by Karen Jonson
Greg, a resident devotee who ran Swamiji’s infomercial business, came up to me one day and bludgeoned me with, “You know Swamiji himself is the divine photographer, don’t you?”
As if I needed more pressure. My role as photographer-in-training went from bad to worse, despite the fact that I actually had a good eye. I had taken dozens of photos for my college newspaper and for magazine articles I’d written after college. I had a style that was both artistic and photojournalistic. But somehow my natural ability wilted under Swamiji’s harsh scrutiny. He was hypercritical of everything—especially of his own images.
Prabhakari made a point to tell me, “Swamiji is very picky. He doesn’t like anyone’s photos,” and added he didn’t even like the photos taken by a California devotee who was a professional artist and photographer.
Then there was plain old bad luck. One time the film got stuck in the camera and I missed every shot at a celebration. Another time, I accidentally opened the camera before rewinding the film.
The final blow to my future as a photographer for Swamiji came one afternoon when Vishi called me over to take photos of him. Rushing to get ready, I changed into an acceptable outfit: a long skirt, frumpy blouse, and a shawl. I was shaking as I hurriedly threaded the film through the camera—it would not be good to keep Swamiji waiting.
I ran to his bedroom door, then waited outside for ten nerve-shredding minutes. Finally, he walked out. Vishi and I followed him wordlessly down the stairs. She was carrying his orange shawl and a fresh flower garland. I was sweating as I sat on the back seat of his golf cart. He turned it on and hit the gas. I jerked forward, grabbing the railing, and gripping it tightly for the entire bumpy two-minute drive to a field by the creek on the south side of the ashram. It was not an enjoyable ride this time.
He stopped suddenly and jumped off the cart. Vishi hurried after him. She handed him the shawl, which he whirled over this head and around his shoulders, then tucked one corner into the left side of his dhoti. She then placed the flower garland around his neck. He leaned in slightly to accept the decoration. She adjusted it and fluffed his short, white, wavy hair.
As I watched him prepare to be photographed, I wanted to flee. I could barely see straight. Suddenly, he walked over to a tree and began posing. I lifted the camera and clicked. He held each position for only a few seconds. His movements were so quick that I kept capturing him in mid-pose.
“What’s wrong?” he snapped after I’d taken a dozen poorly timed photos.
“I’m not used to this, Swamiji,” was all I could manage.
He said nothing, but looked displeased. He jumped into the cart and we jumped on. He hit the gas and drove to another location further down the river. Again he got out and began posing beside some flowering bushes. I looked through the camera’s lens, praying I would capture his image to his satisfaction. But my timing was still completely out of sync.
Finally, he jumped on the cart for the last time and raced back to the building. When we returned, he took the camera from me and disappeared up the stairs to his bedroom, Vishi scurrying after him.
I was stunned, unable to think. That night at his dinner, I learned Swamiji had sent another devotee into town to develop the film. When he got the photos, he flipped through the stack like a blackjack dealer in Vegas, glancing at each one for a nanosecond. When he was finished, he put the photos back in their paper packet and dropped the whole thing onto his couch with a thud.
Later Vishi came up to me and handed me five photos. “Swamiji wants you to have these.” I cringed as I looked at them, each one worse than the last. I had never seen him look so bad.
And that was the end of my brief, humiliating stint as photographer-in-training for my guru.
38
Escape Plans
Nowhere to Run
I HAD THOUGHT OF LEAVING Barsana Dham many times.
Whenever problems became overwhelming, I would crave escape—a break from conflicts with devotees, exhausting seva demands, the boring devotional schedule, and Swamiji’s never-ending tendency to shower his attention on a chosen few. These issues and my general lack of spiritual evolution often made me depressed, tired, sad, and ready to run away.
At these times, I would daydream about escaping. I often envisioned myself packing up my few worldly possessions and driving away forever. In every daydream I returned to someone or someplace from my past, and successfully reentered the real world. But every daydream ended with the same fact: I had nowhere to go—no parents, no grandparents, no old friends, nobody.
My grandmother had been the only person who had ever unconditionally loved me, and I had relied on her love and support until she died when I was twenty-seven. In one of my elaborate schemes, she was still alive and living in an idyllic small town, north of my birthplace of Missoula, Montana. I imagined moving in with her into some darling small house with a flower-filled yard, living a life of gardening, taking long walks in the countryside, cozily reading books by the fireplace, and dating local eligible bachelors.
In another one of my recurring daydreams, I returned to Olean, New York, which was my mom’s hometown. Although Olean was a small, mostly blue-collar town and long past its prime, it was the only place where I had ever had any level of consistency in my life. When there, we stayed in my mother’s childhood home, which was an early-century, two-story duplex with an old-fashioned stone basement, a large cobweb-filled attic, and a high-pitched roof. Even though I had lived there for only three years of my life, it was the one place on Earth that I felt was truly “home.” In my ashram escape fantasy, I would return to my mother’s home and remodel it into the ultimate bachelorette pad.
