Faith-Based Folly

[Tara Carreon]

TANTRA-INDUCED DELUSIONAL SYNDROME ("TIDS")
by Charles Carreon

TIDS: Tantra-Induced Delusional Syndrome

Abstract

Taking clinical note of the increased manifestation of acute and chronic delusional ideation among practicioners of tantra, a new entry for DSM-V is proposed: Tantra-Induced Delusional Syndrome (“TIDS”). Currently, enthusiasm for tantra is high among mental health professionals seeking alternative analytical and therapeutic models, and critical awareness is correspondingly low. This article, authored not by a mental-health professional, but rather by an attorney with extensive experience with tantric lifestyles, focuses on the case histories of three American tantric teachers who manifested destructive delusional behavior. The article identifies the risk-promoting character of tantric doctrine as the etiological root of their pathology, considers how delusional pathology transfers to tantric students, and describes the social dynamics of guru-dominated communities as potential breeding grounds for self-reinforcing delusional behavior. The article proposes three types of TIDS, “Guru-side,” “Student-side,” and “Transitional,” and suggests treatment modalities.

Tantra, A Risk-Promoting Spiritual Path

Tantra originated in India during an indistinct time period in the second millennium B.C., as a spiritual style that infused virtually all Indian religions, including the Vedic, Jain and Buddhist traditions, with colorful, imaginative characteristics. Once tantra touches a spiritual path, it is irrevocably reshaped into a path that extols the virtues of risk-taking and focuses on attracting students with an appetite for drama and excitement. Buddhist tantra bears little similarity to the original teachings of the Buddha who was born in Lumbini, enlightened at Bodhgaya, and founded the world’s largest and most enduring monastic brotherhood. The original Buddhists engaged in simple meditation practices to clear the mind and still the passions, Tibetan “Vajrayana” Buddhists practice magical rituals in which they invoke a “tutelary deity” through the use of a “seed mantra” and cognize themselves as “emanations” of this divine being, residing in an alternate universe where all sounds are the divine mantra, and all thoughts are divine wisdom. Although the Buddha disclaimed guru status and advised his devotees to “work out their own salvation with diligence,” Vajrayana Buddhists venerate their gurus extravagantly, literally believing them to be infallible and more important than the historical Buddha.

While there are no doubt legitimate manifestations of tantra, it always proceeds on the basis of postulates, not on the basis of introspection or subjective observations. Several tantric postulates make the tantric path attractive to spiritual strivers:

• The nature of ordinary existence is divine;
• The divine nature is concealed by the passions;
• Wisdom is revealed by transmutation of the passions;
• The guru has the power to transmute the passions; and,
• Rejecting the guru’s grace is the path to self-destruction.

The passions referred to in these postulates are all emotional and intellectual distortions of “clear perception,” including the core attachment to one’s own self-identity. Thus, when presented to beginners as a dualistic, either-or approach to enlightenment, the door to dangerous misunderstandings is flung wide open. Ironically, the tantric path is often made more attractive to risk-takers by the outright declaration that it is dangerous, like a steep climb up a cliff, compared with the slow and steady ascent pursued by stodgier practicioners.

Teachers and Students Enable Each Other

In modern-day America, “tantra” is often taught by virtual neophytes encouraged by traditional tantric teachers eager to seed new soil with their doctrine. Presented with the opportunity to play the guru, many of these newly-minted give in to the opportunity to exploit their students, and thus fall victim to the first danger of which serious tantric teachers give warning – the seduction of worldly power. Students who start off as bohemian rebels and non-conformists easily fall under the spell of tantric teachers who strut like fast-buck artists, adopt tough-guy personas, and exude an air of the-devil-may-care. Ironically, they may soon find themselves in the clutches of a psychology familiar to habitués of the bondage and domination scene.

Modern tantric teachers set about magnetizing a “mandala of students” who find their own individual reasons to adopt and spread the belief that they have established contact with a genuine tantric guru. Once a sufficient critical mass of students adopts this belief, it sets in motion a whirlpool of self-reinforcing behavior that exerts the psychological gravitational force of a black hole, sucking in large numbers of vulnerable souls. The community of Student-side TIDS sufferers reinforce each others’ mental enslavement through a shared, self-perpetuating delusion. Mid-level managers of the community primarily suffer from Transitional TIDS, a tense condition alternating between pride at being a community insider and anxious fear of exposure and humiliation. At the apex of this pyramid of misery sits the proliferator of the scheme, immersed in the psychotic pleasure of Guru-side TIDS.

Guru-side TIDS

In this article, which is but a preliminary foray into a promising field of diagnostic research, three case studies provide the basis for our hypothesis that Guru-side TIDS is a particularized psychological disorder -- Thomas Rich (Osel Tendzin), Catherine Burroughs (Jetsunma), and Franklin Jones (Adi Da Samraj). As these cases reveal, Guru-side TIDS is definitively a predatory, antisocial pathology that sometimes assumes criminal proportions and leads to devastating consequences.

Thomas Rich

Rich’s ascent to the status of Tantric guru was facilitated by his own tantric teacher, the once-legendary enfant terrible of Tibetan Buddhism, Chogyam Trungpa. Trungpa, the author of “Born In Tibet,” and many other books, was enthroned in early childhood as the Eleventh Trungpa Tulku of Surmang Monastery in a remote region of Tibet. Trungpa established the Vajradhatu organization in Boulder, Colorado, and prior to his death, pronounced Rich to be his Vajra Regent, to rule in his stead after Trungpa’s death and until the birth of the Twelfth incarnation of Trungpa Tulku.

Trungpa himself had been a famous drunkard and womanizer, as well as a talented poet and magnetic personality. Rich attempted to behave similarly. Tragically, Rich suffered not only from Guru-side TIDS, but also from AIDS. Not long after Trungpa’s death, he embarked on a series of sexual escapades and engaged in unprotected sex with several students. The reason? Due to TIDS-caused delusions, Tendzin believed that his bodily fluids did not transmit the disease. As a result at least one student and his female partner died of the lethal virus.

The conduct of Rich’s devoted students was equally reprehensible and casts a harsh light on the behavior of Transitional TIDS victims, the middle-managers of the dysfunctional Vajradhatu dynasty. Although many of Trungpa’s closest students were writers and artists, including the renowned poet Alan Ginsberg, and the Vajradhatu had its own newspaper, The Vajradhatu Sun, the entire matter of the AIDS deaths was hushed up, and never discussed openly by the cult leaders. Rich’s personal criminal misconduct was covered up, and legal protections against lawsuits by the victims were adopted in a corporate reorganization that downplayed Trungpa’s legacy and changed the name of the cult from Vajradhatu to Shambhala. In her biography, Trungpa’s wife has claimed Trungpa regretted appointing Rich his Regent, but failed to take action to disempower him. Since Trungpa, decimated by alcoholism, was barely able to relieve himself without assistance at the end of his life, it is not surprising that he was unable to disarm the time bomb he’d unleashed on his students. A man named Patrick Sweeney continues to gnaw the cud of the disgraced Regent, claiming to be his “dharma heir,” and operating the Satdharma group under those questionable auspices.

Catherine Burroughs

Catherine Burroughs began her career as a garden-variety psychic medium who purported to “channel” the spirits of wisdom teachers who had long ago departed this earth. Operating from her suburban lair near Washington, D.C., Burroughs tapped the manic energy that drives the over-achieving technocrats and hyperactive communicators who swarm through the bureaucratic warrens of the nation’s capital. Gifted with a knack for giving orders, Burroughs imposed heavy demands on her followers, pressing them into keeping a twenty-four hour world peace vigil that induced heavy competition among her devotees.

Burroughs’ transformation to Guru-hood was also accomplished with the aid of a Tibetan lama, who was wowed by her ability to maintain a stable of high-achieving, top-dollar donating students. Gyatrul Rinpoche, a Vajrayana teacher of the Nyingma sect who had established his own temple near Ashland, Oregon, endorsed Burroughs as a tulku, a reincarnated Bodhisattva, or “Hero of Enlightenment.” Burroughs saw the opening, and quickly negotiated a merger of her people skills with the established cachet of the two-thousand year-old Vajrayana brand, assuming the name of Jetsun Akhon Norbu Lhamo, and redecorating her temple with a blend of traditional Tibetan imagery and New Age crystals. “Jetsunma,” as she came to be familiarly known, assumed her place on the traditional lama’s throne, donned resplendent brocade robes, and doffed the peaked “lotus hat” that lamas wear on ceremonial occasions. The effect would have been silly if anyone with ordinary sensibilities had been able to view the proceedings; but by then the critical mass of Student-side TIDS sufferers had generated a field of delusive glamour, and Burroughs’ unabashed self-love conquered all hearts. For a while.

As her authority grew unchecked, her antisocial inclinations and intolerance with dissent waxed ever more virulent. Burroughs’ demands for money and power crescendoed in a rampage of bizarre behavior that included serial marriages to several students twenty years her junior, rapacious financial exploitation of her flock, and culminated in her arrest by the Maryland State Police for battery on a young nun. Shortly thereafter, Burroughs moved to Sedona, Arizona, and in almost clichéd fashion, Burroughs predicted a series of “earth catastrophes” that failed to take place in 1999.

