by Karen Jonson
“When I was called back upstairs a few minutes later, I found a groggy Prakashanand sitting in a rocking chair and was directed to join the two preachers kneeling at his feet. He told me with a sigh that his ‘divine mood’ had been ‘upset unnecessarily.’ Later, he explained what had happened in a written statement: ‘I felt the situation was very negative so I turned my mind away from that side, and it, thus, went into total ecstasy. Because I was standing at the time, so, I think, my body fell on the ground.’”
(*This number was probably provided by Barsana Dham, but it is not accurate. At the most, he had maybe two or three hundred devotees around the world.)
I would remember this article years later and be grateful it existed.
PART THREE
In the Dark
Curiouser and Curiouser
“Acquire the transcendental knowledge from a self-realized
Master by humble reverence, by sincere inquiry, and by service.
The empowered ones, who have realized the truth, will teach you.”
— Bhagavad Gita 4:34
“You promise them heaven,
they’ll follow you to hell.”
— Harvey Washington,
Imprisoned Pimp, Newsweek
45
Where is Swamiji’s Guru?
The Ten-Year Code of Silence
IN HINDUISM, GURUS HAVE GURUS—but Swamiji never talked about his guru throughout the entire decade of the 1990s.
In 1992, a visiting devotee mentioned another guru to me. I wasn’t interested because I was hooked on Swamiji, but when I moved into the ashram I became more curious. I would hear snippets of conversations that made me wonder who this other mysterious guru was. I also wondered why Swamiji didn’t talk about him.
I later learned that the people who knew about his guru, like the preachers and several of his long-time devotees, had been sworn to silence. It was like some fraternity initiation secret. It was so hush-hush that Swamiji had even taken his book, The Science of Devotion and Grace, off the market in the 1990s. When I asked for a copy, I was told none were available. But when I mentioned my disappointment to some others, a long-time devotee said, “That’s odd. I know for a fact there are dozens of boxes of it in Ron’s garage up in New York.”
On my next visit to the ashram, I begged one of the preachers for a copy. She told me she would check, but later abruptly informed me the book was no longer available. Luckily, a fellow devotee took pity on me and lent me his copy. I devoured the book from cover to cover—twice—and took copious notes before returning it to him. But it turned out to be a disappointment, since it only covered material that Swamiji had already revealed in his speeches. I wondered why it had been kept under wraps.
After seeing a photograph of a handsome guru in one of the preacher’s books, I assumed this was the man of mystery, and I became intensely curious about him. The image was of one of the most beautiful men I have ever seen. He appeared to be about forty years old with features that looked more American Indian than East Indian. He had high cheekbones and a large nose. His hair was black, wavy, and fell to his breastbone. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, just a beaded necklace. His chest and shoulders were wide and muscular, and his light brown skin was unblemished. He appeared to be leaning back in a chair relaxing. His eyes were half-closed kind of romantically, and he had the appearance of being deep in devotional thought.
Now this is a guru I could fall in love with, I thought. Although I was devoted to Swamiji, I could never honestly say that I loved him; not like so many other devotees claimed they did. But I wanted to love my guru, since I believed that was fundamental to achieving God realization. Maybe I could love this guru instead, I thought, if only I got the chance to know him.
The photo haunted me. A few years later, in 1996, I saw an image of the man again when a long-time devotee named Kamani visited the ashram from Singapore. I went to her room to ask her to join me for lunch in town, and noticed she had a cassette with a photograph of the same man.
“Is this Swamiji’s guru?” I asked.
“Yes. But I’m not allowed to talk about him,” she said nervously, taking the tape from my hand and burying it under some clothing in her suitcase.
“Why not?”
“I’m not sure. When I arrived here, Sureshwari gave me a stern talk, telling me not to say a word about him to anyone.”
“Have you met him?”
“Yes,” she said with a girlish smile.
“Tell me something about him, anything,” I begged.
“Okay, but not here,” she said in a whisper.
Later, while we were walking on the path around Town Lake in downtown Austin, I asked her again: “What is Swamiji’s guru like?”
