by Karen Jonson
Several months after that, Peter S., who ran one of Swamiji’s infomercial businesses and was an officer on the ashram’s board, gathered us together for an announcement, “Swamiji wants everyone to know Sureshwari left because she is crazy. Not just now, she’s been crazy for years. Swamiji had been trying to help her regain her sanity for a long time.”
This story made no sense. If she was crazy, why was she the president of the organization? I had worked with her directly during the year before she left and knew she was not crazy. She was, however, becoming more honest about many of the chronic problems in Barsana Dham, including her constant power struggles with Prabhakari.
I eventually saw a video of the devotees gathered for Guru Poornima in India in the summer of 2004, when Sureshwari had briefly returned. She was sitting in the front row with the other preachers, and looked bloated, pale, and miserable. She stood out, not because of the devotional glow she’d always radiated, but because she appeared to be in intense pain.
That was the last time any of us ever saw her.
52
Swamiji’s Prescription
My Therapy Cure
AFTER SURESHWARI LEFT, I EXPERIENCED what I would call a nervous breakdown—which lasted for a few months.
I knew something terrible happened to make her leave, and I had no way to find out what it was, because no one would talk about it. I started having panic attacks and nightmares. Frequently, I would wake up in the middle of the night in tears.
One night in satsang I started crying—softly at first, but I felt on the verge of losing control. I walked out of the prayer hall just in time. Lois was at the front desk. I ran over to her and knelt down, and started sobbing uncontrollably. She let me cry, all the while talking to me about how we can only trust in the guru, not in any other devotee, no matter who they are. Her words did not soothe me at all. I still knew something was terribly wrong.
My emotional disintegration was due primarily to the loss of the only person I truly respected in the organization. However, there was another reason. The person I disliked for her powermongering and chronic poor treatment of others was now the sole person in charge of the whole ashram—Prabhakari. I was horrified at the thought of this woman having dictatorial power over the ashram and everyone living there.
Another devotee, Pam, knew about my depression and encouraged me to talk to Swamiji. I resisted. “How can I tell him I’m frightened because his favorite preacher is in charge now?”
But she didn’t give up. One day we were talking outside when another devotee named Jan came walking up the path. When Pam told her what we were talking about, Jan confessed she too was frightened at the prospect of Prabhakari ruling the roost. Pam urged us to go talk to Swamiji together.
Jan agreed. I was still reluctant. But Jan took charge and made the appointment for us to talk to him.
The next morning, I was shaking as we climbed the stairs to his bedroom, and still shaking as we sat on the floor of his bedroom, waiting for him to finish some paperwork.
Swamiji finally set down his papers and turned toward us. “What’s the matter?”
“We’re here to discuss our fears with you, Swamiji,” Jan said.
“What fears?” he asked gruffly.
“I’m worried about Prabhakari being in charge. I think she has a vendetta against our family,” Jan said.
Swamiji looked at her through his tiny black eyes with a bit of disgust. Then he turned and looked at me. “What’s your problem?”
I swallowed hard and opened my mouth. My throat was dry, my voice low. “Swamiji, when Sureshwari was here, I felt like I had a friend. But Prabhakari and I don’t get along well.”
“What does she do?”
“Well, she continually criticizes and attacks me.”
“Give me an example.” His comments came quickly, in short bursts, like shots out of a rifle.
His line of questioning had thrown me off guard. My mind raced to recall a specific encounter, one that would illustrate the severity of my problem. But I was so anxious I couldn’t think clearly. I blurted out, “She once called me a ‘bully’ in a kitchen meeting in front of everyone.” It wasn’t the worst example. However, the incident was much crueler than it sounded.
“So?” he said brusquely. I had no direct response, so I switched gears.
“I’ve been having panic attacks and nightmares ever since Sureshwari left.”
He stared down at us for several seconds saying nothing. Then he turned to Jan and started talking to her about me as if I weren’t present.
“When fears create nightmares, it’s something deep in the person’s head. She needs to see a psychiatrist. Help her find one.”