Franklin Jones

Jones was once a handsome young writer with a Masters in English from Stanford. After serving his apprenticeship with the two tantric gurus Rudrananda and Muktananda, he assembled his own flock of sycophants. A prolific writer blessed with the gift of gab, Jones’ spiritual opus, “The Knee of Listening,” became a staple on the bookshelves of hippies inclined to philosophical nattering. Starting out in Los Angeles, he took advantage of the drug culture in the sixties to induct young, beautiful women into his cult. Jones’ story gives us insight into one of the important methods of inducing Student-side TIDS among followers. It is axiomatic that women will perceive any man as dominant who commands the devotion of all other men. Jones conquered women by surrounding himself with subservient male devotees. During all-night drug and drinking parties, Jones would deploy his male devotees to separate women from their boyfriends or husbands. Jones would then make his move on the new woman. By morning, she would have discovered a new form of bliss in the arms of the guru, and her ordinary lover would have his ego reduced to the size of a pin. Unable to leave his woman behind, and equally unable to argue her away from Jones, the cuckolded man would often become a new devotee. Thus Jones acquired two TIDS victims for the price of one.

In 1985, Jones’ abuse of his devotees exploded in the national press and a he settled a string of lawsuits that alleged what was widely-known in hippie society – that his “communities” were parasitic projects that enriched him with sex, money and power, leaving his devotees psychologically and financially deprived. He bought a small island in Fiji from actor Raymond Burr and moved there with a clutch of disciples whose fate it was to explore the heart of darkness.

Over the years, Jones extracted enough wealth from his devotees to sustain a remarkably self-indulgent lifestyle, toward the end of which he was able to pose as a visual artist who integrated digital photography with monumental aluminum installations that were displayed in Italy and praised by a stable of pet intellectuals in fatuous post-modern style: “It is Adi Da Samraj’s imaginative triumph to have conveyed the illusions created by discrepant points of view and the emotionally liberating effect when they aesthetically unite in the psyche of the shocked perceiver.”

Until the end of his life in November 2007, by way of singing for his supper, Jones continued to emit his original spiritual prose stylings: "I Am The Perfectly Subjective Divine Person, Self-Manifested As The Ruchira Avatar—Who Is The First, The Last, and The Only Adept-Realizer, Adept-Revealer, and Adept-Revelation of The Seventh Stage of Life.”

For several days after his death, Jones’ devotees entertained the notion that he might “wake up” from a fatal heart attack, a notion that they apparently abandoned reluctantly, presumably when the odor of putrefaction became evident. Even the most slavish student-side TIDS sufferers will be forced to admit, after a decent interval, that the guru’s shit admittedly stinks.

Student-side TIDS

Student-side TIDS can develop after relatively brief immersion in a Tantric guru-student relationship. The roots of Student-side TIDS lie in the student’s feeling that they are missing out on the truly miraculous character of a world they believe exists, but are unable to contact. They may have experienced, through drugs, romantic adventures, travel or other emotional stimulants, a sense that life has occasionally parted the veil and allows them to glimpse a magical universe, and that if they could establish a connection with this other realm, they could escape the dull reality in which they feel themselves confined. Tantra is generally not for those students who are comfortable with sustained intellectual effort in pursuit of spiritual awareness. However, it often attracts those fond of mastering an arcane vocabulary, esoteric symbols, and a pantheon of gods and goddesses. Spiritual seekers drawn to tantra share some of the psychological traits of compulsive gamblers, who have an unshakeable faith in their unique luck, and a passionate desire to harvest outsized rewards.

Students of tantric teachers often suffer from a derogatory self-image, and seek to ally themselves with the glamour emanating from the guru. Inclined to believe in their own specialness, but convinced that they cannot achieve transcendence by their own efforts, they place their faith in esoteric traditions that hold the promise of revealing secret knowledge. Tantric teachers whipsaw students emotionally by alternately deriding them for their emotional and intellectual efforts, teasingly making a show of effortless transcendence, then accusing them savagely for being unable to make the petty sacrifices of time and money that would demonstrate the sincerity of their devotion. Tantric teachers also use standard methods of breaking down social conditioning and inducing dependence on the tantric teacher by requiring participation in lengthy rituals and practices, demanding that they render personal services to the teacher and his family, and doling out humiliation as if it were a blessing. Sleep deprivation and rote repetitions of ritual acts also serve to deaden mental acuity and induce an undiscerning mental state in which a fog of confusion can be recharacterized as a sense of removal from worldly attachment. In the tantric environment, all activities and events are re-imagined as sacred portents and harbingers of blessings or misfortune. Nothing that happens in the “mandala” is ever ordinary, thus life becomes charged with imputed significance.

The net result of the tantric milieu is to institutionalize a groupthink founded on individual helplessness and total dependence on the guru. Individually, this may deepen into self-hate, an obsession with the person of the guru, performance of acts of extreme self-sacrifice to obtain approval from the guru, and even the veneration of the guru's physical detritus, i.e., nail and hair clippings. Student-side TIDS may induce bouts of acute anxiety alternating with depression, episodic flights from reality characterized by transient ecstasy and self-deification, compulsive meditative or devotional behavior, and the nagging fear of damnation, referred to in tantric circles as "Vajra Hell."

Student-side TIDS also takes on various apparently benign forms, that manifest in persons with a bland personality or low intellectual vitality, who feel best when kept in a low position without hope of advancement. People who avoid challenges and suffer anxiety primarily when presented with changes of routine may find Student-side TIDS to be a perfect refuge from the rigors of ordinary life. When combined with the narcotic effect of mantra recitation and avoidance of troubling discursive thought, the result can be the formation of a personality happily uninterested in the various pursuits that comprise the elements of an ordinary, satisfying life, such as relationships with other people, having children, a satisfying career, or aesthetic and intellectual activities.

Transitional TIDS

Transitional TIDS develops in some victims of Student-TIDS after a long period of earnest striving to earn the favor of the guru. Transitional TIDS emerges only when fertilized by encouragement from the guru, and is characterized by feelings of superiority, identification with the dominating image of the guru, and confidence that one will in fact attain guru status. Transitional-TIDS sufferers assume the role of go-betweens in the TIDS community, transmitting messages to and from the guru, arranging monetary transfers, and helping Student TIDS victims to establish their credentials. Transitional TIDS often manisfests in subtle and gross anti-social predatory behavior typical of those afflicted by Guru-TIDS. Transitional TIDS usually develops into a cyclic pattern in which the characteristics of Student-TIDS, i.e., ambitious hope and low self image, alternate with the manic character of Guru-TIDS, i.e., self-deification and megalomania, creating a alternating vortex of delusional activity that is manipulated by the guru to satisfy his or her own pathological whims.

Transitional TIDS sufferers, torn by the tension of alternating between ambition and hope on the one hand, and humilitation and despair on the other, often suffer from a suppression of affect that gives them a rigid, serious cast of mind. Transitional TIDS tends to extinguish the sense of humor, and victims of the intense mental division that characterizes this state of mind rarely smile or laugh except when the Guru makes a joke. They will often make attempts at humor that they believe reflect the Guru’s apparently spontaneous style, but such attempts usually fail, eliciting only false laughter from Student-side TIDS sufferers, who are attempting to curry favor from a higher-status devotee. Transitional TIDS sufferers thus are entombed in their personal rigidity and surrounded by a social environment of extreme conformity and predictability, a sort of frozen hell from which they gain a respite only during bouts of despondency and self-loathing.

Treatment Modalities

Student-side TIDS is treatable if the victim can be removed from the TIDS-saturated environment and is engaged in extensive talk-therapy with persons who know nothing about the guru who is the focus of infatuation. For example, simply being put to work in a position involving manual labor, in the company of people who do not know or care about the guru, can be remarkably effective. The complete lack of responsiveness to discussion of the guru tends to give the TIDS-sufferer pause, as they realize that people can live not only without their guru, but without any guru whatsoever. Talk-therapy with people of a “spiritual” bent is, not surprisingly, generally unhelpful. The key to treatment, if a quick cure is desired, is simply to extract the victim from the environment, expose them to ordinary life, and allow their mind to recover from the continuous flow of obsessive guru-regard.

Transitional TIDS poses somewhat of a more difficult problem, but is treatable. The Transitional TIDS sufferer is much more likely to break out of their cycle through an explosion of anger when their hopes of achieving Guru-hood are suddenly exploded. Interestingly, gurus can provoke such occurrences by taxing a student’s loyalty to an extreme, suddenly breaking the illusion that the guru actually loves the student, leaving the student feeling extraordinarily bereft. Another exit point may appear when the Transitional TIDS victim hits a low point of disappointment, that may be provoked by an excessive humiliation at the hands of the Guru or one of his/her minions. Finally, jealousy may arise when a Transitional TIDS sufferer realizes that other people, less spiritual, less devoted, even less intelligent or sensistive to life, are having a wonderful time on a much smaller endowment of spiritual excitement.

Guru-side TIDS is of course, statistically a much rarer phenomenon than Student or Transitional-Side TIDS, and occasions for treatment are almost never presented. Further, by and large, the experience of Guru-side TIDS seems to spark little desire for change in the mind of the guru, and without that impetus, change is extremely unlikely.

Conclusion

In conclusion, while there are hopeful methods of treatment for Student-TIDS and Transitional TIDS, those afflicted with Guru-TIDS face a bleak diagnosis, because once a Tantric authority “recognizes” an individual’s Guru status, and students begin reinforcing it, a self-reinforcing delusional system is established from which anecdotal evidence indicates there is no exit. Indeed, because enabling the Guru’s pathology is the central rationale for the TIDS-powered community, it sets up a perpetual-motion machine that defies the erosion of popularity that even pop stars and first-tier Hollywood actors suffer. If we were sufficiently cynical, we might entertain the notion that Gurus have somehow achieved an enviable position, but then we would be obliged to elevate tapeworms and ticks to a position higher on the evolutionary ladder.

Copyright 2009, Charles Carreon
CharlesCarreon.com

[Tara Carreon]

THE PROMISED GOD MAN IS WEIRD

by Charles Carreon

Introduction: This essay was originally written in 2003, and posted on the American-Buddha.com website. The epilogue was written today, June 13, 2009.

