Letter to the Editor

THE SWAMI'S VOLVO

Editor,

RE: SWIM, SWAM, SWAMI

I'd like to respond to the "letters to the editor" regarding Tripurari swami. First of all, Nancy McLeod and Bill Allen are incorrect by stating that Tripurari has made his money "selling his books." Most of the senior "Krishna devotees" know that Tripurari's "funding" first of all came first from the sales of vinyl "rock and roll" music records in the 1980s. "Misleading tactics" were used in the sales of these records as well. People thinking they had purchased "The latest Rolling Stones record" got home to discover: they had purchased — Scottish bagpipe music. Later, his group graduated to the sales of other trinkets and especially T-shirts at places such as: the San Diego Zoo, the San Francisco wharf, various market places in Seattle, and so on and so forth. And when Tripurari's guru partner (Sudhir) left with a Datsun Z sports car, and a female secretary, he allegedly "cleaned out the safe." It would thus seem that their "accounting procedures" are a little bit dubious and they tend to benefit their yuppie "guru elite." And there are people like Gary Lund who know about the T-shirt business since his brother partnered with Tripurari's group in that business in Seattle.

I once asked a Tripurari follower who was selling "Save The Earth" T-shirts in San Francisco, "Where is the money going"? He replied, "The money is going to help drug addicted youth." So the trinket and T-shirt sales business is apparently where Tripurari's group has mainly collected funds to purchase their rural property, Philo hotel, house in San Francisco, restaurant, store and so on. Yet the innocent public, those who gave his group their hard earned money, were never told that the money was going to fund Tripurari's country home, Volvo, exotic pets and so on? So this is what many Krishna devotees call simply: fraud. His group told the public to donate charity funds for "causes" like helping drug addicts (or whatever their line for that day was) and yet the public was never informed that the funds were really going to end up supporting a "guru's" yuppie lifestyle. Apart from that, many of the young idealistic "collectors" who operated the T-shirt sales tables and who gave the money to Tripurari's group were later left standing at the door without a penny, when they finally became disillusioned with his group. Some would call this: exploitation of people's religious sentiments.

Of course, when the previous Panorama Road "guru" Jayatirtha (James Immel) was in Philo, and he was being told by Tripurari's mentor (B.R Sridhara) to "stay in the guru seat and be worshipped as God's successor" — he was allegedly operating one of the biggest "ecstasy" drug sales businesses in England. The British police were quite baffled as to how to stop Jayatirtha since at the time the drug was legal. Thus, later on when Jayatirtha's head was chopped off — slowly with a dull knife — by "a dissenter," and his head was placed neatly in his lap for his shenanigans with a married woman, the British police told his killer (John Tierney) that he had actually done a favor to the Queen's Empire for halting this drug sales problem. Moreover, the British Police allowed John to get out of jail early, which is almost unheard of in England. No doubt, some of the neighbors in Philo also thought "Jayatirtha is such a nice man." And yet there was the same pattern, Jayatirtha liked to "associate" with his young female followers just as Tripurari has been doing, at least according to eyewitnesses like Nancy Gottfried. Jayatirtha had a nice Volvo, just like Tripurari has. Jayatirtha "was ordered to be a guru by B.R. Sridhara" just as Tripurari has been. Jayatirtha's followers also ended up on the street without a penny when they became disillusioned with his program.

Of course other Jayatirtha "disciples" have had much more severe problems. For example, while stoned on "ecstasy" one of them pulled out a .22 pistol in a Berkeley theater where he tried to kidnap the actress off the stage. A swat team, and officer Joe Sanchez, had to be called in to intervene. Then again, a "dissenter" flew from Santa Cruz to Nepal to "talk some sense into Jayatirtha," and he was subsequently found "floating face down in an icy Nepal lake, after last being seen in a boat with Jayatirtha." Another one of Jayatirtha's followers tried to commit suicide by jumping off a freeway bridge. Jayatirtha is: "a nice guy"?

So this is the result of B.R. Sridhara/Tripurari "preaching," they encourage unqualified people like Jayatirtha to be "Jesus-like gurus." And the results are quite disasterous for all parties, such as money scams, drugs, madness, murders and suicides — ad infinitum. Nevermind this, the first "Jesus-like" guru made by B.R. Sridhara in India (Vasudeva) had his child murdered to cover up his illicit affairs and scandals. And then B.R. Sridhara's "guru" committed suicide by drinking arsenic. Of course B.R. Sridhara says that people like Jesus (acharyas/pure devote gurus) are often "tempted" and they commonly fall into such odious illicit affairs, and worse he says they also "go mad" (they commit crimes) to obtain these illicit items. This idea is expressed in a book distributed by Tripurari where he says that people like Jesus (acharyas) are "tempted" into illicit sex, money and the desire for worship. Dr. J. Stilson Judah calls B.R. Sridhara's "gurus" "antinomianists" (lawless — in the name of religion).

As for Ed Smith's letter, he has just sent me $10 for our book about "the poisoning of the founder of the Krishna movement." He is therefore "not up to speed" on many of these issues? Moreover, when he wants more information — he consults with me? He also says, for example, that there were only nine gurus (in 1977), whereas there were in fact eleven. In sum, his facts are a little foggy. Nonetheless, his heartfelt letter to the AVA is overall quite good since he seems to have understood the main point: corruption has to be challenged. Yet I do not think that Ed Smith understands all of the history.

For example, in 1976 Tripurari helped create a video for the Krishna movement, training people in "crooked collection techniques" (for use especially in the airports). The founder of the Krishna movement (Prabhupada) found out about this video and he was very upset. He sent a letter to all of the temples saying, "These illegal collection techniques will ruin the reputation of our movement and they must be stopped." Yet Tripurari's crew did not stop. This later proved to be a problem in 1980 when a Syracuse New York court case stated: "The Krishna movement is engaged in systematic defrauding of the public." I am not sure whether Ed Smith knows that the source of Tripurari's wealth and property is "systematic fraud" and/or trinket and T-shirt sales "to help poor drug addicts" either.

