The Source on Sunset Strip

The Source on Sunset Strip was a health food restaurant back in the seventies, run by a big white bearded guy named Father Yod, who had a commune full of white robed kids, mostly runaways, in a big mansion up in the Hollywood Hills. He reminded me of Odin. Talking a good spiritual rap for the kids and the tourists. He had a meditation chamber built off to the side of his restaurant in the gravel parking lot. Inside this meditation room would sit maybe a dozen of his acolytes, rapt, hanging on every word from the old coot. He had a rep as being a short fuse; had done time for killing his wife and her lover. A real hustler dressed in white robes. I liked his gong. It was the first really big gong I had experienced and I saw its effect on the unsuspecting initiates into The Father’s cult. He hammered that thing and the room vibrated. That’s when I realized how easy it was to convince people to follow some crackbrained maniac using vibration. He eventually moved his scene to Hawaii where he crashed in a hang glider. He asked his followers to take him to the hospital because it seemed he had a broken back. They all agreed that this was just one more test from their teacher father figure. They showed that they believed in his divine nature and that he could easily heal himself. He died.