Let's talk about sex again.
Updated: 2/22/22 Ukraine War...Clearing the air.
So I was talking about Bo Lozoff, Ram Dass and Maharaji in reference to sex and women and being gay, etc. Well, it sometimes takes me 24 hours to heave up old memories at my age, so here goes. (And I’ll throw in my personal sex obsessed story for good measure.)
Facts: I said Ram Dass was gay. We thought Maharaji was a typical sadhu in white robes. We learned Bo was entangled in a big ‘guru can heal your pussy’ fiasco.
Reality: Ram Dass was always gay, but he had a fling early on with some babe when he had money and sports cars at Harvard with Tim Leary. Then he was really sort of gay in India doing his spiritual thing except he told me when we had our hourly psychological dumps in Kausani (and New York later) that he wanted to have sex with me. No thanks. Not gay and not into sex in India. He came to Muktananda’s ashram from the world tour with him in ‘71 or so, and had four guys with him, one of whom I know was and still is gay, no problem. But then in the ‘70’s when we were all taken in by Joya (and Hilda) he admitted to me in a letter that when he and Joya went out for a drive, they actually went to a motel (she was married) and he did the rear end thing on her. Of course it was a purifying ritual, nothing more. Then in Maui about 2010 a good friend of his digs into his past and finds out he has a 40 year old son in North Carolina with a family. And the son visits his weird dad in Maui and we are supposed to act like nothing unusual. Jeez, he sure saved on college loans, unlike me. He’s a real dad now. Welcome to the club. The guy comes a few times each year. Pretty ordinary dude.
Now Maharaji is a different story. We were under the illusion that Maharaji was some great Hindu yogi celibate in white robes (brahmachari white and not the phoney sadhu or normal ordained monk saffron). I used to wear saffron and shave my head at Muktananda’s ashram and wash the buffaloes asses in the river in the morning for seva. Indians in Nainital probably knew something but did not tell us anything, until the true story came out about 7 years after his death. I think at first I couldn’t believe it, it was too bizarre. He had a wife from nearby Agra and a few kids. One of them took over the Vrindavan ashram. A very big deal in India.
And then the rest of the story started to fall into place. Why did he seem to have five women stashed away in his back room. The main one being Siddhi Ma, who took over after his death. She passed on a few years ago. Krishna Das would go to India to see her many, many times. She only nodded to me in passing. I think she realized I wasn’t going to go gaga at her. And then as I said in the last post, he did they say, the fondling thing but the western girls kept pretty quiet about it. That’s huge, to be fondled by Maharaji, a special relationship, going to God for sure. Maybe that’s why he never got angry with me for having sex at the hotel with ‘R’. That would be hypocritical for sure. Well do we live in the truth or not, should be hide everything? If that’s the case then all my sins are truly forgiven.
These things are so typical of every guru or spiritual master, the same pattern, the same excuses. That’s OK, Maharaji was a householder, we told everyone he was a sadhu, a plain ordinary householder who became enlightened and changed the westerner mindset by reprogramming Ram Dass, and oh yes produced Apple and facebook. And now you’re telling me to believe that the crazed looking kid in the supposed early photos of Maharaji who lived in caves, produced a big family. How is that? Was that scripted to take us off the track. Make us believe he could never have a family. And to top that off, now we’re making statues and shrines about a householder, items that are usually reserved for enlightened or advanced monks in India or Thailand. Not family runaways. Are we worshipping a family runaway? That’s what he would be in America. Did he pay child support? This is a fucking mystery. How did they survive without him? Just saying.
Those Indians are hiding something so they can use him to make money on his fame, typical. Fame created by one of the baddest drugged hippies ever. He even gave Maharaji LSD two times supposedly. And he never helped raise his son for 40 years, bravo, all is forgiven, applause. Other people go to jail for that. Anyway, that’s America now, totally fucked up people who worship idiots like Trump, the Kardashians, overpaid dumbass sports heroes and some cult women in big cities who pose as housewives. Well turns out no guru is perfect. Even Buddha had a family and ditched them. I stuck by my son for 27 years painful as it was sometimes with my wife. Give me a medal. That’s why I tell you to look at Shivapuri Baba.
So my monk days:
As soon as I got to India in Ferozepore, I just wore white and after a week as you can read in my book, I gave a spontaneous talk about God at a Hindu Temple. I made myself a monk and went to Delhi where Raihanna, the Sufi saint, sent me to Sivananda Ashram in Rishikesh on the banks of the Ganges. I ate a banana and milk for dinner, got up early and did my yoga. Sort of a novice monk. Lasted a short time because Maharaji came disguised as a humble man on the banks of the Ganges one day and told me to go to an ashram on the other side.
I was immediately taken in by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, probably because there were no other Americans around and I had a college degree. He gave me the special mantra and in addition, especially for me, initiated me as Brahmachari Gyanendra (wisdom). I wore white, lived alone and wandered around Rishikesh, did his meditation and was sort of happy, who wouldn’t be. Although I didn’t know at that time, how he would become so famous. Then Bhagavan Das showed up finally and I asked Maharishi to let him stay. We both left after three months, he out of boredom and me because Maharishi went to America and told me to stay behind with his fucked up family who with Maharishi out of town treated me like shit.
I had the urge to go to Kathmandu and traveled by bus. Again, all I do is stand in the middle of the road and inevitably in those days, being the only hippie sadhu from America in India, looking like Jesus Christ, someone will take me in. This time a Nepali photography shop owner helped install me as an English teacher in the Tibetan monastery on a hill in a stone cottage. I didn’t like teaching. By that time they introduced me, thought I was not crazy, to a few important people who knew the king, like his Press Secretary and the ex-ambassador to the UK. They took me to a temple in Pashupatinath forest where Shivapuri Baba lived and died the year before. Damn.
