These are some notes of people who have had observations about the Swami Chetanananda.
There were women in the Ashram who didn’t have a clue. Laura Moderna may have been in that category of women who had no idea about the Swami’s BDSM and drugs.
The old school. They made the place run. Laura, Kari, Ruth, and others.
They were like schoolmarms. You wouldn’t talk about coarse things around them, like dirty things like sex or drugs. You’d mortify them. And yourself.
Ruth Knight dropped out of college to run the Ashram’s kitchen.
She says, “It is said that simply to sit in the presence of a teacher brings great benefit.”
Laura Moderna may not have been aware. She died of cancer.
But her daughter Winnie worked with the Swami. She was in his inner circle for years. Always around him. She cleaned his house and tended to his needs for years, along with Gretchen and other young women.
Gretchen Kreiger
Laura’s other daughter Jessica must have been aware. Her daughters may not have told Laura what they knew.
Everyone kept their mouth shut. He trained them to protect him and keep his secrets. This helped lure other women in and for him to get away with worse and worse.
Wm. Kent Burtner, M.Div, M.A. is a counselor in Portland. Over the years, he counseled former students of the Swami.
He said they manifested symptoms. Dissociative disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder. Guilt and fear of their former guru and his disciples.
They described the presence of guns in the ashram, and of Rottweilers trained to kill. And “powers” the Swami claimed to have over them.
They said the Swami threatened them. Some produced threatening letters.
Cult leaders engage in damage control and accuse their former students of lying.
Tactics to present the leader as the victim of slander and revenge. They often succeed in intimidating former and current followers.
I met with former students of Swami Chetanananda in group meetings, sometimes as many as 10 people participating. I saw how important speaking the truth is to people abused by a cult leader.
They were his fucktoys. Replaceable, disposable, expendable. It’s a hard pill to swallow. A man you devoted yourself to, loved and treated as a god. He could make you believe he loved you as you did him.
I wish I were angry. But I’m just broken. He takes something from you so profoundly intimate that it’s impossible to get over it. He circumvents your relationship with yourself. And he never lets go.
Go to his house, paid for by the work of others, by donations. See his life-long drug and sex addiction, his sexual violence, and battery.
He drove a Porsche for years. He had a house in Malibu. Using donations for expensive alcohol and cocaine and meth.
This man will never change. He’ll cower for a while. He’ll tell everyone how devastated he is at the betrayal.
He’ll tell his faithful and recruits that it’s a smear campaign from angry exes and people left behind. Then he’ll return to the old way. He’ll never stop. He can’t.
I can’t count the times he told me he stopped. He’d “rather cut his dick off” than do it again.
A few hours later, he went on another bender. He can’t stop.
Swami with Monica O’Neil
Monica lost any appeal. So Jen came back. Warm bodies that don’t complain. That’s it. That’s what he needs. It’s irrelevant who it is or was.
It’s not new.
Dr. Chris Arthur is a psychiatrist in Portland. She saw abuse 20 years ago. Her friend “B” suffered from severe depression and other mental problems.
Dr. Arthur wanted her to leave the Ashram.
No such luck. She was in love with the Swami.
She visited the ashram herself. She told the Swami to get out of having “followers”, which he could not handle, and become a person with equal relationships. They escorted her off the premises.
A person who had left the Ashram told her how the Swami harmed her.
It was told a believable story of ashram members being injured during sadomasochistic activities conducted for the pleasure of the Swami, involving a Portland prostitute.
She wrote to R, urging her as a doctor to confront the Swami. She wished to stop his sexual and physical abuse of ashram members.
I received no response.
Another person saw things she did not expect from a swami.
Fuck everything with a pulse under 40. Re-enact your hard-core porn fantasies with the most vulnerable.
When you can’t get enough of everything, buy some hookers to let your hair down. Sex clubs, glory holes, modern slavery.
Another woman who lived at the ashram noted that Lama Wangdu often came to visit.
I was warned about Lama Wangdu, who was there at the time. People laughed about how women better watch out, because he may grope you unexpectedly.
It was not taken seriously. Women laughed about how funny it was. They gushed over him and appeased him, despite his behavior. Like they gushed over Swami Chetanananda.
