Sex and Power Issues with Guru Adi Da

Posted by Connie Shaw on Feb-2-00 1:12am

I was a member of Free John's group from 1980-1984 and was among the group of people who exposed the group's excesses to the media in 1985. Franklin Jones/Bubba/Da Free John/Adi Da had sex with his students, and for all I know he still does. There is way too much evidence of that fact to dispute it, and that alone is an abuse of the teacher's position in my book. I have heard many accounts of his abusive behavior from people I know and trust a lot. Since I was never in his inner circle and did not witness these events myself, I have to rely on the accounts of my friends.

Once, when I discussed my objections to Adi Da's cult with a member who was (and still is) very well connected within it, I asked "What would you do if the Master told you to rape someone?" His response was "That would depend on the circumstances." This is the sort of relationship that Adi Da demands from his devotees and that his whole organization promotes. We are each responsible for our own naivete, gullibility, and need to give away our power to another. But Mr. Jones is responsible for inducing people to give their power to him and then using that power to get what he wants from them.

Neither Adi Da nor his organization has ever, to my knowledge, apologized for the harm done to people, or even openly acknowledged that many of the abuses happened. There has always been a lot of secrecy about what goes on close to the guru. In a relationship that should be based on trust, this secrecy and lying is simply wrong. When my best friend was seduced by the big guy, she was afraid to tell me. Everyone who knew about it was sworn to secrecy. I only found out why she was so traumatized years later. …

Posted by Connie Shaw on Feb-7-00 11:44am

Forgive me if this matter has already been dealt with roundly in earlier days of the forum, but I've seen the notion of "consensual sex" mentioned from time to time in recent posts, and I need to take issue with it. This is an important matter, particularly for women, who in Jones's group are the ones on the receiving end, so to speak.

Imagine for a moment that you are an earnest, sincere young woman joining a spiritual group. You read the books, go to the classes, meetings, and service days, tithe your money, etc. You are not informed that the guru to whom you are pledging all your allegiance, time, money, heart, and soul conducts orgies and has sex with his students. You work hard, study hard, try hard. Your devotion increases. You advance in the organization. One amazing day you are called into the presence of the master. You can hardly believe your incredible luck. You are getting something that is the fondest desire of nearly everyone in your little world.

You prepare yourself as best you can for this honor. Very seriously, and reverently, perhaps with some trepidation (for you know that the guru is a fire), you enter the master's personal residence. You are in a place that you have never before been allowed. You are given some instructions about how to behave by one of the inner-circle devotees. They are beaming at you. You have won the jackpot. You hope that you will not disgrace yourself. 

You are ushered into his presence. His closest devotees are all there, the ones that decide what level of practice you get to be in, whether you can go to celebrations, sit with the master. They have a lot of control over your place in the pecking order. They are smiling, intense, blissful, serious, laughing at the master's jokes. There's an overwhelming feeling of intensity and shakti in the room. There are flowers, incense, works of art, beautiful objects. A bottle of Jack Daniels is going around. You have been eating a raw diet for two weeks, along with the rest of the lay members, and you have a passing thought about how your body is going to cope with alcohol, but you down a glass of it. You are not about to chicken out now. You have come for the instruction. You will be one who can stand in the fire. The party goes on, the drinking goes on, the hilarity and laughter goes on. The master is dealing with you. He is getting into your emotional stuff. You are doing your best to surrender to it all. He is telling you that you are sexually wounded because of your relationship with your father. He is precise. He knows where the hurt is. He tells you that you are stuck in the third stage of life and must go through this obstruction. He will help you. You know this is the test. Everything you have been doing for the last few years has been leading to this. You believe everything he says to you. You surrender all your resistance and allow the guru to have anal sex with you. 

You are later debriefed by an inner-circle devotee who tells you that for the master's safety this must be kept secret. You go home, and you are profoundly disoriented, but you believe you have been given a great gift. You tell no one what has occurred. But you are very disturbed and confused by it.

When someone in a position of authority over another uses that relationship to get sex, that is sometimes an offense punishable by law. Ask Bill Clinton. Or any number of therapists or priests. This is not consensual sex. This is abuse of power. Consensual sex takes place between equals. 

Some of the men who contribute to this forum seem to think this issue is really about sex, rather than power. I've already been called a prude for bringing the issue up. Sex is a matter of great vulnerability for many of us--and I think it's safe to say, particularly for women. But the issue is primarily one of power. And I wonder if Franklin Jones can be held legally responsible for his abuse of it. If not, he should be.

Connie

Posted by Connie Shaw on Feb-7-00 11:13pm

I will try to make a few more matters clear on this topic, but I'm not interested in protracted debate on it. The discussions that seem worthwhile to me here are the ones in which there is some openness. There is really no point in discussing the guru with the devotee in this case, because the guru is without blemish, end of story. Everything he does is perfect. It's like talking to my fundamentalist Christian sister--in her eyes I'm bound for hell no matter what unless she can save me. So why would she listen to anything I had to say unless I say Save me Jesus?

As to responsibility, we are all responsible for our actions. Some women did say no when confronted with Jones's demand for sex, but they were in the minority. Jones bears his own responsibility for taking advantage of his position. If you manipulate someone who trusted you, then you are responsible for the way you have treated them, no matter how "naive" they are. Furthermore, he did at times instruct devotees to use force in sexual acts with one another, which is what we call rape. That's what one of the 1985 lawsuits was about. 

Therapists and doctors have been sued by patients they had sex with and have lost their licenses. Ministers have lost their congregations for the same offense. It happened at the San Francisco Zen Center...we could go on all night. A boss does not have to explicitly say "on your back or you lose your job" to his secretary to suffer legal consequences for sexual harassment.

The story I told happened to a very good friend of mine around 1983. During the time I was in the group, 1980-84, the official word was that the sexual experimentation and wild parties were a thing of the past. People in the inner circle knew that wasn't true, but they didn't talk about to those outside the circle. I lived in Lake County and worked for the fellowship in an office on the sanctuary at the time that this episode occurred and I had no idea that while I slaved my butt off, lived on very little money, ate a strict diet and kept the conditions, the man I was doing all this for was screwing my friend and others like her. The woman in question was one of the most intelligent women I've known--she was far from naive. When I saw her the day after this happened it was clear to me that she was not her self, but I thought that was simply because she had been close to the guru. I didn't guess how close, and she didn't tell me--she kept the secret, as she had been instructed to do.

Other women have told me similar stories. If you talk only to the women who are still in the group and you hear what a blessing it was to have sex with the guru (although even some of them will admit that there was no tenderness or gentleness involved), and you conclude that therefore no abuse has occurred, then I would suggest that you are the one who is naive. Or brainwashed.

Myth of the World's Greatest Lover

Posted by Temperance on Feb-4-05 1:24am

Thanks (again) to Connie for this "inside information". I knew her a bit in the old days.

My sister had sex with him, one of the "Gopis" (wives) for a time in the early 70's. She told me he just "rolled on and
off". Not what she expected.

Not what I expected to hear.

Luckly for her, he wasn't into "up the ass" then.

Abuse of power ? For sure.

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Posted by \m on Feb-4-05 2:06am

I too knew someone who was a gopi in the mid-70s (not your sister) who had a similar report. Interesting to hear
someone else say nearly the same thing. Maybe he wasn't all that he was quacked up to be in that department...