Just the other day, for the first time, I found myself interested in Franklin Jones. I found this book of his, The Promised God-Man Is Here, at “The Bookwagon”, down in the Ashland Shopping Center. It's a big book, like a Michener novel, with a picture of a fat white man with his palms facing forward at chest level. He's wearing a saffron robe on his upper body, his legs and knees are bare, his head is slightly back-tilted, and he seems to either be beaming spiritual energy at us, or keeping his distance. Since he's sitting in the midst of an aura of wavy gold lines, I think beaming is intended to be conveyed. The purity of the subject addressed by the book is signaled by the white cover, associated in Tibetan iconography with pride, vajra, the north and the god realm.

The book is by "Carolyn Lee, Ph.D.," one of the numerous female devotees who have cast themselves on the funeral pyre of Franklin's love. Cause he's a ramblin' man, a complete unknown, a rollin' stone, a rompin' stompin' heaping hunk of burnin' love. That's Franklin, Lord above, and as on earth so in heaven, and also at the seven-eleven. This man is bad! He is so bad he should be locked in a cage with Dr. Laura and Judge Judy, and forced to satisfy their unnatural lusts. Or required to share a lifeboat with Chogyam Trungpa, Krishnamurti, and Madonna for company, and a package of beef jerky and a bottle of Crown Royal to liven up the experience. Just imagine how many ways that could turn out.

Bubba Free John was Franklin's moniker when first I heard of him, back in the days when "The Knee of Listening" was the kind of thing the older hippies worried about. I was only worried that I wasn't getting enough time in the sack with sexy chicks, and serious religion, like serious politics, did not hold my attention. Now I find out that, for all of the religious overlay, his concerns were much like my own, but more grandiose. His recent outpourings indicate that he is now even more convinced of his eternal worth to humanity than he was back in the hippie era, but even then he knew he deserved more than the average guy. He made a career out of stealing women from gullible young hippies who could be buffaloed. The prettier the girls, the better, and Franklin established a system for getting the couple stoned and drunk, having his pals separate the guy from the chick, after which Franklin would seduce her and initiate her into Franklin-worship. Later on, Franklin's assistants got a share of the flesh they helped bring to the altar.

Being ready to drop your drawers and get physical was very much a part of the Franklin scene. Going with his strengths, Franklin accumulated as many as nine official wives, a condition bound to incite envy in those of small experience. Franklin's power over women gave him power over men, and the clique of seducers at the core of his gang gave him the macho support that provokes swooning among members of the fairer sex.

Franklin cuckolded large numbers of men, who stood silent and helpless as their women shucked off their clothes and walked into bliss. The men, deprived of their testicles, couldn't help but hang around. They could lessen the pain by pretending that God had taken their woman. If they pretended Franklin was divine, they could hang around and try to win back the love that had been whisked away from them. They might even get one of Franklin's other castoff women.

On the other hand, if a woman had money, Franklin could always separate her from her man by tossing a new woman his way. Then, she would look to Franklin to heal the wound. Franklin could help her understand that the new relationship was also a good thing. She just needed to open her heart. Keeping her purse closed wasn't helping. That's the way it is in a religious community. You open up your heart, your purse, your legs. Wherever your treasure is, you share it.

This simple formula for a happy and successful cult kept Franklin fed, stoned and caressed for around thirty years. In The Promised God-Man Is Here he again recorded and revised the history of his achievements for posterity, laying out a feast for his devotees. If you were not a believer, this book won’t make you one, but it can still be enjoyed as a study in psychopathology, in which the true character of the patient's delusion is gradually revealed by the steady accumulation of character details.

Never content with one name where an evolving string of them will do, this avatar morphed from Franklin Jones to Bubba Free John to Da Love-Ananda, to Da, Adi-Da, and finally Ruchira Avatar Adi Da Samraj. Rarely able to reside in one place for more than a few years, Franklin up and left his faithless pseudo-disciples in a huff on numerous occasions. Of course, some say he fled Marin County in order to avoid more heat arising out of lawsuits against him by abused students, but I think he just got in a snit. There was pace and staging to Franklin's inner freak show. He managed to keep his devotees on pins and needles about his dreams, his heart palpitations, his swoons, his depressions, his crying jags, his decaying health, his mission to save the world. They feared his judgments, the cruel accusation that they were undermining his mission by failing to generate devotion, cash, contacts, the things a messiah needs. How can you save a world that doesn't want to be saved? The things a guru has to do with his own hands! Are we out of Valium again?!

Yes, he confronted them about it! The slacking, the fake devotion, the heel-dragging, the complete lack of concern for the fact that there were FOUR BILLION PEOPLE on the earth who NEVER HEARD OF DA! WAITING! HE REMINDED THEM: THIS IS INCARNATION THEY ARE WAITING FOR, BUT DA'S DISCIPLES are SLACKING! Back in the mid-eighties, when they first moved to Fiji, Franklin told them, he would MAKE HIS MOVE! Well, he did! But did they? Nooooooo. They just sat there with their simpy devoted faces and LET HIM DOWN!

It was true. Da was God, the baby God. Sitting in a diaper full of shit, screaming for somebody to wipe his butt. Waving his rattle-sceptre, screaming for food, comfort, adulation. His disciples did their job. They adored him and shut him up. They did it in shifts until he died. That was the task his devotees took on, and as Da was their witness, they fulfilled it.

Epilogue

On November 27, 2008, Franklin Jones was working on an art installation of massive painted aluminum constructions. Inflated estimations of the artistic heft of his output had already been floated, and so it appeared that Adi Da was about to enter his Warhol phase. With the international art market tanking, his entry into the field was well-timed, since artists able to fund their own shows and grease the publicity machinery that sustains buzz and prices are a rarity, and good reviews could be bought cheaply. Then Time, that wounds all heels, pulled its rug smoothly out from under the feet of the man, and at the age of 69, the bullshit ceased to flow. At least from the mouth of Adi Da himself, which had ceased to produce words about the same time as his heart stopped beating. His devotees, of course, had just begun. Using the Internet, they began proclaiming on his behalf:

As devotees know, Beloved Bhagavan Adi Da Samraj is a Divine Yogi. There is a long history of such beings having very unconventional “death events” or moments in their lives. We have seen this in Beloved Bhagavan’s Case in many circumstances in the past–the Ruchira Dham or Lopez Island Event, and the Divine Emergence, as merely two of them. Certainly it is the hope of this moment, as we write, that Beloved Bhagavan will Re-Enter His Body and begin a new Phase of His Work. It is our hope and intention that He will Re-Animate the Body and wake up.

Franklin Jones, being merely human, did not “wake up” from his heart attack. But those who had known and loved him consoled themselves on a website dedicated to his memory by posting audio recordings with a focus on the following message:

That Adi Da will always be eternally present, and furthermore, that He has provided us with all the means necessary to locate Him, making His Presence forever available to us.

At this point, our jeering and laughter reach their proper end, because the absurdity of Adi Da’s self-promotion, and the slavishness of his disciples’ adulation stand revealed in their completeness, and whatever there was to expose about the man in life, death has taken the laboring oar, and we may rest from our exertions. This epilogue thus is properly concluded with an epitaph, and since Jones was a false guru from the sixties, made of ordinary American clay, his epitaph from the pen of an American boy, whose music will play on and on long after Jones’ silly sermons are forgotten:

“And castles made of sand
Slips into the sea
Eventually…”

Jimi Hendrix

[Tara Carreon]

KILLER KRISHNAS FROM INNER SPACE

by Charles Carreon



I had never thought particularly ill of the “International Society for Krishna Consciousness” (“ISKCON”) until I read Monkey On A Stick -- Murder, Madness, and the Hare Krishnas by John Hubner and Lindsey Gruson, published in 1989. I discovered the book on a paperback rack in 1999 while standing in an A&P grocery store killing time one evening in Daytona, Florida. Initially captivated by the almost-unbelievable tale of how a gang of pedophile vegetarians ran an international sex and drug ring under the guise of a charity and service, I returned to the story several times, and have now produced an up-to-date telling of how one more hippie dream went horrendously sour with the help of this kooky little thing called “Eastern religion.” This article is separated into two parts, a summary of some of the most lurid stories that appear in Monkey On A Stick, and the legal story, drawn primarily from legal documents and news reports about the aftermath of the IKSCON pedophilia scandal.

Monkey On A Stick covers the time period in the mid-to-late eighties, when eleven Western "gurus" ruled the ISKCON empire, after the death of founder Swami Prabhupada, and abused their power over hundreds of thousands of Krishna devotees. Based in India, the virulent, perverted nature of the cult that operated under the acronym ISKCON, “International Society for Krishna Consciousness,” has never been fully known. This book is well worth reading, whether you are looking for good reasons to avoid getting into a religious cult, or are simply a devotee of the true crime genre.

The most horrific events in the book center around sex, murder and drug dealing at a West Virginia temple called “New Vrindaban,” founded by Keith Ham, a New York homosexual who dropped out of the Columbia grad school religious department to become an early devotee of Prabhupada and took the name Kirtananda (“Blissful-in-sacred-song”). Kirtananda and his partner Howard Wheeler, who joined at the same time, rose high in the Krishna hierarchy. Both were perverts to the core. Wheeler opened a temple in Ensenada, Mexico near the flesh markets of Tijuana, and enjoyed the free access to the bodies of poor children as only a pedophile could. Kirtanananda shielded a teacher from prosecution who publicly sodomized many young Krishna children in his classroom in front of their peers, and shipped him to India as the police were closing in with an arrest warrant.

