A Legacy Not Worth Saving

It is easy to forget about the many casualties of The Source Family, amidst the media flurry and exaggerated claims being made about Father Yod and 'life in the family', but there were more casualties from being in the family, than not.  Firstly, there is the emotional damage that Jim Baker left behind by impregnating three different women, during his reign over The Source Family.  One of those women was his own wife, Robin Baker (known as Ahom) who gave up her own pursuit and dream of becoming an actress in Hollywood when she met and married Jim Baker; whom she believed to be 'the love of her life.'  Robin Baker was as instrumental in the formation of The Source Family, as Jim Baker; in fact per Tim Garon who spent an entire year with Jim and Robin, prior to the formation of The Brotherhood of The Source; it was Robin's idea to start their own spiritual family, after Jim Baker decided to leave Yogi Bhajan.  Tim also stated that Jim Baker's reason for leaving the yogi was because Jim had found out that Bhajan was having sex with various women in his ashram!  But, Robin was young and beautiful when she met Jim Baker in the late sixties where she adopted/took on the role of a spiritual mentor or mother to those who came to her morning classes held at The Source Restaurant where some became inspired by her.  Because in the early days of The Source Family, Robin Baker embodied all of the qualities that you might expect to find in an Aquarian Age 'earthly spiritual mother':  beauty, warmth, compassion and kindness.  Robin embraced her new role as 'spiritual mother'; a complement to Jim Baker's role as 'earthly spiritual father.'  Most everyone who joined in the early days of the group referred to Robin Baker with the endearing term of Mother.  Robin was the inspiration for several of the young women who joined as she and her husband were laying (no pun intended) the foundation for their New Age Aquarian family.  But, Robin had no idea what was in store for her, or what she would have to endure in helping her husband to form his own Aquarian family; she didn't know that very soon after young women who had been inspired by her began to join would be approached by her husband soliciting some to bear his child to further his delusion of creating a super race of Aquarian children via his seed.  Jim Baker's plan to impregnate some of the young women who began to join his family came as a shock and a surprise to Robin, but she was now married to the man.  So, Robin Baker did her best to adapt and adjust to her husband's objective, hoping and praying that he might soon see the error of his ways and stop his pursuit of other women in the newly formed group; although that did not happen until the final days of his life.  Robin had already invested so much of her life in helping her husband create The Source Family, along with nurturing and cultivating relationships with other family members which combined with becoming pregnant with Jim Baker's child; she made the decision to remain in her demoted position within the family.  Because Jim Baker replaced Robin with another dark-haired young woman whom he became enamored who had joined the family; referring to her as his 'mother/angel' whom then all of his attention and focus was then centered, and where Susan (named Makushla) displaced Robin.  Susan aka Makushla was then waited on hand and foot and showered with praise and adoration, just as Father Yod and is still seen by some devote former family members as being the head of the defunct Source Family, because of her highly touted position of being 'Yahowha's mother/angel'. So, Robin Baker who was Jim Baker's only legal wife, during the entire course of The Source Family was removed from her role as spiritual mother and replaced with Makushla.  This is the kind of legacy that Jim Baker left behind; replacing the women or wives in his life with another who caught his eye, along with having children with different women before The Source Family and during its existence.  Jim Baker fathered three children with three different women, during the family daze; but he also had children prior to the formation of The Source Family.  Yet, this is the legacy that a couple of people are so intent on saving; a legacy of the use and misuse of women and children by a man who saw himself as god or messiah of the New Age.  Many men from Jim Baker's generation found it very easy to move from one woman to another; to leave their wives and children for another woman usually a younger or prettier version of the one they were leaving, and to continue fathering children whom they left with very little thought as to their financial support or security; which is exactly what happened with not only Robin Baker and her infant daughter fathered by Jim Baker, but the two other women whom he also impregnated, during the family.  Adding insult to injury, one of the more aggressive council women who still saw herself as one of 'Yahowha's women' tried to wrest any remaining financial interest or money from the sale of The Source Restaurant to go to the support of herself and the other women whom Jim Baker had surrounded himself, rather than to the children Jim Baker had sired in The Source Family. Wow, not any kind of legacy worth saving, in my mind; but more a tragic tale of one man leaving behind a wake of fatherless children and abandoned women!