by Karen Jonson
On July 6th, Swamiji quietly left Barsana Dham and flew to Trinidad (very few devotees even knew he’d left).
On July 13th, Swamiji returned to Barsana Dham, and seemed smug and chipper, even though Maharaji’s trial was only forty-eight hours away. He even disparaged Trinidad as a “backward” country, laughing at the fact that a dog had been running around on the tarmac as his plane departed.
On July 16th at 9 a.m., Maharaji appeared in a Trinidad courtroom and before noon walked out a free man.
That day the Trinidad and Tobago Express newspaper published the following news under the headline “…Evidence Weak; State Drops Case Against Guru”:
“The State yesterday abandoned its attempt to prosecute an 85-year-old Hindu holyman on charges of rape and molestation. Jagadguru Ram Tripathi Maharaj was told he was free to go, after Assistant Director of Public Prosecutions Roger Gaspard made the surprising decision to offer no evidence. Gaspard said the evidence dealing with the alleged rape victim’s lack of consent ‘is particularly tenuous. In the circumstances, the State will not be able to make out a prima facie case.’ The alleged victim was in the witness room of the court for yesterday’s hearing.”
What had happened behind closed doors? Was there really no evidence? Was there a payoff? I didn’t know for sure. But, like many others, I felt there could have been a “financial negotiation.” Jody, the blog administrator for Guruphiliac.com, posted his opinion on July 16th under the headline, “Kreepalu Exonerated, But Still Way Creepy.”
“It was the expected outcome, and one that may have had a lot less to do with innocence and likely a lot more to do with influence. Kripalu Maharaj has been cleared of the rape charges in Trinidad-Tobago. It all came down to a ‘he said, she said.’ And since she’s a poor black girl of 22 and he’s an alleged God-on-Earth with tons of cash, with it all coming down in a part of the world where it’s sometimes just a bit easier to get what you pay for, you know how the math was going to add up.
“Interestingly enough, some of Kreepalu’s Kool-Aid brigade weren’t so sure, one going so far as to attempt to post a comment containing a Wikipedia entry about the ‘persecution of Hindus’ in Trinidad-Tobago. But for those stunningly duped devotees who believe the randy guru is Krishna, God has decided to smile on you today.
“Our thanks and our heart goes out to those many abused devotees who came forward in the comments of the Kreepalu posts. The scoundrel got away with it again, we’re afraid. It all proves one of our general findings about life so far: God is one kinky Bitch with a very strange sense of humor.”
Maharaji supporters continued to lash out with their vindictive fury, such as in this account:
“Lot many people got carried with false allegations against the biggest divine personality on earth Jagadguru Shree Kripalu Ji Maharaj.”
Jody replied:
“Give us a break! He’s playing God for name, fame and financial gain! Not to mention all the special attention he seems to ‘command’ from the ladies. A lack of evidence can mean he got away with it just as much as you believe it indicates his innocence. Many people have come forward with stories of abuse of all kinds, mostly sexual, but also financial. He’s not scot-free. Many folks understand what’s really going on, but an amazing fact of life is that there are always adults looking for space-parents to believe in, and Kripalu can use these children to project his ‘innocence’ regardless of what crime he commits.”
Jody’s last sentence was sad—but all too true.
66
Confronting the Guru
An Invitation to “Private Time”
AFTER MAHARAJI’S RETURN TO Barsana Dham after Trinidad, I stayed far away from him—and stopped going to satsang.
I also refused to do any seva, including baking anymore $2,500 birthday cakes. I told everyone I had to get back to work and had no more free time or money. That did not go over well. However, I wasn’t the only one staying away from him. Many devotees were either exhausted or had to return to their jobs. Maybe some of them were also stunned by the shenanagans. Whatever the reasons, the prayer hall was almost empty during Maharaji’s daytime satsang sessions. I heard Swamiji asked Prabhakari for a list of the names of ashram devotees not attending satsang.
One day, I was in the kitchen of The Girls’ House making a snack, when Madelane called out to me: “Swamiji was just here, looking for you.”
Uugghh. What does he want? I thought.
“I told him you were in your office. He went there.”
I walked back to my office. Swamiji was sitting on his golf cart and Vishi was up knocking on my door. I called out: “I’m right here.”
As I approached them, Swamiji said, “We came to see your office.” He had never visited my office during the entire time I lived in the ashram. I knew he was there for some other reason.
“Okay Swamiji,” I said.
I unlocked the door and let them in. He made a beeline for my tan love seat. I walked behind him, then knelt down on the floor next to him. Vishi sat off to the side, leaning on my bookcase.
Despite my obsequious behavior, I was not happy to see him. My mind was racing. What could he possibly want? He looked around my office and commented on my framed prints of trees. “I like that picture,” he said.
“It’s one of my favorites,” I replied.
I knew this was just small talk, because he was not here just to view my office decorations. I braced for whatever it was that had brought him here. He sat quietly for a minute. As the seconds slowly ticked by, I sat rigidly in anticipation.
Finally, he spoke: “You’re not going to Maharaji’s satsang.”