If you went to an airport in the seventies, you may have wondered what would happen with the money if you gave a young devotee money in exchange for pseudo-ecstatic dancing, repetitive music, simpy smiles, and cheap incense. Read this book and wonder no longer. The official name for the platoons of urban change-scavengers was "sankirtan groups," but they were colloquially referred to as "scam-kirtan." Armies of young women, bullied by cynical, pimpish fellows, wrung innumerable dollars from the pocketbooks of tired Americans, meeting a usual quota of $300 a day, or getting a beating to cover the difference. These young women were also often sexual playthings for the heterosexual appetites of the more plebeian devotees who went for that sort of thing. Kirtanananda also collected millions from drug dealing and money laundering, and directed rings of scam-operators who solicited donations in the name of Vietnam veterans, hungry children, etc.

Kirtanananda was reportedly inseparable from a young boy called Samba, who sat at his side at all times, and with whom he often slept. Kirtananda was also unquestionably a woman-hater. He counseled men to beat their wives “like their prayer drums” – because it would improve them -- and despised audiences with women devotees, describing the occasion as "fish night," when extra incense had to be burned to counter the odor of women. According to the authors, the entire Krishna empire became a magnet for homosexuals with a lust for power, after Prabhupada, disenchanted with the 80% divorce-rate that afflicted the numerous marriages between devotees that he had arranged by edict, decided that only sannyasins, (male) "renunciates," could take leadership positions in the organization. While “celibacy” was enjoined upon male sannyasins, staying in the closet was no problem for these skirt-wearing, chanting, dancing worshippers of Vishnu.

Kirtananda’s management of New Vrindavan was similar to the style that Leona Helmsley would have adopted if she’d been operating the Vatican. Little people would of course sometimes get hurt when God went about His business. So there were a few shallow graves here and there on the property — big deal. The temple roof was leafed with gold, and the floors were pure marble. The architecture overawed with splendor, lifting the mind to God. Lots of people felt very peaceful and divine there, leading them to part with a check or a stack of ill-gotten cash.

Kirtananda was as blatant about ruling by terror as Don Corleone. He expressly ordered the horrifying murder of Chuck St. Denis that's chillingly described in the book’s opening chapter. He was shot twelve times with a .22, and repeatedly stabbed in the chest with a kitchen knife while being exhorted to chant Krishna’s name so that he would be reborn in the Hindu heaven. As the life fled from him, he howled like a dog, so the killers cracked his skull with a hammer. Even after all that, as they wrapped his body in a plastic tarp, he opened his eyes and warned them not to do that, because then he wouldn’t be able to breathe. They buried him under a stream, which is probably a good way to make a spirit unquiet, and perhaps that is why his cries, which vanished into the West Virginia night, echoed on, causing rage to burn even in the hearts of idiot mouse-like devotees accustomed to burying their fears in monotonous chanting.

Kirtananda, quoting one of Prabhupada’s quaint Indian sayings, likened the murder of St. Denis to impaling "a monkey on a stick" to frighten other monkeys, and for a long time it worked. Everyone in New Vrindaban knew that St. Denis had been killed on Kirtanananda’s orders by his personal thug, Tom Drescher. No one dared to speak out because Drescher lived under Kirtananda’s express protection, in the lap of privilege, right there in New Vrindaban. Undermined by Kirtanananda's financial influence, the local police and prosecutors didn’t act against Drescher.

But justice sometimes finds its vehicle. One day a deranged devotee spontaneously attacked Kirtananda with a three-foot steel rod, making serious dents in his brain. Kirtananda barely survived, and ever after walked with a cane, suffering headaches and double vision. Even in that debilitated state, however, Kirtananda maintained his corrupt grip on the faithful, and directed Drescher to kill Steve Bryant, the New Vrindaban exile who considered it his mission from Krishna to expose Kirtanananda's abuses, and had been publishing the embarrassing truth. Drescher killed Bryant in LA, which caused the pot to boil over, and resulted in his prosecution and conviction for St. Denis’ murder. Now serving a life sentence in prison, Drescher has nevertheless been elevated by his service to Krishna to the status of holy assassin, a destroyer of unbelievers. In a special ceremony conducted by Kirtanananda, he was given authority to initiate prisoners in the Hare Krishna path, and has several followers inside.

The Legal Story

Kirtananda Convicted and Released After A Few Years In Club Fed

The story that the authors of Monkey On A Stick tell about the ISKCON cult has been confirmed by subsequent revelations. In February 1987, the New Vrindavan was closed and the principal fled the country as law enforcement closed in. On February 17, 1987, Frederick DiFrancesco and and Larry Gardner were indicted on child molestation charges, and although Kirtananda denounced the investigation and charges as mere persecution, in 1990 the Feds indicted him on five counts of racketerring, six counts of mail fraud, and conspiracy to murder St. Denis and Bryant. A jury convicted him of all but the murder-conspiracy charges, but the verdict was reversed on the grounds that testimony about the child molestation had prejudiced the jury. In the midst of a retrial, he pled guilty to one count of racketeering, and was sentenced to twelve years in prison. Released in 2004, he was received, as the New York Times put it, “into the welcoming arms of his congregation,” notwithstanding that ISKCON had discharged him from his religious position after concluding he was a pedophile.

The Texas Racketeering Lawsuit Against IKSCON

Well-known Texas trial attorney Windle Turley filed a federal lawsuit [online at http://www.harekrsna.org/gurupoison/support/turley-case.pdf] in 2000 on behalf of around 50 innocent children whose parents left them in the care of pedophiles while they worked the streets, scrounging cash to buy gold roofs and fancy cars for the heirarchy. Turley named 16 corporate defendants based in Texas, Pennsylvania, New York, Washington, Florida and California, seven defendants in their capacity as Executors of the Estate of A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada -- Gregory Gottfired, Robert Grant, Thomas Hertzog, Ghopal Khanna, Howard Resnick and Glen Teton – and 18 more defendants as members of the Governing Body of Commissioners of ISKCON (the “GBC”). These defendants, by legal name and Krishna name, were FARAMARZ ATTAR (“Atreya Rsi das”), CHARLES BACIS (“Bhavananda das”), WILLIAM BERKE (“Bali Mardan das”), ROBERT CORENS, (“Rapanuga Swami”), WILLIAM DEADWYLER, III (“Ravindra Svarupa Das”), WILLIAM EHRLICHMAN (“Bhagavan Swami”), JOHN FAVORS (“Bhakti Tirtha Swami”), STEVEN GOREYNO a/k/a STEVEN GUARINO (“Satsvarupa das”), MICHAEL GRANT (“Mukunda Goswami”), KEITH HAM (“Kirtanananda”) resides, THEODORE RICHARD HARRIS (“Panca Dravida Swami”), THOMAS HERTZOG (“Tamal Krishna Goswami”), JEFFREY HICKEY (“Jagadish das”), GOPAL KHANNA (“Gopal Krishna Goswami”), HANS KARY (“Hansadutta Swami”), WILLIAM OGLE (“Balavanta das”), HOWARD RESNICK (“Hrdayananda das Goswami”), BRUCE SCHARF (“Brahmananda”).

Turley’s complaint alleged that ISKCON became a den of thieves and a one-stop-shop for pedophiles, who in exchange for donations, would find a perv-friendly environment, a ready supply of compliant victims, and cover from investigation and prosecution.

“ISKCON and its leaders …­­­enriched themselves by granting special favors to large fund raisers and donors, even if some large donors were drug dealers and other criminal elements. The special favors include, among others:

(a) Granting teaching positions to sexual predators so they would have access to children for their sexual gratification;

(b) Giving young girls from the gurukulas as brides to older donor men;

(c) Creating “asylum” and a ring of protection against apprehension of fugitives, including those dealing illegally in arms, drugs and murder, within the ISKCON enterprise;

(d) Destroying evidence and failing to report criminal conduct on the part of ISKCON and devotees.”

Turley further alleged that under the cover of being an international religious organization, ISKCON offshored its perversities in India, where sexual abuse of children is culturally accepted, rarely investigated, and virtually never prosecuted.

“In a conscious effort to avoid policing and scrutiny by U.S.A. child protection agencies, ISKCON took a large portion of its boarding school activities overseas to India. In India, ISKCON managed at least two profoundly abusive boarding schools for boys. These were the Vrindavan and Mayapur schools. Both were staffed and controlled by appointees of ISKCON who were, for the most part, assigned from the United States. The students sent there were almost exclusively from the United States, and the management policies, devised and implemented by the GBC, originated in the U.S.A. The Indian schools were among the worst offenders and abusers of minor boys, and many of the Indian school teachers and leaders were also teachers, leaders and abusers in United States schools.”

Turley’s complaint alleged that devotees were required to put their children in the “gurukula” boarding schools, which were basically pools of children who were rented to pedophiles.

“Some examples of the types of abuse and neglect to which the children, ranging in age from 3 years to 18 years, were subjected include but are not limited to:

· Sexual abuse including rape, oral sex, intercourse with children, sexual fondling of children, and masturbation with children.

· Physical beatings of children with boards, branches, clubs, and poles.

· Physical beatings by adult teachers and school leaders with fists to the head and stomach.

· Kicking the children into submission.

· Children were in some instances made to walk great distances in bitter cold, including snow and rain, without jackets, coats, or shoes.

· Children were often forced to sleep on cold floors and in unheated rooms.

· Children were frequently deprived entirely of medical care [for] malaria, hepatitis, yellow fever, teeth being knocked out, broken facial bones, and broken bones in their hands, often inflicted as they attempted to shield themselves from beatings.

· Children were sometimes kept in filthy conditions. In at least one instance, a local group utilized what had recently been a cattle or horse barn for a nursery.

