Straight From The Source: Conversation(s) with ISIS AQUARIAN of The Source Family [Part 2/4]
Part 2 of our in depth interview with Source Family archivist, Isis Aquarian, covers energy fields, the death of Father Yod, and re-assimilating to society
CLICK HERE TO READ PART 1
Father Yod lost his life as the result of a hang gliding attempt on August, 25, 1975. The man known as Jim Baker, however, had, for all intents and purposes, already died well before that. The details surrounding the way that Yod passed over are, in many ways, just as fascinating as the way that he lived, with certain elements still shrouded in mystery. The unorthodox nature of his death is heightened by the fact that the guru had never actually hang glided before; making this fatal leap without any experience, let alone proficiency, in such a high risk activity. Then there’s the baffling claim that, although he passed away 9 hours after colliding with the Earth–nosediving in the direction of the home from Magnum P.l.–the coroner never found his body to have sustained any notable physical injuries from the crash, other than a bruised posterior. This includes a complete lack of broken bones and no detection of internal bleeding, creating a whole other enigma about his cause of death. But, out of all of the details, there is one consistent account among the followers/witnesses that really intrigues me in particular. It is said that their leader was gliding rather sufficiently on the wind, before it suddenly cut out from underneath him without warning. And to hear them tell it, it sounds almost supernatural, as if all wind was sucked out of the immediate area, leaving the one that they referred to as Father in a position similar to Wile E. Coyote blindly running off of a cliff–there was nothing to support him anymore, and he came plummeting down.
Even after experiencing his death and through the 4 decades that have followed, Isis Aquarian feels that she has never lost her thread with Father Yod; and the word “thread” is one that Isis tends to use quite often. By “thread” she’s referring to a connection, running theme, or line of communication between individuals; possibly even to a space or concept. At this point, she and I have our own thread between us, simply due to the connection established through working together on this interview piece and the tone and understandings that have been fostered from our interactions since. If you think about it, you have a specific connection or relationship which is unique to each and every one of the different people that you have in your own life, whether it involves inside jokes, shared experiences, simply an unspoken understanding, or even a mutual distrust or hatred (a thread is a thread, even when it’s a fuse). Similarly, the members of the Source Family are indefinitely connected by a very powerful period in history. Regardless of how they interpret those experiences as individuals now, or experienced them then, they all still traveled through a series of events that no one else will, in the exact same fashion, ever again. And while this will forever link the members, as they are all intertwined to a collective past, threads are also cut, or, as is often the case, they simply fray and wear through. To utilize more of Isis‘ terminology, the family was a “bonded unit,” but that isn’t necessarily the case today, more than 3 1/2 decades after their dispersal. Of course, none of this should really be too much of a surprise considering that their primary bonding agent did pass on from this Earthly plane a full 38 human years ago.
Those of you who read our piece, An introduction to Isis Aquarian and the Source Family may remember the black and white image of the Sunday meditation class in the parking lot. Of that photo, Isis has stated that Yod was speaking directly to her, when it was taken, although she believes that everyone else also probably feels as though he was speaking to them. Likewise, the family record keeper has made it clear to me that each of the members had their own uniquely personal threads with Father Yod/Yahowha. The fact that Yod was capable of making so many separate individuals feel tended to, important, and seen is a testament to his charisma and powers as a leader. It is also directly reflected in the way that he was able to bring them all together as a singular unit under one vibrating energy. That’s what leaders are supposed to do, unite, inspire, and motivate, rather than dominate and control.
And that, of course, is also the biggest concern where a cult leader is concerned, whether or not they are dominating and controlling their followers, breaking them down mentally and emotionally, stripping them of their free will. It will also remain the biggest debate, because, if you really think about it, the same questions can be (and have been) raised of most organized religions, on one level or another. Whether that concept gives too much credit to the leaders, and/or not enough to the followers, is another story. As for The Source Family, in particular, there is one specific soundbite included at the end of the documentary trailer that’s sure to agitate such concerns in skeptics more than any other. In the brief and, otherwise, light-hearted and laughter-filled audio clip of Father Yod speaking to the family, he asks, “See how I absolutely need you, and you absolutely need me? What would I do without you? You know where I’d be? In a loony bin.”