I stuck to my story. “Swamiji, I can’t take any more time off of work. I already took more than I could afford during Maharaji’s first six weeks here.”
“You have to go see him. This is a rare opportunity.” He was talking in a normal tone, but I knew from experience his mood could change in a nanosecond.
“Is there something wrong?’
I was not prepared for this question. I was still in shock about everything I’d learned. I decided I should use the opportunity to try to understand what the hell was going on.
“Well. I. I’m not sure.” I struggled to find the words to voice my convoluted thoughts, and to figure out how to answer without getting blasted.
“What?” he said, with only a hint of impatience.
“I was wondering…” I could not say the words.
Vishi piped up. “You can ask Swamiji anything. Just ask him,” she insisted.
I finally squeaked out one sentence. “I don’t understand who Maharaji is.”
“What?” Now he was irritated. “What don’t you understand? I told you his whole life history.”
“I know. But I don’t understand about private time.”
“What do you mean?” he said, his voice a controlled growl.
Vishi spoke to him in Hindi.
He looked at me with a mixture of puzzlement and disgust, “What does Maharaji need from a woman’s body?”
“I don’t know.” I answered in a tone that said: You tell me.
He snapped back: “He doesn’t need anything. He doesn’t do it for his benefit. He does it for their benefit.”
I was stunned. He had not denied it. In fact, he had just admitted that Maharaji did spend private time with women—and there was no mistaking that it was a euphemism for sex.
He sat silently fuming for a few seconds, then said, “Do you want to have private time with Maharaji?”
I realized this was a trap. If I said no, Swamiji would immediately know I wasn’t a true believer anymore. So I gave the only answer I could under the circumstances: “Yes, Swamiji.”
“Then you have to be in satsang, sit up close to him, and long for him in your heart. At least go once a day in the morning. That is very important.”
“Okay, Swamiji, I will.”
Apparently satisfied with my answer, he got up and walked out of my office.
Vishi trailed after him and looked up at me. “Come talk to me sometime,” she whispered conspiratorially.
“Okay,” I nodded, realizing I’d just been invited by her to be prepped for “private time” with Maharaji.
67
Prepping Me for “Private Time”
Decoding the Secret Language
I HAD NO INTENTION OF ever participating in “private time” with Maharaji—however, Vishi’s invitation to talk was my opportunity to learn exactly how women were prepped for it.
The next morning, as promised, I attended satsang in the morning. But after sitting in the prayer hall watching the fraud Maharaji perform his usual shtick, I decided I couldn’t stand the sight of him anymore. I stopped going as much as possible.
A few days later I met Vishi in her bedroom to discuss private time with Maharaji. “What does Maharaji do during private time?” I asked faining meekness.
“I don’t know myself,” she said, acting demure—unconvincingly. “I don’t see Maharaji in that way, because I serve Swamiji. But what I tell women is: ‘Be prepared for anything.’”
“What does that mean?”
“Anything could happen with Maharaji. He’s our divine lover.”
How many times had she told women this same thing, I wondered.
“So, you mean anything, like sex?” I was trying not to set off any alarms, but I needed to get to the bottom of it while I had the chance.
She sighed and looked down at her bed. Then she looked up at me. “You see, Maharaji was Chaitanya Mahaprabhu when he appeared on Earth 500 years ago. And Chaitanya was a strict sanyasi, so no one could touch him. Women could not even go to his satsang. This is our chance to love Krishna physically in the form of Maharaji.”
Now I understood what Swamiji had meant when he told us we now had the rare opportunity to have a “physical relationship” with Chaitanya in this lifetime.
At last, I was starting to decode some of their secret language—and shed some light on the dark side of this organization.
68
Under the Radar
My Year of Living Dangerously
AFTER LEARNING I WAS LIVING in a cult, rather than a pure spiritual organization, I had to carefully plan how and when to leave.
On one hand, I was petrified to leave what I had been conditioned to believe was the safe confines of Barsana Dham’s 200 acres. For a decade and a half, I had felt protected inside the ashram’s gates and had believed I was going to live in this ashram until the day I died. Now I had to leave and re-enter that world all alone.
I started having horrible nightmares. During the day, whenever I thought about my future, I was often gripped by rolling panic attacks. But, in spite of my fears, I started the process of preparing to leave. The first thing I did was return to therapy sessions with Elise. One day in late December of 2007, I explained my fears and my plans to leave the two-faced organization.
At my next session, she took me by surprise. “I’ve been thinking about you. And I think you shouldn’t leave the ashram right away. You should sit tight, relax, and make a solid plan for yourself before you go. Leave only when you feel more confident.”
“But how can I stay in such a place, where the leaders are so wicked?”
“You’ve been there fifteen years, what difference will a few months make?” Elise asked me. “Why not just stay and live your life under the radar? Leave on your terms when you are ready. It will give you time to make a plan, and also give you the opportunity to continue gathering information about what is really going on for your book.”
I thought about it over the next couple of days. It made sense. If I could slow down, take my time, and carefully create a Plan B, I could leave with a bit more self-confidence. Plus, I liked the idea of unearthing more secrets before I left so I could help other avoid these two conmen and their gang. The pressure was off and I relaxed for the first time in months. Now, I lived with a new sense of purpose. To the casual observer, I was the same mild-mannered devotee going about her life of work and seva. But undercover, I was engaging in casual conversations with as many people as possible, so that I could dig for information that would reveal more about these men and their decades-long spiritual con game.
