I was raised Jewish and taught that no man is God. Many Orthodox Jews believe in the coming of the meschiach, unlike Christians, who believe the messiah has already come (and is coming again). As a kid, I thought if the messiah had already come he didn’t do a very good job– getting crucified, arguably, was evidence of a complete failure– but life often offers second chances, and humanity definitely needed help. So perhaps, I thought, a Messiah could still show up, like Superman, and save the world.

I grew up in the 1960’s. The Cuban missile crisis scared everybody when I was in third grade and even at that age I knew the threat of nuclear Holocaust was very real. We practiced “duck and cover” yet suspected that would hardly save us if the bomb was dropped.

While the Cold War threatened the entire world, here in America the Vietnam War and civil rights movement ripped society in two. Nightly news consisted of jungle war footage, anti-war demonstrations, domestic bombings and assassinations. The world was fucked up, that was plain to see.

Looking for answers, at age fourteen I started reading about Buddhism. It seemed to make sense of the human condition.  At sixteen I read Be Here Now and took yoga class to meet my high school phys ed requirement. Eastern religions attracted me. Although the world was fucked up, I knew there had to be enlightened people somewhere, I had just never met any of them.

Rabbi Rosensweig, who tutored me for my bar mitzvah, was a Holocaust survivor who loved humiliating and ridiculing children. His rendition of a cruel uncaring God did not warm my heart. It turned me off to Judaism.

My parents were the children of immigrants but they may as well have been from another planet. Status and materialism were all they seemed to care about. They claimed to love each other but argued all the time. They claimed to love us kids, but it never felt like love to me. We had no emotional connection.

They were happy when I brought home straight A’s, but the rest of the time my mother was neurotic and over-protective, and my father was generally absent. Not once in my childhood did my father ever throw a ball with me. I can’t remember us ever having even a normal conversation. He was rigid in his demeanor and hardly ever home. A lawyer in private practice, he worked seven days a week, usually twelve hours per day. His office was his sanctuary, away from my neurotic mother and us annoying kids. At the office he was king.

Nonetheless, my siblings and I were expected to fit into the mold of the perfectly behaved, academically superior, future doctor or lawyer. That was not my dream, but that made no difference to them. My brother Mo, ten years older than me, didn’t want that either, and he paid for it with his life. Diagnosed as a schizophrenic after a nervous breakdown at the University of Michigan, he was shuffled in and out of mental hospitals for four years and died alone in New York City just when we all thought he was getting his life back together. I was fifteen years old.

I blamed my parents for his death. How could they not protect and provide proper medical and psychiatric care for their own son? After Mo’s death I did not trust my parents at all to make good decisions for me. I didn’t buy into their world view and I certainly didn’t want to be like them. I wanted to be enlightened, above it all, happy no matter the circumstances, while others scurried about in their personal rat races.

Eastern religions told a different story. You could be happy and peaceful despite chaos and poverty.

Two friends of mine didn’t make it out of adolescence. They gassed themselves in their garages during junior year of high school. They couldn’t take the pressure of living up to their parents’ expectations, figured life wasn’t worth the effort, didn’t want to play the game.

But I knew something was out there, or more accurately, inside… the secret to living happily.

During the hippie era it was said you couldn’t trust anyone over 30. So it seemed natural that a child from the east would come, bringing enlightenment. You could trust a child, so when I learned that there was a teenager who had been recognized as a great guru since he was eight years old I was interested. Guru Maharaj Ji (translation: Great Honorable King, Leader from Darkness to Light) was worshipped by millions in India as the Lord of the Universe. He was described as the 14-year old Perfect Master, the renowned revealer of Knowledge, Satguru, the one true guru… God Incarnate.

I had doubts—-I was Jewish, after all—-but the story was so incredible I had to check it out. I went to satsang—-the nightly meeting where devotees spoke of the miraculous changes that Guru Maharaj Ji had brought about in their lives. They bubbled over with love and enthusiasm. It was real and heartfelt. They were joyful, confident, at peace—- enlightened. I wanted what they had.

The secret initiation ritual where Guru Maharaj Ji’s enlightenment was revealed was called Knowledge. I attended satsang for two weeks straight before being selected to receive Knowledge. I was very excited and hardly slept the night before the initiation began.

At 8 am around seventy people were ushered into a room and sat, shoulder to shoulder, on the carpeted floor. A middle-aged man in a saffron robe, Mahatma Rajeshwar, was the initiator in charge. Someone told me he was formerly a lawyer and a judge in India. He was a serious, intense man, and began the initiation by taking questions and interrogating seekers in the room.

It quickly became apparent, however, that it was better to keep my mouth shut. Someone asked why Guru Maharaj Ji had Rolls Royces and Rolex watches and Rajeshwar told him that Guru Maharaj Ji was God incarnate and could have whatever he wanted. In fact, it was our duty to give it to him. That did not satisfy the questioner and he was summarily thrown out of the room for expressing doubt. Around fifteen people were ejected from the room in the first two hours. Anyone who questioned Guru Majaraj Ji’s divinity or materialism was sent packing.

The Knowledge session got serious after maybe eight hours of indoctrination. First, the ‘Word of God’ was revealed. That this unspeakable word could be so simple—-the breath—-made sense. Breath is life, and we do it without thinking. It is given to us, and when it stops, we die. All the scriptures had it wrong. The Word of God is not written, it is the natural act of breathing. Focus on that, and your thoughts vanish. When consumed by thoughts, focus on your breath to reclaim your center. Breathing meditation is the secret to Being Here Now.