This was not the first time Swamiji had instructed a devotee to seek psychiatric help. At that time, a growing number of people in the ashram were on anti-depressants, most at his suggestion. It appeared to be his go-to solution for anyone suffering from any issues whatsoever. In fact, one visiting devotee once asked me, “Why are so many people in the ashram on anti-depressants?” It was a good question; one I wondered myself.
Swamiji ended our encounter by telling us both to forget about Prabhakari. “She has so many things to worry about in the ashram—finances, construction, video—she can’t also worry about people’s feelings.” How could someone, especially a sanyasi no less, not have to worry about people’s feelings?
The next thing I knew, I was in a psychiatrist’s office. That day I joined the growing population of devotees on anti-depressants. The low-dose Lexapro did seem to help. It smoothed out the raw edges of the emotional circuits in my brain. But what helped me even more was the therapist Jan also advised me to see. She had found the therapist following a bad car accident that left her with panic attacks.
Elise, the therapist, changed my life. Instead of talking about the ashram on my first visit, out of the blue I talked about my brother, Michael, and my chronic guilt over his suicide when he was twenty-two. I’d had recurring grief ever since. The cycles of despair had always followed the same pattern. They would hit me about once every two years and last for about three months. This had been going on for almost ten years. I had always believed devotion to Swamiji would dissolve away the anquish, but it never did.
Within the first hour, Elise helped me see that I was just a child myself at the time of my brother’s death, and was therefore not capable of helping him. He and I came from the same dysfunctional parents, so I did not possess the skills necessary. After my first healing session with Elise, the grief cycles stopped completely.
I felt more unburdened than I had in years—and the renewed surge of inner strength came just in the nick of time.
53
The Million-Dollar Trip
Maharaji Visits the West
BEGINNING IN 1999, Swamiji had been telling us every year that Maharaji was coming to the U.S., he finally arrived in May 2005.
At the news of his impending visit, devotees were beside themselves with excitement, and leapt eagerly into the chaos of preparation. Delirious with anticipation, they were ready and willing to do whatever it took to get Maharaji to Barsana Dham—from construction projects to decorations to special purchases of food and personal items.
About three months before he was scheduled to arrive, we were all called to a meeting. Prabhakari told us, “We need to collect one crore rupees (a little over $250,000 U.S.) before Maharaji makes the trip.” Despite the excitement, there was a collective pause in the room. But, everyone rallied quickly, accepting that this was the price to pay for the embodiment of God to grace our lives in our own country. Once the money issue was dealt with, devotees resumed the seemingly endless preparations for the arrival of Maharaji and his “divine family” members. Preparing for his arrival was not a simple matter. For one thing, he typically traveled with a minimum of four servants and his three daughters (all in their 50s), who shared three or four servants between them. On that trip, he also brought his two sons and three of his grands
ons.
The accommodation requirements were exacting. No detail was too small for consideration—from a particular brand of hard-to-find toothpaste to the type of food stocked in their personal kitchens to the size of their big-screen TVs. It took a small army, a large bank account, and a considerable number of man-hours to ensure they were properly hosted.
Then there were the preparations for the hundreds of people who would come to see Maharaji. Although it still required extensive manpower to house, feed, and tend to a constantly revolving crowd of 200 to 500 guests.
Once he and his entourage arrived, we quickly realized the down payment of $250,000 was just a drop in the “collection bucket” for Maharaji’s trip abroad. In fact, by the time he left Barsana Dham after a four-week stay, he had raised over one million dollars. This was accomplished through a well-orchestrated seva operation that rivaled nothing I had ever seen or heard about in India.
“Seva opportunities” in Barsana Dham U.S.A. include: attending a daily “picnic” ($100), inviting him to your room ($600), going on a boat ride with him ($200), receiving a bite of his snack ($100), receiving a cookie from him ($250), and sitting in his room while he ate dinner ($2,500). He would even visit devotees’ homes outside the ashram for $5,000 to $10,000.
