Welcome to John of AllFaith's MyStory
True Stories
That Changed My Life |
Part Four: The Eighties
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Greetings and Welcome to MyStory!
During the early months of 1980 I lived in a geodesic dome on Pig Snout Ridge near the Tennessee, North Carolina border with a guy named Howie. As winter was coming on, and various circumstances took place, I realized that it was time to move along and so I hitchhiked to Culver City, California near LA.
There I moved into the ISKCON headquarters known as New Dwarkadeesh Mandir. In time, I was accepted into a traveling sankirtan ("preaching") party known as the South Asian Cultural Exhibit (SACE). We traveled the western US giving information on Vedic culture and, truth be known, scamming people out of huge amounts of money. Raising funds allegedly for the Boy Scouts was one of the more popular ones, Food for Life was another. We also sold paintings "made by local artists" (really Mexican line workers), small golden Buddha incense burners etc.
By this point the new leadership of the International Society for KRSNA Consciousness had developed the following justification: Everything belongs to God. People are not giving us enough money (as God's representatives), and therefore they are cheating God. This being the case, the argument went, we could justifiably cheat the cheaters of God! Probably the best moneymaker of all was a front group called "Food for Life." It brought in millions! During these corrupt years, ISKCON was incredibly creative in scamming "karmis" (non-devotees) for KRSNA, something the founder, Srila Prabhupada, had absolutely forbidden, but he was gone and new self proclaimed gurus were now in control. In the LA temple was a bogi-yogi named Rameshwara. Among his accomplishments were sankirtan prostitution parties, Laguna Beach Drug dealing, helping in the murder of my friend Sulocana and much more.
When SACE set out from LA I didn't realize that they planned to engage in such fund raising tactics. Being a basically honest person, I didn't approve of this sort of thing, and so as it became obvious that such scams were a mandated part of working with the traveling sankirtan groups, I began "to cheat the cheaters of the cheaters of God," so to speak, and pocketed portions of my collections. After a month of so of this, I left the group in the early morning hours, caught a bus to L.A. and then a plane for Hawaii.
From Honolulu I caught a plane to Molokai, where I spent some time with a local Hawaiian political and spiritual group, the Kauna Kahulawi. A couple of months later, a pilot friend allowed me to hitch a ride to Maui, where I stayed for a little over a year.
On Maui, I met an interesting religious group that called themselves the Brethren. We lived on the streets and learned/practiced a rather odd version of biblical religion that consisted of how key group members were all the reincarnations of some biblical personage and how one day "soon" we would be granted the "keys of the kingdom" and become global rulers. One of the Brethren, the incarnation of Paul, confided to me that he had a dream that I was his companion Silas. If I stuck around long enough, God would reveal it to the others!
I didn't buy it, but they were an interesting group.
I left the Brethren and went back to my Christian roots. I lived like they did, but I shared the Gospel of Jesus on the islands.
In time, I decided I needed to return to the mainland and so worked as a kitchen helper in a Lahina restaurant, earned air fair, and flew into San Francisco.
While on Maui I had been offered a place to stay in Calgary Canada. My plans were to land in San Francisco, hitchhike north and leave the US behind, probably, I intended, forever. Destiny however had other plans!
In far northern California, a terrible snowstorm hit, shutting down the interstate. I returned to Berkeley, California, planning to winter at the New Jagannatha Puri mandir there, and in the spring, head back north.
But once in Berkeley, I was again inclined to work with ISKCON and so moved a few miles north to the farm community they ran at that time known as Mount Kailasa. Unfortunately, their guru Hansadutta, was as mad as most the eleven so-called gurus who had taken control of the Movement following Srila Prabhupada's death (or some say murder). Hansdutta was insane! He and his close disciples drank to excess, horded and abused guns, ran black market operations, smuggled, counterfeited, inherited the "prostitution sankirtan" from Rameshwara after he fell, they killed cows, he openly had sex with his male and female disciples, he blew out the windows of a Berkeley car dealership in a drunken rage... But he was far from the worst offender among the eleven! After a couple of months, I left the farm and returned to Berkeley, where I established a place for myself and began making friends. I stayed in town and never made it to Calgary.
In Berkeley, I met and fell in love with the mother of my son. Before getting married, we received word that she had become pregnant. I was ecstatic! I was going to be a father! She however said a child would interfere with her life plans and schooling, and so despite everything I could do or say, our child was murdered by a doctor, and she paid for it. I fled in anguish, returning to Atlanta. There I connected with a group protesting the building of the Jimmy Carter Presidential Parkway known as the Road Busters. That proposed parkway threatened to destroy much of what made the area so unique. This was 1984, an Orwellian nightmare year for me!