Even now, the perceptions of who Jim Baker/Father Yod/Yahowha was, what his motivations were, and what actually occurred, shift with each individual. That being said, the way that I’ve come to view the man is as the one who took each of the many threads that he had with the individuals in the commune and sewed them all together. If the rituals, principles, and ideologies of the Source were like the panels of fabric in a parachute, or hot air balloon, and the threads were… well, the thread, then the combined harmonizing frequency of the family is what filled and kept them afloat. That unifying energy, which energized through their unification, is what they referred to as “circumvent force” [references to the energy field can also be found in Yogi Bhajan’s teachings of Kundalini Yoga under terms like “Kriya” and the 8th Chakra]. Keeping that force in tact and everyone on the same wavelength is what magnetized the family together. Once their guru wasn’t around anymore to project their energy toward, so that he could redistribute it back to them, the focus became wobbly and the charge connecting them all, as one, began to fizzle out and lose direction. In other words, they absolutely needed him and he absolutely needed them, for everything to be sustained. One could even equate the wind cutting out from beneath Yod‘s hang glider to a break in the circumvent force of the family unit itself.
By the time that Father Yod had found himself standing on the edge of that cliff in Oahu, he had reached an impasse. His journey had taken him from Jim Baker (restauranteur/health food pioneer) to Father Yod (cult leader) to Yahowha (manifestation of god on earth), but what was next? He couldn’t just go start another restaurant as Jim Baker, because he wasn’t that man anymore. In some ways, his journey had stalled, but he lived so deeply outside of “man’s” world, that he wasn’t really sure how to fully exist away from the safety of the commune and outside of that bubble. His evolution had taken him so far away from his former self, that the next step might actually be to leave this physical plane altogether. But, in an ironic twist of fate, he was the closest that he’d ever be to achieving ultimate spiritual freedom, yet felt more of a link and responsibility to his physical duties, than he ever had before in his life.
Isis graciously provided us with the following insights into his thought process:
“[Father] said, “Truth be known, I would just like no drama and simple living, just live the rest of my life out in retirement” with just his one women, he called his “Mother Angel,” Makushla, who gave him no drama and was there just for him, “and maybe a few of my sons to take care of the earth duties. But, then i have 3 other women who have my children, so now what? I need to be responsible for them.” And then, eventually, he said, “but i know my other wives will not leave me and I have taken them on as my wives, so all of them are now my responsibility“…so here we were. Yahowha was going to disperse the family, take his 14 wives and 3 children, and 2 or 3 of his strong sons and we were going to live somewhere. And every once in awhile, we would have gatherings where all could come, or maybe just on Sundays have morning meditations for all to come, but all had to now be on their own.”
Yahowha searched his soul regarding the future during an extended stay over several weeks in the Lanikai region of Oahu. After so many years of consciously limiting distance between the members to maintain that singular bonded unit, the leader had begun compromising and fragmenting that “circumvent force“/energy field himself. Leaving the family in Hilo, Yod accompanied a member named Mercury to Oahu, in support of the son’s quest to break the world hang gliding record.
Isis describes it as follows:
“Father and a few of us also went. Then he sent for his other women and we lived in Lanikai with Mercury and Jupiter. After Mercury did the flight and broke the record by staying in air 13 hours (it was awesome, Jupiter would fly out and meet him and hand over water and food), then when he came down into the field. It was dark and Father had several of the cars line up and put their lights on like a landing field.”
The idea of flight was one that had always fascinated Yod. From myths and legends like Sodom and Ghamorrah to hints in the mystery teachings and writings of Manly P Hall, concepts of ancient civilizations with winged, yet Earth-bound, men, is something that he was strongly drawn to. In fact, the guru even attributed man’s subconscious obsession with flight to the “memory residue” of distant incarnations where such men actually existed and possessed the ability to fly off of mountaintops. So, his leap was more than simply a death wish, it was something that he wanted to be able to experience. That being said, he was definitely aware of the potential danger associated with his actions, and it wasn’t something that concerned him.
Here’s Isis‘ take:
“I think he just got to a point where he knew he no longer wanted to be here, he was done with it. It had gone as far as it could and the next stage was …….the other side. He did not fear death, we had lived within the spiritual knowledge of other realms, star systems, beings, councils planets etc.; he was ready for that adventure. He also knew that meant, once again, just going forward on his own and that is what he did…he even left us.”