The second technique of Knowledge, nectar meditation, I thought was pretty stupid. Reaching back with the tongue to collect post-nasal drip. Yuck.

Likewise, the third technique, plugged ear meditation, using a wooden arm support to keep your arms from getting tired, seemed kind of dumb. There are sounds inside the body and if you plug your ears and focus you can hear them. Not particularly enthralling, however. I think the same effect could be found listening to peaceful music.

The initiation went on for ten hours before Rajeshwar finally began his most important revelation– Divine Light. This was the big shebang, what the whole thing was about. If this guru was for real and Knowledge was truly an experience not just a philosophy, then the Divine Light should be OUT OF THIS WORLD. We were told to focus on our third eye, the center of the forehead, as Mahatma Rajeshwar made his way around the room. I waited nervously for my turn, afraid that I would not be worthy, that the supernatural phenomenon would pass me by. I discarded all doubts and believed that Guru Maharaj Ji could be God. As a sincere seeker I felt chosen to be among this first wave of devotees, called upon to help bring peace on earth. A child shall lead them. If Guru Maharaj Ji was truly God incarnate then I was open and willing to surrender to him as the higher power.

Rajeshwar came down the line of soon-to-be premies, touching each on the forehead and asking, “Do you see light?” As he approached me I was filled with tension and anticipation. He touched my forehead and the next few seconds changed my life.

I was transported beyond my body into another realm. There was a brilliant circle of light and I was drawn into it, overwhelmed by the feeling of infinite peace that accompanies a total loss of self. “I” no longer existed, there was only love and timelessness. I merged with LIGHT—- boundless, brilliant light– where everything made sense and all was as it should be.

It was incredible! This was IT! My mind went “Wow!” and instantly I was transported back into my body, sitting on the floor in lotus posture. The infinite experience of light vanished and I was once again in the world of the tangible, Mind Blown. Unbelievable. Indescribable. Otherworldly. Inexplicable.

That was the proof, as Divine Light Mission professed., that Guru Maharaj Ji was Lord of the Universe. I had just experienced infinity, it had to be true. There was no other explanation for it. This momentary experience of GOD exceeding anything I had ever felt on LSD, psilocybin, or mescaline. It was utterly profound.

How could I ever explain this to anyone? How could I go back to my normal life? How could I do anything but pledge my life to the incarnation of God who has come to bring peace on earth?

So began my journey of satsang, service, and devotion in the ashram of Divine Light Mission. I lost touch with all my friends from boarding school who went off for a party year at Grand Valley State College in western Michigan. Instead I joined a premie house in Kansas City, worked that summer as a dishwasher and ice cream truck driver, and saved up for the trip to India in November of that year, 1972.

There were five of us in the Kansas City premie house and we lived in a three bedroom apartment above a laundromat. There was a Dairy Queen down the street but for half the summer I had my own Fudgesicle inventory to indulge my sweet tooth.

We lived the ashram life: rising at 6 am to sing aarti, the song of praise to Guru Maharaj Ji that begins:

Jai guru dev Maharaj Ji, your glory fills the world! Protector of the weary and the weak!     You bring the death of attachment.
You bring the mind true detachment.
Save us from the ocean deep!
Jai Dev, Jai Satgurudev!

Aarti goes on for another eleven verses, each more saccharine and subservient than the last. By the end of aarti the mind is in a perfectly numbed state, ready for the next hour of sitting meditation. Then breakfast, work, dinner, satsang, and another hour or more of meditation before bed. It was always a long day and I often found myself nodding off when trying to meditate. But I put in the hours because that’s what premies did. I was a bad meditator throughout my years in the ashram but never had trouble falling asleep.

Once in Kansas City we were visited by Hare Krishnas, the fanatics who dressed in orange robes, had shaved heads and pony tails, and chanted Hare Krishna day and night. They were passing through town and the leader of the premie house offered them lodging, probably hoping to convert them. That didn’t happen. Instead, we had a battle of aarti in the morning, with them singing in one room while we sang in another. They had no interest in our boy guru, of course-— theirs was the one true guru— and we had no interest in their crazy dress and practices. But we both came from supposedly peace-loving Hindu traditions and shared a rejection of western materialism. We ate flat bread and dal with them in the evening, and shared our granola in the morning. When they left we were all quite relieved, and enjoyed a good laugh over their bizarre and misguided beliefs.  Boy, are they brainwashed!

Before falling into the cult of Guru Maharaj Ji I was a straight-A student at a prestigious Michigan private high school, Cranbrook, and had been offered entry into the University of Michigan’s fast-track program in medicine, which would have granted me a medical degree after just five years of study. I wasn’t interested. I was searching for Utopia, and in receiving the Knowledge of Guru Maharaj Ji and joining the ashram I had found it. Nothing else mattered, not family, friends, or my future. I trusted in God in the form of Guru Maharaj Ji. Whatever he wanted, whatever he commanded, that was my purpose in life. I was his servant. That was my life and I did my best to be loyal, obedient, and sincere, believing I was truly on the path to enlightenment.  

