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Some of you may have
read Erika Andersen's disgusting spin on the
Ashrams, which is on her website and entitled 'You
Lived In A What?' and is dated August 8, 2001.
After I read it, the following just kind of
spilled out of me. I have submitted it to her
website, but given the censorship on the cult
sites, I know it will never appear there. Anyhow,
here it is:
Maharaji’s Ashrams
I am one of probably thousands of people who
lived in one or more of Maharaji’s ashrams.
Just to set the record straight, Maharaji’s
ashrams were monastic institutions that Maharaji,
himself, promoted as his gift to his followers as a
means to dedicate our lives to him. The basic
structure of the ashram was poverty, celibacy and
obedience. We also lived by a schedule, starting
with ARTI, along with prostration before a picture
of Maharaji in the morning, and again in the
evening, followed by meditation. We also had
satsang every night, and “service” all
day. All the money ashram residents earned was
turned over to Maharaji’s organization and
much of it went to Maharaji personally. There was
also a set of “ashram rules” which
Maharaji claims to have personally authored. All of
Maharaji’s Initiators (Instructors) and Elan
Vital Administrators were selected from among the
ashram residents, as were Maharaji’s servants
and personal staff.
As an ashram premie and devotee, you were
available to be transferred to any place you were
needed to do anything deemed necessary. You owned
nothing; you did what you were told, and
relationships, career, and any worldly interests,
were verboten, unless directly related to your
“service.” Your life belonged to
Maharaji, who portrayed himself as the living
incarnation of God, the living Perfect Master, and
who exhorted us to surrender our lives to him. Many
of us believed him and tried to do that, by means
of his ashram. Physically, we lived in large,
overcrowded, rented houses with no furniture; we
slept on foam mats on the floor, ate vegetarian
food, and mostly had underwear with holes in
it.
Many people, including me, spent their 20s
living in Maharaji’s ashram. I lived in the
ashrams from 1974 to 1983. During that time, I
mostly worked jobs out in “the world” and
turned over every cent I earned. Part of the time I
did “service” in Elan Vital, as either a
bureaucrat at Elan Vital International
Headquarters, as part of the army of unpaid workers
on Maharaji’s Boeing 707 plane that we were
revamping with gold toilets and other luxuries
Maharaji wanted, or as a “Community
Coordinator” in three different cities. In
fact, I lived in ashrams in seven different cities
in the USA, not by my choice, but because I was
sent to each one. In 1981, I was sent from the
Miami ashram to the ashram in San Francisco, a city
I love and where I have lived ever since (with a
few years in nearby Marin County). In 1983, I left
both Maharaji’s ashram and his cult.
As can be said about any living situation, no
matter how repressive or bizarre, I had some good
times in the ashrams, and some terrible times. I
met some wonderful people in the ashrams, most of
whom sincerely believed Maharaji and wanted to
dedicate their lives to him. Living with people who
are sincerely seeking truth, no matter how
misguided that search might be, can be a very nice
experience.
For the most part, however, I hated living in
the ashrams partly because sex and romantic
relationships were forbidden, partly because of the
lack of having any of my own money, partly also
because of the almost total lack of privacy, and
partly because the ashram system allowed some
rather sadistic and unsavory people to inflict
their psychological abuse on people who were very
vulnerable to them. That has been talked about
quite a bit on the Internet by former ashram
premies.
Also, I am a person who has always been very
interested in the world. I love to read, I love
theater and movies; I love politics and current
events; I love the wild outdoors and I love my
family, an Irish Catholic/WASP combination of
wonderful, loving people. Involvement with all of
those things was either forbidden or frowned upon
in Maharaji’s ashram. Indeed, all
“worldly” pursuits and relationships were
considered distractions from the true purpose of
one’s life, which Maharaji said repeatedly was
to devote one’s life 100% to Maharaji. In
return, Maharaji promised, through his grace, to
take care of us as if we were his children. He
repeatedly said that it was HE who knew what was
best for us, and not the ashram premies and their
“confused minds.” Little did I know at
the time that not only did he have no intention or
capability of caring for us, he likely did not even
know that most of us were even alive, and he
couldn’t have cared less.