…
“I think he decided to go flying that morning and, if it was supposed to be that he went, he was ready. He tested the cosmic forces for sure, but I also know that he did not consciously commit, or want to commit, suicide. If he wanted to do that, he would’ve taken kool aid or just jumped off a mt. without wings etc. But he was open to the opportunity if presented itself to leave.”
In the end, it was somewhat of a miraculous and fitting way to leave. Father Yod/Yahowha isn’t the first or last person to embrace an evolution after painting themselves into a spiritual corner–that’s often the way that it seems to go–but it’s hard to deny that his circumstances were unique. I’ve read that before passing over, he told the followers to look for a new star in the sky, because it would be him. Less than a week later, one was detected over Hawaii–first by a Japanese astronomer and then by those in Oahu, 19hrs later.
Some of the most common questions that people are intrigued by, when they first discover The Source Family, deal with how something like this ever even got off the ground. But, after something like this has escalated to such great levels, perhaps a more fascinating question to ask about than how it took off, is how one is ever supposed to touch down and land from “the highest trip on the planet.”
The Interview (part 2)
ISIS AQUARIAN:
Have you seen the documentary?
MONSTER FRESH:
Oh yeah. I’ve seen the documentary.
I don’t think people flash(?), but that’s Father talking at the time. Where did that come from? *she’s referring to her archives*
I mean, I’ve seen the documentary a couple times and I know that the book also comes with a disc that has some audio.
Exactly. Like, I’ve got a thousand tapes that I did. Every morning, I recorded Father’s morning meditation tapes. And so, we finally got Carl Anderson from Global Recording in San Francisco; he’s been working with us for years to get them all off of cassette tapes and into MP3 files and we’re releasing them in a series. And Drag City… what happened was I started coming across the music on my cassette tapes that I recorded, either following Father around or going into the band room–or we would listen to them in morning meditation. So, I had all of the family music, what we ended up calling “The Lost Music,” because I had taped it on this stupid little tape recorder–these cassette tapes. So, the music wasn’t lost. Drag City is taking it and remastering it, and those are the albums that are coming out. The Thought Adjusters, I don’t know if you’ve heard that, but a few of these albums are coming out; it’s because I’ve had them in my archives. So, it’s amazing how it’s all getting done. And the next album to be released is Aquariana’s album. It’ll be the first album from one of the Source Family women.
Is she just piano and vocals?
Yeah, she’s vocals and piano, and she was the mother of Yod (Father’s son), and one of his wives too. She’s the one that you always see on the car with the long blonde hair with all the women.
So now, I’m continuing to work with what I have in the archives. We’ve had two brothers that wrote, channeled letters, through the family time, called The Invisible Worlds. And they archived what was happening in the family through these letters, and so, we’re releasing those as a booklet. So, it’s pretty well ongoing. But the thing is that we have a heartbeat now, and we’re back. People have come out of the Source closet; they kind of feel safe, because the book and the film are being so well received. You know that old saying about, now that something’s happened, everybody wants on the band wagon. So, I’m having to come to terms with and deal with that. Because, in the beginning, everybody put me down and went, “Oh my god, what are you doing? Don’t do it. You’re not gonna do it right. You shouldn’t do this.” So, I’m, basically, the only one that stepped out, and got crucified for it. And now people are thanking me. And people are taking what I’ve done and using it for their own purpose. Kind of a rip-off, but it’s like, it’s just gone out of control; it’s taken on a life of its own. The Source Family members, some of us get along and some of us don’t. Some of us don’t even really like each other anymore. And we were kind of a karmic family to begin with. You know, we were there for Father; we didn’t come in because of each other, we came in because of Father. And that was our thread, and now a lot of us are just trying to deal with each other. And there’s a lot of niceness in that, but there’s some that is just not. I would say that there are a few, that are living in what I’d call controlled insanity, and they’re… you know, causing problems.
The interesting thing though, is the dynamic of this collective of people living together under collective principals. There are these different elements now that these people have these other lives that are gonna make it a little less… You’re not all on the same plane. There are different things that people are working with [being] affected.
Oh no. We haven’t been for years. People are still arguing and judging each other and putting each other down and I just keep saying, “Well, I’m the only one that did anything and, so far, nobody’s done anything. Why are you yelling at me and crucifying me and telling me I didn’t do this right, or I didn’t share—I should have shared it with everybody?” And I went, “What?” Nobody wanted to have anything to do with it. I said, no no no no no. This is my journey, my project, and I’m stepping up alone as a lone person and taking credit for it and doing it; that’s my right. And I was warned *laughs* that, once you get into the business to do something like this, that happens. Everybody does come out of the woodwork and everybody wants on the bandwagon, as if, they have a right.
