by Karen Jonson
It appears Prakash planned to tap into the wealth of Westerners interested in Eastern religions, because he made a beeline for Fairfield, Iowa—a stronghold of Maharishi’s followers. Like some kind of Hindu-guru-pirate, Prakash seemed intent on plundering Maharishi’s booty of devotees. While there, Prakash gave lectures and actively sought out people who had become disgruntled with TM for whatever reason—this low-hanging fruit was easy picking for the fledgling guru. Prakash even ran ads in the local newspaper denouncing the Maharishi and claiming he was an atheist.
By joining Prakash, the former TM followers gained one thing many had craved for years—close proximity to a guru. Maharishi’s following was large enough that personal contact with was rare. Prakash gave these people a chance to finally become members of a guru’s inner circle. His claim to have been offered the seat of Shankaracharya of Joshimath played heavily into his strategy to pilfer the Maharishi’s followers, because they had been taught to worship Guru Dev. However, for all his wheeling and dealing, Prakash only gained a few dozen ex-TM followers.
Interestingly, TM was not the only organization Prakash poached from. He also brazenly copied the name of another successful Hindu spiritual organization that had been operating in the West since the 1960s—the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON). Prakash named his fledgling organization the International Society for Divine Love Consciousness (ISDL). He even started reproducing several of ISKCON’s famous paintings of Radha-Krishna, until he received a cease-and-desist letter for copyright infringement.
Years later I discovered he had also stolen from his own guru, Kripalu, by plagiarizing one of his books and claiming he had written it. This was Prakash’s first book, The Science of Devotion and Grace, which is an almost verbatim copy of Prem Ras Siddhant, one of Kripalu’s books, which was available only in Hindi for years (as a result, no Western devotee was likely to notice the plagiarism). Although he claimed to have authored many books, most are simply compilations of his speeches, while others are merely piecemeal ramblings with whole sections plagiarized from other sources.
Before long, Prakash had enough devotees with enough money to purchase a large house in the outskirts of Philadelphia, where he ran his U.S. center for years. But what he longed for was a large plot of land on which he could build his own temple. One of Prakash’s followers brought to his attention 200 acres for sale southwest of Austin, Texas, which was adjacent to acreage owned by the TM organization. While living in the ashram, I heard the details of how the land was purchased by Dennis Wagner, one of Prakash’s devotees and a former TMer, and immediately transferred to Prakash. This information was uncovered by Jeannie Ralston, the writer of the 1995 Texas Monthly article about Prakash.
Was it a coincidence that Prakash gathered as many ex-TMers as he could find, and then bought property just north of the Austin establishment of his old nemesis? And what was his inspiration when he instructed his followers who lived in Los Angeles to “find celebrities to become devotees”? Was the Maharishi’s well-publicized contact with The Beatles the inspiration for Prakash’s desire to gain his own “star power” and gain a PR boost? However, the LA devotees were unable to entice any big stars to the Barsana Dham ashram. The best they could do was invite B-list actress Lindsay Wagner (who played the Bionic Woman in the 1970s television show and “starred” in one of their infomercials). She stayed for only a few days and chose to spend most of the time in her room by herself doing yoga.
When the Maharishi died in February 2008, Prakash made a last-ditch attempt to poach more TMers and instructed his former TM followers to contact anyone they had known from TM who had money and invite them to a special seminar in New York to meet him. The seminar was scheduled for the first weekend of May 2008, and the response was promising. But in the end, it backfired stupendously. Prakash was arrested in Washington, D.C. on April 24th. He refused to cancel the seminar. The rich attendees were angry and disgusted to discover their host was an accused child molester.
Thus ended Prakash’s inglorious attempt to follow in the footsteps of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi—and take over his dynasty.
125
Unholy Union
A Deal Between Devils
ONCE I REALIZED THE TRUTH NATURE of this organization, I wondered about the relationship between these two criminally minded men.
Obviously, something was very off in their odd association. Prakash appeared to worship Kripalu to an excessive degree, fawning over him at every turn. But whenever Kripalu was not around, Prakash wanted to be worshipped in a similar way by his own devotees. To his face, Kripalu would praise Prakash, but regularly take mean-spirited verbal swipes at him behind his back. There was something twisted going on between these two. The relationship hinted of a sado-masochistic dynamic between psychopaths. Dr. Hare makes an interesting point about co-dependent psychopaths in his book Without Conscience, which I believe speaks directly to the relationship between these two men:
“Psychopaths usually don’t get along well with one another. The last thing an egocentric, selfish, demanding, callous person wants is someone just like him. Two stars is one too many. Occasionally, however, psychopaths become temporary partners in crime - a grim symbiosis with unfortunate consequences for other people. Generally, one member of the pair is a ‘talker’ who gets his or her way through charm, deceit, and manipulation, whereas the other is a ‘doer’ who prefers direct action - intimidation and force. As long as their interests are complementary, they make a formidable pair.”
Kripalu was the talker with charisma, while Prakash was the heavy-lifter, the one who made things happen. Some have described him as the “businessman” of the pair. The two letters proved they had a business relationship—versus the purely “devotional” one they faked in public.
