Hatley's observations on Fiji visit, and women's relationships in Adidam
Posted by hatley on Feb-26-05
I am curious, women …. did you feel pressured to be female in a very narrowly
defined way when you were devotees and did you mind?
When I arrived in Fiji it seemed that a woman there was designated as my shadow.
No matter how much I tried to have the odd private moment, there that shadow
would be as I brushed my teeth beside one of those outdoor taps all aswarm with
gigantic wasps, always giving rather grating advice. One day I was scuttling
along the path to meditation -- I think it was dark and not very warm -- and
there was that shadow behind me, edging in for a quick word that I was never to
wear pants again.
And it went even deeper than that. Though there was a constant drumbeat about
celibacy -- which I was at that time complying with -- I was nudged in the
direction of prostitutional underwear. I didn’t accept the nudge, but what on
earth would have been the point of mail ordering prostitute's clothing to Fiji
at some incredible expense (I hate to contemplate the shipping fees!) when I was
supposed to be a celibate and was one? Was it just so I would feel all that
scratchy uncomfortable lace, black garters, etc as I went about my day and
remind myself that that prostitute image was now a private element of my life?
I remember that just before I departed for Fiji I bought a pair of soft cotton
pants I loved. They were called Japanese gardener pants from the Smith and
Hawkin catalogue. My wearing these pants in the community was seen almost as the
female equivalent of a man in FULL DRAG.
On another occasion, when I was viewed by others as having come up with some
really useful ideas, I was told that I needed to seek out a man in the community
to be my boss (they had some jargon I've forgotten that was a little different
from boss -- maybe it was "to manage me") so that I could execute these ideas.
Now, there was no man around who knew about this exact field -- so it wasn;t
that they had someone in mind who could actually instruct me or take the ideas
further. It was simply that I was seen, as a female, as too helpless to
accomplish something meaningful without a male boss to husband my energy or some
such nonsense. Yet I had been "shipped to Fiji" to to do this very thing! It was
baffling.
Posted by Crone
on Feb-26-05 7:23pm
..did I feel pressured to be female in a very narrowly defined way....???
Uh …. Yah.
One particularly pedantic lady housemate went through my underwear with me,
telling me what I SHOULD wear, as opposed to what I chose to wear. SHOULD being
the operative concept. Lacy, brief, sheer, and ... oh yes ... sexy, being the
operating principle. And another woman, or was that a group of them, who told me
that I should only wear bright colors, not the more subtle colors that had
always been more complimentary to my hair and skin. Bubba said! Adi Da said!
SHOULD SHOULD SHOULD! How to do my hair. What to wear. How to behave. How not to
behave.
It wasn't always this way. But then the parties started and Adi Da started
sleeping with his devotees. Women were practically fighting each other to get
into his bed. We started wearing erotic nightgowns for party dresses, lacy
bikini panties, crotchless panties, and soon were being told by other women how
to behave, think, etc. There came a time when Adi Da decided that all women
should look like his mother. His own wives, of which he had many at that point,
started looking like pictures of Adi Da's dear mom. Alcoholic tarts from the
30s-40s-50s. They shaved their eyebrows and then painted them back on in high,
wide arches. They wore bright red lipstick and heavy mascara.
He decided that only women knew what other women "wanted" and that's when things
really got interesting. We had ladies groups, where we sat naked in circles and
were instructed that there was nothing wrong with women being sexually intimate
with each other. Okay, ladies, the group leader said. Everyone put your left
hand on the breast of the woman sitting next to you. How does it feel? What do
you feel? Do you feel anything? No, you aren't doing it right. Don't be
embarrassed. This is natural. You're supposed to feel turned on. You don't feel
turned on? There must be something wrong with you. More "mature practitioners"
had similar groups, except the subject matter was further south. Dildos were
inserted. Then the questions were asked again. What do you feel? Interestingly,
at least one of these group leaders later sued because of the sexual damages she
had experienced being told that she was really a lesbian.
Basically, Adi Da could only tolerate women who were ultra-feminine and entirely
submitted to him. If you didn't fit that mold, you would be dealt with until you
did, or you would be demoted in practice. He went after the brightest, most
accomplished women, tearing them down until they were submissive, and
abuse-able. And then he used them as he saw fit.
The point of getting mail order "prostitutional underwear" was so that you could
wear them for Adi Da. Or maybe his lieutenants, if Adi Da deemed that you were
more suitable for one of them. Sometimes he would go first and then pass a woman
off to his friends. Often, he instructed his buddies to go first while he
watched. They didn't really want you to be functional. They wanted you for sex.
The only way to get into some women’s pants was to subjugate them in every way.
Only men were in charge, and all women had to be managed by men. We were deemed
capable of being nothing more than sex objects. But hey, this was considered the
way to enlightenment!