Of course, in the ashram there was no career
development, no education, no forming romantic
relationships and no sex allowed, and these are
normally the very things one is engaging in in
one’s 20s. For me and many others, because we
entered the ashram to devote ourselves totally to
Maharaji, we missed all that. When the supposed
“ashram experiment” (which is the current
revisionist spin that the Maharaji cult and its
current PR mavens call it these days) came to an
end, we were then in our 30s, with little or no
advanced education, no career, no relationship,
strained relations with family, and an extremely
truncated set of life experiences and skills with
which to start life over, years behind everyone
else in our age group. I am sure that if we had
known it was all just some temporary “grand
experiment” as Erika Anderson dismissively
calls it, we would have thought differently about
entering the ashram in the first place.
The damage to my relationship to my family was
also severe. On one occasion, I was forbidden in
the ashram from attending the funeral of my
grandfather. On another occasion, I was forbidden
from attending my little sister’s wedding. In
addition, I missed most of the holidays, birthdays,
and special occasions my family held without me.
They also felt very rejected, and for good reason.
Maharaji told us on many the occasion that we
really HAD no relationship with our family. He told
us the ashram, and Maharaji, were our REAL family,
and that “the only tie you have to your family
is the one they gave you for Christmas”
(actual Maharaji quote).
All of those things, including the terrible
waste of time, talent, and energy, that occurred in
Maharaji’s ashrams are things you can’t
ever get back. So, to be told that the ashram was a
“failed experiment” that just sort of
happened because of some kind of cultural
misunderstanding, and that Maharaji really
can’t be held responsible for any of it, makes
my eyes glaze over. And as has been typical of
Erika Andersen’s rationalizations and
revisionism, she also blames the ashram premies for
getting it wrong, or coming into the ashrams for
the wrong reasons, and that they were the real
problem, not Maharaji. This is particularly unfair,
cruel and dismissive, and just plain false. And
yes, I regret having wasted those years following
Maharaji, especially the nine years I spent in the
ashram, and the damage it caused to me and those I
love. Indeed, it is the biggest regret I have in my
life.
Here is what Erika says on her website:
I see Maharaji's ashrams in America as
having been a grand failed experiment. And I really
enjoyed the time I spent living there.
The main problem, I think, was that the
ashram was transplanted whole from India to
America, like some exotic plant… There was no
cultural context for it here; we didn't know what
to make of it or how it fit into the practice of
Knowledge. In the absence of that context, people
came to it for all kinds of odd reasons. Perhaps
some people's motivations were simple and sincere
wanting to practice Knowledge and be fully
available to help Maharaji. Some of us, though,
came to avoid starting a real adult life in the
world (like lots of other college-age kids), some
out of personal ambition ('I'm going to be the BEST
devotee') and some out of religious zeal ('this is
the only reality and everyone else is
doomed').
While I don’t dispute that Erika might have
had a good time in the ashram (although I
personally recall times when Erika didn’t seem
to be very happy in an ashram where we lived at the
same time), I don’t think that addresses the
issue. And the list of motivations of the people
who entered the ashrams she suggests, leaves out
the main one, and that’s Maharaji himself.
Maharaji, repeatedly, stressed the need to move
into the ashram and to stay there. Since he also
preached that we should surrender and devote our
lives to him, that was the major motivation for
many, as it was for me. I believed Maharaji was the
Perfect Master who knew what was best for me. I
believed he was the living incarnation of God, and
I believed him when he said the purpose of my life
was to devote it 100% to him, and that he provided
the ashram as a means to do that. And, at the time,
when I was allowed to enter the ashram, I was
happy, excited, and I felt privileged for the
opportunity he, the Perfect Master, gave me.
Maharaji said on many occasions that the ashram
was a life-long commitment. Once in the ashram,
Maharaji instructed his Initiators to tell us that
leaving the ashram was not an option, and he
emphasized it himself, in no uncertain terms, in
numerous ashram meetings he had with us over the
years, (which Erika Andersen also attended but
seems to have conveniently forgotten), almost right
up to the very time in 1983 when he summarily
closed the ashrams without explanation.
For example, I have a copy of a tape of Maharaji
speaking to his devotees in Atlantic City, New
Jersey, in December, 1976, when Maharaji said the
following:
“The ashram is for people who have
dedicated their lives for their lifetime. When you
understand that the purpose of your life is to
understand knowledge and to devote your life to
Maharaji, then ashram makes sense and is really
required.