India Here We Come

All summer and fall of 1972 I worked and saved money for the trip to India that November. Devotees from all over the world flew into Delhi on six charted Jumbo jets and were bussed north to the DLM compound in Hardwar, at the foot of the Himalayas. There, three thousand Western disciples were housed in tents and lined up twice a day for a plate of rice and dal. A hot cup of chai in the morning helped take away the morning chill. Most Westerners were hippies from white, upper-middle class families and were used to camping, but this was different. Open pit latrines, with cubicles made from black plastic, lined the edge of the field. The stench was overpowering. There was no toilet paper, we were told to use a leaf. Fresh running water was scarce. Soon people started getting sick with dysentery.

For a full week it seemed that I did nothing but run back and forth to the latrines. Nearly everybody was sick, and I almost shit my pants several times waiting for a latrine to open up. There was no medicine for the mass of devotees, so treatment would have to wait until I got home. Not wanting to spend hours a day in the latrine, I reduced my intake of food. I lost five pounds in twelve days while in India.

Return Home

I returned home to my parents in Port Huron, Michigan to get treatment for dysentery and figure out my next move. With antibiotics the dysentery cleared up in a week. Although 10,000 miles separated me from my guru my mind and heart were nonetheless filled with love for him. I felt duty bound to serve him and help him bring about peace on earth. My parents thought I was cukoo, but that didn’t matter to me. I knew their worries were completely unfounded and ridiculous.

While in Port Huron I did my best to proselytize for Guru Maharaj Ji. I called my old civics teacher and gave a presentation about India and Guru Maharaj Ji to some 9^th graders at Port Huron Northern High School. They were most interested in the sanitary practice of wiping the ass with the left hand and eating with the right. In the absence of fresh running water that was the best you could do. I sang a devotional song for them. They almost certainly thought I was nuts.

Later I went down to the local department store to hand out literature and talk to people outside the store. That lasted maybe an hour. Mostly I was ignored. Nobody wanted to hear about a teenage Indian messiah. It was uncomfortable doing the Lord’s work in this way. Word got back to my mother somehow and humiliation was piled upon humiliation. I promised never to do that again in my hometown.

U of M

At home I meditated two hours a day and kept a vegetarian diet. I had no friends in town to visit, but a few relatives stopped in to see what they could do to get me out of “the guru business”. My blunt Aunt Gus, a schoolteacher, told me I should be the guru. If a 14-year old can do it, why can’t I? Nobody understood that I had experienced a profound revelation from the Messiah, or that the world was entering a new phase of evolution and, inevitably, Guru Maharaj Ji would rule the world in peace and harmony. I had received Knowledge and they hadn’t. Unfortunately, they weren’t interested AT ALL.

In India an older Indian premie advised me to go to college and study engineering. I had no interest in engineering but I trusted the advice of this stranger because surely he was in tune with Guru Maharaj Ji and knew what was best for me. My parents of course were delighted for me to enter college only a semester late. The University of Michigan accepted me on short notice and even gave me a token $50 Regent’s award for enrolling. (No 5-year medical program—-that I would not and could not do.) I found a premie house in Ann Arbor where I could live and continue my devotional practice and started classes in January 1973 including calculus, chemistry, chem lab, and literature.

U of M hosted 30,000 students—-a population as big as my home town. I was overwhelmed, unfamiliar with Ann Arbor, and not really motivated to study hard. Meditation was more important than study. What good was calculus when God Incarnate was on the planet? I could not relate to any of my fellow students, either–I just wanted to talk about Guru Maharaj Ji and Knowledge. My career at U of M was doomed from the start and I dropped out a day before the withdrawal deadline.

Detroit Ashram

Several of us from the Ann Arbor premie house ended up moving to the Detroit ashram. It was located in a classy craftsman house near 8-Mile Road. Eight or nine of us lived in four bedrooms, and we held satsang for the public every night of the week in our living room. Richard, a rail-thin clean-cut 25-year old with two years of college was ashram director. Maggie, a hippie girl from Windsor was housemother and cooked all the meals. The rest of us had jobs outside the ashram or worked in the ashram business, an upholstery shop run out of the garage.

I got a job as a stock boy for a vending machine company. The owner was a Jewish guy and he had an attractive saleswoman around 25 years old. My job was to fill cartons for the drivers who went out each day to restock machines.

One day when the others were out of the office the saleswoman, who knew I was celibate, backed me up against the wall and looked in my eyes. It was a clear offer, let’s see just how celibate you really are. I was stunned, unable to make a move or say anything and the staring contest lasted only a few seconds before she gave up on me. Adolescent biology is real and I could not get her out of my mind so I ended up relieving myself in a warehouse cubby later that day. For a full minute and a half Guru Maharaj Ji was completely out of my mind. Then, to relieve the masturbation guilt later, I found myself asking Guru Majaraj Ji for forgiveness.

My last two years in the Detroit ashram I worked for Henry Solomon, a gnome-like Romanian Holocaust survivor who married an equally rotund American Jewish woman. Henry ran a wholesale shoe business catering to ghetto Blacks—-cheap platform shoes in suede and patent leather, imported from Poland and Romania. I loaded cartons of shoes into retailers’ vans and kept inventory. I learned to operate the Telex machine in the days before cheap international calling. It was a dead-end job but the Solomons were nice to me and always respectful when encouraging me to leave the ashram and go to college. Of course, I knew better.

My paycheck was made payable directly to Divine Light Mission with no payroll taxes withheld. It could be done that way because I was a monk working for a religious order. Divine Light Mission was happy because it meant more money back to headquarters, and the Solomons didn’t mind because it was less paperwork and hassle.