I think one of the most interesting things about this story that people are intrigued about is kind of the re-assimilation back into society, afterwards. One of the aspects that gets me is that, when you guys went to Hawaii, you weren’t greeted that openly, yet, a lot of the family members seem to have stayed there afterward. I mean, nobody would hire anybody from the Source Family in Hawaii, and I was wondering, how did you guys continue to create lives there afterward? Were you more welcomed?
That’s why the family dispersed; we couldn’t. It’s because of the Manson Family, basically. I mean, it was more than the Manson Family. The Manson Family killed it, for what the 60s and 70s were riding on, and what could have happened, and what could have come out of that genre. They absolutely came in as a darkness and stopped it. And [the locals] thought we were the Manson Family. You know, we came to Hawaii and they didn’t know who we were. They didn’t know we were famous, or the darlings of L.A. and had a famous restaurant, and that we were doing good stuff. We were just hundreds of people living in one house, wearing robes, and they were completely freaked out. In hindsight, we should have come in a little quieter than we did. We should have come in very quietly, gotten a monastery somewhere, and lived on the land, grew our food, and kept to ourselves. But we didn’t. And that’s Father [who] didn’t; you know, he was in everybody’s face. “We’re gonna do this. We’re gonna do that. We want this. We want that.” He was gonna go in and take over, and put in another restaurant. Well, that’s the way you do it in L.A., but that’s not the way you do it on the island. And they completely shut us down.
So, before going, you guys didn’t really foresee any of this animosity; you kind of had a positive outlook?
Oh no, not at all. We were shocked. We were shocked that people didn’t love us and embrace us, and knew who we were, and weren’t into the same program that we were gonna offer them. And it was a rude awakening on all levels. Nobody would hire us. Nobody would let us get a toehold for a restaurant or anything. The Source restaurant was the goose that laid the golden egg, but when they left that, we were getting some money per month from the sale of the restaurant, but it wasn’t enough to keep everything going for such a large family, without anybody else working. And when nobody could get jobs and nobody else was working… very quickly, it was the end. And, when we were in San Francisco–when we left Hawaii the first time and went to San Francisco and Father saw that we weren’t gonna make it there the way we wanted–he tried to disperse us. He said, “I’ve given you everything that I know and maybe it’s time; maybe this is the end. Maybe we’re not gonna go on and live the rest of our lives together; it might be another lifetime. And maybe we were just pioneers of the start of something that will end up having some good. It might not be our time to completely finish it.” And he really talked about dispersing the family; we wouldn’t go. We would not leave.
Wasn’t one of the principals, though—it was in the commandments—the concept of, kind of, outgrowing [the whole collective] in the first place?
Yeah, but how do you know when you’ve outgrown something? We felt like, oh my god, we were so young, we couldn’t survive without him, we didn’t want to leave each other, and we didn’t want to go back out in that world by ourselves, or with onesies and twosies. We were really a group that was in one frequency and it was held together by the glue of father (that frequency) and it was working. And we were living outside of time, and we were living in spiritual law, and we were living in mystery teaching, and it was exciting. It wasn’t like it wasn’t exciting, or [it was] boring. There was no place else anybody would have rather have been.
I mean, it’s a classic story. He outgrew Yogi Bhajan.
Right.
It’s the same thing with Siddhartha… whatever.
He outgrew us.
Do you think anybody was preparing for that concept that you wouldn’t be together, or that you would move on?
Of course, there was a few, but they didn’t stay; they left. So, what I’m saying is, the core of the group–the group that stayed together–no, none of us ever saw that. We had never gotten to the point of outgrowing it, or the thought of leaving, or doing anything else. He outgrew us. But see, that was his M.O. If you trace it back to the time he left his mom, basically, or, when he was 14, his M.O. was, when something served its purpose, he left and he moved on. Because he was on his own path and journey, and he kept leaving what no longer served him. He left his first wife and child in Ohio, because he knew he had a destiny. He was driven by a sole destiny and he wanted to know what it was. He wanted something higher. He wanted spirit from the beginning. He just didn’t know what it was or how to get it. And when he was driven to L.A., he got married to Elaine Baker, they opened up the Old World and the Aware Inn, and had two very successful restaurants. And he left her, married Dora, left Dora and opened The Source. Married Robin and left Robin, in the family. That’s what happened in the family. Robin started out–it was Jim and Robin Baker. There came a part where he said, “I’m no longer Jim Baker” and he started talking about Jim Baker in the third person. He used to laugh at him (Jim Baker). He would say, “I love that guy, but oh my god.” You know, [Jim] was like the ultimate animal man. And he said, “I’m on my journey now to—my evolutionary process, to a spiritual being.”