I guess your question hit a nerve. But I'm done remembering all this stuff. It
gets harder and harder to dredge it all up as my involvement fades into the
distant past. Thank goodness for that. Thank goodness you left when you did. You
have far too much self-respect to be a true devotee of Franklin Albert Jones,
aka ME ME ME!
What happens to loyalty?
Posted by hatley on
Feb-27-05 2:13am
Usually -- or maybe it is just a distorted impression I have of life -- there is a deep loyalty between close women friends (or any friends). The things you are talking about -- the going critically through a friend's underwear for some "higher" purpose for example -- seem such a violation of that fundamental loyalty. What happens to that loyalty in the community?
I was remembering tonight an experience of Fiji. When I was invited there, it was as a guest. The letter of invitation expressly said I would pay my airfare, but once I arrived, all my food and lodging (the desktop I slept on to get up off the concrete bug infested floor!!!) were free. At some point, while I was in Fiji, Godfree came to me with a bill. A shocking bill (I'm pretty sure it was on paper, not just a verbal demand). I was being charged so much per day -- I forget how much, but it really added up, and of course I had no source of income while I was working on the island. I said: but Godfree, you wrote me a letter and said I would not be charged for staying here. He looked straight back at me and denied it.
I was stunned. I said: well, I remember the exact phrasing of your letter and it is sitting on my desk at home in California. He told me if I did not come up with the money (I guess I was supposed to have it wired) then I would not be allowed to leave. I had committed to teaching that summer at UC Berkeley and I had no intention whatsoever of not showing up. But Godfree kept saying I would essentially be held prisoner until I got him this money.
I was almost trembling from the shock of it when the woman who was supposed to
be sort of guiding me or something during my time there walked in. I immediately
told her what had happened, expecting her to say: oh we'll get this straightened
out right away. I guess I was expecting that friend loyalty thing to click in --
and we had been good friends, I thought -- but her facial features arranged
themselves around Godfree's dishonesty -- I could literally see them shifting --
and she gave me some vague line about how we never know what will happen next in
our practices, as if Godfree's con-man-ism was some manifestation of the divine
spirit intended to burn and bless me a little, and I saw she was going to
participate in Godfree's scam -- and she did!
Now how on earth do you get a woman to do that? What stops the normal human
impulse to take the side of a friend who looks a little shaken and far from
home?
Personal loyalty? In the community?
Posted by Crone
on Feb-27-05 10:59am
Funny story about Godfree. Some people never change, do they!
Perhaps the biggest mistake you made was trusting anyone in the community. Just
about all of the community leaders are running a scam. The fewer the morals, the
closer they were to Adi Da.
Sorry about your friend, but she had her own priorities. They likely were to
cover her own backside, to maintain her own position in the community. She was
never really interested in you.
One of the biggest cons was the "I love you" line. It was how people manipulated
each other. Whatever they wanted you to do was sandwiched between this line. If
you didn't do as they wanted, they were off to the next "friend".
This all sounds pretty cynical when I read it back. But it is really the way I saw it. Glad you got out.
Posted by hatley on Feb-27-05 12:28am
…. And I can’t help wondering whether an attempt to get me drunk [hypothetically, by Adi Da] would have gone anywhere. My father was an alcoholic and I decided as a child that I would never get drunk (I believe in alcoholic genes) and I never have been drunk. But I had such faith in the guru. I can’t say for sure if I would have agreed to have a drink. I believed in all that blessing stuff down there (in Fiji) ...what a blessing it was to polish that relentlessly corroding brass and so on.
The last time I was at the sanctuary in Lake County there was a sudden and unexpected (to me) reversal of rules. Huge amounts of meat were being cooked up and people kept urging me to drink. Small children were standing about chain-smoking. I had no desire to eat the meat or drink so I didn’t. In the morning people were having Cokes and clutches of candy bars for breakfast. I kept thinking: why this absurd EXCESS?!
For all these months I have been "forbidden" to have a cup of afternoon tea and a brownie (a habit I happily returned to the moment I left!) which seemed so much healthier than months of gnawing hunger (I could never seem to get full on that diet) followed by a direction to binge on all those forbidden foods plus alcohol, etc.
It made absolutely no sense to me why anyone would WANT to gorge on coke and chocolate bars for breakfast -- or smoke cigarettes when they were not a smoker. (I didn’t leave because of this partying -- it just happened to coincide with my hearing that horrifying story about the guru's wife needing to be stitched up by the chiropractor. I actually really enjoyed the party even while saying no to the "accessories") …. [Editor’s note: the story about the guru’s wife needing to be stitched up by the chiropractor may be a reference to an incident involving E. C., who is alleged to have carried out surgery on one of Adi Da’s wives who sustained injuries to her intimate area with a dildo.]