But being a sadhu, they told the king, who was very impressed with me and he gave me his summer palace with servants and a four poster bed to live in. I couldn’t take the luxury in those months as a new monk so I told them about my feelings. They organized a trip for me to the top of the highest peak in the valley where Shivapuri Baba had a stone cottage next to the origin of the Bagmati River. It flowed into a beautiful pool where I bathed. A woodcutter (a real one like in the movies) brought me tea and food every day for two weeks. My first retreat. I was a forest sadhu. The only thing was don’t step outside at night, there are hungry tigers. Sometimes I would hike up a km to the spectacular high peak and one time I thought about jumping to see if I could fly. Not. Time to leave.
I traveled to Varanasi as the pretend white robed monk I was and was taken in off the street by a professor from Banaras Hindu University and treated like a prince again. My own home even. One day on the Ganges, another humble man disguised as Maharaji told me to go up the big steps and through the small wooden door. There I had the darshan of Anandamayi Ma who was sitting up front, who upon seeing me sent over someone with a chocolate Kiss from America. OK, nice, now what. After that a man approached me on the street and said he worked for Mr. Birla, the richest man in India (motorcars) and he wanted to give me a monthly stipend to stay and do yoga in India. Wow. But I missed the USA and my mother so I regrettably said no thank you, without knowing what I had truly just passed up. But destiny is destiny. I wrote my parents, who thought I was dead, after a year and a half, and they sent me a Pan Am ticket home. End of monk story until I return to India after my Mad Man career.
I came back to India in late 60’s with Denise (Paris girlfriend) from Morocco and went straight to Raihanna. She told me to go to Muktananda’s ashram in Ganeshpuri. That’s a long story. I broke up with Denise there and lived alone in the back as Ron Swami, orange robes now and shaved head, really thin, totally broke for two years. I went from washing buffalo’s asses in the river in the morning to help edit Muktananda’s first book, ‘Play of Consciousness’, to make it more American English sounding. I sang sanskrit like Krishna himself and was the hall monitor. I met Osho and hung out with Franklin Jones (Bubba Free John) and his two ladies and NY Rudi, Rudrananda, who died in a plane crash (accidentally?). Ram Dass came and danced and gave me $100 and I jumped over the fence at night to go to Maharaji in the Himalayas.
We were all monks with Maharaji and Ram Dass unless you came with a girlfriend or were married or he made you marry. I was a white monk again, but totally shaktipat-ed out for the first few months. I’ll leave it here, you read other posts. Too many cosmic stories no one else in the satsang ever lived through with mentor Allen Ginsberg and peyote Little Joe and ‘Charlie’ IBM.
Background (you need to know some Hindu culture and philosophy, dummies). Ramananda (The biggest and best fifteenth century ever): Born at Prayag, he was the first great Bhakti saint of North India. He opened the door of Bhakti to all without any distinction of birth, caste, creed or sex. He was a worshipper of Rama and believed in two great principles, namely as perfect love for God and human brotherhood.
His householder enlightened disciples included:
(a) Kabir, a Muslim weaver; He strongly denounced the caste system, especially the practice of untouchability.
(b) Raidas (Ravi Dass), a cobbler (Me) Friend of Lord Krishna.
Take it or leave it.
And then there’s me. I am not hiding the facts like these others while I’m alive, maybe some, so no one freaks out. I have had sex of many variations with many women since college. (And did the heavy petting thing in high school). Here’s some of my un-accomplishments:
Stole the French girlfriend (famous French film editor) of the Soft Machine’s lead singer of the well-known rock group of the 60’s and ran off to California and India with her. The LSD was really helpful that night in Southampton.
Had a love affair in the Hamptons and East Village with the wife of a legendary leading member of the pop art movement in the 60’s.
Joined Ed Sanders who is considered to have been active and "present at the counterculture's creation” in my East Village pad for an orgy with my two girlfriends at the time.
Married (eloped) a rape victim in 1967 whose fear of intimacy after sexual assault was a psychological minefield for her and her Jewish parents who thought she could never marry and helped her to be loving and become a movie star…from Helene to Serene in Midnight Cowboy. Divorced 2 years later for Denise Casabianca and moved to Paris.
Serene in ‘Midnight Cowboy’. Also, unfortunately the ultimate worse accomplishments: a close high school girl I loved platonically and knew from Greenwich Village cafe days in 1963 when I was in college committed suicide out of the blue. Another girl I worked with during the prison ashram days project was found dead in Kansas, suggesting to my friends in Vermont from the satsang it was because of unrequited love. And another girl I loved in Taos who insisted on going home alone from my teepee at night to New Buffalo commune was found raped the next morning. And yes, I had sex with my secretary from Madison Avenue, without blinking an eye in 1966.
Goagirl, girlfriend, French, trippy. She asked if I had a shower and moved in. Well so that’s what you’re getting from me, the ‘naked truth’. But is there another ‘gateway’. God just makes it a challenge. Why Ravi Dass is now Ron in God or something special or in reality in Thailand actually ‘nobody’ (hey, Ram Dass I made it). But he has no backing, no incorporated foundation, no Oprah interviews. He has the ‘truth’. Who wants to get crucified anyway.
P.S.: Sorry if I’ve offended anyone but it’s insignificant to what is going on now in the world. You realise half of America, the leading democracy and superpower, is mentally unbalanced with a dysfunctional government and the greatest greed the world has ever known.
Hey Man....your posts are a Hoot! Thanks for sharing and may you Keep on Keeping the Ron Dream alive! YAY!!!