· In almost every school the children were kept in severely overcrowded conditions, often forced to sleep shoulder to shoulder on the floor or in small rooms in three-high bunks with 10 or 12 children to each tiny room.

· The children were physically abused by being awakened every day in the early morning hours (generally at 4:00 a.m.) and subjected to a cold shower, after which they were taken, without any breakfast, to a daily religious service. At some schools, the children were forced to walk great distances in the dark to attend the service, and often in cold or rainy conditions, clothed only in their thin gown-like “dohti.”

· The children were not provided bathroom tissue, but instead were expected to wipe themselves with their fingers, after which they would dip their fingers into a bowl of water.

· As punishment for not cleaning themselves thoroughly, children were scrubbed with steel wool until their skin was raw and sometimes bleeding.

· Children were abused when they were forced to sleep on their wet blankets or in tubs as punishment if they wet their bedding.

· Some children were forced to wear their soiled underclothes on their heads for long periods of time because they had wet themselves.

· Children were often forced to go without food entirely, either because there was none, or as punishment. When food was provided, it was always inadequate for a growing child’s diet.

· The inadequate food that was provided was often prepared in unsanitary conditions, was of very poor quality and so unpleasant that even hungry children frequently could not eat it. In at least one school, the children learned as a matter of routine to remove insects from their food before eating it.

· Each child was expected to eat what they were provided. If they did not do so, their served portion was kept on their plates until the next meal when it was served again. This process often continued until the cold food -- even moldy and insect-infested -- was swallowed.

· In some schools, children were forced to lick up their vomit from any foul food they may have thrown up.

· At New Vrindavan, three young boys, about six or seven years of age, who worked in the kitchen, took some food to their hungry friends. They were caught and punished by being gagged, having bags placed over their heads, and being put in a small room for several days with only a bucket for their waste and no food or water. One of the same boys was later slammed by a teacher into a marble wall, resulting in a loss of some teeth and fractured facial bones.

· Children were controlled by various threats to hurt or kill them and by punishments. Young children, strictly limited to a vegetarian diet, were continually terrorized when told that non-Krishnas were meat-eaters, that they ate each other, and that the children, if given to or taken by the meat-eaters, would themselves be eaten.

· Children often saw rats in their rooms and schools. Some children (such as those at the school in Dallas) were told the rats lived in a particular old closet, and the child would be, and often was, placed in the closet if they didn’t do as told.

· One form of punishment included forcing little children to stand on a crate for long periods of time in a darkened closet “so the rats would not eat them.”

· Very young children were in fact placed in those dark and locked closets and left afraid and crying for hours at a time. They were locked overnight in dark cellars with dirt floors. One young child was made to sleep alone in the loft of a cold barn for many nights.

· Sometimes the children were sent by their superiors to massage and bathe the religious gurus and then drink their now “blessed bath water.”

· In some cases, children were stuffed into trash barrels for periods of two to three days, with the lid on, as punishment for relatively trivial “sins.”

· Children were almost universally told that if they disclosed their condition or complained to their parents or others, they would be severely punished. When complaints were made, the children were publicly and often severely beaten or subjected to other forms of punishment.

· Girls, as young as 12 or 13 years, were frequently “given” or “promised” to an older male in the movement. Although their marriages were generally not sexually consummated until the child was at least 16 or 17 years old, the little girls were terrorized by the threats, and often reality, of being given away by their leaders to become engaged to marry “strange old men.”

· Children were often forced to lie awake in their beds or sleeping bags and listen as their little friends were sexually molested by teachers and other leaders.

· The children were emotionally abused by subjecting them to near-total parental and societal isolation. In an effort to totally control their minds, the children were, in most cases, separated and isolated from their parents and were not allowed to have regular contact with their parents. Personal visits, correspondence, and telephone calls were either forbidden or discouraged. Gifts, particularly of food, were intercepted. For example, one young boy felt abandoned by his parents, and had no contact with his family for more than a year. He later learned the one small package of cookies sent by his mother was intercepted and kept from him.

· Children were frequently moved to different schools in different states without the consent (or, sometimes, knowledge) of parents. Some children were hidden from parents. Some boys were shipped out of the country to ISKCON schools in India. In at least some cases, after the parents discovered their child’s whereabouts and made arrangements for them to come home, their plane tickets were intercepted, and torn up in front of the children. Then, these children were punished for their parents’ attempt to bring them home.

· Even though the children were given by their parents to ISKCON to educate, except for the reading of their “vedic scriptures,” the children received little or no education.

· Because of near-total isolation from the outside world and lack of education, the children who remained within the ISKCON schools for extended periods of time were totally unequipped to enter outside society. They have experienced extreme difficulty in earning a living, entering and maintaining relationships, including marriage, and in adapting to the laws and regulations of society. Many are in need of extended psychological and/or vocational training, rehabilitation, and medical care.”

Helping Hands From The Religious Establishment Reach Out To Aid ISKCON

Strangely enough, mainstream U.S. churches supported ISKCON in its efforts to get the lawsuit dismissed. The following groups joined in filing a “friend of the court” brief urging Judge Sam Lindsay to dismiss the case on the grounds that a church could not be legally characterized as a “racketeering” organization, and thus there was no federal law on which the court could base its exercise of jurisdiction over the defendants.

The American Jewish Congress
Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs
Christian Legal Society
Christian Life Commission of the Baptist General Convention of Texas
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints
The Evangelical Covenant Church
The First Church of Christ,Scientist
General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists
General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A)
National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States
United States Catholic Conference

Affecting a pious and disinterested tone, these eleven churches, each of which has now been implicated in the ever-widening scandal of ecclesiastical sex abuse, waded into the dispute to protect the coffers of ISKCON from being tapped by a damage award that could help the Krishna children rebuild lives shattered by their collision with a diabolical cult that had the foresight to incorporate as a church in order to conceal, foster, and escape justice for its widespread criminal activities. The “friend of the court” brief, filled with supercilious chaff, referring to the churches as “amici,” dresses up the argument in First Amendment garb:

“This case originally involved allegations of sexual abuse by some members of the International Society For Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) entrusted with the education of children. Amici do not have any knowledge of the truth of these allegations, nor are we speaking to any factual issues in this case. We all unequivocally condemn all forms of sexual, physical, and emotional abuse whenever such abuse occurs. All of the amici with pastoral responsibilities have, in our own ways, sought to deal with it, and to heal its devastating effects. Amici file this brief because proper resolution of the serious threat to religious freedom posed by the RICO claim in the Amended Complaint is critical to the autonomy of churches, synagogues, mosques, and other religious organizations. Religious freedom is fragile enough without adding the threat of destruction by lawsuit under a statute designed to eliminate organized crime, not organized religion. The attempted use of RICO to target an entire religious community is an outrage against the First Amendment.”

Judge Lindsay accepted the argument that churches cannot, as a matter of law, be characterized as criminal organizations, thus giving the green light to creative criminals who wish to adopt the ecclesiastical cowl as a cloak for criminality. Calling the ruling a “victory for religious freedom,” attorney David Liberman equated liberty with libertinage, an intent that I am certain the Framers of the Constitution never conceived in all of their deliberations.

Chapter 11 Bankruptcy To The Rescue

After the suit was dismissed, Turley refiled in Texas state court, and ISKCON moved to the next stage of legal defense – the bankruptcy courts. Claiming that the $400 Million in damages sought exceeded the value of ISKCON’s property, Liberman orchestrated bankruptcy filings of numerous ISKCON-related entities around the nation. This required all injured individuals to submit claims in bankruptcy by June 30, 2003. The case was settled in bankruptcy in May 2005. By that time, 540 Krishna children had submitted claims, and a $9.5 Million fund was allocated to provide them with awards. A press release stated: “The amount each individual receives will be based on the nature of the abuse, its severity, and the time factor. The amount of compensation received by most will range from $2,500 to $50,000.” ISKCON leaders mumbled mea culpas all the way to the bank, proving as many a mediator has argued, that saying you’re sorry can greatly reduce the bill you’re forced to pay.

A Pittance For The Victims

Ultimately, with insurance money, Turley garnered $20 Million to be divided among the claimants. If we take out just 25% for Turley, that leaves $17.5 Million, which divided by 450, gives you less than $39,000 per claimant. Take a look at the types of abuse those children suffered – teeth knocked out, forced to eat their own vomit, and according to statements from virtually all of the children interviewed, an interminable, daily stream of sexual assaults. Ask yourself how forty-grand can possibly compensate for those types of injury. Ganganam Dasa wrote a short article in October 2009, in which he said that the settlements were small: “It works out to about two thousand dollars twice a year for 4 years -- about enough to pay rent and bills for a short time -- a pittance for a stolen childhood and a bleak future.” The suffering that the Krishna children endured in childhood was a setup for failure in adult life. As Ganganam Dasa wrote:

“As many of us gurukulis are in our 30's and because of the low quality of education given in the gurukulas, university entrance was impossible. While ordinary karmis (non-Krishna people) are having successful lives -- financial, emotional, and family stability -- every gurukuli I know is struggling day to day, have not attained the dreams of having what karmis consider even average success: family, a comfortable living situation, reliable vehicle, etc. I have to emphasize that when I was 4, I didn't make the choice, unlike adults, to join a religion that celebrates poverty, lack of family, and viewing the world as a Kali Yuga hellhole that we must leave ASAP. Now as a result, many of us have grown up into exactly what was planned for us -- emotionally disturbed, unskilled losers, while many others around us who had normal childhoods are prospering with happy lives complete with families of their own. It's no wonder some have attempted or chosen to end their lives through suicide.”