Key to the City and Pie in the Face

The director of the Detroit ashram was a lanky soft-spoken moron named Richard. Richard had been a failing college student and drug abuser when he stumbled on Guru Maharaj Ji. His obsequious manner and unshakeable belief in the boy’s divinity quickly earned him a management position in Detroit, his hometown.

Somehow Richard convinced the Detroit City Council to honor Guru Maharaj Ji with a Key to the City for his efforts in “getting kids off drugs”. DLM was ramping up for Millenium ’73, a huge event taking place in the Houston Astrodome in November of that year. There was a big push to get Guru Maharaj Ji in the public eye and expand the ranks of devotees. We ashram premies were thrilled that Guru Maharaj Ji was coming to town. Every opportunity to be close to him was precious! We cleaned the ashram meticulously and set up a comfortable throne-like chair on a riser in the meditation room, surrounded by flowers. We drove downtown to the City office building in two cars. When we got there I was disappointed to be assigned to security– standing guard outside the chamber doors with Dan, a dumb lunk of a man and one of my roommates.

Dressed in crisp button-down shirts and our best slacks we opened the double doors for worshipful premies. It was August and air conditioning kept the chambers cool while the hallway outside was a bit muggy. The chamber doors had to stay closed during the ceremony, which meant we weren’t going to see it.

But it was a thrill when Guru Maharaj Ji and his entourage strode down the hallway right on time for the ceremony. Wearing a sharp Italian suit and surrounded by well-dressed aides, he didn’t even acknowledge Dan or me as we bowed our heads and opened the doors for him. He just strode on through.

The doors closed and Dan and I both reveled in the momentary darshan and lamented that we couldn’t be inside. Such was our lot. A loyal premie never questioned orders because Guru Maharaj Ji was always in charge.

We stood, ear to the door, trying to discern what was going on inside. A few minutes in we heard a commotion and backed off as the doors flew open and a scruffy long-haired guy raced down the hall from the chamber. One of Guru Maharaj Ji’s aides raced after him but quickly gave up the chase.

It took five minutes for me to find out what had happened inside. Chaos and commotion reigned. Richard soon came out and castigated Dan and me for letting in some evil riffraff. We were horrified—- it was inconceivable that someone would humiliate the Lord of the Universe like this! Everyone we let in had looked pretty blissful– no one was suspicious!

The prankster was an anarchist reporter named Pat Halley. He had come with a tray of flowers on a pizza box concealing a pie plate filled with shaving cream. As the boy guru waited to receive his award, Pat strode forward, wiped away the flowers, and smacked Guru Maharaj Ji at point blank range in the face with the cream pie. It was all caught on videotape by local news channels, who had been tipped off, and the entire scene was replayed on the nightly news. It even made the front page of the New York Times. We didn’t have television in the ashram but we scrambled to read the story in the next day’s Detroit Free Press.

Guru Maharaj Ji projected a façade of divinity immediately afterward saying, “This was probably nothing like the nails through Jesus Christ.” He was a bit more magnanimous later, saying, “I just want to apologize to that person who did that to me. I do not want him arrested or hurt. If someone doesn’t understand something, he cannot be responsible for what he does.”

We all thought that Guru Maharaj Ji was incredibly humble, reserved, and forgiving. But other forces were at work. Five days after the pie throwing one of the senior initiators, Mahatma Fakiranand, a fanatical bald-headed Indian in flowing saffron robes, showed up in Detroit unannounced with a sidekick named Fletcher. We gave them a tour of the ashram, including the upholstery repair shop in the garage. Fakiranand seemed very interested in furniture repair.

Group meditation on the second morning after Fakiranand and Fletcher arrived was oddly tense. Our two guests were nervous and rushed to leave after breakfast. The previous night, Richard had fielded a call and made it very clear that NO ONE was to pick up the phone. We knew Richard was speaking with top leadership-—possibly Guru Maharaj Ji himself, but didn’t know what it was about.

That morning Fakiranand left the house dressed in western civilian clothes, not his usual saffron robes. He and his accomplice, along with a DLM officer from Denver who had flown in the day before, drove off in one of our ashram vehicles, a baby blue Plymouth Dart. Something was definitely up.

We soon found out what had happened. Unbeknownst to anyone in the Detroit ashram, Fakiranand had called Pat Halley, the pie thrower, and arranged to meet him privately. They pretended to be former members of the guru’s inner circle who wanted to expose the guru’s fraud and reveal his secret Knowledge.

Fakiranand and Fletcher enticed Pat to bring them to his apartment in downtown Detroit. They sat him down to reveal the secret meditation techniques and asked him to close his eyes. Then Fakiranand struck him in the head six times with a blunt object, cracking his skull. The attackers left him for dead, a bloody heap on the floor. Fortunately Pat’s scream was heard by a neighbor, who soon found him and called an ambulance. He was rushed to Beaumont Hospital and underwent emergency surgery. A plastic plate was inserted in his skull to protect his brain and promote healing. He survived, but could easily have died from the attack.

The next day we discovered an upholstery hammer missing from our upholstery shop. Apparently that was the attempted murder weapon. Pat Halley regained consciousness and we all soon learned what had happened from news reports. The upholstery hammer was never recovered. With assistance from the top brass of DLM, Fakiranand and Fletcher were driven to Chicago where they boarded a plane that took them out of the country. They were never prosecuted.