Most days, I wrote in my journal to record what I was learning, along with my roller-coaster emotions. I began to piece together the puzzle, and a picture emerged—of two men who had duped thousands of people with promises of divine guidance, when all they really cared about was collecting millions of dollars and having sexual conquests with female devotees and children.
Over the next few months, I learned so many things I wished I had never known. For example, I learned how many female devotees willingly engaged in sexual acts with the gurus and how the preachers were part of a network of people bringing Maharaji a steady supply of women. I learned how young girls were offered to Maharaji by the preachers, and even by their parents and grandparents. I discovered how much money the organization was collecting and taking to India, often by illegal means. I also found the lengths they could go to in order to keep their secrets—intimidation, threats, payoffs—nothing was off limits.
But no matter how many new and offensive things I dug up, I never stopped being shocked by the newest disgrace that came to light. Privately, I could no longer call them Maharaji and Swamiji, since those were terms of endearment used by devotees to show honor and respect—both of which they’d killed for me by their true natures. Instead, I would refer to them in my journal notes and whenever I was talking to ex-devotees by their names: Kripalu and Prakashanand (“Prakash” for short)—a sign of much-intended disrespect.
One day while chatting with Lois, I casually mentioned Kripalu’s arrest. She looked at me with disgust. “That girl and her family were trying to blackmail Maharaji. She knew just enough to make up those lies.” Clearly, his arrest had hardened her resolve to believe this man was still God. I did not ask Lois the obvious question: how could she have found out anything, let alone “just enough,” to make such detailed accusations? I assumed Lois knew more than she was willing to tell me.
Another person I talked to in my search for truth was Jack. He and his wife had become devotees about a year after I moved to the ashram. They eventually moved to Barsana Dham, along with their two young children. Jack had a rough exterior and was overly flirty with many of the women. I avoided him for years, but we found common ground years later as we analyzed the secretive activities within the organization. But even though Jack had strong opinions about the preachers and others in positions of power, he would never criticize the two gurus. He held fast to his belief that they were saints.
I tried to help him understand this “sainthood” was false by sharing the new information I had unearthed online. He was curious to hear everything, but nothing seemed to make him relinquish his faith in the gurus. He himself already knew many things I did not, which he shared with me. The most unsettling story involved his own daughter. It happened in 2005, during Kripalu’s first trip to Barsana Dham.
One day, Kripalu saw Jack’s beautiful blonde sixteen-year-old daughter and told one of the preachers, Janeshwari, to go get her for him. Janeshwari found the girl walking behind the temple and told her she had the opportunity to gain a divine experience with Kripalu. She could go be alone with him in his bedroom and enjoy his company like the gopis enjoyed Krishna. She instructed the young girl exactly how to prepare for the encounter: take a bath, remove her jewelry, and unbutton her shirt before she went into Kripalu’s bedroom.
The girl started crying, then fell to the ground sobbing. Janeshwari looked around, embarrassed, and walked away.
Another female devotee saw the girl sobbing and ran up to her. “What’s wrong?” she said, kneeling beside her.
The young girl looked up and through her tears and screamed: “They want me to have sex with Maharaji.”
The woman picked her up and took her home to her parents. Jack’s wife was deeply upset and wanted to leave the
ashram. But he felt differently. As he told me: “I think she should have gone to see him and been graced.”
I was so disgusted I almost stopped talking to him. But decided to keep quiet in case I could learn more from him—which I did.
Jack also told me during Kripalu’s 2005 trip, Gopal Das, the temple priest, and a devotee named David, had driven bags of cash to New York. If this really happened, I wondered where they had taken the money. Was there a network of devotees involved? Jack also said he’d heard Prakash had collected a large sum of during his clandestine trip to Trinidad following Kripalu’s arrest. If this was true, what was the purpose of all that cash?
Jane was another person I talked to at great length during my year of living dangerously. We had become friends as a result of our shared estrangement from the organization in light of the criminal revelations. Our awakening of the true nature of the cult followed a similar timetable.
One day, she told me a horror story about one of her charan seva experiences, stating no one would ever believe that a person could rape someone in a room when four others were present. I could not imagine what she meant—but she provided more details later.
During one of her charan seva experiences, she was positioned on Kripalu’s left calf. Neelu had turned the lights so low that the room was nearly completely dark. As Jane massaged his thigh, she felt his hand caressing her butt from outside her clothing. Before she knew it, his hand had moved between her legs. She continued pressing his leg as he began shoving his finger inside her vagina through her clothes, which included three layers of cloth: her panties, her slip, and her sari. He proceeded to push his finger in and out for several minutes.
“The pain was so excruciating I thought I was going to faint,” she said. When he finally stopped, she had trouble getting off the bed and walking home.
“I was bleeding,” she said. “I can’t believe I went to receive his divine grace and I received something so dark and ugly. I knew then and there that he was definitely not God.”