The Violators Got A Free Ride

In the end, it seems clear that: (1) there were at the very least over five-hundred children subjected to conditions of terrible abuse that destroyed their experience of childhood and rendered them unfit for adulthood, (2) the ISKCON organization ultimately admitted total responsibility for the creation and establishment of the system that enabled the abusers, (3) the abusers were never systematically identified or held personally responsible, and were effectively immunized by the bankruptcy proceeding, (4) virtually no one, besides the two pervert teachers indicted in South Carolina, were ever even criminally charged, much less convicted for their commission of heinous acts of abuse, and (5) the ISKCON organization has suffered little in the way of consequence on a financial scale, a mere speeding ticket in the life of a cult that has vacuumed the cash out of innumerable pockets and purses.

It’s quite remarkable, really, and teaches you something – the sins of the parents will be visited upon the children, and when you are born to parents stupid enough to raise you in a cult, nobody is really going to care that much about your problems. It will all be viewed as self-inflicted, even though, as Ganganam Dasa said, he had nothing to do with the bad choices his parents made. So when you see someone leading their whole family into a lifestyle that says you should surrender everything worldly, pursue a life of poverty, and give your children the gift of a sanctified lifestyle, tell them story of the Killer Krishnas. Maybe, just maybe, they’ll think twice.

[Tara Carreon]

THE DALAI LAMAS, PRISONERS OF THE POTALA JUNTA

by Charles Carreon



Everybody knows the Dalai Lama. He won the Nobel Peace Prize for a new sort of reason. Most people get it because they caused peace to break out in some region of the world where warfare had previously been the norm, but the Dalai Lama didn’t do that. Tibet is probably as un-peaceful as it’s ever been, and he never goes there. He’s the “leader of the Tibetan people in exile,” and his exile has not won the Tibetans peace, freedom, or anything else that is desirable. But let’s move on. This essay is about the history of the Dalai Lamas, that I almost guarantee will surprise you.

You probably know that the Dalai Lama, like many other Tibetan clerics, is said to be the latest in a long line of sacred “incarnations” of a single blessed being who migrates from one dead body to the next living one, getting smarter, more spiritual, more magical, and more worth bowing to with each successive “rebirth.” This means that the Fourteenth Dalai Lama should be at least thirteen times as experienced as any other human being, and therefore entitled to extraordinary deference for his past achievements, extending into the distant past.

You would expect, of course, that the First Dalai Lama might have known that he was the First Dalai Lama, and might have said something about planning on being reborn again. But that’s not the case. The First Dalai Lama never mentioned being a Dalai Lama, because he was only recognized "posthumously." Same with the Second Dalai Lama, who was also recognized posthumously. And since they never mentioned being the First and Second Dalai Lamas, who do you think identified them as such? Well, and I’ll tell you right now that you’re going to get better at this, they were both posthumously recognized by the Third Dalai Lama!

Under what circumstances did the Third Dalai Lama “recognize” his “previous incarnations?” Well of course, after he identified himself as the Third Dalai Lama. This tradition of picking your psychic ancestors and adopting their venerable character as your own might seem rather shabby, but Tibetan lamas have long engaged in retrospective embellishments of their past incarnations.

Furthermore, this tradition of burnishing one’s resume with illustrious past lives was not left behind in Tibet. On one of his first visits to the United States, while visiting Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello estate, Tenzin Gyatso, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, told a TIME Magazine reporter that he had a hunch he might have previously incarnated as Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, member of the First Constitutional Congress, and Third President of the United States. Let’s just assume that the Fourteenth Dalai Lama’s hunch was correct, and he was T. Jefferson, Founding Father of the USA, born April 13, 1743, died July 4, 1826. During most of that time period, the Eighth Dalai Lama, Jamphel Gyatso, was on the throne in Tibet (1758-1804). But in 1743, when Jefferson was born, the Seventh Dalai Lama was on the throne, so let’s assume that the Seventh Dalai Lama was capable of generating a double to be reborn in Virginia, and that there was no hiccup in Thomas Jefferson’s energy when the Seventh Dalai Lama died, and the Eighth Dalai Lama took over. You might even think harder about this topic, because if the Dalai Lama can generate two incarnations, then it would be wise to have overlapping incarnations, to eliminate the interregnum between one incarnation and the next. Keep this question in mind as you read on, because you will see why the Tibetans would never want to eliminate the interregnum between incarnations – that’s where all the fun happens.

There’s just one more question I want to ask about Thomas Jefferson. Was Jamphel Gyatso’s character at all like Thomas Jefferson’s? According to an article on Minnestoa Public Radio (“MPR”) website, Jamphel Gyatso "was uninterested in politics, and for a 150-year period starting with his reign, day-to-day power was exercised in Tibet … by a series of regents. During Jamphel Gyatso's reign, Tibet fought wars with the Gurkhas of Nepal, and received a delegation from England, which was interested in Tibet because of its strategic location in relation to British India, China, and Czarist Russia." [1] So Jamphel Gyatso/Thomas Jefferson was simultaneously fighting a war with Britain on one side of the world, having them to tea on the other side, and the British none the wiser.

However that works out, you'd figure that, having integrated his lessons from occupying the Oval Office on the other side of the world, the Ninth Dalai Lama would drop the apolitical stance of the Eighth Dalai Lama and import some democratic reforms into Tibet. Let's check the Ninth Dalai Lama’s record. Whoops! He didn't get much of a chance to adopt democratic reforms, since he was "likely murdered" at age 11 by his compassionate tutors. According to MPR, the Ninth Dalai Lama, Lungtok Gyatso (1806-1815) enjoyed a very brief reign. He "died at age 11 in the Potala palace. Some historians believe that, given the tumultuous state of Tibetan politics, he was assassinated. The subsequent three Dalai Lamas also died young. Some theories suggest they, too, were murdered." So the Ninth, Tenth and Eleventh Dalai Lamas all died young in the Potala Palace? Well, maybe he did come back from America with some ideas for reform, and those ideas didn’t receive a warm reception.

However, we have gotten a little ahead of ourselves. Let’s get back to the Third Dalai Lama, who recognized himself as the incarnation of two men who had apparently never prophesied that, in the future, they would be reborn in the person of the Third Dalai Lama. That’s interesting, because one of the bulwarks of "credibility" for the serial-reincarnation hypothesis is that the births of the reincarnated ones are foreseen by the prior incarnation. This slim warrant of authority is lacking for the real first Dalai Lama, i.e., the Third. But no one argued with him about it, or if they did, they didn’t fare well, because the Third Dalai Lama had Mongol muscle to back his claim.

Whatever he might have lacked in sanctity, the Third Dalai Lama made up for in political savvy. In 1578, he was hanging out with a Mongolian warlord named Altan Khan when suddenly he had a flash, and saw that in a past life, Khan had been a famous Tibetan warlord, whose spiritual mentor had been a prior incarnation of the Third Dalai Lama! It was a Happy Reunion, and both Altan Khan and the Third Dalai Lama made the most of it. The Mongols built huge temples, made massive offerings to the Buddhist faith, and both sides cemented their relationship to such a degree that when it came time to select a Fourth Dalai Lama, he turned out to be …. the grandson of Altan Khan. In this twist of fate you can see how, by skillfully re-defining the past, you can control the future.

The Fifth Dalai Lama, also known as the “Great” Dalai Lama, took full advantage of his close collaboration with the Mongolian armed forces. My source of Tibetan history for this comes from a website maintained by a Tibetan lama called the “Sharmapa,” whose own sect came into conflict with the Dalai Lama’s several hundred years ago, a wound that has not healed over the centuries, resulting in his willingness to provide a candid assessment of those olden times now so happily remembered by today’s New Agers as the golden age of Buddhist monarchy:

The landscape of the old Tibet was dotted with wars, political intrigue, and bloody feuds. For centuries, two old, “red-hat" Buddhist schools, the Sakya and the Kagyu, held, one after the other, undisputed sway over the country. By the beginning of the seventeenth century, a new power had emerged and began to threaten the political status quo: the Gelugs, or Virtuous Ones, a "yellow-hat," reformed Buddhist order, founded around 1410 by a disciple of the 4th Karmapa. Led by the mighty 5th Dalai Lama and his authoritative ministers, the Gelugs invited Gushri Khan, the Mongolian warlord, into Tibet in 1638. Their design was to break the power of the Kagyus, take over the government, and secure a hold on Kham in the east and the rebellious Tsang in the south of the country. Given free rein, the ferocious Mongol hordes razed to the ground or converted to the Gelugpa tradition a large number of Nyingma monasteries. The 10th Karmapa had to flee into a thirty-year exile after his camp was attacked by an army operating on orders from the Dalai Lama's ministers. The school of the Virtuous Ones imposed their political hegemony with sword and fire.

“Sword and fire,” eh? That usually is indicative of the activities of pious rulers eager to avoid bloodshed, right? Well, no worries – the Fifth Dalai Lama was enthusiastic about what he had to offer the Tibetan people, and to paraphrase Rumsfeld, you don’t go to temple with the followers you wish had…. Yes, the Fifth Dalai Lama was a powerful figure, so powerful in fact that after he died, his "Regent" concealed his death for about fifteen years. According to MPR, "Lozang Gyatso's death in 1682 was not announced until 1697, as the regent of Tibet attempted to monopolize power."

That's cool. Yeah, let’s conceal the Dalai Lama’s death for fifteen years, so we can run the country and -- wait a minute -- how the hell do you conceal the Dalai Lama's death for fifteen years? Wouldn't somebody notice? That will give you an idea how tightly lips were sealed in the Potala. And if you think you can keep a political secret for fifteen years without killing a few people and bribing a hell of a lot more, then you should definitely be a Tibetan Buddhist, 'cause you can believe anything.

