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THE LAST GREAT CALIFORNIA HIPPIE COMMUNE IS STILL GOING STRONG

By Francky Knapp
April 29, 2019
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Image courtesy of Patty Paulsen and Sunburst Sanctuary

They came from the mountains, and kept to themselves. If you were lucky, you
might have seen them frolicking in the hills under the glow of the buttery,
golden hour sunshine that California does so well. Collectively, they were known
as “The Brotherhood of the Sun,” and in the 1970s, they emerged as one of the
most successful communes in US history. In a manner of speaking, that is,
because if we’ve learned anything from our past investigations into communes and
cults, it’s that these sort of things have an expiration date. Otherwise, things
get ugly, which is why we were surprised to learn that the Brotherhood not only
existed, but turned into “Sunburst Farms”: a multi million-dollar business. This
is the story of how one man’s dream gave birth to a Californian Camelot, a trip
steeped in idealism and salvation, complete with stallions, schooners, and
firearms. But most of all, it’s a fascinating tale of what happens when peace,
and making a profit, collide…

Image courtesy of Patty Paulsen and Sunburst Sanctuary

Our story begins in a Southern California psych ward in 1963. Local bricklayer
Norman Paulsen was trying to calm the voices in his head at Santa Barbara County
Hospital after an overdose on his medication; the same voices that would return
to him six years later, prompting him to found a haven away from the mounting
anxiety of the era. “The center was not holding,” writes Joan Didion about the
fall of the 1960s in Slouching Towards Bethlehem, “It was a country of
bankruptcy notices and commonplace reports of casual killings […] People were
missing. Children were missing. It was not a country in open revolution. It was
not a country under enemy siege. It was the United States of America in the
cold, late spring of 1967.” The Haight-Ashbury overflowed with pre-teen junkies,
and the Tate murders gave the counter culture a serious ice bath. Flower power
was at its tipping point when Paulsen tried to give the dream one last chance to
work.

The Haight-Ashbury in 1966. © William Gedney Duke University

To really understand the complexity of the 1960s, we recommend watching Ralph
Arlyck’s 2005 documentary, Following Sean, whose plot finds more parallels than
you’d think with Sunbursts’s story. The movie combines footage from 1967 and
2005 of a hippie boy, Sean, who fascinated Arlyck when he lived in San
Francisco. At barely four years old, he waltzed around Haight Street barefoot,
and talked about smoking weed. Truffaut was fascinated, and called Sean “a kid
of our modern times”, while the White House (which had a private screening) was
horrified. Folks predicted he’d become a genius stockbroker, or an addict.
Whatever his future held, outsiders thought it would fall into one of two
extremes, but couldn’t necessarily see a place for “hippie” culture to become
integrated into the norm. That’s where Sunburst becomes interesting.

 * 

Paulsen began leading meditation sessions at the end of the ’60s in an old ice
cream warehouse in Santa Barbara. Soon dozens of young folks from all walks of
life made it their mecca. By 1971, he’d amassed hundreds of followers and moved
to a nearly 160-acre ranch where they built teepees and adobe houses, planted
orchards, and herded Nubian goats and French Percheron horses (the sturdiest of
stallions). The goal was to consume cleanly, and only what they needed.

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There was a strict no drugs, no outside possessions, and no sex (outside of
marriage) policy. A member named Mehosh Dziadzio captured some beautiful images
of the period, and his snapshots paint a dreamy picture of Sunburst during its
glory years. “Before we started our day, we would join hands in a circle to
thank Mother Earth for the bounty she has given us and pray for the healing of
our precious planet, much like the native peoples who came before us,” explains
Dziadzio, now a professional photographer, on his website. “With self
sufficiency as our goal, we learned all the skills and the trades necessary in
working with the land. From cowboys to sailors, blacksmiths to weavers, store
keepers to bee keepers…”

Sunburst community

They were such busy bees that they started selling their produce to local
establishments. “Their image in the community was quite wholesome for a long
time,” explains Ernest, a Santa Barbara resident for over 40 years, “They were
way ahead of their time with nice fresh organic fruits and vegetables (great
avocados for 10 and 25 cents) granolas, and fresh carrot and vegetable juice on
order. Their markets were funky but clean, pleasant to go in.”

Market 3 in Goleta, Ca November 1978. Image courtesy of Sunburst Sanctuary.

