Stephanie went ahead and contacted the INS, outlining the swami's sexual behavior and its impact on his devotees. "At this juncture," she wrote, "I would like to ask you to intervene in whatever capacity you can to prevent further abuse on the part of Swami Amar Jyoti in this country." She has yet to hear back from the agency. Marcia Richardson also wrote the guru, demanding that she be repaid $70,000 for donations and her purchases of tapes and books, as well as fees for retreats. "Secondly, it compensates partially for the scholarship, studies and career I gave up in order to devote myself to this swami and his organization," she said. "In addition, it includes what only can be a minute token payment of the betrayal and upset this has caused me. I would not have become involved with this swami or Truth Consciousness, Inc., if I had known of this swami's duplicity, sexual misconduct/abuse and masterminding two abortions."
Marcia received a letter from Conrow that was almost identical to the one he had sent Stephanie. Two months later, in December 1993, Conrow left Truth Consciousness and his guru. He now works in a new-age bookstore in New York.
This spring lawyers in Michigan and Colorado told the guru's former devotees that any lawsuits would be fruitless, other than those filed by women who could make a case for sexual abuse. The guru is protected by constitutional guarantees to freedom of speech and religion, the lawyers said.
Berkley Freeman declines to talk about the situation. "I will contact my client and see if he cares to discuss this," he says. So far, the swami, now 66, doesn't. Nor do the people still living at the Sacred Mountain Ashram, who refer any questions to Freeman.
Truth Consciousness, which still lists the swami as its president, is trying to sell the community property at Sacred Mountain, though not the ashram itself, for more than $400,000. It's also peddling a windswept, 320-plus-acre parcel near Ward that the guru once called "The Garden of Eden," for about $2 million. The Grand Rapids and New Zealand ashrams already have been sold.
To Stephanie, Sacred Mountain is as good as gone. She realizes she will never meet with the guru and resolve the bitterness between them. She knows that he was not the "good daddy" she searched for most of her life. She credits her acceptance to a retreat she attended last November, at which the Buddhist lama Thrangu taught the art of compassion.
One night, as Stephanie meditated to cultivate compassion, chanting long Tibetan prayers, the image of her father appeared. She'd buried any thoughts of him for more than a year, since she'd heard from her brother that he had been found dead in Florida, alone and penniless. At the time, she hadn't known whether to celebrate or mourn.
Now his face again floated in her mind. This time, though, he wasn't angry and watching. He was pleading for help. He was stuck in the bardos, the limbo between death and rebirth in the Bud-
dhist religion. His soul had stopped evolving and couldn't be reborn without her help.
Stephanie recoiled--and then the prayer of compassion she still chanted took over.
It was a tough battle for her father's soul. She cried as she chanted, desperately trying to remember the intricate Tibetan wording as conflicting emotions tore at her. Part of her wanted to let her father go into the blackness; no one could blame her. But slowly the anger and resentment flowed out of her body, and the little girl buried inside reached out to set her daddy free. Suddenly, his face was gone.
Exhausted, Stephanie finished her prayer. She was still sitting, trying to understand what had just happened, when she realized that what she had accomplished--raising a child, completing her Ph.D., starting a psychotherapy practice, writing her poetry--she had done through her own hard work. She didn't need her father or a guru or anybody else to tell her that she was a good girl, a smart girl, a girl worthy of love.
She just knew that it was true, and that was enough.
end of part 2
