one in the room who was not participating. I took a deep breath as if embarking on a great adventure, and dove right in. I immediately felt as if I were melting, as if I were a drop which had fallen into the ocean and become suddenly indistinguishable from any other part of the whole ocean.

Then Stephen spoke, and explained how the class worked. To paraphrase: “We have become one mind. You will ask the questions and I will give the answers. Since we are the same thing, the answers are implied in the questions. For convenience I will be speaking the answers, but before you ask a question, listen a while and you will probably find that because we are one thing I will be answering the question you have on your mind.”

In fact, I found all the questions that came up in my mind being answered as he spoke. I was hooked, and ended up spending the next 2 ¾ years of my life totally involved with Stephen and his group. I stayed with him through the move to the Family Dog dance hall in San Francisco in 1970, the Caravan to Tennessee in 1971, and the first seven months on the Farm there, finally leaving in December of 1971.

Throughout all of this time the main teaching method was a weekly meeting on this format, at first on Monday night, but after a while on the Farm, a Sunday morning service and a Monday night meeting.

2. Describe your participation and responsibilities in this setting.

While class was at the Straight Theatre I was simply one of the folks. But once Stephen moved to the Family Dog, I wanted to invite him out to our communal house in Berkeley. He said that it would be much more convenient for him if we could come and visit him. I made an appointment and visited him on my own. We set up a date for the whole band to come over.

By this time everybody in the band was going to class regularly. Then our participation became a little greater, as we met with Stephen and his “four-marriage” every Thursday afternoon to compare notes on living in a “group head.” Stemming from these meetings, we played for and organized the first class party, and then the Holy Man Jam. This was a two-day program at the Family Dog which included the other two bands that had played at the class party, plus Alan Watts, Tim Leary, and Indian medicine man Rolling Thunder.

When we moved to Santa Cruz in 1970 we would drive up the coast every Monday night, about 150 mile round trip. When the first caravan left on Columbus Day 1970 to circle the country I wanted to go, but was too deeply committed to the band, by this time called the Potter’s Wheel. The girl I was living with did not like Stephen enough to want to follow him all over the country. But when they got back in February and announced they were leaving for Tennessee, I sold my drums the next day and left with them the day after. I was a hitchhiker on communal busses until we finally were loaned a thousand acre farm in Lewis County Tennessee, at which time I began to live in a tent with a couple of other guys.

I was part of the work crew that dug the root cellar for the first structure that we built from scratch in Tennessee. I had a job for a few weeks chipping mortar off the used bricks we used to build the walls. It was the first manual labor I had ever done, and I loved it. When we bought the adjacent 1000 acre farm I volunteered for the carpentry crew. I became an apprentice, digging the foundation for the sorghum mill, our first building. I stayed on that crew through the framing and siding (which is documented under carpentry).

Earlier I had been on the crew that went to Sparta, Tennessee to bring back an abandoned water tower that had been given to us. In October I joined the apple picking
crew that did the entire harvest for the Wiard Orchards of Ypsilanti, Michigan. I was also a member of the Farm Band, and spent some time on local farming crews.

3. Describe new skills and/or knowledge derived from this learning activity which contribute to your Degree Plan.

These fall into two main categories: the skills and knowledge directly related to Stephen’s teaching, and the manual skills acquired on the farm.

A. Knowledge of Stephen’s teaching. When I joined him at the Straight Theatre the main theme was “speaking the truth.” Stephen said their research had been like making up a computer card for each religion and when they stacked them up this was one of the places where the holes went all the way through. Another one was “Thou shalt not kill.”

One thing I learned the first year was a disregard for the social consequences of my words, the only criterion for speaking being whether it was truth or not. Truth was defined as accurate information about the here and now in the here and now. Later, on the Farm, the criteria for speaking had expanded to true, kind, and necessary. (This by the way is a slogan for the Rotary or Kiwanis).
The meetings at the Family Dog were attended by fifteen hundred people every Monday night. We estimated that with people coming on and off there was probably a core community of 4500 people directly involved in the class. The doors were always open and Stephen made a point to try to have it be like the Dharma Dialog of the old Zen masters. Nobody was excluded and the truth was considered the criterion for who would hold the floor at any given time. A few of the points that Stephen made which introduced me to concepts I am still dealing with in my Zen practice are listed below:

1. Hinayana and Mahayana. Stephen pointed out the basic difference in Buddhist practice between the Hinayana (smaller vehicle) and Mahayana (the greater vehicle). The Hinayana is involved with the liberation of the individual, and the Mahayana with the liberation of all sentient beings. He said that his was a Mahayanist teaching because he believed that there should be room for everybody in a true spiritual teaching, with nobody left out. This was the first I had heard of the Mahayana, which is the historical source of Zen.