“It was a different time,” Patty Paulsen, a member of Sunburst since 1975, told
us over the phone, “I was from the East Coast, but I felt this calling to
California. You couldn’t not follow it.” Like the majority of the Sunburst
followers, she was in her twenties and looking for a way of living that, she
says, deepened her understanding of “living with awareness and in a connection
with one another”.

Image Courtesy of Sunburst Sanctuary

She recalls that they ran a little café, “the Farmer and the Fisherman”, a
bakery, and eventually had a wholesale warehouse for shipping their produce
across the country under their newly adopted title of “Sunburst”. They came out
with a veggie-centric cookbook taught, “How to Get Protein Without Really
Trying”, and had a domino effect on other local businesses in the area to go
green. Come April of 1975, they were a $3 million business that, according to an
archival article in The Los Angeles Times, had a school for members’ children
and a 3,000-acre ranch adjacent to land owned by Ronald Reagan and John
Travolta”. It was the largest organic farm in the USA.

Image Courtesy of Sunburst Farms

“I don’t know what it was,” Patty says when asked about what made the commune
work, “It was something in the air. Something about being young, too.” She
pauses. “I think that when people hit age 28, something happened. They either
stayed or left, but something about that number brings in a big change – not
always bad, you know. But not always good. We were like a family”.

Image courtesy of Patty Paulsen and Sunburst Sanctuary

Ernest’s perception of the family, however, was that it really kept to itself.
“They were so insular nobody really knew what went on in their culture when they
were back at the commune,” he said, “They were driven in school buses into their
Sunburst Market stores every day. We would try to talk to the girls at the check
out, they just smiled and did not respond. [They were] all in hand-made tie dye
clothes, long hair, barefoot.” He recalls an odd run-in with their members when
he was a carpenter, when the city demolished old baseball field stands. He says
he went down with some friends to help take it apart in exchange for some
scraps, but “the Sunburst guys showed up in a big group and aggressively laid
claim to big chunks of it, demolished it like maniacs and loaded it on their
trucks.”

Sunburst Natural Foods Warehouse, Goleta Ca. March 1976. Image courtesy of Patty
Paulsen and Sunburst Sanctuary

“People didn’t always understand,” says Patty about the tension between the
commune and the community at large, “you hear the word ‘commune’ and you think
of all these extremes that just weren’t us. Everything has its ups and downs,
its roses and thorns. It’s up to you to dwell on either the thorn or the rose”.
When asked about the financial ups and downs of the commune? “Well the company
didn’t go public,” she says, “and in the late ’70s and ’80s… those were some
hard times”.

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Image courtesy of Patty Paulsen and Sunburst Sanctuary

Hard times is an understatement. The police “discovered that they had a stash of
serious weapons up on Gibralter Road at a strategic bend,” explains Ernest,
“with a plan to close the road when some doomsday event they thought was
imminent happened. That was the end of the party for the stores.” They found
M-14 military and Belgian assault rifles, which Patty says they purchased not as
doomsday effects, but to defend themselves against intruders in the then
isolated mountains. Paulsen also bought and spruced up 1920s schooners, which he
chartered to the local islands with members.

Image courtesy of Patty Paulsen and Sunburst Sanctuary

The commune, it seemed, had no trouble standing on its own two feet away from
the conventions of the city. “There was also a guy, a member who was a Green
Beret,” says Patty, “who Norm had people train with. Not everyone liked that.”
It’s a subject Patty is touches on openly, but doesn’t dwell on for long. Even
less so, when the topic of Paulsen’s mounting drug addiction comes into play.

Norman Paulsen

Paulsen, who passed in 2006, was a curious man. Patty talks about him lovingly,
as a leader who inevitably “had to carry the responsibility of a vision” that
was bigger than himself. His backstory, too, has all the eclectic trappings of a
20th century prophet; he was the son of a blind judge from Lompoc, Charley
Paulsen, who played piano at the local silent movie theatre. As young man, he
survived a 30-ft fall, and began seeking spiritual guidance through the
teachings of Paramahansa Yogananda, the man who brought yoga to America.

Centre: Paramahansa Yogananda

“Beginning in 1920, Yogananda was one of the first masters to bring meditation
and yoga science to the United States,” explains Sunburst on their site. “He
came from a rich lineage of enlightened teachers, beginning with the great
master Jesus working in conjunction with the ageless Himalayan yogi Babaji”.
When Paulsen bought the land for the original commune – thanks to a $6,000 from
a workers’ compensation settlement, and $50,000 from his mother – it was as the
torch bearer for Yoganada, and, as Patty says, one simple goal: “to meditate
together”.