The Detroit Police came to our door to investigate. I knew nothing but ashram director Richard talked to them. I guess there was insufficient cause to charge him in enabling their getaway. The cops gave up fairly quickly on tracking down Fakiranand. To them, Pat Halley was an undesirable radical and not worth their time.

We knew Fakirananad was a fanatic and believed that he acted independently. Guru Maharaj Ji renounced Fakiranand’s attack and claimed he was not at all involved. We believed him. How could the Lord of the Universe authorize a mafia-like hit?

The press was not so kind. Major stories appeared in Penthouse, Rolling Stone, and other publications condemning Fakiranand and calling DLM a dangerous cult. For ashram premies it was just another challenge to our faith. The Lord worked in strange ways. We were freaked out, but no one left the Detroit ashram as a result of the attack.

We were told that Fakirananad was expelled from DLM, but years later I learned that that he was back in Guru Maharaj Ji’s service in Europe within days. The apology and claim of innocence were just window dressing on the behind-the-scene crime of aiding and abetting Fakiranand’s escape. Guru Maharaj Ji’s brother probably authorized the revenge attack, but it is unclear to this day whether Guru Maharaj Ji knew in advance of the planned crime.

The day after news broke of the attack, a brick was thrown through our living room window with a death threat to Guru Maharaj Ji written in black marker. That was chilling. We were nervous about further attacks. I was assigned to sit on the front porch with a baseball bat during satsang as a deterrance.

Pat Halley had described Guru Maharaj Ji as a “slick businessman” and a “Jim Dandy guru”, and he was right, of course. Pat ultimately sued Divine Light Mission and received a settlement of $10,500–a pittance that didn’t even cover his medical bills.

Learning of this later, after leaving the ashram, it struck me that Guru Maharaj Ji could have done much, much more to make things right for Pat Halley, but instead agreed to the smallest possible settlement his team could negotiate. This speaks volumes about the character of Maharaj Ji and his organization. Peace and love were just words used rhetorically. There was no real sensitivity or care for anyone unless it advanced the cult and its leader’s interests. I was one of the brainwashed. Lost in the fog of Guru Maharaj Ji and his mesmerizing milieu, I didn’t realize that I was just being used, too.

Houston here we come

After two years in the ashram I was feeling pretty  frustrated. Despite meditating two hours a day the Divine Light never returned. The closest I got to a “Wow!” experience was seeing Guru Maharaj Ji at festivals, where the excitement of other devotees was contagious. I stood in line more than once to kiss Guru Maharaj Ji’s feet. This was considered a high honor. The first time doing it I got a contact high. The second time it felt like I was missing something. The third time it just felt silly and disgusting.

Ashram life was regimented and demanding from dawn until late at night. I rose, meditated, ate breakfast, went to work, came home, showered, ate, attended satsang, meditated, and slept. There was some satisfaction in giving satsang—-speaking off the cuff about Knowledge and Guru Maharaj Ji (I’ve always loved public speaking)—-but in real terms my life was going nowhere. No career opportunity, no higher education, no enlightenment! I spoke to a visiting DLM honcho about maybe leaving and going to college and he advised me to stick with it a while longer. We were so close to bringing peace on earth, and Maharaj Ji needs all the help he can get! You can always go to college later, he said. So I set aside my frustrations and stayed a while longer.

By my third year, however, I felt more and more overlooked and used. Richard, the Detroit ashram director, was an imbecile. I began to see the hypocrisies of Divine Light Mission more frequently. Guru Maharaj Ji had married his blond American secretary and his mother had disowned him. How does the “Holy Family” break up if God is indivisible and everything that happens is a manifestation of His will? There were rumors of him eating tuna fish, even though we in the ashram were strict vegetarians. There were rumors of him smoking weed and drinking. Despite his promises and prophecies, the world was not one inch closer to peace. And I was still slaving away as a stock boy in a shoe warehouse, going nowhere.

DLM was ramping up their film and video production unit in LA, Shri Hans Productions. At one point they put out a call for resumes. I mailed in my award-winning 8 mm film, Tormented by Numbers, along with a letter begging to be accepted. I never heard back from them, and the original film and its sound track were never returned.

I talked to Richard about transferring to another ashram where I could work in management. He seemed agreeable, so in November 1975 I packed my bag and was given a one-way ticket to Houston. I was excited for a new location with more responsibility.

The ashram director, “Speedy”, met me at the airport. He did not make a good first impression. A portly 25 year old, he said he was called Speedy because he did everything slowly. Slow to talk and respond, slow to walk, slow to eat, and slow to grasp abstract concepts like competency and individual autonomy.

There was no position for me in ashram management in Houston. Speedy didn’t even know that was my expectation. I was just told to get a job, which I did, as a stock boy in an art supply store. There, I made a friend, Gordon, who worked with me. We got along great and even had some laughs. He didn’t make me feel like an idiot for worshipping a teenage guru and I didn’t try to convert him to my beliefs. I liked working with him better than hanging around the ashram where I was at the bottom of the hierarchy, taking orders from morons.

Working with Gordon made me look at my life objectively. I had beliefs, I had a spiritual practice, and I had a guru who I believed to be God. But I was neither happy nor satisfied.

One night I stayed up late meditating. Again I was frustrated in not breaking through to the next level of consciousness. When I opened my eyes after nearly two hours I was alone in the meditation room. This isn’t working, I thought. It seemed like a cruel joke. Then I had an idea.