From 1978 until the mid 1980s Tripurari and his mentor B.R. Sridhar were certainly the biggest cheerleaders of the Krishna movement's then "eleven gurus." I met Tripurari in San Francisco around this time, where his friend Marz Attar was trying to get him "voted in as a co-guru" with the other "eleven." So I confronted Tripurari, "Why are you trying to get 'voted in' to a guru program, which contains homosexuals and deviants"? He was very angry at me and he refused to reply. Of course, he has never replied to this question for 15 years hence.

Around this time, some of us were openly stating that the eleven's "guru lineage" was "the enforced cult ritualistic worship of homosexual pedophiles," and Tripurari was not only defending that group but he was trying to become one of their co-members. And as a result of Tripurari and similar others like him defending, and even trying to join that group as one of their co-gurus, several thousand children were molested under the jackboots of that regime.

This is all documented and is part of the Dallas, Texas "Wendle Turley" lawsuit. "As the leaders looked on and did nothing, children were starved, beat, molested, and killed from medical negligence." And, "There was an epidemic of anal reconstructive surgery for boys." Tripurari certainly cannot say he "did not know about any of this" since I approached him directly about these matters, and also mailed him our papers on the topics, and told him there were major problems with his "gurus," including that some of them were homosexuals and pedophiles. As some say, Tripurari was so frantically propping up that regime that he did not hear the sounds of children's skulls crushing under his feet.

One of the gurus endorsed by B.R. Sridhara/Tripurari was Kirtananda (Keith Ham). He was always covered with the hands of fifty boys when he sat in his big guru seat, yet Tripurari still said he wanted to be Kirtananda's twin brother and co-guru, despite this rather odd public display. Tripurari's desire to be "voted in" to the guru clan was actually squelched by Kirtananda (who was subsequently arrested), who said, "Since Tripurari wants the name and fame of being a guru, he is not a guru. He simply wants to enjoy the post of guru." And so Tripurari got a "guru certificate" instead from the overarching mentor of all of the eleven (bogus) gurus, namely B.R. Sridhara. By the way, B.R. Sridhara is the founder father of a violent homosexual guru cult in India. Anyway, in the 1980s myself and my writing partner, Steve Bryant, were also getting all kinds of death threats for challenging the pedophile guru regime that was supported by Tripurari and B.R. Sridhara. Steve was assassinated on May 22, 1986. Then, officer Joe Sanchez of the Berkeley PD told me I was "next on their hit list." The FBI, Federal Marshals, and others then raided Kirtananda's farm. I am not sure how Tripurari can say he is "unaware" of any of these events. Around this time B.R. Sridhara also told Hansadutta to keep his "guru worship" going, never mind that Hansadutta admitted to Sridhara that he was addicted to percodan, alcohol, other assorted pain killers and affairs with some of his female disciples. B.R. Sridhara also told Jayatirtha to keep his guru project going as well, despite illicit sex and drug problems there as well.

After the mass molestation was exposed, and the poisoning of the founder was more and more being exposed, the main founder of the eleven false gurus "Tamal Krishna" (Thomas Herzig) was crushed to death by a large truck, in a car accident in India. Tamal is the main suspect in the poisoning of the Krishna movement's founder and launching the subsequent homosexual pedophile guru cult. And Tamal's self-incriminating "whispers" are prominent on what is now called "the poison tape" where he is saying things like: "the poison is going down." After the car crash, many people were thus clapping and rejoicing that: the founder of the pedophile guru project; the main suspect in poisoning the Krishna movement's founder; the main person who tried to lead the Krishna movement astray by deviating it into another B. R. Sridhara homosexual worship project, was dead. Most everyone was happy, except Tripurari. He wrote a "Eulogy to Tamal" where he was weeping and crying that his hero was dead. Tamal used to lecture that his favorite "guru" was Bhavananda, Charles Bacis, a former "Chelsea Girl" in the Andy Warhol camp. And now Tripurari was saying his favorite hero is, Tamal, the twin brother of homosexual guru Bhavananda? And when Tripurari visits Los Angeles he associates with people like Virabahu, who was "voted in as guru" at the 1986 "recoronation of a known homosexual pedophile guru." Marz Attar by the way told me that if he had tried to overturn the reinstatement of that known homosexual pedophile guru in 1986, "They would have beaten me to death with bamboo sticks." These are the kind of folks Tripurari writes "eulogies" to?

Last but not least, Ed implies that our documents are not factual. Why then are my documents submitted to the Dallas courts by Wendle Turley? Why didn't the eleven gurus challenge our documents and instead they pleaded "no contest" — and then declared bankruptcy in that court? Why have we never been challenged in any court case EVER for libel and slander, since we started writing even before 1980? Why have we got death threats instead? Why have our statements gone unchallenged when presented to John Hubner who wrote "Monkey On A Stick," or the Rolling Stone Magazine's article "Dial Om For Murder," or Time magazine's "Tempest In a Temple," or CBS news' Jane Wallace on her West 57th street program — all of which were repeating my statements, and so on, ad infinitum?

Why do Tripurari's followers threaten to "sue me in court" every month, for the past 15 years or more, but they never do that? Why have audio forensic experts such as Jack Mitchell agreed with our poison tape analysis, that the founder of the Krishna movement was indeed: poisoned? And if our documents are all faulty, why is Ed ordering our book and audio CD? Because, there is no solid counterpoint. That is why.

Thanks,
Timothy K. Lee
Santa Rosa