Next To No Time

Photo courtesy of Isis Aquarian, Source Family Archives, from the book "The Source: The Untold Story of Father Yod, Ya Ho Wa 13 and The Source Family" (Process).

Ya Ho Wa 13 was the music outlet of the Source Family, a communal group that numbered 160 at its height in the early 70s and lived together in a mansion in the Hollywood Hills. They were led by their “Earthly Spiritual Father” Jim Baker, later called Father Yod then Yahowha—an organic-restaurant owning, Rolls Royce driving, ex-Marine judo expert and convicted felon turned yoga practitioner and surveyor of religion and culture. He died after a hang-gliding crash in 1975. The Family released nine Ya Ho Wa 13 albums of improvised invocations on their own Higher Key imprint. Sixty-five were recorded in all. It is some of the most singular music of all time. A book written by Family historian Isis Aquarian was published last year, revealing much of the mystery that was/is the Source Family and reinvigorating public interest. Ya Ho Wa 13 has also entered into a period of re-activation. I talked to Djin Aquarian, their deep-spirited guitarist about his and the band’s recent activities and other things of then and now. Vice: Do you think people will ever live in outer space? Djin Aquarian: If there's a Starbucks. We are already living in outer space, that's where this Earth is. All that's necessary is a hospitable environment—a planet, a moon, a space station, etc. The perplexing question is can we live in inner space, which is where we suffer from the self-imposed alienation from our higher self? Timothy Leary was sure that outer-space colonization was an evolutionary surety encoded in our DNA and it appears he was right. It's Yahowha's mission to establish a heaven-on-Earth colony of 144,000 light beings to exemplify how good we could have it on Earth if we want to. Do you feel that music is a means to channeling other planes of existence? Music can definitely do that when its creators and players are in sync with that purpose. Ya Ho Wa 13's new album is called "Sonic Portation" because that's what we do. Father was well aware of the vibratory and mental nature of the universe and that each plane has its vibratory frequency which when tuned into could transport one’s consciousness into that vibration and simulate the actual experience. The truth is that it's all within us right here and now. Music, art, yoga, poetry are all means of attuning to those inner planes and creating channels to the outer self where we are usually absorbed and struggling within those limited confines of the physical senses. What inspired the core group of you, Sunflower and Octavius to get back together? I think I can speak for the band when I say, from our timelines of awareness, we can see a great cosmic hand moving and shaping realities to serve its purpose. I believe Ya Ho Wa 13 is inspired by an urgent need and desire in humanity for a great planetary awakening which the music and art that stays within the more commercial perimeters cannot deliver. Our music, as you know, is shamanic in its nature and channeled in the Eternal Now, tailor-made for the audience in house. It's kind of an organic conscious revival experience taking you from a death state of consciousness into a new-life state. Do you do anything different now when you’re playing compared to when you were living with the Family and recording at the Mother House? It's only different by place and time—spirit is carried through and above these mortal conditions. Now though, the band must recreate the conditions necessary to bring the sounds through coherently and that's what's harder for us to produce seeing as we are not commanding venues like the Rolling Stones. Brion Gysin called the regular practice of magic “a form of psychic hygiene.” Would you say the same thing applies to your routines in the Family? Father used to say everything is a magical act and is in fact a product of magic when seen correctly. Hygiene of body, which may seem as mundane, is of paramount importance to us as well as hygiene of the psychic nature. I would be very careful to generalize as to what form of magic Brion was referring to, but I will say that if it's psychic hygiene that you are aiming to achieve, our 8th commandment is the safe way to go. It includes singing the Most Ancient Name of God YOD HEY VAU HEY>>>>>>YAHOWHA, and is the best way bar none. That plus the 4th commandment of “harmlessness to all living.” Are these aspects of the Family embedded in the music? The lifestyle is only embedded in the music when we practice the lifestyle together and then play. We will be traveling together a lot this year and it remains to be seen if the band will actually live the prescribed lifestyle of Father Yod/. I fully believe though that the music will reflect the harmony of our unity. That's one of the reasons we do a Star Exercise on stage with the audience before we begin [this is a Family meditation ritual involving a series of breaths and affirmations performed while standing with legs spread apart and arms outstretched to form the shape of a star—Ed]. Your guitar playing seems like it has no points of reference. What were/are your inspirations? It is without reference. It's also very stressful in a good but different way than if I were to have parts memorized and technically perfect. There's room for "outside/inside" forces to play through me along with my ego. My inspiration is mainly Father Yod who gave me the space and the tools to let what was inside me out. I heard other sounds and voices in the wood, metal, and air vibrations of guitars. And life in general is music to me. I hear it in everything all the time. I guess it's a sort of divine madness. I’ve been reading a book of Sufi teachings called The Mysticism of Sound and Music that refers to music as “the beginning and the end of the universe.” Do you think that’s right? Yeah, of course, music is what everything is doing to be what it is. Pythagoras called it the harmony of the spheres, which goes for atoms as well as stars. Time is obliterated in eternity and music is what we call the effect of the dance of life elements in sound, and it goes from infinite past to infinite future as an eternal stream. Time is the arbitrary conscious divisional measurement of the space between points of matter. So the answers have always been here in the Eternal Now where past and future merge. History repeats itself, so of course what we do not learn we must be taught so the future can be a repetition of the past or something new in a relative sense. Father said music is the beginning and the ending and the beginning again ad infinitum. Do you think that the end of the Mayan calendar in 2012 predicts the end of time? Well if the José Argüelles had his way, the Mayan calendar would be a more accurate replacement for our Greco Roman calendar and in that sense in 2012 time as we know it would end. But will humans come to an end in 2012? No. Will consciousness make a major shift? It is in the process of doing so as we speak, and that will cause a shift in perception of time as we know it. Do you feel that there is an expiration date on humanity at all? Humanity has expired before and returned. Spirit lives forever whenever the right conditions are present. Humanity, like love, is a quality of a being that is quite evolutionarily different than the animal man. A “human” is a moral, altruistic, ethical being and is different than the “man” who survived the ice age. How about Ya Ho Wa 13, is there an expiration date on you guys? There's an expiration date on everything. To expire is to breathe out and to inspire is to breathe in. Right now YaHoWa13 is on the in-breath and we would love for this in-breath to last a while and inspire the great Yahowha vision of a loving peaceful world community. TRES WARREN