She smiled like a schoolgirl with a crush. “He’s nothing like Swamiji. He’s very vivacious and outgoing. He’s a powerful speaker and gives the most amazing lectures. He’ll pull you into a big hug.”
“He once told us we can envision Krishna any way we want. For example, if Krishna were here on the Earth today he would play cricket and baseball, just like any other little boy. So we can picture him out on the baseball field in his uniform throwing balls and swinging bats, instead of the traditional image of him wearing his dhoti and playing on his flute as he herds cows.”
Her giddiness about this guru made me even more desirous to know him. It was obvious her devotional heartstrings were pulled by this other guru, not by Swamiji. She soon left Barsana Dham and never returned.
Not too long after that I was talking to a housemate, Ellen, in her bedroom. She had been a devotee of Swamiji since the late 1970s. I noticed a copy of his first book on her nightstand and mentioned I had been trying to get a hold of one. To my surprise, she told me it had been taken off the market and hidden away.
“It was because it contained his guru’s bio and picture. Swamiji did not want his devotees to worship any other guru. At first, he had us tear out the photos of his guru. Then he just stopped selling the book.”
I was amazed by this revelation.
“In those days, Swamiji talked about him occasionally. We even had his photo on our altars. Swamiji took twelve of his devotees from New Zealand to meet his guru in India in the mid-1980s. He said he would take more on a second trip. But when he returned, he announced that he wouldn’t take any more devotees to India. It turned out that a few had left Swamiji for his guru.”
Now my curiosity was piqued. Who was this other guru who had the power to pull devotees away from Swamiji?
I wouldn’t know for a few more years.
46
Introducing Maharaji
The “Guru of the Universe”
SUDDENLY, AFTER YEARS OF SAYING nothing at all about him, in the late summer of 1999, Swamiji began telling us about his guru, Kripalu Maharaj, whom everyone called “Maharaji” (kripalu means “gracious” and maharaj means “king” in Hindi).
Swamiji started hanging photographs of Maharaji all over the temple, playing taped recordings of him chanting, and showing us videos of him from India. I was shocked when I saw his updated image. Gone was the handsome man I had seen in the photograph years ago. Here was a bony, wrinkled old man with greasy skin and no muscle mass. The gorgeous guru who had haunted me was history. I felt no attraction whatsoever to this elderly Indian man.
But when I saw the first video of Maharaji I regained some of my original longing. In the video, recorded in India at one of his ashrams, he is walking back and forth on a decorated stage as the devotees in the audience chant and play music. Despite his much older appearance, he had a commanding presence and irresistible charisma as he walked back and forth snapping his fingers, occassionaly singing a verse, and seemingly absorbed in the chanting.
We finally learned more about Maharaji when Swamiji delivered a thirty-part lecture series about him at the 1999 annual Fall Intensive for life members in Barsana Dham. The series, which was called “The Life History of Bhakti-Yog-Rasavatar Jagadguru Kripalu Mahaprabhu” revealed a multitude o
f fantastic insights about this other guru.
For example, Swamiji told us Maharaji was a “jagadguru,” which means a “supreme teacher of the universe.” What’s more, he was the most important jagadguru to ever appear on Earth. Further, Maharaji was the direct incarnation of Radha-Krishna. Even more astounding, he was also the reincarnation of one of the greatest saints of India, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, who famously worshipped the form of God, called Radha-Krishna, just as we did.
Other astonishing revelations included Maharaji’s immaculate conception, his otherworldly academic and physical aptitude during his school years, and his profound arrival on the spiritual scene in his early twenties as a gifted orator and singer.
Swamiji started off the lecture series with a warning, delivered with great drama: “You must know that Maharaji’s life history is for your own personal devotional benefit. It is not for discussion or casual retelling. You must make it very clear in your mind.”
Then he said with great pomp and circumstance, while breathing heavily: “When Chaitanya left [the Earth] he disappeared into the deity Jagannath.” (Chaitanya is believed to have left his earthly body by running into a stone deity of Lord Jagannath. It is said he left an orange smudge on the stone.)