In another daydream, I returned to Seattle and was able to afford a hip condo on top of Queen Anne Hill overlooking the city and Puget Sound. In my imagination, my home was on the second or third floor of an old school that had been converted into residences. The rooms were large and spacious, with huge multi-paned windows along one wall. There was a deck that provided me with plenty of space for a potted garden of flowers and herbs. One corner of my living room was my office, where I spent my days writing and looking out over the Puget Sound. I had two cuddly kitties, and I had a boyfriend in the navy, who came home on the weekends.
I did leave Barsana Dham once, about two years after I moved in, but only for a long weekend. I wanted to get away and think about my life inside the claustrophobic devotional pressure cooker. On a Friday afternoon, I drove to a bed-and-breakfast in San Marcos about forty-five minutes south of Austin, but a world away from the ashram. I reveled in being away from the group living environment and having a bedroom and bathroom all to myself.
On Sunday after breakfast, I sat outside on a lounge chair in the establishment’s backyard garden with a pad of paper and a pen, and wrote down the pros and cons of staying or leaving the ashram. I was leaning strongly toward leaving when I wrote down one reason to stay: I wanted God more than anything else in the world.
I sat back in the sunshine and considered my dilemma. Should I escape the miserable life I was living in the ashram, or grit my teeth and keep going on my quest to find God in this lifetime? I decided to stay on the path. I made up my mind that if it meant that I could achieve my primary goal in life, God realization, it would all be worth it in the end.
I drove back to the ashram, knowing I was going to dig in my heels and work harder than ever to be the best devotee I could possibly be.
39
Surrendering to the Guru
Mission Impossible?
ONE CONSTANT THEME OF LIFE under Swamiji’s tutelage was total surrender to the guru.
He told us repeatedly that God’s grace is easily attainable through selfless love and faithful surrender to a real saint and we could not expect to enter the divine world until we had completely surrendered to him. In his book, The Science of Devotion and Grace, Swamiji wrote: “It is for the good of a person that he surrenders. A Saint is the giver. He is not going to get anything or be
deprived of anything if one surrenders to him or abandons him. It is in his endless mercy that he accepts a person as his disciple, but people do not understand and recognize his graciousness.”
The concept of surrendering is a foreign one to most Westerners. After all, we live in the land of the free, established by fiercely independent pioneers. I struggled daily with it myself. Despite Swamiji’s explicit teachings on the subject, I could not grasp the concept. Did it mean that I would never have an independent thought again? Or that I had to give the guru every penny and survive just on my faith in him alone? Did it mean that I should lose all concern for my physical body, like a wandering yogi in India?
The best example of total surrender I could find was from The Bible. Luke 1:26-38 recounts the story of Mary, mother of Jesus and how she said yes to an illogical request from the angel Gabriel—with barely a moment’s hesitation:
“In the sixth month, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. The angel went to her and said, ‘Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.
“Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. But the angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end.’
“‘How will this be,’ Mary asked the angel, ‘since I am a virgin?’
“The angel answered, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be barren is in her sixth month. For nothing is impossible with God.’
“‘I am the Lord’s servant,’ Mary answered. ‘May it be to me as you have said.’”
Although I’m not a Christian, ironically, I held this story as an ideal of surrender while following my Hindu guru’s teachings.
40
Uncomfortable Grace
The Women-Only Ritual
WHILE ALL OF SWAMIJI’S DEVOTEES WAITED for him to grace them in multiple ways, behind closed doors he regularly imparted a secret “grace.”
However, this blessing was bestowed only upon a select few. It was the grace of intimate touch. The first time I experienced this it took me by surprise. I had entered his bedroom one evening after satsang to say goodbye to him after visiting the ashram for several days. Two of his women-in-orange were there with him when I walked in. He looked up from his bed where he was writing on a notepad, and growled a few words in Hindi. The two women bolted upright and scurried out of the room, shutting the door behind them. I knelt down on the floor near him and pranamed.
“I came to say goodbye, Swamiji,” I said.
He set his writing down beside him, reached out a hand and took mine. He held it without saying anything for a few moments, like a boyfriend. I was shaking a bit at finding myself alone with the man I believed to be God. I had no idea what to do. I stared at him, hoping for a sign.
“Where are you going?” he said slowly, as if he were sleepy.
“Back home.”
“Ok,” he said softly.
Then he pulled me toward him and put his large arms around me. My face was buried in the orange cashmere sweater he often wore. The combination of the soft fabric and his wide firm chest made me feel safe and comfortable. I wanted to stay in that embrace for a long time. But then he pulled away a little and with no warning he leaned in and began kissing me on the mouth using his tongue. I was shocked—and repulsed. He tasted like sour grass. Then I felt a sharp pinch on my nipple. He had reached down and, through the fabric of my sari and blouse, pinched one of my nipples hard. In fact, it was so hard that I reflexively said “ouch” and pulled away.
I sat on my knees, looking at him in a daze. He gave me a casual look, tilted his head slightly, and said, “Okay, goodnight.” Then he leaned back on his pillows, and went back to his writing.