My guess is that back in the 1950s, both fake gurus were likely floundering by themselves—Kripalu as the aimless sexaholic drifter and Prakash as the ambitious wanna-be with a Napoleon complex. When they met, they sized each other up and realized they could be more successful together than they had been on their own. In essence, they realized they could use each other to gain more of what they both wanted—power, sex, money, and fame.
So what exactly was Prakash up to after he hitched his wagon to Kripalu’s cart in the 1950s? Obviously he wasn’t preaching, because he did not collect any devotees before the 1980s. I believe he was devising a plan that would appeal to Kripalu—one involved with creating their own form of mysticism. His letter to Kripalu is proof they had devised a plan to “gain millions of dollars” from Westerners. All they needed now was a clever new angle on Hinduism and a mystical backstory, which took a little time to concoct. I also believe that Kripalu sent Prakash away because, ironically, he became too greedy for having sex with female devotees.
But eventually they settled into a holy-man tag-team approach, like a king and his trusty sidekick. They concocted a unique and clever twist on worshipping Radha-Krishna that involved a guru providing intimate “divine love” to female devotees on Earth in the way that Krishna supposedly gave intimate divine love to gopis in the divine world.
My understanding of the relationship between the two men and the creation of their unusual Hindu sect crystallized one day while I was reading Prakash’s derogatory book about Christianity, called Formation of the New Testament and the History of Christianity. In one passage, I realized he was describing events with such an authoritarian tone, not because he was a Christianity scholar, but because he was actually describing the relationship and plans made between himself and Kripalu:
“A person named Paul (c. 10-67 AD) whose Jewish name was Saul, was born in Cilicia, (south of Turkey) and was trained as a rabbi in Jerusalem. He was an ardent exponent of Jewish faith and a prime critic of Christianity. Once, sometime after the crucifixion of Jesus, he happened to meet Simon Peter in Jerusalem where he also saw James, the brother of Jesus. Paul was an ambitious man and liked the leadership. After spending some time with Peter and evalu
ating the situation where the followers of Jesus were deciding to form their own religion, he saw his future and decided to join the group, and, seeing the intellectual ability of Paul and his training in the preaching business, Peter discovered that he has (sic) found the right man whose skilled oratory and passionate enthusiasm could be used for the promotion of their desired religion. Thus both joined as a team and along with others got busy deciding the central theme of their mission which could divert the people towards their side. There were Jews and Gentiles (those who followed their own faith and not the Jewish). Paul was already a Jewish rabbi so he was the best person to influence the Jewish people and also he was good for the Gentiles who could be converted into this new faith.”
“After joining the group, Paul became very popular because of his creativity, and thus, Paul and Peter were the two main leaders of that group. Paul, along with one or two of his people, started propagating his missions in the farther places of Turkey and Greece etc., and Peter in the local area with occasional long distance trips.”
If you re-read this passage with Paul as Prakash and Kripalu as Simon Peter, and replace Christianity with raganuga-bhakti (their for of Hinduism), it takes on a whole new meaning—with vast ramifications.
126
False Profits
Is JKP’s “Charity Work” a Scam?
FROM THE TIME I JOINED JKP in 1991 up until 2004, I never heard anyone talk about doing charity work—it was simply not part of the organization’s mission.
In fact, once, when Sureshwari was attending the Parliament of World Religions in Chicago in the 1990s (thanks to a devotee’s inside connections), she called to ask Prakash: “What should I say when people ask me what kind of good works we do?” His answer? “Tell them we provide prayer services and books that enrich people’s spiritual lives.” This was, of course, was not “charity work.”
While I was in the organization, there was no focus whatsoever on charity. Later I discovered Kripalu had established a girls’ school—which was, in hindsight, highly suspicious and more than a little disturbing. Also, Kripalu would periodically put on a show of charity. For example, one year during his annual Intensive in India, devotees in attendance were asked to purchase bicycles for the poor people in the village. Each time a devotee purchased a bike, Kripalu would have his photo taken with the bike and its lucky recipient—and then JKP announced Kripalu was donating bicycles to poor villagers.
The first I ever heard about JKP establishing any hospitals in India was in 2004, when I was in India. One of the preachers asked me to help prepare a brochure she could use to collect donations for the hospitals that JKP was planning to build. However, it wasn’t until after Kripalu’s arrest that they started talking about the hospitals in earnest—as if they were going to erect huge, modern, multi-story facilities to care for thousands of poor patients in India. No such hospital was ever built by JKP. In reality, they only built a few small clinics—offering minimal services and treatment, and mostly staffed by devotee volunteers. One Indian doctor told me he had been planning to spend three months in India working in one of the clinics—until he learned about the true nature of JKP from “The Truth Project” Facebook page. JKP’s “charity work” was nothing more than a giant smokescreen—designed to provide their congame with yet another way to collect millions of dollars.