Well there’s a lot of reference to his father leaving and that concept of looking for a father figure, but there’s not a lot of speculation regarding the fact that his father left with his sister. What role–?
He never had a father, so he did find a father figure in Yogi Bhajan.
But, I mean, didn’t his biological father leave with his sibling–his sister–when he was young?
Yes.
Did that affect him — do you feel — in any way?
Of course it did. [His father] left with [Jim’s] older sister, because his older sister tried to kill him when he was a baby. She pushed him down the stairs in a baby carriage, because she was so jealous of him. And it was the depression and they were poor and his mom could not take care of both of them.
Yikes.
I know.
So [the sister] left with the father and he stayed with the mom. You know, he was on a search for a father figure and he did find that in Yogi Bhajan. I know he saw the yogi as his father, and we always saw the yogi as our spiritual grandfather. But, he knew that he did not want to continue bringing what the East had, because the East would only take you to a certain point in their teachings. They left no room for anything new, and that’s what the whole Aquarian age was about. It was a new energy coming up and it had to be flexible to suit the times. And he totally believed that the next spiritual awakening would come from the West. You know, L.A., or whatever–that mentality. And he wanted to merge that and take it higher. And he knew, at one point, he had to leave the yogi. He loved the yogi. He loved the yogi until the day he died. But, the yogi would only go so far, and he knew that he was being guided to do other things another way, so he went out and did that. That did not prevail in the family with the sons. The people in the family did not get to that point where they went, “Wow. I’ve gone beyond this. I’m gonna now go out and do it my own way.” There was 1 or 2 people that left because—not because they thought that they could do it better, or they had gone as far as they could go with him; it was because of certain programs in the family, or teachings, and it had to do around sexual practices. They didn’t agree with it.
>When he felt that he outgrew the family, do you feel like, at a certain point, he was worried that he was doing a disservice; that people wouldn’t grow with him there?
There was a point where he knew that we all had to go out, like birds out of the nest, and start our own path. We were too hooked onto his path. And he kept saying, “This is my journey and we all have to do our own journey. It’s the school of life, nobody can take your test but you. Nobody can take your exams. You have to do your own graduation. And just be your own journey and path. I’ve given you everything.”
I just felt that was a really important thing to touch on, since that’s something that does differentiate it from that category of cults that people seem to want to put it in, it’s that he did seem to want individuals to thrive, versus [needing them to] rely on him.
Right. And he did want us to thrive. And “cult,” please make this very clear, “cult” is culture; it’s one’s way of life, and it says that in the dictionary. It’s only in America that it has a bad connotation and then, once again, it goes back to Manson, if you want to know the truth. The media needed a buzz word, and that became one of the buzz words to put on hippies and the flower children and people living communally, when they didn’t know what to do with it.
And then, there’s also something that you say—it’s actually in the book. I was gonna try not to go back to it too much, because [we’re] hyping the film, or whatever, but it’s all interconnected. Basically, one of the things that interested me is that, you said that when you ran into [Jim] at the Source and you reconnected with him, that you didn’t feel like [Baker] was controlling the energy. Do you feel like it remained that way, up until the end?
What do you mean, “controlling the energy?”
Well, you said that, when you went [to the Source] to look for the models for the photo shoot, that you didn’t feel like he was controlling the energy that existed between you. Like, that he was in control of it; that it was [simply] there.
Okay, I don’t know what you’re asking me, but what I felt was… I turned around and I recognized him on a soul level for our timing, and it was—I’ll tell you what it was like. It can be referred to as a rapture, or a quickening; something that happens in an instant and you know it’s right and it takes you to a different level. That’s what happened with us.
I just took that, because that was a quote, where you were like… that you experienced that, but you didn’t feel like… It just said, “I didn’t feel like he was controlling the energy.” You know what I mean? Not that he wasn’t involved in it, but that it wasn’t like a manipulative energy.