I went back to my room and gathered long underwear, top and bottom, and a couple pillows. I found some safety pins and an extra sheet. We often meditated under a sheet, and I configured a phantom meditator and set it up under the sheet. When everyone came in to meditate in the morning, they would be put to shame by the serious devotee who had meditated all night long.

In the morning, as we gathered to meditate, everyone kept quiet so as not to disturb the mysterious meditator. Someone so committed as to meditate all night long had to be respected. No one counted bodies. In the semi-darkness, it could have been anyone.

As we prepared to sing aarti, the devotional song of praise, before sitting down to meditate, I voiced what everyone was thinking, “Who is this?” Backing up two steps and then charging forward I kicked the meditator under the sheet with full force. People gasped in horror as the disembodied meditator went flying, and I rolled on the floor laughing.

That did not make me any friends in the ashram.

My stay in the Houston ashram only lasted a month or two more as the hypocrisies of Divine Light Mission kept growing larger for me. Why was a lazy ignoramus put in charge to boss me around? Why wasn’t I enlightened? Why was I worshipping a pudgy teenager who was enjoying every material luxury-—including sex with his hot devotee wife—-while me and most ashram premies slaved away at menial jobs? Why was Guru Maharaj Ji continuously embroiled in controversy and scandal? These forbidden, frightening thoughts racked my brain, but I couldn’t talk about them with anyone.

One night, instead of satsang, Speedy screened a 16mm print of the movie DAVID COPPERFIELD at the DLM office not far from the ashram. I never understood why. It wasn’t satsang, it wasn’t spiritual, it wasn’t devotional; it made no sense. I left early and walked back to the ashram alone. There, I stumbled upon two classic Coca-Cola trays, the kind you used to get at the drive-in restaurant, and was struck with another idea.

I took down every picture of Guru Maharaj Ji on every altar in the house and stashed them in a closet. On the two main altars, in the living room and the meditation room, I replaced his picture with a Coca-Cola tray. If  worshiping God is so frivolous then we might as well be worshiping Coke. On each side of the holy refreshment trays, instead of flowers, I placed a water glass holding a knife and fork, and illuminated the updated altars with eerie fluorescent lights. It was truly creepy. What a great prank! All hail Coca-Cola!

I was giddy with excitement when my ashram mates came back from the movie an hour later. I couldn’t wait to see their reaction. I hoped the prank would get a good laugh and then maybe we would have a serious discussion about what was going on in Divine Light Mission.

It didn’t play out that way. The others returned home and completely freaked out. Speechless. Shocked. Afraid. Violated.

My glee quickly shrank as Speedy went on the offense. Why did I do it? Was I feeling alright? Was I having a nervous breakdown?

“I’m fine, it was just a joke.”

“But it’s not funny, it’s creepy.”

That prank brought on the end of my time in Houston. I was damaged, unpredictable, and frightening. Within a week I was shipped off to an experimental community in San Antonio located on two floors of an old downtown hotel-—the City of Love and Light (COLL)– where devotees thinking of joining the ashram and those thinking of leaving lived together. It was a halfway house where doubts could be expressed and the commitment of ashram living could be tried on for size. I was glad to get away from Speedy and Houston and see what a progressive community of devotees felt like.

San Antonio

Somebody from COLL met me at the bus station in San Antonio. It wasn’t hard to identify the premie amongst the crowd—- a brunette hippie girl with a secretarial look, a Guru Maharaj Ji button on her blouse, and a Mona Lisa smile that says, “I’m secretly and perfectly in love.” Joana, slightly overweight and cheerful, was the faithful devotee sent to pick me up and render me unto the devotional centrifuge of COLL.

San Antonio was way more charming and attractive than Houston. The hotel was next to the Riverwalk, a meandering pedestrian path and public park along the San Antonio River lined with all sorts of restaurants and shops and even the old fort, The Alamo. The heat and humidity were more tolerable than Houston. And with over 100 residents living on the two floors of COLL, I figured I could probably find at least one or two rational people with whom to discuss the pros and cons of ashram life. No longer trapped in the stultifying environs of the Detroit or Houston ashram, I was free—-or as free as one could be while still living a life of poverty, chastity and obedience.

COLL had several businesses. Rainbow Carwash was always in need of help, so that’s where I worked, vacuuming and polishing cars. I made a couple of friends there and we talked openly about the ashram. Criticizing Guru Maharaj Ji was still out of bounds, but critiquing ashram life was fair game.

Nightly satsang at COLL was like everywhere else: speakers talked about the Knowledge and how Guru Maharaj Ji had changed their lives. There was always a large group for satsang but some members of the community skipped it occasionally, including me. The community was so big it was easy to get away with breaking one of Guru Maharaj Ji’s supreme commandments: “Never delay in attending satsang”. 

Once a month, on a Sunday, the entire community met to discuss practical matters about life in the hotel. The director of COLL was a Jewish guy named Michael, who relayed feedback from hotel management, like: don’t wander off our two floors; use the stairs to minimize contact with hotel guests; no freeloading condiments from the hotel dining room; keep any food in ziplock bags to deter cockroaches. After a question and answer period the community meeting transitioned to more traditional satsang.

One Sunday Michael needed someone to take notes and type them up for distribution. I volunteered. Finally, a position of some importance, group secretary! It was a pleasure to use my mind, even for something so simple as putting words on paper to summarize an hour-long meeting. Michael thanked and complimented me for my work and the next day copies were made available to everyone. Michael asked me to do it again next time.