Swamiji said: “When Chaitanya left the world his life history was not written… when he left in the deity, then people knew he was so great. Many devotees who had not fully surrendered felt very sorry.”
By now Swamiji was so worked up he couldn’t get through a sentence without gasping: “So this time the true devotees should not feel sorry…” He broke into loud sobs, then finish his statement, “… when Maharaji is gone.” At this point, all of the preachers broke into loud heaving sobs as well. A few other devotees joined in. As the wailing echoed throughout the prayer hall. I watched the scene, wondering about the over the top drama.
After Swamiji’s tears subsided, he continued in a staccato of heavy breathing, expelling a loud breath between every few words: “That’s why… I’m telling… the life history… so all the devotees who wish… to realize divine love of Radha-Krishna… in their life… For that reason… I’m restoring the divine secrets of his life.”
When Swamiji finally finished his lecture that day, he fell back on his decorated seat and sat in silence for nearly ten minutes. When he finally got up, he appeared woozy, like he’d had too much to drink. He wobbled out of the prayer hall on unsteady feet.
In the next day’s lecture, we learned about the immaculate conception of Maharaji, including how his mother had supposedly said, “‘I felt no discomfort up until he was born. I felt very comfortable. I felt blessed in bliss all the time.’” According to him, she was alone in her room, lying on her bed half asleep around midnight, when Maharaji appeared. “Only his mother knew the divine circumstances of his birth.”
Swamiji said Maharaji’s birth paralleled the birth of Krishna, who appeared at midnight lying next to his mother Devaki. The resulting celebration of Krishna’s birth marked the creation of Hinduism’s annual Krishna Janmashtami celebration (“jan” means birth in Hindi). Maharaji’s parents were reported to have held a similar celebration for his birth.
Swamiji also said that when Maharaji was sixteen, he went into the forest alone and came across an abandoned temple of Lord Shiva. Seeing a pond nearby, he entered the water until it was up to his chin, assumed Shiva’s tandava nritya stance of ecstatic dance, and stayed there for four days. Swamiji provided his interpretation of this event.
“It’s difficult to understand the actions of a divine personality if one has a material mind,” explained Swamiji. “But I think he saw God Shiva in the temple, and just felt to reveal a part of his personality. Shiva, Vishnu, Ram, Krishna are all one. So probably he revealed his form of God Shiva… to show that God Shiva is part of his personality.”
Swamiji offered up many similarly curious explanations of Maharaji’s “divine” actions such as this spin on Lord Chaitanya:
“When Chaitanya was on the Earth he followed the strict doctrine of sanyasi, which included not allowing anyone to touch his body and not allowing women into his satsang. But Chaitanya, now in the form of Maharaji, decided to take a very different approach in this lifetime. Maharaji thought, ‘If I, just in this time, give them the privilege to touch my body, it will be something that’s good. It will reveal more of that love and people can feel more of my personality, closely.’ He was like Chaitanya, but more liberally giving his association freely. He doesn’t have a material body. He has a divine body, and divine body doesn’t need any material thing. It has descended so any souls can see the personality. But the divine personality can’t be seen except by a divine personality.”
As we were taught more and more about the “greatest saint of modern times,” one question nagged at me: If Maharaji was so great, why hadn’t we heard about him sooner?
This must have been a common question, because I learned there was already a pat answer circulating among devotees, which was this: We were all so devotionally barren that when Swamiji found us we were not ready to know about a saint as great as Maharaji.
Curiously, while Swamiji told us many fantastical stories about Maharaji, he never said a word about the mysterious decade of enforced silence about him.
47
Going to India
Suffering for God
TINY MANGARH VILLAGE IS, as they say, “in the middle of nowhere.”
It’s about 100 miles southwest of Delhi, India. On Google Earth, it’s just a dot in the middle of vast nothingness. Like much of the countryside in India, there are only small villages and fields of crops for miles around. The cluster of buildings that comprise Maharaji’s ashram are the most substantial group of structures in the area. But Mangarh is holy ground for Maharaji’s devotees, since it is where he was born and raised, and where he established the first of his three ashrams.