No, no, it wasn’t manipulated at all. It was very cosmic and it was like I was uncoded. It’s like when something’s coded. Or, unlocked. And his frequency to me, brought my frequency up to a balance with his. It was like, in an instant, I knew everything that I was supposed to know. I knew I was supposed to be with him. I knew that I was supposed to be there. I knew why. And I also knew that we deal in eternity—this is really important. So, that thread, be it last-life incarnation, this incarnation, or next incarnation, it exists. And, you know, when he died—when he passed over–it’s like, just because somebody has died, doesn’t mean that they’re not still there. The thread is the thread and we work cosmically with each other. And we did that in the family; we existed in those cosmic spiritual realms. We saw that they existed, and they work, and that there’s something true to it. I’ve been with him for the last 40 years. We’ve still been doing the work, is the point of that thread. That thread has never been broken.
Is there anything, right now, that you feel, specifically, that he would just get a kick out of, that’s happening in the world, or that you’ve seen recently, that he would trip out on–just the whole concept?
Well, he was always very adaptable to the times and he always said the vernacular of the times. You know, tune in to the generations. What are they talking about? How are they talking? Where are things going? And be part of it. Understand it, adapt to it, and use it. So, I think he’s laughing about everything. I think these are great times, I think these are exciting times, and I think these are times that he really would have enjoyed, and I’m sure he is, because a lot can get done. With the internet, like I said, you can just… you know, in 3 seconds, have whatever you want to say all over the world. He would have loved that.
I think that point that you’re talking about, about him being adaptable, is also something [important]. Because, I can see the danger in certain things and how people can view them one way, versus another way. Obviously. So, I think that adaptability is something that I’m interested in, because there’s a lot of things that can seem contradictory. I mean, you refer to the sexual aspects of the family, but do you feel like it’s more like him adapting as things evolved, as opposed to writing things off, or contradicting himself?
He never wrote anything off, because he knew that there was a reason for it, a lesson, or [it was] part of moving forward knowing that you did not want that. You know, to make things very clear. So, he never wrote anything off.
I mean, he had these principals, but then they seemed to change. But, do you just think that was more of an evolution?
Yes, and they changed all the time. He had certain principals when he started the family as Jim Baker, and he totally moved out of that and it changed everything. And, when he left and the family dispersed, for a long time, we were very confused, because we tried to get what happened in the family, in that realm we were living in–which was not man’s law, but spiritual law—and a lot of us tried to take that and bring it down to man’s law and make it fit, but it doesn’t, because they’re two different things. And so, a lot of people got very confused about things. Like, “Well he changed this. He said that. Then he did this. And then… but, wait a minute, he had 14 wives, and it doesn’t work in this realm.” Well no, but we didn’t live in this realm. People are very confused… some of them. Still.
He also had this energy that seemed to bring everybody together on the same level. But then, the energy that you guys directed towards him, also… I mean, all that energy together is what kept that thing afloat.
Oh, absolutely.
When he left, or when he passed, and you guys went back into society– Well, you guys refer to it as “Maya,” is that correct?
Right. Or, just, you know, back to Earth *laughs*
Yeah, back to Earth. It’s interesting, because I think that a lot of the way that it’s being perceived, is by people that believe that everybody was brainwashed, or everybody was caught in… whatever. The reality of how I see a lot of this is that you returned to a society with barrages of advertising and corporate agendas aimed towards you. And it almost seems like you guys returned to a brainwashing society that you’d been able to isolate yourselves from, to a certain degree, by forming your own community.
We actually left it. It would be like a past incarnation, and all of a sudden, we had to go back and remember. It was a past incarnation; we had died to everything, once we came into the family. We never thought we were ever going to go back, ever. So, that was brutal for us to go back. It was like being sent back. You know, we were sent back into something that we left and were happy to leave. And now, we were sent back.
And you had to figure out how to take the stuff–the teachings that you had–and apply them. Eventually, did you just figure it out, or was it just difficult to figure out how to apply these principals?