Norman Paulsen. Image courtesy of Patty Paulsen and Sunburst Sanctuary

As early as 1971, Paulsen declared the Brotherhood to be a Christian non-profit
despite the fact that the commune was a mix of Christian, mystic, Kriya Yoga and
indigenous tribal beliefs (couldn’t hurt in terms of achieving a tax-free
status). By the late 1970s, Sunburst communities had expanded to cities in Utah,
Arizona, and Nevada, while Paulsen burned through their earnings on alcohol and
drugs. A 1982 Drug Enforcement Agency investigation found that he’d spend
$60,000 on narcotics, while members – who were defecting left and right – said
it was upwards of $200,000. In a 1986 interview with the LA Times, former member
Michael Ableman recalls the day he left. “Norm was sitting in his house, in a
very dark room, with his shirt off, and he was quite drunk. He said to me: ‘I am
the man they call Jesus of Nazareth. If you believe me you can stay. If not, get
out.’ I was told to be out of there by the next day.”

Norman Paulsen

The disparities between what higher-ups in the commune were earning, compared
with what those who were farming during 12-hour days, was also of concern.
Paulsen was driving fancy cars and buying silver horse saddles. “He wasn’t a
drug addict,” Patty says defiantly when asked about Paulsen’s spending. “There
were no clear instructions back then like today, no internet, when you were
taking medication.” In the same interview with the LA Times, Paulsen chalked
down his drug use to his years of absorbing everyone else’s energy. “You can’t
sit down and talk to someone without exchanging energy with them,” he said. “If
that person has negative thoughts, that leaves a residue of negative energy on
the one who’s trying to help. All that took its toll on me.” In the game of
revisiting such complex history, the truth tends to live somewhere between the
extremes.

Image courtesy of Patty Paulsen and Sunburst Sanctuary

Patty changes the subject back to meditation. It’s clear that now, after all
these years, the community has pardoned Paulsen by way of sweeping the painful
parts of his past far, far under the rug. His smiling face appears frequently on
their Facebook page — the emblem of their martyr, but also, family member.

Norm Paulsen. Image courtesy of Patty Paulsen and Sunburst Sanctuary.

For over two-dozen die-hard brethren, hope remains. The 1990s saw Sunburst’s
return to California, and about a dozen miles southeast of Lompoc and at Nojoqui
Farms, you’ll still find their community camped out in what arguably looks like
paradise at Sunburst Sanctuary. “We have about 30 old timers still here,” Patty
says. “We’re still farming, but it’s for ourselves.” They’ve even got a website
that explains everything from their online courses in meditation and yoga
retreats to a paleontology workshop, involving a hike to view onsite fossil
specimens at the Sunburst Sanctuary. Books by Paulsen are also still available
from the website.

© Sunburst Sanctuary

The future of Sunburst remains uncertain. On so many practical levels, the
community has its hands tied by its classification as a religious organisation
on an agricultural preserve (bringing in new members is hard, when you can’t
build the structures to house them). Yet, the degree to which Sunburst has
carved out a place for itself online and in social media is impressive. Patty
says that anyone is welcome to attend their Sunday service, which is
non-denominational and gets to the heart of what Sunburst was always about:
making the time to meditate together.

Image courtesy of Patty Paulsen and Sunburst Sanctuary

“We have one last store here in Solvang, [California],” she says, referring to
the last vestige of what basically became hippie entrepreneurialism. Firearms,
etc. aside, there’s something to be said about the commitment and devotion to
the ideal of community and how long some followers are willing to carry that
dream into the next generation. The media would have loved to see the entire
commune brought to its knees – and indeed it was, on several occasions. Yet,
Sunburst remains remarkable for avoiding the extremist fate so many predicted
for counter-culture groups in the ’70s (selling out, or burning out). It was,
and still is, a happy anomaly — and there’s no way to neatly tie up their story
in a bittersweet bow, simply because it’s not finished being told.

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FROM THE ARCHIVES

A Brief Compendium of Secret-ish Oddball Clubs and Societies Let’s Window Shop
for French Fairytale Homes Again Let’s House Hunt for that All-American Utopian
Commune. Just in Case.




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Last Updated on April 29, 2019 by Francky Knapp



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