2. The Bodhisattva. The Mahayana ideal is the Bodhisattva, who declines liberation until he can come back and help all sentient beings to attain that goal. Stephen was teaching the blissed-out acid heads of San Francisco that if they truly had seen a vision of enlightenment they had a responsibility to help other beings reach that state. This was the first I had heard of the Bodhisattva ideal, which is central in the teaching of the Zen school.

3. Patience. Stephen taught that if you wanted to change the world, but you were impatient, that indicated that you needed to be able to accept things as they are, in the here and now. Only by truly accepting the reality as given can we be in harmony with it enough to have any effect. I started to slow down and try to see what was really happening in the world, rather than blindly trying to change it. Patience is one of Maezumi Roshi’s strongest teachings, in terms of getting really deeply into changing oneself and the world.

4. To Appreciate. To appreciate is to make precious. Whatever you put your attention into will become that much stronger, so choose good things to put your attention into, to make precious. Maezumi Roshi is constantly telling us to appreciate ourselves, to appreciate our lives, to appreciate the lives of the Buddhas.

B. Manual skills learned on the Farm. The seven months on the Farm was the first time that I did manual work in my life. The main manual skill that I developed was in carpentry, which is documented under that heading. I also learned to drive a bus. And in the farming department I learned methods of cultivation and planting. I picked apples in Michigan, oranges in Florida, and peaches, corn, and bell peppers in Tennessee. The seven months of physical work from dawn to dusk was probably the best thing that ever happened to offset and balance my early intellectual upbringing.

4. Self-Assessment: Evaluate this learning activity. Mention such things as the quality of the experience itself and its personal significance to you.

This was a very unusual experience for me. During this time I was outside of California for the only time in my life, and saw much of the United States. It was the only extended contact with rural life that I have ever had, living on a thousand acre farm for seven months and working the soil much of that time. Stephen practically ran my life for 2 ¾ years. The first year or two away from the Farm I had practically no identity of my own, and had a lot of trouble starting a new life for myself. I had grown accustomed to being surrounded by large numbers of people who all felt the same way down to the minutest details, and it was not good training for this pluralistic society.

In  terms of the quality of the community, it certainly was unique in its time for the sheer massiveness and uniformity of its agreements. We were simultaneously experimenting with community, group marriage, dope, vegetarianism, farming, and religion. But looking back I think there was a major flaw and that was that everything had to be cleared through one finite individual. In purporting to speak for all of us, Stephen could do whatever he wanted on a whim and everybody would follow. It was too much power for any one man. Especially when we moved out to Tennessee, and isolated ourselves from sophisticated criticism, Stephen became more and more an autocrat. But people within the community did not see it that way. Every so often somebody would leave and stir up a few waves, but by this time Stephen had consolidated so much power that I never felt, let alone heard, any doubt expressed about his role in the community by members of the community.

I can sum up the personal significance of this experience with two positives and a negative. On the positive side was the function of providing a bridge from the world of dope and rock and roll to the world of Zen. I wanted to study Zen and get some discipline into my life, but the available teachers seemed too austere in contrast to my very loose life style in 1969. Stephen provided a little bit of each world, and it was only after being with him for almost three years that I had had enough dope and rock and roll and not enough zazen. So I left and came to California to find a Zen teacher. But I am grateful for the role Stephen played at that point in my life.

The other positive significance was the opportunity to do farm work for seven months. In many ways this was the happiest time in my life. Again, I was able to stay involved with all the other things I liked to do while getting a feeling for being one not just on a spiritual level, but really being one with the dirt, the soil, the earth. I strongly look forward someday to being able to get back into some sort of farming or rural situation.

The negative that just about balances these out is how much personal power I had to give away in order to get all these nice things. There was a very detailed set of beliefs that I had to conform to, and it took me a long time to learn how to think for myself again after leaving. At this point in my life the positives and the negatives about living on the Farm seem almost perfectly balanced off by each other.

5. Describe the methods of evaluation and feedback used during the learning experience itself.

For almost the whole time the feedback was that whenever you believed in the agreement of the community you were OK. There was total validation for agreement. Only toward the end, when I started to want to honor my own inner voice, did I start to get negative feedback. Stephen’s partner Michael told me that I wanted “infinite elbow room.” Stephen told me that he could see me as two people, one who I thought I was, and another, an astral body hovering nearby, that was lying. I was told to leave the Farm to pay off a debt I had incurred, and I was put on the road in a ten degree Tennessee winter with no money and a pair of old overalls.