A few months later, I returned to the People's Republic of Berkeley. I felt I needed to speak with my child's mother. A nasty rip cut my soul in two and I desperately needed closure. The death of my son, I knew he was a boy, agonized my soul. He would be 22 years old today (in 2006) had he not been murdered. I was still having my recurring Shoah dream every few weeks, but now I also had visions of a baby being torn to bits by drooling white coated doctors as women looked on and laughed maniacally. I intended to speak with her and allow the relationship to close on better terms. As we talked, I discovered that she too was having nightmares. In her dreams, a baby had somehow been placed in the back of a VW bug (her car) and as the engine started the baby was ripped to shreds as she screamed to let it out. As we talked, we decided to get back together, and in 1988, our son was born. Infanticide is a great evil that no truly civilized nation would allow. I no longer have dreams of this tragedy, but it often comes to mind still.
Around this same time, early 1985, I enrolled in college while doing odd jobs, hauling etc. to make ends meet.
One day, I visited Shree Maa & Swami Satyananda Saraswati of the Devi Mandir. Theirs is a wonderful Hindu Chandi mandir in Martinez Ca. (they are now located in Napa). As I walked into the temple room, Swamiji was giving a talk about Vedic palmistry. He asked for volunteers. As usual, I was ready for any contact with spiritual masters, and so quickly offered my hand.
He hesitated, something he seldom does, then asked if I had been seriously ill recently. No, I replied. I'm healthy as a sacred cow... a little joke. He was serious however. "You are soon going to be struck down with a horrible illness." Will I recover? "Not completely, no..."
I left the mandir after the puja. I knew the Swami was the real thing, but I also knew that a hand greater than his guided my life, so I let the warning slip from my mind. I was certain that God would never allow that to happen to me.
Then one morning in 1989, about three months later, the alarm clock sounded and I hopped out of our waterbed and onto my feet ready for another day, with the worst pain I had ever before experienced. I collapsed to the floor screaming in agony. My wife hurried into the bedroom and likewise screamed. My ankles were the size of grapefruits; the muscles in my legs were tensed and hard as stone pillars, yet visibly pulsing or throbbing! I was in a daze as she helped me into the living room to the couch.
We visited countless doctors, healers, aura cleaners, homoeopathists, acupuncturists, Chinese medical doctors, you name it. The good news, Kaiser Permanente told us, is that there is nothing wrong with you! The bad news is that there is nothing wrong with you! It's in your head!
But of course it wasn't. After depleting our meager bank account, we were at our wit's end! Then one evening my mother-in-law called. She had seen an article in the paper about a little understood "new illness." Three foggy days later, the article arrived in the mail. I asked my Kaiser doctor about it, he told me that Chronic Fatigue Syndrome was what talk radio shyster Doctor Dean Edel had dubbed "the Yuppie Flu." This isn't it, my doctor assured me. Only hysterical Yuppie women get that!
After some pressure from my lawyer brother-in-law, Kaiser finally agreed to send me to UC San Francisco Medical Center. There, sitting in my wheel chair because I could not walk, the article in my hands waiting for the doctor, I got a real shock. He walked into the room smiling and announced, "I have some good news and some bad news" -- what is with that stupid expression! I remember grumbling -- The good news is I know what's wrong with you. The bad news is that there is no known cure or any universal treatment for it. He hadn't seen the article in my hand, but his conclusion was the same. He called it "Chronic Fatigue and Immune Dysfunction Syndrome," CFIDS the illness is known in most of the world as Myalgic Encephalomyelitis or ME. I also have a related condition, Fibromyalgia (FMS), as do most people with CFIDS.
Because I knew more about the world's religions than my teachers, I'm not bragging here, its simply a fact, I managed to complete my studies utilizing several independent studies and receive my MA in Religious Studies despite the illness that hit me with a year of college left. My Master's thesis was a full translation and commentary of the Srimad Bhagavad Gita. I had previously been accepted by the San Francisco Institute of Integral Studies for my postgraduate work, but because of the illness, I had to cancel that. The plan was the reworking of the translation, adding an exhaustive commentary, and seeking publication.
By this point, I had been sick for a little over three years. It took about a year to get a diagnosis (for some reason having a name for this monster helped!) and then in the autumn of 1992, shortly after graduation, my wife told me that a disabled husband was not part of her life plan, and that I should leave. Go? To where? Our bankruptcy had freed us of my medical and our other bills, and she wanted to start a new life without me.