Ashram is intensive care provided by Guru
Maharaj Ji. Guru Maharaj Ji knows how to operate on
us and he is the surgeon. See, you have a disease,
and you have been given medicine for the disease,
and that's good, which is knowledge. But we need
intensive care to recover from the disease because
we can fall back into the disease. And the ashram
is Guru Maharaj Ji's hospital. Ashram is the place
we all need to come from but some people can't be
there because they are married.“
Later, Maharaji reiterates that the ashram is
always for a lifetime. In fact, Maharaji said you
have to be there a long time for ashram to have the
effect on you it is supposed to have. He said it
was like you were in an accident and hit glass that
wasn't safety glass, and many splinters of glass
have to be pulled out of you slowly and
painfully.
Of course, none of that should be a surprise to
Erika. She heard all the things Maharaji said, and
she knows she can’t explain it away.
[Although Maharaji has attempted to destroy all
evidence of the incriminating things he said in the
past, that hasn’t been very successful, and if
anyone you like to hear this tape, I can make it
available to you.] Under these circumstances,
Erika’s bizarre suggestion that the ashram was
just one of a number of “options” that a
premie had, is disingenuous in the extreme.
But wait, it gets worse. Later, Maharaji took
questions from premies. A premie asked Maharaji
about whether it was okay for him to leave the
ashram and “to have a wife,” since he
felt he needed one. To this, Maharaji said:
Do you need a wife, or does something else
need a wife? A wife is not a human necessity. It is
desire. It is just an extension of mind. Right now
your mind is saying you want a wife, but if it's
just a wife, why do you want the second thing, you
say I want a child, and I want this and I want
that. Somehow mind traps you at the weakest spot.
That's the way mind taps into you. Do you want a
wife, but this is really just an extension of mind.
“
Then another premie asked Maharaji about people
who had moved out of the ashram and got married,
which a number of ashram premies had done earlier
in 1976, and he asked Maharaji what they should do.
Here is what Maharaji says:
“This is what you should tell them. If
you take a stick of dynamite, and stick it down
your throat, and light the other end with the fuse,
what's gonna happen? (laughing) Who would you blame
that on? The point is, who's gotta pay for
that?
Look, they are married and it's ridiculous
for them to get divorced. ...It was an irrational
and wrong move to get married. It isn't the answer,
knowledge is the answer. [Maharaji proceeds to
talk about marriages that 'aren't working' and how
they are worse than hell.] He continues:
Whatever you sow, you reap it yourself and if it
isn't working out, you are gonna reap that
too....Service to Guru Maharaj Ji is personal
self-dedication. Moving out of the ashram and
getting married was a flip-flop move and it's a sad
sight, why did they do that? Why, because it's an
extension of mind. “
Could this be any more unequivocal and clear?
Setting aside for a moment the psychological damage
these kinds of sick statements could cause,
Maharaji clearly said that not only was the ashram
a life-long commitment, and was required,
marriage and relationships as alternatives were
“just extensions of mind” (not to mention
equivalent to blowing your brains out with
dynamite). In this light, is the drivel Erika
Andersen is putting forth on this subject
infuriating to those of us who know the truth of
what really happened? You bet it is.
Maharaji also issued lots of threats about what
would happen to an ashram premie were he or she to
leave, let alone the dire calamities that would
befall someone who chose not to practice knowledge
anymore (variously, that one would “go to
hell,” that one would “smash into a
thousand pieces,” that one would have
“tons of rotten vegetables rot inside of
them,” etc.)
Indeed, as late at the 1980s, Maharaji
instructed his Initiators to encourage every premie
possible to dedicate themselves in the ashram. I
know this, because as Community Coordinator for
Elan Vital, I was obligated to assist in this
nefarious mission. In Miami, Elan Vital lawyers
processed numerous divorces for premies so they
could become “unattached” and move into
the ashram, often to work as unpaid, slave labor
for one of Maharaji’s pet projects, like his
personal luxury aircraft.
Just the year before the ashrams were closed,
there was a notorious ashram inquisition, in which
people like Initiator David Smith psychologically
harassed and tortured the ashram residents to
double their commitment or to get the hell out if
they weren't 100% devoted and surrendered to
Maharaji. This was, according to David Smith, at
Maharaji's personal direction.