Seva opportunities began immediately upon his arrival in the ashram—a welcome with all the pomp and circumstance befitting a conquering king. Devotees dressed in authentic Indian garb welcomed his Mercedes at the main gates, and walked and danced beside his car in a slow-moving procession, chanting, playing drums and cymbals, and waving colorful flags and a banner all the way to the temple doors.
When he arrived at the temple entryway, someone opened the car door and he emerged to the traditional shouts of joy in India: “Jay ho!” and “Jay Shree Maharaji Ki Jay!” Devotees parted like the Red Sea as he strode confidently into the prayer hall and straight to the throne at the front of the room, which was bedecked with a huge headboard, multi-colored flowers, golden embroidery, plush pillows and other decorations. As soon as he lay down, he instructed the devotees to begin the ritual of bowing to his feet—for $100 cash.
After collecting about $5,000, Maharaji retreated to his bedroom. Many of us followed him. He laid down on his perfectly adorned bed in his lavishly decorated bedroom and announced in Hindi that it was time for coffee. One of the preachers announced in English: “Maharaji has graciously invited everyone to stay for coffee seva. Those who don’t want to do the seva, please leave his room immediately.”
Someone asked: “How much is the seva?”
“$250.”
I stayed in his bedroom, relishing the chance to sit in his presence during his first-ever trip to America, watch him eat toast, and hear him tell jokes in Hindi. The seva lasted less than fifteen minutes. The “coffee seva” was a misnomer that went back to this particular seva’s initial meaning: Drinking a few drops of Maharaji’s leftover coffee. Now that he no longer drank coffee, the seva had changed. He had toast and water instead, and we each received half a cup of soda and a handful of popcorn as we sat with him.
I attended the coffee seva again the next afternoon, sitting as close to the foot of his bed as possible. I went again and again, becoming so addicted to this semi-private time with Maharaji every day that I ended up attending nine coffee sevas in a row—for a grand total of $2,250. That was more than I’d spent on either of my two trips to India.
But that wasn’t my only seva expenditure this time around. By the time he left, I had logged over $13,000 in seva debt. The group mentality that believed one should do whatever one possibly could for and with Maharaji was infectious. Clearly, this time, I had been swept up in the mass hysteria.
Almost immediately, life in our Westernized ashram began to emulate life in the ashrams in India. In fact, from the minute he stepped foot on the property, Barsana Dham USA seemed to morph into “Maharaji World” India. One morning I even witnessed one of his preachers burning wood in a small stove outside his kitchen. Now our air had the same throat-tickling tinge of smoke that had choked off my breathing in India. Prior to Maharaji’s visit, one devotee rented a couple of cows in order to supply fresh milk for him daily, just like he enjoyed in India. Seeing his attendants enter the kitchen twice a day with fresh buckets of milk became a common sight.
Our schedule was just as crazy as it had been in India, with the day beginning at 4:00 a.m., and crammed with satsang sessions and seva until 10 p.m. I felt like I was always running to catch up.
With the frenzy surrounding nearly every minute of his visit, calculating the money owed for seva was a challenge. Most devotees carried around little notebooks to jot down a running list of their seva expenditures. Often the sevas happened so fast that it was easy to forget how quickly the debts were adding up. In the middle of satsang they might start selling t-shirts at $50 each or shawls for $100. When Maharaji would get involved in the selling process, the selling went into overdrive, with devotees rushing to grab items directly from him. However, those expenditures never slipped through the cracks of the people in charge of money collection. Each of us was assigned to a money manager, who carefully tracked all our seva activity. The five or six seva managers fed our seva debts to one devotee accountant, who then tracked the rapidly escalating debts on a central spreadsheet.
While I was wracking up thousands of dollars in seva debt, others were spending more than I was. One time when I checked my account, I noticed the devotee listed directly under my name had a tab of $90,000. At least that woman, as one of the three main infomercial businesspeople, was wealthy. Some of the poorer devotees were also going into significant seva debt. I asked one woman, who was a secretary and single mother, why she was spending so much money—money I knew she didn’t have.
