I experienced a lot of in meditation. The light and deep sincerity and longing. So it was my natural inclination to want to share that. He never asked me to do any kind of recruiting or anything… this was all me. I was a zealot. I took up this banner and ran with it.
We stayed in Ft. Lauderdale for about 7 years. After our first Satsang we were only there for 4 years. We had Satsang each week, movies during the week, outings on Sundays.. we’d have a Knowing Session every 4 or 5 months maybe.. which was where people that didn’t have this experience could have it revealed. We treated it as a very sacred thing. Because that’s what the whole meeting was about. That’s why we had them. Making people aware that they were more than they think they are and that there’s a way to experience their divine nature directly without anything in-between. That’s why we were having the meetings. Very clear. It’s a mystical experience that the meetings were formulated around. There was no other reason to meet.
Eventually, we moved to West Hollywood. Angelo had an apartment in Los Angeles that he had subletted for 30 years (since he was a teen wanna-be actor). One day, he told me there was an apartment that had opened up next door to him and I should go there because he intended to move back to L.A. I think he was only in Florida to learn hypnotherapy techniques. He had always intended to move back to L.A. And I had wanted to go there since I was a kid. So as far as I knew, when we left it was just time for us to move. Angelo moved first and spent months supposedly looking for a place for us to live together. There was like 7 of us at that time that wanted to go. We were all living together so we had to stay behind and sell the two properties (that Angelo owned and we lived in.) So at 27 years old, I found myself caravaning across the country with 6 other people to this big house in West Hollywood. I was very excited. I couldn’t wait to live there.
Satsang in West Hollywood had already started before we moved there. Angelo had already started meeting people and he was already having little satsangs in his apartment. While we were still in Florida, we would send them little gifts of prashad in the mail (little sweets they could have in their meetings.) And we would also send them tapes of us playing music so he could play it on his little cassette tape and they could sing along to the tape. Singing and music were part of the meeting. You sing after sharing satsang and then you have prashad (where you give out food.) That was the format of it.
So we arrived from Florida and moved into this big old green type house built in 1917 that was really run down. We fixed it up and had a commune-style house where 7 of us lived with a very large living room where we had Satsang. We invited anyone that wanted to come. Because this experience called The Knowledge was supposed to be for everyone. It was in L.A. that he changed the name of the experience to “The Knowing.” I think a lot of people knew about The Knowledge and I think he started wanting to personalize it more and make it ‘his.’ I think this was when he started making things a little bit more about him. The people in LA were a little more hip… savvy… more prone to have a BS meter than the people in Florida were. So he had to change the name so people wouldn’t think it was the same technique as what was so freely available elsewhere. And I remember that was one of the first changes that in LA. It seemed to make sense at the time to me because we were doing a day-in day-out work on ourselves. An astringent examination of our consciousness… every day. And the people who were giving out The Knowledge would basically come in for a weekend seminar and have The Knowledge revealed and then leave. It wasn’t their whole life. We were like a monastery-type setup.
I guess you could call Angelo a part-time teacher at this time. As far as I know no one had ever referred to him as a Master. Hardly even as a teacher. He had an entire gay lifestyle that he was still actively engaged in. We lived in West Hollywood -- which is the gay capital of the US following San Francisco. And as far as I know, he had a very active gay lifestyle. I didn’t really care. I wasn’t gay and I was into the spiritual aspect of what we were doing so none of that mattered to me. I thought that whoever wanted to meditate in this experience should be allowed to. So no, although Angelo “led” the group, he was not engaged in the monastic life himself. He lived in an apartment. He had his own private life that a lot of us didn’t know about or think about. He oversaw us and made sure that we had activities to do at least 5 nights a week.
He was a Guide really. It was very moving because he was excited about this experience of The Knowledge (which he turned into The Knowing.) He seemed excited about these meetings. Excited about preparing people with knowledge and understanding. Making them sensitive to the fact that there’s more… that you don’t really know who you are til you’re meditating in this experience. And eventually showing that to them. He used a tradition. A Hindu tradition where you come in front of the teacher and ask for an experience to be revealed to you and the teacher knows if you’re ready or not. At this time it was understood the opportunity was going to be offered every few months.
There were always two Satsangs a week. Even in Florida (I forgot about that.) Angelo shared on Thursdays and he wanted me to share on Sundays. And everybody that was really sincere was expected to show up. And then other things were added. About a year after we arrived in L.A. we started having a Tuesday night meditation where people would get together to meditate. By this time there were 20-40 people. And then we started having a dinner on Wednesday nights. We had dinner at our house with the people that lived there. Maybe one or two other people that were considered the very close older disciples and Angelo. And then he decided that there was a whole bunch of other people so why not let them have their own dinner at a different house. Then after dinner we would go over to the other house and Angelo would lead us all on a walk around the neighborhood. So that became something everyone was expected to go to as well. Oh, and we always had class on Monday night. This was for our psychology work. Where we go and have primal scream. You’d interpret your dreams and work them out. There were probably about 12 people in the first class in L.A. And again, it was a mix of his patients and those of us in Satsang. Friday night was movie night. And we all went together. That was expected too. People were expected to be there for spiritual discipline. Even if he wasn’t there. I think at this point Angelo was taking on the mantle of, at least a teacher, where he felt that he knew better and that all of these people were coming to him for guidance… spiritual guidance. And he was offering a framework where they could be constantly reminded of their nature thru these different events.