Of course, many of us in the ashram really
believed, because Maharaji told us so, that he was
taking care of us, because we had dedicated our
lives to him. That, of course, was a pile of crap,
the falsity of which was exposed when he
whimsically decided in 1983 to just shut down the
ashrams with no preparation whatsoever. We are told
by people on the inside of the cult that he did it
because he was worried about the ashram premies
being a liability as they got older. Because most
of the ashram premies didn’t have established
careers, good health insurance, and retirement
plans, their needs were increasing, and the ashrams
weren't the cash cows for him that they used to be.
According to those same reports, Maharaji
didn’t really care how the closings were
carried out. It just wasn’t one of his
concerns. He just wanted it done.
When the ashrams were closed little or nothing
was done, financially, psychologically, or in any
other sense, to help the ashram premies make the
transition into the real world. Some of these
people were true babies, if you know what I mean.
Some had lived in the ashram for over a decade.
These were in most cases great people, in fact, who
just made the terrible mistake of trusting someone
as deceitful and uncaring as Maharaji.
A large number of the ashrams were in debt
almost all the time, mostly because of the cost of
going to programs, the cost to donate money to
Maharaji himself, the cost to support Elan Vital,
the cost to support Elan Vital personnel and
Initiators who didn't work, and, very
significantly, the cost to donate to various
expensive toys Maharaji wanted, like that Boeing
707 monstrosity that cost (and wasted) millions and
millions of dollars.
Most of the ashram debt was on credit cards.
When I was ashram housefather in two different
cities, it was always a struggle to meet all the
financial commitments, because the ashram premies
usually had relatively low-paying jobs, which they
often lost because they had to take off for
programs, and because Elan Vital moved people
around a lot for 'service.' It was always a
financial struggle to make ends meet. We had the
advantage of living communally, but, besides debt,
many of the needs that the ashram premies had, like
medical, dental, clothing and other needs, were not
adequately met, because there just wasn't the money
due to the almost constant demands to donate to
Maharaji. For example, I never had any dental work
done the whole time I lived in the ashram because
there wasn't any money for that. Many premies lived
in ashrams without adequate medical care, all in
the name of surrendering to Maharaji.
But the truth was, Maharaji didn’t even
know who we were, and cared less. I lived in his
ashrams for nine years, and I never even spoke to
Maharaji, not even once. He never stepped foot into
any ashram I ever lived in. I’m sure he never
even knew my name. He certainly expressed no
interest or concern whatsoever about how the ashram
premies lived, or whether they were being properly
taken care of. He cared even less when he dumped
the ashram premies onto the streets in 1983, and
even stuck them with the ashram debts, for some
people as much as $20,000, individually. Again,
these were people who had given Maharaji their
lives – absolutely everything, and had
sacrificed years of their lives to serve and
support him, and yet this is how Maharaji responded
to them. Clearly, that says something loud and
clear about the kind of person Maharaji is.
The cavalier way in which Maharaji related to
the ashrams is something that will dog him for the
rest of his life. There are too many of us out
there who aren’t about to forget the rotten,
uncaring things Maharaji did to us, and how little
he seemed to care about us as fellow human beings.
And this is magnified by the fact that to this day,
Maharaji has failed to even admit there was any
problem, and certainly that he had anything to do
with it.
Erika does admit, in her usual passive voice
method of deflecting any responsibility from
Maharaji, that the closing of the ashrams, at
least, wasn’t done very well. But Erika
engages in rank intellectual dishonesty when she,
like the good cult member she is who cannot bear to
criticize her cult leader, excuses Maharaji from
ever having to admit, let alone atone for, the
damage he caused people, because, according to
Erika, people might not be able to accept his
apology.
I’m speechless. It’s about justice,
Erika. It’s about damage done to real human
beings. Since when is it acceptable to flake out on
an apology or taking responsibility for your
actions unless there is some kind of guarantee that
the apology will be accepted? This is culthink in
the extreme.
But I’m sure Erika expects more from other
people in her life and only gives such bizarre
dispensations to her cult leader. Hopefully, her
kids have figured out that exception and won’t
learn from Erika’s retreat from the
expectations one would apply to any other human
being.
Joe Whalen
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