Still stunned, I said goodnight, bowed, and fled the room. My mind was reeling. I couldn’t even think about what had just happened. I figured I had just been graced in some classified special way, but didn’t feel anything at all, except for a bit of disgust. But I forced myself not to think about it. I just returned to my room and packed for my journey home.
As it turned out, that was just the first of Swamiji’s French kisses and pinches I received over the next few years. What’s more, over my years in the ashram, snippets of comments from some of the other women clued me in to the fact that many of them had experienced their own moments of “intimate grace” from Swamiji. Most of them seemed not only comfortable with it, but craved it. One woman in particular could not get enough of his sloppy kisses and body pinches. She would run out of satsang every morning to encounter him in the hallway of his sitting room. One time I walked in on them in an illicit embrace, making out like school children. After that, I made sure to wait until they walked out of the hallway, usually hand in hand like lovers.
Another woman bragged to me about her “private time” with Swamiji. She mentioned that she would lie beside him on his bed and cuddle with him. I didn’t ask for any details, because I wanted to pretend she hadn’t told me that.
Once in Los Angeles, another female devotee and I went to his bedroom to say goodbye after a short trip over the holidays. She was clearly familiar with the intimacy and welcomed it. I was surprised by her exuberance. She dived into his arms and he fell back on the bed. She was lying on top of his chest with her hips between his spread legs and French kissing him, while making small moaning and smacking noises. When it was my turn, I just gave him a quick kiss and hug and was ready to leave.
I was simply unable to process these experiences and stories, because I couldn’t fit them into the image I had formed of this God-saint. I wanted him to be what I thought he was: divine, pure, and above worldly cravings. In order to keep my dream alive, I buried these unsettling experiences in the dark recesses of my mind, and conveniently forget about them. On the rare occasions when I thought about it at all, I always assumed there must be something missing in me—some level of devotional capacity that I was lacking. Something was preventing me from appreciating the special grace that Swamiji could impart only through his divine touch.
But no matter how much I told myself the problem was within me, the special encounters were always an unwelcome uncomfortable grace.
41
Mad with Desire
Life Without Sex
AT TIMES I THOUGHT I would go mad without sex.
Of all the rules Swamiji laid down, the most difficult one for me was celibacy. He taught us abstinence was necessary to help our devotional minds grow pure faster. But not having sex can make you think of it all of the time, which seems counterproductive to the spiritual life we were supposed to be living. Especially considering I was in my thirties and forties while living there, which are typically the most sexually charged years of a woman’s life.
I was chronically tormented by desire. I concocted elaborate mental fantasies wherein I had part-time boyfriends, and would sneak out to indulge my carnal needs. More than once I seriously considered actually paying a man to satisfy me. However, the logistics would have been a nightmare for several reasons, including the fact that the gates to the ashram were locked everynight from 11:00 p.m. until 6:00 a.m. Plus, my days were bookended by morning and evening satsang. On top of that I had my daily seva and work responsibilities. No matter how I plotted out a possible plan for sex, it seemed that in every direction, I ran into an impenetrable roadblock.
One time, I worked for a man with whom I had an obvious physical attraction. I thought for sure if the opportunity ever present
ed itself, I would have sex with him right in his office on his desk. He might have also had this on his mind when he asked me to meet him in his office one Saturday afternoon to work on a project. If it had been any other Saturday I believe I would have gone. But on that particular Saturday, Barsana Dham was celebrating its annual Rathi Yatra celebration with the RV “chariot.”
Since he didn’t know about my life in the ashram, I gave Eric some lame excuse about why I could not meet him. I could tell he knew I was lying. He never asked me to meet him outside of normal work hours again, and I didn’t have the nerve to bring up the idea. I had no choice but to take it as a sign that my purity was being preserved for God.
I met no other potential lovers out in the world. After all, the only activities I engaged in outside the ashram gates were business meetings. Bars, social events, and other multi-sex venues were out of the question for me. And it’s not like there were any desirable options in the ashram, although a few of the men did come on to me over the years. But I had no interest in any of them. Perhaps the sight of grown men groveling in front of another man put me off. I regarded the male devotees as either surrogate brothers, sychophatic guru worshipers, or simply annoying people to be avoided.
Since everything worked against me, I kept my lust at a slow simmer in the backburner of my brain. My sexual desires were my own private matter, separate from my life in the ashram. I suffered in silence, never admitting my yearnings to anyone. It was a piece of me I knew was alive and would not die, no matter how many hours I spent in satsang, no matter how much seva I did while trying to think of Radha-Krishna, and no matter how many nights I slept alone in my twin bed in my small bedroom in a house filled with other single, sexless women.
Whenever I craved a man’s touch, I would talk myself out of it by reminding myself of the downside of sex. It was messy. Men could love you and leave you. I could catch a venereal disease. Thankfully, the ferocity of my lust finally waned as I entered a period of hormonal respite. I went into early menopause in my early forties, about ten years sooner than most women. One side effect was that my sexual yearnings abated and my sex fantasies retreated. It was a huge relief. I knew that much of my new calm was chemically induced, but I welcomed it as if it was a gift from God for all my years of heated torture.