But eventually, someone figured out that the Dalai Lama was dead (“He never drinks his tea!” say the servants) and you gotta pick a new one. No problem. Grab another kid and let’s go. And you don’t have to take the child of anybody famous – after all, they’re just going to kill him when he starts to mature. The Sixth Dalai Lama died young, at age 23. He made the mistake of alienating the Mongols who had made the Dalai Lamas the puppet leaders of the nation. The Mongols invaded, kicked him off the throne, and killed him when he tried to flee Tibet. From the MPR site: "Tsangyang Gyatso (1683-1706). Because of the delay in announcing the Fifth Dalai Lama's death, Tsangyang Gyatso was well into his teens before he was recognized as the Sixth Dalai Lama. He is considered to be the most unconventional Dalai Lama. He dressed as a layperson, drank wine, enjoyed the company of women and composed love songs that are still popular in Tibet. His eccentric style alienated him from Mongol leader Lhabzang Khan, who invaded Tibet during this time and deposed Tsangyang Gyatso. He died while leaving the country; many historians believe he was murdered. Lhabsang Khan appointed another monk, Yeshe Gyatso, as the Seventh Dalai Lama, but his legitimacy has never been recognized by the Tibetan people."

The Seventh Dalai Lama knew better than to annoy the politicians, and he played both sides against the middle. He got the Chinese to push out the Mongols who had deposed the Sixth Dalai Lama. But you know how it is with the Chinese – you invite them in to smoke a little opium, and they never go home! The Seventh Dalai Lama was a figurehead political leader, because the Chinese installed a governor, called the "Amban" to make all the decisions pursuant to Chinese law.

The Eighth Dalai Lama we already discussed. Another hands-off leader, thanks perhaps to having transferred his political spirit through the ether to his co-incarnation, Thomas Jefferson.

The Ninth Dalai Lama, as we know, died young. The stats on the 10th, 11th, and 12th Dalai Lamas make it clear that here was a position with no job security. From the MPR website again:

10th -- Tsultrim Gyatso (1816-1837). Like his predecessor, Tsultrim Gyatso died suddenly in Potala before assuming temporal power. During his brief life, Tibet continued to isolate itself, while keeping a suspicious eye on its borders.

11th -- Khendrup Gyatso (1838-1856). He was the third in a series of Dalai Lamas who died at an early age. During Khendrup Gyatso's life, China's influence in Tibet weakened further because of the Opium War and the Taiping Rebellion. Tibet's struggles continued with Nepal and Ladakh to the west.

12th -- Trinley Gyatso (1856-1875). His reign was a time of severe unrest among Tibet's neighbors. The weaker Qing dynasty was unable to provide military support because of its own battles. At the same time, the British intensified pressure on the Tibetan borders, from their colonial bastion in India.

Now we can discuss why the interregnum between incarnations is so useful. The point of “finding” a Dalai Lama and then killing him before he assumes power is to perpetuate Regent-Rule. Let the people have their Dalai Lama, but always keep him either in the cradle or in the grave, and never let him assume the throne. Then the Potala Junta can rule in his stead. Victor and Victoria Trimondi have written a book entitled The Shadow of the Dalai Lama, which alludes to murder and human sacrifice as elements of Tibetan Buddhist ritual. Before you discard this notion, you must consider this fact: the Holy Men in the Potala somehow killed the God-king Four Times! Serially going through this charade of "finding a reincarnation," taking him from his family, mummifying him in state regalia, then sending him off to the heavenly realms, after performing careful rituals to protect his soul from bruising during frequent deaths and rebirths. When you think of it that way, it makes all those images of little boys in silk robes and yellow hats somehow a little sinister, doesn’t it?

Now consider also that the old lamas who committed the god-murders were supposedly also reincarnating. The histories don’t say that the Potala Junta was finally broken up and the Twelfth Dalai Lama was therefore not murdered, and all of his killers were forbidden to reincarnate. No, the story is that the Potala Junta leaders continued to reincarnate, and their later incarnations still hold positions of power within the Gelugpa power structure.

So ask yourself this: When the Fourteenth Dalai Lama draws inspiration from his lineage, how does he do it? He of course knows the history of his past incarnations, although he never discusses it, but wouldn’t it be nice to ask him, “What's it like to be surrounded by the reincarnations of people who serially killed your past incarnations?” It would also be fun to ask: “How do you draw inspiration from the Third Dalai Lama, who was apparently a total opportunist? How do you draw inspiration from the Fourth Dalai Lama, the grandson of Altan Khan, whose ascension to the apex of ecclesiastical power was obviously rigged? How do you draw inspiration from the Fifth Dalai Lama, who converted people by the sword and acquired monasteries from competing sects in a gangsterish takeover assisted by Gushri Khan's Mongol thugs? How does this past history of your many incarnations, of whom so many were murdered, and so many others were involved in killing and political gamesmanship, add up to a Nobel Peace Prize?”

But let's move on. The Thirteenth Dalai Lama lived a normal lifespan. How? Well, he probably got to thinkin' about what had happened to the Ninth, Tenth, Eleventh and Twelfth Dalai Lamas, and caught a clue. He refused to live in the Potala Palace. He moved into the Summer Palace, the “Norbu Lingka,” and wouldn’t be budged. And he left the country for very long trips – spending several years in Russia as a guest of Gurdjieff (called Dorjieff in most of the books), and also spent some time in India. Supposedly he did this to escape Chinese aggression, but I suspect that was an excuse for getting out of Lhasa any damn way he could. Much better out there traveling amongst the poor people who think you're god, than in the castle, where everyone thinks they're god, and you're just a pawn in their game. All of the old conniving lamas stayed in Lhasa, with their wealth, concubines, and ceremonies. Out there on horseback with the yak herders, the Thirteenth Dalai Lama was a lot safer.

Take note that the Fourteenth Dalai Lama has followed the same tactic, at least by getting out of Lhasa. Of course, you probably think he made a wise move when he relocated to India in 1951 with financial assistance from the United States Central Intelligence Agency (a fact that you can independently confirm with an Internet search of “dalai lama admits cia payment”). But let’s take note that few heroic leaders whose people survived a hostile attack ever did so by fleeing to another country. When London was being bombed with V2 rockets and buzz bombs, did Churchill flee to America? Why did Israel push so hard to evict Arafat from Palestine? Because when the leader abdicates, his followers are leaderless. A leader in exile is no leader at all.

From a strategic, diplomatic viewpoint, the Dalai Lama’s abdication was detrimental to the Tibetan people. The first time the Fourteenth Dalai Lama left, on December 20, 1950, he simultaneously sent a delegation from Lhasa to Beijing to negotiate a deal with Mao’s diplomats. The delegates unanimously signed an agreement that destroyed the legal foundation for any claim to Tibetan autonomy, and still provides the basis for the PRC claim that Tibet is part of China. [2] The Fourteenth Dalai Lama was supposedly very displeased with this agreement that his diplomats signed, but he didn’t repudiate it for years.

But although it was not a good political move, it was probably the right move for the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, who was still young, and wanted to stay alive. Tibet, a far-flung, ungovernable land controlled by nobles who were easy prey for the organized Chinese soldiers, could not maintain a national unity it had never possessed. There were no newspapers, no radios, no automobiles, none of the infrastructure that binds a nation together. Unlike the Bhutanese royal family, that accepted an offer from British to defend their country against Chinese aggression, the Thirteenth Dalai Lama, urged by arrogant Tibetan autocrats, had rejected the same offer.

The Dalai Lama had no means to exercise leverage against the Chinese. The people he sent to negotiate with China came back to Lhasa, having given away the country. Lhasa was crawling with war profiteers selling supplies to the Chinese garrison. Worst of all, in exchange for a year of non-aggression, the young Dalai Lama allowed the Chinese to build a road from the Chinese frontier all the way to Lhasa, opening an avenue for military transports to penetrate the heart of Tibet. Talk about bad feng shuei! Facilitating transportation for an attacking army is the ultimate strategic blunder. In Europe, the barbarians always tried to destroy the Roman roads on which the Emperor’s armies travelled with deadly speed. So by the time the Fourteenth Dalai Lama abdicated, he likely had no choice.

So what's the box score?

Let’s examine the history of the 14 Dalai Lamas:

The First Dalai Lama didn't even know he was one.
The Second Dalai Lama didn't know it either.
The Third Dalai Lama was a clever opportunist who usurped the good reputation of the first two “Dalai Lamas” by inventing the lineage and making himself third.
The Fourth Dalai Lama was a royal appointee.
The Fifth Dalai Lama was a killer-conqueror, and his last fifteen years of "rule" were fraudulent.
The Sixth Dalai Lama was murdered at the age of 23, and his appointed successor was denied office.
The Seventh Dalai Lama was put on the throne by the Chinese, who treated him as a figurehead.
The Eighth Dalai Lama was a hands-off guy who let the Chinese run the country.
The Ninth Dalai Lama was murdered and never ruled.
The Tenth Dalai Lama was murdered and never ruled.
The Eleventh Dalai Lama was murdered and never ruled.
The Twelfth Dalai Lama was murdered and never ruled.
The Thirteenth Dalai Lama fled twice, and rejected a defense pact from Britain that would have protected Tibet from Chinese aggression.
The Fourteenth Dalai Lama abdicated, never ruled the country, and has won the Nobel Peace Prize without garnering any peace.
In the end, the illustrious history of the Dalai Lamas just doesn't exist. Their sad legacy is a testament to the Byzantine manipulations of the Potala Junta. The credulous Tibetan people have been taught that they are led by a god-king, but that king is an invention of unscrupulous political strategists who sell influence as their primary product.