As soon as Barsana Dham’s 1999 Intensive ended, Swamiji started taking groups of devotees to India to meet Maharaji in India. The first trip included a group of about two dozen of Swamiji’s wealthiest devotees. These lucky souls returned home one month later with arrogance and breathless stories about Maharaji and his escapades. They were also loaded down with trinkets such as scarves, hats, and jewelry—all received from Maharaji—along with the coveted red string rakhi bracelet he gave to all who visited him. Most of us didn’t know at the time that each of these items came with a price tag. But once we got to India we gained our own “opportunities” to receive Maharaji’s grace through material consumption—with a price tag.
The following spring Swamiji took the next group of devotees for another month-long stay in Mangarh. This slightly larger group was comprised primarily of the second ring of the inner circle: People who regularly contributed large amounts of money to Swamiji and who were friends with the preachers. They too returned with stories, stuff, and an air of superiority.
I was in the third and largest group of devotees to travel to India. We went in July of 2000 and traveled not to Mangarh, but to an ashram in Barsana village to celebrate Guru Poornima: We stayed in the huge new Vishwa Kaliandra Kendra temple, which Swamiji had been building for years. Neither the temple nor the dorm rooms were complete when we arrived. But Maharaji had insisted on holding Guru Poornima there for the Millennium. Devotees sacrificed comfort and health to live in what was essentially a construction site. It was hot, dirty, stinky, noisy, and crowded. There were so many people squeezed into the unfinished ashram during the three-day event that we were literally walking over each other.
While every trip to Maharaji’s ashrams in India was a test of physical endurance—due to the weather, an unforgiving schedule, poor food, pollution, and sleep deprivation—our trip went down in the history of Barsana Dham as the worst trip ever to India. The challenges began the moment we boarded the plane in Austin. We flew coach from Austin to Atlanta to New York to London to Delhi. Then we spent over three hours on a cramped, hot, and dusty bus in the dead of night from Del
hi to Barsana. We arrived at the ashram at about 6:00 a.m. at the tail end of morning satsang. We filed off the bus and into the building like a line of disaster survivors.
I was exhausted and filthy when I first glimpsed Maharaji in the flesh. He was sitting on a decorated bed in the small prayer hall of the ashram’s original building, called Rangeeli Mahal. We lined up in front of him and took turns bowing at the foot of his bed. He watched us intently, with amusement.
After bowing, I sat on the floor with the other devotees who were singing the morning chant. I stared up at Maharaji, looking for clues to the divinity that we’d told us he possessed. But all I saw was a sweaty, skinny, wrinkled old man.
I had imagined I would feel some bolt of devotional bhao at my first sight of him, no matter what he looked like. Instead I felt only a big emptiness. As I stared at him, panic started to rise up inside me. I wanted to stand up and run. I had come halfway around the world to a very different, very foreign world, all to see the man front of me—and from the moment I laid eyes on him, he gave me the creeps.
Someone once told me that when Maharaji was young he walked like he knew all the women lusted after him. Now he was seventy-eight, and looked every bit his age. The man before me was far from the image of the dashing, sexy man I had expected. His otherworldly handsomeness and toned body were gone, along with the luminous long black hair, which was now thin, gray, and greasy. I laid on his shoulders like strands of cooked noodles.
I later found a description of him in a book by psychiatrist Dr. Gordon Warme, who had met Maharaji in Mangarh in 1992. The doctor’s description seemed to find resonance with the image I remembered from the photos: “I was struck by his stature; he was the tallest man in the room, over 1.8 metres (6 feet), broad-shouldered and strongly muscled. Although he was over seventy, his thick shoulders were particularly noticeable, always shown off by sleeveless robes. Clean-shaven and handsome, his features were strong and bony.” Clearly, the previous few years had taken their toll, and we had missed Maharaji’s glory days.