“I have very little fun in my life,” she said sheepishly, “and this is my only opportunity for fun. So what if I have to get an extra part-time job to pay off my seva?”
Other devotees had other reasons for giving way more money than they could afford. Perhaps it was one of Maharaji’s repeated themes: Give your entire tan-man-dhan to the guru. He stated if we failed to do this, we likely would not make it into the divine world.
Swamiji planned many special events to give devotees plenty of reasons to give Maharahji more money. One of the events was a Mother’s Day celebration in his honor, since he had arrived in May. For the occassion, Maharaji visited a person’s room or home for $600. The person would “host” him for a few minutes, doing arti to him and offering him a snack. The “fund raiser” was such a success that later that day he bragged about the number of rooms he’d visited in one morning—over eighty! He raked in over $48,000 in just a few hours. Inspired, Maharaji added several made-up holidays to the schedule: Maharaji Day, Sister’s Day, Brother’s Day, and Lover’s Day—all of which provided opportunities to buy time with him, even if it was just a minute or two.
He also added boat rides, swims in the pond, and other unique activities to the seva schedule. After a while, when the preachers could not gather enough volunteers for some of the sevas, because people were running out of money, they began asking devotees directly to do particular sevas.
One day Diwakari asked me to attend one of his dinners for $2,500. When I told her I couldn’t afford it, she seemed frustrated and cited Maharaji’s oft-spoken advice: “You should give him all your money—it’s all his anyway.”
54
Maharaji Returns
And Chaos Ensues
IN 2007, JUST TWO YEARS AFTER his million-dollar trip to Barsana Dham, Maharaji decided to leave India once again—this time for a grand four-month “world tour.”
This trip originally included stops in Singapore, Fiji, New Zealand, San Diego, Austin, Trinidad, and Canada. We were expecting him in Austin on May 9th. But just days before he left India, we got the first of three calls regarding his last-minute trip changes. He was not going to Fiji after all, and he would be arriving in Austin two weeks earlier than expected as a result
. Within a week, we received the second call: Maharaji was not going to New Zealand, and would arrive at Barsana Dham on April 9th. Then the final itinerary change came: Maharaji would not be going to San Diego and would be arriving in Barsana Dham on April 1st. We were not given any explanation for these mysterious schedule changes.
The residents of Barsana Dham had begun preparing for Maharaji’s arrival in early January, believing we had four months to prepare. With each update, preparations become increasingly frantic. On this trip, apart from his three single daughters, he was also bringing his wife, Amma, who was his age, frail, and always dressed like an Indian-style China doll, with decorative saris and lots of jewelry. Like her daughters, she was always accompanied by a servant or two to tend to her every need.
Due to his changing arrival date, we had to squeeze several months of work into two weeks. Everyone was manic as they cleaned, shopped, and organized. Most of us got little sleep as we raced against the clock. Just two days before his arrival, the place was in shambles and the new video camera had not yet arrived. This was a critical problem, because it was expected that nearly every waking moment of Maharaji’s public life would be filmed.
After many days and nights of non-stop preparation, the devotees greeted Maharaji’s arrival with a frenzy of chanting, drumming, and cymbal playing. When he was helped out of the Mercedes in the temple’s porte cochere, he threw his hands in the air, waving to the crowd, and did a little bouncing dance. Devotees quickly placed flower garlands around his neck. Then he bounded up the steps and walked rapidly into the prayer hall. A crowd of devotees stood on either side of a plush orange cloth that had been laid on the floor for him to follow, like the Yellow Brick Road. The path led him through the center of the prayer hall and directly to a bed with an oversized headboard. It was ostentatiously decorated in fancy fabrics, beads, lights, and other bric-a-brac.
Closely following on the wheels of Maharaji’s Mercedes were the luxury cars carrying his wife and three daughters. Behind them were several ordinary cars and vans containing the family’s many servants and devotees who were tagging along on the “world tour,” like groupies following rock stars.