My most satisfying and at the same time most frustrating evening in San Antonio was May 11, 1976. Bob Dylan and the Rolling Thunder Review came to the San Antonio Municipal Auditorium. I walked over with about a dozen other satsang escapees to the auditorium and hung around on the steps outside to eavesdrop on the music blasting from inside. Occasionally the front door would open and we’d see a bit of the light show from the distant stage. I remember hearing Scarlet Rivera’s haunting violin solo on “Hurricane” and Dylan’s plaintive wail on “One More Cup of Coffee”, wishing I could be inside to see my music idol for myself. But I had no money for a ticket. The vow of poverty was a bitch.

Playing hookey that night I almost felt like a normal young adult in America, listening to popular music, inhaling secondhand smoke of marijuana, letting go of guru worship for a couple of hours. Joy could be found outside the ashram and outside of meditation. Guru Maharaj Ji didn’t own joy, he wasn’t the source of joy as we were told, he just interjected himself into the equation like a nosy neighbor, a meddler. If he was God, as I had believed for nearly four years, then he was really bad at it, like Jesus. His Divine Light Mission was full of morons and creeps in positions of power. That could not possibly be a manifestation of anything but incompetence.

There were pay phones in the hotel (remember those?) and a day or two later I used one to call home. The relationship with my parents was strained—-they never respected or understood why I fell in with the guru and I felt minimalized when speaking with them. They valued social status and materialism and as far as I could tell they had no inner life, never contemplated at all what it meant to be human. We had very little in common except our biological relationship and the common trauma of my brother Mo’s death in 1969, which we never talked about. I did not feel loved by them. I blamed them for Mo’s death. But I had no choice except to reach out to them because they were my only lifeline outside Divine Light Mission.

When I expressed doubts about staying in the ashram they jumped into action and immediately offered to send me a plane ticket home. I wasn’t quite feeling ready to leave but knew that my tenure as a slavish monk was winding down. I was won over by the argument, “If you know you’re leaving eventually, why not leave now?” Two days later I was on a plane back to Detroit and my parents’ home. I never went to another satsang and had no contact with anyone from Divine Light Mission for decades.

It was disorienting to be thrust back into maya—- the illusory material world. I still meditated morning and night and was confused about Guru Maharaj Ji. Who Is Guru Maharaj Ji? Both a movie and a book had been produced under that title by Divine Light Mission, asserting that the boy guru was the one true spiritual master of our age, a divine being, come to bring peace on earth. I had had a profound initiation but the following four years gave me no evidence supporting that thesis. Instead, there were scandals, secrets, and lies. Where had the profound revelation of Divine Light that I had experienced in the Knowledge session come from? I had no idea. I just knew I was tired of being a slave in an organization that cared little for my needs and desires. Ashram life offered no pathway for me to manifest my human potential. I was as confused as can be, but I was also done with the bullshit.

Before leaving COLL I talked with Joana about my aspirations. I wanted to be Johnny Carson—a comedy writer and performer. Laughter was good medicine, and if I could make people laugh I would be doing my part to make the world a better place. She recommended Emerson College in Boston. I had never heard of Emerson College but I remembered the name and told my parents I would consider going there. Soon enough I had an application in the mail and shortly after that an acceptance letter in hand.

My brother Allen had gone to Columbia University and Columbia Law School, and had married a well-educated and beautiful woman who had previously pursued an acting career in New York. My family and I discussed what I wanted to do with my life and I said I wanted to be an actor. It was not the ambition my parents wanted to hear, but compared to an impoverished life of guru worship it was an improvement. After two weeks at home I packed my bags and headed to New York to study acting at the Hagen Berghof Studio in Manhattan for the summer. Luckily I found a sublet from a high school acquaintance who was on tour for the summer with the Paul Taylor Dance Company. I landed in New York, found my way to his lower east side apartment building, and enrolled in acting class.

I couldn’t talk about the last four years of my life with anybody. It was too shameful and I didn’t understand what had happened to me. Had I been conned? It felt like it. Given my experience with divine revelation I couldn’t engage in superficial chitchat and after four years inthe ashram I had essentially no familiarity with pop culture. The hippie era was gasping its dying breath. Rennie Davis had become a top follower of Guru Maharaj Ji and then dropped from sight. Abbie Hoffman, my Yippee hero, was reportedly dealing cocaine. Jerry Rubin had abandoned left-wing politics and become an insurance salesman. The world had become foreign and nothing meant anything anymore.

I studied acting in New York that summer and went to Emerson College in the fall. I was four years older than the other freshman and lived alone in a studio apartment a few blocks away. It was nearly impossible to make friends. At a new student dance the first week I gathered the nerve to talk to a beautiful woman who astonishingly was standing alone on the other side of the room. I didn’t know how to talk to girls but I knew I had to say something. I could not let this opportunity pass. I came up with a little song about being a cowboy—-complete nonsense and embarrassing—- but it was the best I could come up with quickly. I had to make my move before somebody else did. If I could get her to laugh I would break the ice.

That woman was Pam. She appreciated my effort and we became friends. She had a boyfriend in law school but that was no deterrence to me. She was also studying acting and we auditioned and performed in a children’s theater show together. One day she came over to my apartment—- to rehearse? I can’t remember. It started raining heavily and I encouraged her to stay over rather than walk home at night in the rain. I promised to be good but made my move in bed and she did not resist. I enjoyed sex for the first time in over four years and IT WAS WONDERFUL.