Author’s Note: In 2015, I learned that JKP’s latest “charity” scam involved collecting money to build veterinary clinics to take care of sick animals. This is particularly ludicious since neither guru even liked animals. What’s more, I saw people in JKP’s ashrams hitting dogs with sticks. One time, I saw a stray dog with four puppies when I was on a walk with a large group of devotees and the three sisters in Barsana. No one stopped to check on the dogs but me. However, the mother dog, obviously a stray, was scared of people.
Once again, this organization has cleverally figured out a way to pull at people’s heartstrings—and purse strings—especially Westerners who are known to spend billions of dollars a year on their pets.
127
The Guru-Devotee Dance of Narcissism
Are Their Followers Drinking the Kool-AidTM?
THE ONE QUESTION I’VE BEEN ASKED more than any other since leaving the JKP cult is this: Why would anyone stay in that organization considering the depravity of the fake gurus?
It’s a good question and a logical one that any normal, law-abiding person would ask. Unfortunately, I do not have any easy answers. For one thing, it is a mystery to me why anyone would choose to stay in an organization in which the leaders have been accused repeatedly of sexual abuse and where one was convicted on charges of indecency with children and is now a follower.
The simple answer is that the people who have not left JKP are so entrenched in the concept of worshipping the gurus that they can only believe one of three things: First, that anyone who accuses the gurus of bad behavior is wrong and out to persecute the men; secondly, that any action of a saint is “gracious”; and, third, they willing participants in the con game. I consider the last group to be willing members of a Hindu sex cult. (Note: A female devotee who was in the inner circle of the women and girls who had sex with Kripalu, told me: “Way more than several knew exactly what was going on. It’s true. We were willing members of a sex cult. Because we believed he was God so anything God does must be okay. Pretty sick, huh?”)
The first and foremost falsehood put forth by the gurus was that they were saints. If one could accept that, it was easier to swallow the next lie—and the next, etcetera. In an article “Why We Forget” on Salon.com, neuroscientist David Disalvo made the following statement, which relates to the hold the gurus had on the devotees in the beginning of the process:
“If there’s anything that cognitive psychology studies have made clear over the years, it’s that humans can be exceptionally gullible. With a little push, we’re prone to developing false beliefs not only about others but also about ourselves with equal prowess - and the results can be, well, hard to believe.”
Kripalu preached over and over that the guru is more important than God in a devotee’s pursuit of the divine. He cited scriptural references extensively to prove his point. I never truly took these teachings to heart, largely because I was never deeply attracted to the gurus. I wanted God in his divine form, not these men who seemed to be uncommonly attached to their physical comforts and the attention they garnered from besotted followers. Maybe that’s why it was easier for me and a handful of others to detach ourselves from the organization once the gurus’ secrets came to light.
In the years since I left the ashram, I’ve had more time to consider the dysfunctional dynamic between devotees and their gurus, and have considered why, in the face of all common sense and logic, many followers just keep drinking the Kool-Aid. The psychology of the guru-devotee relationship is complex. Developed over years of careful conditioning by the gurus, it culminates in a shared narcissism. The guru play-acts as if he or she is God incarnate, and the devotees narcissistically believe they are among the chosen few specially selected to follow this supreme form of God on Earth. For these people, to leave the guru and no longer be “special” is a pain worse than the sting of admitting you’re following a conman. So the die-hard devotees perform whatever mental gymnastics are necessary to continue living their lives in lockstep with the guru. I found this quote from Alexis Sanderson, Spalding Professor of Eastern Religions and Ethics, University of Oxford, which describes this concept perfectly:
“It is easy enough to enter such a spiritual prison but extremely hard to get out or even to realise once one has entered the value of what one has lost. The pressure of the Guru and his favourite acolytes can be overwhelming even in less obviously coercive groups, and recovery, if it ever comes, is likely to be an extremely painful process involving grief, self-loathing, and rage.”
Sanderson is right. When I left the cult, the grief and self-loathing nearly destroyed me. I went through a bleak phase of self-recrimination,
until I finally started to heal and rebuild a new life for myself. It took four years for me to feel like I had moved beyond my past life and become passionate about new things in life. Then it took a few more years to snap out of the lingering effects of post-traumatic stress disorder—and embrace a life free of the cultic damage.
Like so many others with similar experiences, I needed to understand why anyone would ever choose to stay in a self-limiting and abusive virtual prison, such as those created by the gurus. After much honest introspection and consideration of explanations from self-help books, professionals, and former cult-members—and a great deal of brutally honest introspection—I settled on one theory that makes more sense to me than anything else. I am sure it will be controversial, even blasphemous to some. But, for me, it speaks more strongly to the twisted world of the guru-devotee dance of narcissism than anything else.
I believe the guru-devotee relationship shares a commonality with the fetish known as BDSM (bondage discipline and sadomasochism).
128
Bondage and Discipline
Spiritual Masters or Slave Masters?
IT’S AMAZING HOW SIMILAR the guru-disciple relationship is to the master-slave relationship in the fetish subculture called BDSM, which practices bondage, discipline, and sadomasochism.
When I was a new devotee, I watched a woman prepare flowers for the altar. When I bent down for a whiff of the beautiful fresh flowers, the woman reproached me: “Those are for Swamiji to enjoy. He should be the first to enjoy their fragrance.”