It was both, because then that became our journey and our path. And, what do we do? Do we just apply it silently to our everyday lives? Do we become silent within it, or go out in the woods and then join a monastery? Or, do we join society and try to figure that out? It’s the same as everybody’s doing right now, with everything in their lives, and with the realization that we… You know, Jesus was the prototype for the next evolutionary process of mankind. And when I said that Jim Baker was “the ultimate animal man,” well, that’s a morphing from an animal to a human. And you have the ultimate animal man, but some day there’s the spiritual man, which Jesus came as a prototype for. And as a spiritual being for this new age, a lot of the crap—you can’t bring it with you, so you can’t be relating to ego, or personality; you have to relate soul to soul, and that’s from the heart. And we believed that the heart would be the new mind for the new age. And that’s why Jesus always pointed to his heart. You know, that’s a whole teaching in itself, but… So, when we came back to where man was dealing, still, from his head, and ego, and personality, we all fell into it; we were in it again. It was hard being out here on our own and not being barraged by it. A lot of family members got involved with drugs. Cocaine. They just could not handle the reality of it. They didn’t know what to do. And, back then, we were told that cocaine was not addictive. You know, “it would be okay.”
There is a story in the book where they do some cocaine, on the way to a show, I believe. But it seems like it’s more of the threat of where things could lead, versus having control over what you’re doing and being able to do it in moderation.
Right. Father would do things if they were brought to him. And he wanted us to experience. He didn’t want to keep us completely cut off of what was happening out there. So, if cocaine—somebody brought it in once, he said, “Okay, let’s do it.” So people experienced that; then it was never done again.
Yeah. Also, there’s a thing where you mentioned once, where you said that Jim Baker the man would reveal himself, on occasion, and it would confuse people. Can you think of any specific instances where that happened?
Well, he loved old musicals, old movies, and he’d always be quoting lines from them. Well, he did that throughout the family time. He did it in some of the music that he did. And he’d go, “That’d be Jim Baker coming through,” and laugh. You know, stuff like that. Is that what you mean?
That’s what gets me, is that there’s this duality to everything and a lot of the things that could turn people away, to me, makes it more endearing.
Yeah.
Basically, it says to you, “I’m in this human form, “ and, to me, that elevates people. I mean, to some people, it could detour them rather than, you know, “You’re not just this entity.” But, to me, it seems like it’s more like, “Look, we’re all these people that can ascend.”
He said, “Do not ever disrespect your human form. See the clothes that you are now wearing and operating in.” He said, “The trick is not to kill that animal, but to keep your foot on its neck. You be in charge of it, but that animal will serve you well. That’s your body this life. You have an animal body . You must take care of it, you must respect it, but you must stay in control of it.” And that was the whole thing.
Wasn’t there a point where he threw your tapes away—your mediation tapes—or, at one point, he didn’t want to be recorded?
Oh, yes he did.
*both laugh*
So, I’m going along just fine, documenting, recording, saving the legacy, blah, blah blah. And then we go through this period where he goes, “Wait a minute, am I falling into a trap, here? Dogma.” He said, “I don’t want this to end up dogma.” He said, “We’re living in the now. Maybe we shouldn’t be doing this.” And, of course, I flipped out. So, in the middle of the night, he had about 8 sons come in; take all the tapes; take them to the restaurant dumpster; tear them apart, so I could never put them back together again; and threw them away. And that, kind of, cleared him, as far as he was concerned. He took action on it and he said, “We’re not gonna make this dogma.” But I knew my role, and he counted on it. And, after almost leaving the family and flipping out, and yelling and screaming at him, where everybody was absolutely agasp—you just didn’t do that—I said, “okay.” But I just went and got my tape recorder, sat down the next morning in class, and starting taping them again. And he just looked at me and he laughed. And he looked at the family and said, “Well, I tried.” And so, that was enough that it got him off the hook. And then, two days later, he said, “Isis you are to record everything, you are to document and archive everything, because what you are doing will save the legacy.” I even have a letter that he posted about that. And then, from then on, I had free reign to do that.
The first thing that I thought about was like, “Wait a minute. There’s this concept of this Eternal Now and focus on the present and, if there’s this idea that you guys are gonna be together forever, where’s the purpose in documenting it?” I mean, I see it now…
He lived in both worlds and he always had a plan B, because that’s just the way he was raised. He prepared for every, and all, eventualities, and that’s what he did. So, as much as we were living [that way], he knew that, at any time, it could turn on a dime, because he saw it his whole life. He saw it with the yogi. He saw it with himself. He saw it within society. And, he probably knew that he wasn’t going to be around that long, either. I think he knew.
[All images used courtesy of Isis Aquarian-Source Archives]
The Source Family documentary is available now on DVD from Drag City records
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