I was now on Social Security Disability so I wasn't a complete pauper, but I was close. I was too sick to look for a place I could afford, so at first I lived in the back of my car in a nearby warehouse district. My body was racked with constant, roving pain, I threw up many times a day, had irritable bowel syndrome, was painfully sensitive to light, my lungs were problematic.... I had lost my son... life had become unbearable for me. It is said in the Bible that God will not allow us to suffer more than we can bear... I was close!
Unbeknownst to my ex-wife or anyone else, I purchased a .38 handgun at an Old West gun shop in El Cerrito. In my 1969 vision, God had given me the choice to stay here or "go Home" to be with Him. At that time, I chose to stay. So many of the events in my life I had seen in the vision, including my wife... but this I had not seen! I saw nothing about an illness destroying my health and leaving me a useless cripple or worse... I was, you might say, on a massive poor-me trip! No, I had made up my mind. I was going Home now!
So there in my car I sat. It was around two am. I read a few excerpts from the Bible. I chanted five rounds of japa mala (Hindu prayer beads). I read from the Bhagavad Gita and the Tao Te Ching. Then I pulled out the gun and touched it to my lips. I remember the taste, gun oil, nasty! I wiped down the barrel, placed the gun in my mouth, and pulled the trigger... and click. It didn't fire.
All alone in the back seat of my car I laid, shaking like a leaf. Part of me didn't think I'd have the nerve to pull the trigger, but I did. After a few minutes, I checked to make sure there were bullets, and there were, placed the barrel in my mouth a second time, pulled the trigger... and nothing.
Somehow I knew that if I tried it again, the gun would go off. I also knew however that I was not going to try it again. I had received God's answer. I opened the door, pointed the gun to the ground, pulled the trigger, and it discharged. I then started the engine and quickly drove away before the police could show up to investigate the shot!
No one knew of these events at that time, but two days later I went to pick up my son and take him to a nearby park to play for the afternoon. When I dropped him back off, my father-in-law was there waiting for me. He was a very wealthy man who worked for the US Army. He heard of our break up and was upset that his daughter would abandon her husband in such a desperate time of need. I was in no place to refuse his kind offer to buy me motor home to live in. I parked it in a nearby trailer park. A few months went by, and I wasn't getting any better. If anything, I was going back down hill again! I had assumed I would eventually recover form this illness, but I was now coming to expect the worse.
One day I went to New Jagannatha Puri Mandir in nearby Berkeley. In the temple room there, is a life size statue (called a murti and not properly considered a "statue," but that's what most people would call it). I often sat on the floor before this murti and talked with my Gurudev, meditated, or simply sat quietly (the murti shown on the left is a photo I took at Prabhupada's Palace in West Virginia, but they are all similar). This time, as I silently explained to Srila Prabhupada what had transpired in my life recently, I got the distinct impression that he was telling me to go to India!
I can't go to India! But that same inward voice said, "If I give you the money will you go? You need to meet someone there." Of course, I will! I replied, knowing this conversation was only in my head and there was no way a yogi who had passed on nearly ten years before was going to pay my way to India!
Three days later however there was a letter from Social Security in my mailbox telling me that there had been a mistake in my account, and that as part of my retroactive payment I had another $1500 coming!
I booked a flight to New Delhi and shared a cab to the holy city of Vrndavana.
This is one of those times when the chronology simply doesn't work. Elsewhere I'll share my experiences in India. For now, I connected with an Ayurveda practitioner who treated my CFIDS, alas to no lasting avail, although in the short term it helped a lot.
Due to my illness at one point I stumbled and fell down the steps of the Banke Behari mandir and cut my leg. From all around people hurried to help me. They carried me into a shop, cleaned and treated the wound, brought me food and drink and a new dhoti (robe) as mine had been bloodied. When I offered to reimburse them, these wonderful people declined. They don't call it Mother India for naught!
What's important to this telling however, is that while I was there I met my fifth teacher. He explained many things to me. One that was interesting was he told me I had lived in Nazi Germany in my last life and had been killed for being Jewish. I knew this from my recurring dream already, but now it was verified by a master. I had told him nothing about my dreams.  What was even more interesting was that he told me I had simultaneously lived in India and been one of his disciples! It seems that several of the Guru's disciples had left him to follow Gandhi. I was killed by British soldiers during one of the demonstrations. He had decided not to die until he had a chance to see all of his former students! "This is why you were sent here, to meet me." We reached an agreement in which I would teach English to his students and move into his ashram.
One day I called my ex-wife from Goverdan Hill. I asked to speak with my son, but he refused. In the background, I heard his yelling: "TELL HIM TO COME HOME!" That still small voice told me I needed to return to the US despite my intentions.
What a short strange trip its been!
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