6. Describe the material products of this learning experience, if any.

Three story sorghum mill, foundations of first houses, water tower, started the Farm Band. I was one of 250 founding members. There is now a 2000 acre farm with 800 people and about six other farms.

7. List the forms of testimony and evaluation that you will include in your portfolio as demonstrable evidence of learning. Please attach these.

Evaluation by Tom Robischon.

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Evaluator:  Tom Robischon

1. A brief self-description: your relationship with the student relative to this learning experience; professional and/or academic qualifications. You may attach a resume.

I am Ed’s core faculty advisor. I have discussed these experiences with Ed as a basis for this assessment. Ed has asked me to do this assessment rather than ask Stephen Gaskin because he decided that Gaskin’s anti-academic orientation would affect the assessment, and perhaps lead Gaskin to refuse altogether to do it.

2. Describe the student’s learning in this experience. Mention observable growth, skill development, information mastery, aesthetic sensibility, or other evidence of acquired learning. Use the back of this sheet if necessary.

Ed does a quite good job, I think, in describing his learning. I find it particularly important vis a vis his degree plan because the more than 2 ½ years Ed was involved in this represents the bridge in his learning from the rock/acid/Hash culture of the late 60s which Ed was deeply involved with, to his involvement currently in Zen. Thus in terms of the learning model he employs in his degree plan, it represents the move from the second intermediate circle to the third central interests circle of Zen and psychology.

Ed’s involvement with the farming commune is part of his goal of seeking out alternate life styles in order to develop the “skills necessary to live in experimental communities and to experience the psychological effects of this way of life.” The skills and knowledge that Ed identified are knowledge of how a large commune is run, to the level of being a founding member; and carpentry skills to the level of an apprentice who can use all the tools and read plans to build furniture and buildings. (These are the skills and knowledge for this goal that he acquired through his involvement with the farming commune.) It is clear to me that Ed does address himself to these skills and knowledge in his write-up of these experiences.

In examining Ed about this experience, I expected him to be able to explain in more detail several of the points he makes in his write-up; to be able to speak knowledgeably about these experiences; to be able to critically discuss certain aspects of the experience and aspects of the philosophical orientation of the commune and its leader Stephen Gaskin; and I expected him to be able to relate this to his degree plan.

Ed can speak at great length about this experience beyond what he has written here. Particularly is he able to analyze the experience, the orientation he and others had, the importance and meaning it had for him then and for him now. He showed that he has been thinking rather regularly about this period in his life, now especially with the perspective of his progress toward his degree. He has continued some contact with the commune and in fact will be talking this week with Gaskin, whom he has not seen for some time, seeking to find among other things what his perception is now of this person who, as Ed says, “practically ran my life for 2 ¾ years.”

Ed and I discussed at some length the slogan that Gaskin framed early on in this movement, “speak the truth.” This, as Ed says, was to be the one and only test for someone’s speaking out. How do you know when someone is speaking the truth in order to decide whether he can speak? Ed describes this as one of several instances in which Gaskin was leading people in this group to take from their acid experiences and incorporate insights into their straight life. In this case, the experience of sharpened awareness that enables one to detect when another is not telling the truth. Ed is convinced this can be done.

“Speak the truth and fear no man” (woman too?) is one of Gaskin’s later slogans. Gaskin, with his awareness of General Semantics, was keenly aware of words that change people and words that don’t, according to Ed. His sloganeering here was fortuitous for the group: he seemed to have the ability to put the thoughts and feelings of the group into felicitous slogans that did help change people. So Ed sees that it is the performatory function of these slogans, rather than their truth or justification that is to the point here.

I asked Ed if this kind of communal life is part of the future. “Good question,” he replied (thereby receiving added points from his advisor!). Ed thinks things like the Arab oil embargo make such living more credible and more desirable. The emphasis on self sufficiency he sees as holding great promise and worth for the future. He admits it is a “little Quixotic,” but thinks it worthwhile that they continue to “tilt at this particular windmill,” to show that it can happen. (It now numbers over 800 people, almost half of whom are children under the age of four!) Ed has seen the latest book published by the commune, all about the births of the children on the farm. Clearly this was a necessary part of Ed’s move from his alternative lifestyles to Zen and psychology. An experiential odyssey that Ed is able to integrate into his current major interests.