I fell in love with Pam, but unfortunately because of her other relationship I was only the occasional secret lover. With her I felt alive like with no one else but my parents had brainwashed me into marrying a Jewish woman, and she wasn’t Jewish. Her relationship with the law student floundered and we were on and off for months. I pursued a Jewish woman and was rebuffed. I had an affair with another woman while Pam and I were on hiatus. It was a big, wide world and I wanted to explore the possibilities. I had a lot of catching up to do.

Four formative years had been taken from me and left me with a big shameful secret. No one could possibly understand what I had been through, so when asked I just said that I had been working. I was not proud of spending the last four years in a religious cult and didn’t want to explain it or be ridiculed.

I was confused. Despite my profound revelation in the Knowledge session it turned out that the Perfect Master, the current incarnation of God, was a con artist, a hedonist, a materialistic manipulator with an unquenchable appetite for luxury living. He had homes all over the world, Rolls Royces and Mercedes-Benzes, a private jet, and he wanted more. To sum it up, God was a selfish, greedy liar.

For the next three decades I was a spiritual cynic. I fell into a career in the investment business. If it was all just about money, why not go after it directly? I wanted to start a family but it took a dozen years before I met a Jewish woman and fell in love. She had a science PhD and viewed my time in the ashram as the skeleton in my closet. We married, had kids, and throughout our 25-year relationship she taught me about critical thinking, science, and medicine. She had a profound love of nature, and in addition to Jewish tradition, appreciation of nature became our shared religion. Nature was awesome, infinitely expressing the creative life force. No belief was required as nature is self-evident. It can be studied and understood as a collection of complex systems, but more than that it can be appreciated for its profound beauty. From the waggle dance of bees to the camouflage of predators and prey, nature is wondrous yet comprehensible. Evolution explains almost everything. Human curiosity and ingenuity have delivered us into the golden age of science and medicine where nearly everything can be understood and almost anything imaginable is possible.

Unfortunately, my wife passed from metastasized breast cancer around ten years ago. It was sadly ironic that a woman of such scientific brilliance should be felled by rogue biology. I was with her when she passed. It was strange being her caregiver in her final weeks and days. All I could do was show love and try to reduce her suffering. It was heartbreaking.

I was not afraid of death because the profound experience of my Knowledge initiation gave me a glimpse into the non-corporeal realm. The white light that I experienced fit the definition of a momentary near-death experience. But in my case it was not the result of a life-threatening incident. Rather , it was a neurological trick, induced through fear, indoctrination, deprivation, belief, and the touch of a finger. My wife helped me to understand that everything, or nearly everything, has a scientific explanation. It took a long time to understand what had happened to me neurologically, and even longer to understand the depth of the spiritual fraud perpetrated by Guru Maharaj Ji and DLM. These understandings finally freed me to tell my story without shame. It took decades.

After my wife passed I reevaluated my life. Our time on this earth is finite. We didn’t ask for life, it was given to us, and human life is one of the rarest gifts in the universe. Our mission, as elites among all creation, is to honor life, enjoy life, and strive to make this world a better place. This earth is a wonder of nature, a precious living oasis in a mostly cold and lifeless universe.

A year and a half after my wife died I received an email from an unlikely source. Pam found me on the internet and opened up an email conversation with, “Hi Paul, do you remember me?” My heart soared. I had looked for her online many times when my marriage was on the rocks without success.

Did I remember her? I had to laugh. I had thought of her often over the preceding 30 years and was joyful to reconnect, relieved that she was alive and well. The conversation continued and within a few months I flew back east to meet up with her. Perhaps the universe was kind and loving after all.

I have been taken advantage of many times throughout my life, but never more so than by Guru Maharaj Ji and Divine Light Mission. Those four years altered the course of my life and taught me that even holy spiritual leaders can be crooks. Human beings need meaning in their lives, and this makes fertile ground for spiritual and religious con artists to take root.

I could easily have stayed cold and cynical, distrusting of people and even the universe itself. I have plenty of cause for anger and resentment, but that would be a miserable resolution. Fuck everyone and everything. Life sucks and then you die. No, that was not the message I wanted to carry with me for the rest of my life.

I had been naïve. I had believed in the possibility of a Messiah. As it turned out, that belief was the core precept used to manipulate me and millions of others for the benefit of an unscrupulous guru and his minions.

Life isn’t fair and is full of random events. Shit happens. My wife got a bad deal. Despite all I’ve been through, I still have my health and time left on earth. I am tremendously lucky.

Insurance policies often have a clause limiting liability due to “Acts of God”. The clause covers damage to a vehicle, home, or personal property from a tornado, hurricane, or wildfire. But there is no clause limiting liability from an Actor claiming to be God.

Guru Maharaj Ji stole four years of my life with his charming portrayal of the Perfect Master, an incarnate God. He used his many talents and resources to persuade millions of people that he was the answer to their innermost dreams and longings. I was among the bamboozled. It took a long time for me to figure out the truth. Now armed with this wisdom, and with the bulk of my life and responsibilities behind me, I am ready to go forward telling the truth, consequences be damned. There is no Messiah. Every person is sovereign. My former guru is a fraud, more cunning and manipulative than most, but that is no reason to give up on Utopian ideals. Most people are good at heart. There is always hope. One can live a meaningful life by standing up for what is right, by defending the weak and powerless, by fighting for a more just society, and by doing good work. Fuck the crooks and con artists! I will lead a good life nonetheless.

——-