Considering the undisputed facts, it is absurd to imagine the Fourteenth Dalai Lama as the product of some refining process that has produced him as the distilled essence of human virtue. The entire lineage is a sham that was (1) raised into being by the Third Dalai Lama’s exploitation of the reputations of two dead clerics, (2) converted to a super-executive position by uniting military might with sacred authority in the person of the Fourth Dalai Lama, (3) enhanced in power through the exercise of military might by the Fifth Dalai Lama, (4) subordinated in power by the execution of the Sixth Dalai Lama for refusing to obey the will of the Mongol leaders, (5) subordinated to Chinese influence during the reigns of the Seventh and Eighth, (6) subordinated to the Regent Rule of the Potala Junta during the serial assassinations of the Ninth, Tenth, Eleventh and Twelfth, (7) living on the outskirts of town or in foreign domains during the reign of the Thirteenth, and now, ( represented by a man who fled Lhasa in his teens, has not set foot in his native land for fifty eight years, and is politically relevant only as an instrument of U.S. foreign policy to irritate the Chinese.

But, you may ask, am I not being terribly unkind to a man who has lost his throne, seen his countrymen trampled by tyranny, and made a dignified effort to keep the Tibetan cause before the international media in an era when that is not an easy job? He is no Baby Doc, and has led his followers less into harm’s way than … say … Yasser Arafat! He could have moved to Paris, or Geneva, or Buenos Aires, and exploited his advantages to enjoy a sybaritic lifestyle with female companionship.

He certainly could have, and these comparisons show him to be a man of restraint and dignity. But now that we have disposed of the venerable belief that his prior thirteen incarnations have suited him for the highest office on the planet, and that we should exalt him by acclamation to Secretary General of the UN, let’s ask how well he’s done his job of being the primary representative of the Tibetan people. He is the only Tibetan that most Europeans and Americans have ever heard of, and they think he is a saint. As for Tibetans, he has been their only political leader for fifty-eight years.

Think of what it has cost the Tibetan people to have the Dalai Lama as their only representative during the entire time since the Chinese came to plant their “revolution” on the Tibetan plateau! Do you really think that the Tibetans are well-represented in their struggle against Chinese oppression by a man who is never in the country, cannot set foot inside its borders, and for all his efforts has not achieved a single diplomatic victory in more than a half-century on the job?

This is the cost to the Tibetans of deifying one who is simply a man. The myth of the Dalai Lamas was always used to deprive the Tibetan people of real representation, and it continues to be used for that purpose today. However good the intentions of this man who wears the mantle of a god, by occupying that position, he obstructs the process of democracy, that is based on the belief in the equality of all people, and their right to representation in government.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Copyright, Charles Carreon 2009
1. http://news.mpr.org/features/200105/07_newsroom_dalai/bios.shtml|
2. http://www.tibet.freeserve.co.uk/beijing.html

[Tara Carreon]

[Tara Carreon]

[Tara Carreon]

Everyone has their own way of putting all the information that's out there together. I've been hanging out with more people than usual for the last few years, and it's like you can appreciate some part of almost everyone, but not the whole banana. Usually you like someone until they start to reveal their hidden secrets, then you go, "Wow, they are crazy!" And everyone knows what parts to keep secret, and how to leak their secrets a little bit at a time to give themselves time to gauge other people's reactions, and if the person they’re talking to starts to make weird faces, they can quickly withdraw like a turtle into their shell without experiencing too much damage to their ego. But that little bit is usually enough to give you a clue that "They're crazy!"

Oy vey.

The thing that really disturbs me are all the ways people have of making themselves think that everything's okay in the world, problems are just your own personal problems, if you're so unenlightened to HAVE a problem! Poor thing! Maybe we can get you therapy. Maybe a nice subrosa patriarchal shaman. So what if he believes in gnomes, and God's urine being the great healing power in the universe? That's a big seller these days for hopeless people who can't find a place to stand in reality. But how does that really help us? Does it help us find a more secure place to stand, or does it just pull the ground out from under us even more? And what about the REAL problems that are everywhere in need of being changed that are sabotaged by this type of thinking?

Of course, our conditioning is that we don’t need a ground to stand on, and there aren’t any real problems. We are nothing, the world is a solipsistic, nihilistic world, with only God existing for sure, and our only task is to get pure enough to get back to God and see that his whole illusory creation was just a great big reflection of his total wonderfulness. Only our relationship with God counts. Our relationships with other people don’t count because they’re not real. We can’t prove they exist. And we can’t prove that we exist either. Who are we? Where are we? The fact is we’re just bones and blood and excrement.

That’s our father-conditioning, and it’s a hash, for sure, especially the part about us not being able to “prove” that we exist, since the standard for “existence” and also the definition of “God” set down for us by Plato is that it DOESN’T exist, and is beyond form. But going beyond the arguments of our illusory existence which are somehow meant to mesh with our impure actual existence, being “good” little boys and girls, we try to accommodate ourselves to His Teachings, not because we like them but because he will hurt us if we don’t. Transforming fear into religion, we try to psyche ourselves into thinking everything’s great, it’s all just our own fault. Our defilements, our impure vision, our lack of merit are what cause us to see an imperfect world. We need to visualize deities and then all our problems will be solved.

It’s a tough damn situation Daddy has put us in. Denying our existence, and the existence of other people and the world. But Daddy has provided numerous Secret Teachings for us to cope with. And those are the secrets we have to keep hidden from others, and which when we reveal to people who’ve chosen other secret teachings than the almost exact same ones we have chosen, they think we are crazy. But whose craziness is this really? Ours or Daddy’s?

How did we get in this situation? Has it always been this way? Has God and Daddy always been our Master?

The earliest cave paintings found in France and Spain do not depict pictures of God or deities or people, but simply of animals. Religion does not appear to have existed even 40,000 years ago. Yet Creation Anthropologists continue to scurry around the earth trying to find evidence of religion in primitive times. A burial, a statue, any damn thing is PROOF of religion, they say. Really? The fact is we have no idea what primitive people thought.

Religion seems to have happened at the time that our ancestors gathered together into city-states. That was when Daddy really became powerful, and started telling us all what to think and do. And that’s when we became slaves and evolution and freedom stopped. Religion was inevitable in this situation, because when Daddy enslaves and abuses his children, the last thing in the world He wants to see himself as is an abuser, and since he’s the one in power, he can dictate the rules. And the rules are that Daddy is NOT an abuser, but a savior. If there is a problem, it is YOUR problem, NOT His. All goodness comes from Daddy, all badness comes from you. And taking it all the way like Daddy likes to do, He is the ONLY being in the world, and you don’t even exist. Not even the world and nature exists. Only Daddy exists. Religion is the ultimate expression of Daddy’s ego.

On the other side of Daddy is us. Being subjugated by Daddy, we have no choice but to accept his teachings as true. Then we do something very interesting: we forget that we are subjugated, and think we believe them of our own free will. That is when we create the Shadow World/Garbage Dump where we put our repressed knowledge, like Daddy is an asshole, and we and the world really do exist, and the nagging feeling that there is something terribly wrong in the world, and everything else that is not allowed in ordinary reality. So City-States, Daddy, Religion, Slavery, and the Shadow World all appeared at the same time.

The point is we are in the situation we are in because of our slavery to Daddy. Anyone who thinks we are free is a fool. Try to go out there into the big wide world, and all you’ll find are fences and signs saying “Keep Out.” We are confined in our cages, and the only choice we are given, if we are good, is whether to eat kibble or eukanuba or some other type of bird, squirrel, hamster, chicken, or pig food in order to survive another day. If we aren’t good, we get no food and die. But making a choice about what type of animal food we are going to eat in no way leads us to freedom outside the cage, which is what evolution is, a choice that move us into the future. It's the ultimate purposeless life. We may as well all just kill ourselves. Our lives are that unmeaningful.

I remember an experience I had as a very young girl. I stepped out onto the brightly lit Arizona sidewalk outside my house, and looked up at the sun-blasted sky filled with the haze of blue light broken apart by trillions of super-hot sunrays, and had a sort of enlightenment experience. Seeing this thing "for the first time," as people so often say untruthfully, I asked myself, "What the hell is going on here? How did I get here? Who am I? What is this world? WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING?" And I challenge any would-be guru to tell me when a person SEES more clearly than at a moment like that.

I remember once as a young child looking into the sky through the clothesline in my Aunt Louise’s back yard, and seeing all the brightly colored balls in the sky, and wondering that I had never really LOOKED at them before. I always knew they were there, but since no one had ever talked about them, I hadn't really seen them before that moment. But then I saw clearly that they were there. And I thought, "I better not tell anyone that I saw this, because they might think I'm crazy."

When I was in college I had a full-blown vision where a being in the sky entered into me and spoke through my mouth, and my friend Deborah and Margaret who were with me in my dorm room at ASU studying biology and art witnessed this extraordinary event. They refused to talk with me about it after it happened, and I really wanted to know what they had seen. Neither would tell me, and it was clear that they were terrified by what had happened. The only thing I could get out of them was when I turned to Debbie and asked “Did you see what I saw?” and she nodded yes, and then I turned to Margaret and said, “Did you see what I saw?” and she nodded yes. But after that, nothing. Anything that threatens Daddy’s reality must be vigorously suppressed..

And that is the cause of our going down. The demonic Daddies who rule our world know that there's an area where they can act unimpededly, a shadow world where everyone refuses to look, and in that place they are wreaking havoc on us, destroying our world, destroying our identity, making us believe things that aren’t true, and making us believe that true things are false, but we can't look there, and we can't act, because that's the place of trauma.

We need to do something about Daddy's destructive psychology. And most importantly, get free from his cages.