It creeped me out. All of it creeped me out. I avoided Wangdu like the plague and learned to avoid Swami Chetanananda when he showed interest in me. I saw through the bullshit.
Lama Wangdu and Swami Chetanananda
She said she felt traumatized and hurt by the Swami’s deception.
I knew in my heart what was going on was wrong. Swami Chetanananda was wrong to manipulate students into sexual relationships and “party” so much. I would not let him use me, so I moved out.
To this day, I am still dealing with his shit. It’s affected many people I know and care for, and even those I’ve never met. My heart goes out to everyone.
The Dead
Alan Dewitt was a student for 30 years. No one could explain his rapid decline. He was in the hospital and died. No one knows why. They said he “died of a broken heart” following his wife’s passing.
His room was cleared out at the ashram before the family arrived.
Rudi’s sister in law, Phyllis Rudolph lived at the Movement Center until her death.
The devotees cared for her physical needs as part of their “seva”, free labor.
Albert Rudolph, aka Rudi was Chetanananda’s “teacher.” He got his money, art and took care of his brother and sister in law.
Mary Elizabeth Bazzani, was found drowned in a Portland river. Was she a BDSM partner that Shoemaker put in a trance or drugged?
And Ayez Quadir. What happened to him?
Ayaz Quadir
Swami Chetanananda and Natacha
Natacha jumped off a bridge in a trance.
Dr. John Bonner received “home care” from the devotees as a “seva” service. He was a resident of the Movement Center. His son, Dr. Andrew Bonner, and his daughter-in-law, Dr. Rebecca Resse, were residents there.
Both Drs. Andrew Bonner and Resse were in the Center when Natacha jumped off the bridge. They provided care to her in the center. They are still in the Portland area.
They don’t all die. Sometimes he leaves them behind.
Molly
About six weeks before the doors of the Movement Center shut, Molly broke her knee. No one had room for Molly anymore. She did not make the grade to Gold Beach. They put Molly out to pasture. To live in the “real world” after 30 years of service. She was a leftover misfit.
The Movement Center is no more. And at Gold Beach, Molly is a name forgotten.
Leaving Chetanananda
“At first, we were blatantly courted,” the 11 who left the Swami in 2008 said.
We were made to feel chosen and special.
Chetanananda disguised his control tactics. He made enlightenment sound noble and realistic.
He disarmed us with poetry, music, and sumptuous parties.
Many fell prey to his charm.
We were in painful life transitions or naively assumed that spiritual teachers don’t lie. We accepted Swami Chetanananda’s claims that he loved us unconditionally and had only our best interests at heart.
They sacrificed to stay close. They relinquished ties to family and friends. They changed jobs, ended marriages and partnerships, or entered them at this suggestion. They sold homes and delayed planning their financial security to pay for his projects.
They left the ashram after discovering his lying, cheating, manipulation, and sexual misconduct.
Adultery. Having sex with the daughters of his students. His secret use of alcohol, cocaine, and prostitutes. His violence and anger. Fundraising manipulations by him and his staff.
A luxurious lifestyle attained at the expense of devotees. His threats to students who spoke about his private life; and endless cover-up.
Freeing ourselves from his control was not easy. For years, we had avoided looking at the truth for fear of destroying our spiritual growth, betraying our guru, and being ostracized by the community.
He spoke in platitudes: “The mind is the slayer of the soul,” and “Doubt is your worst enemy.”
He instructed us not to energize problems by giving them attention. He made us anxious and confused by alternately bestowing and removing the “honor” of being in his company.
They had fear and mistrust. They did not dare discuss sensitive issues. They informed on one another to be “close” to the guru.
Loyalty to anyone else meant disloyalty to him.
We learned not to trust ourselves, our former moral and ethical standards… We grew accustomed to accepting blame for his problems. We learned to lie to “protect Swami Chetanananda’s privacy.” The transformative practices he taught damaged them.
Many of us were depressed inside the ashram even though we did our best to believe we were happy and growing. His staff and closest devotees were often callous and mean-spirited… Some of our former friends, current Institute members, even considered suicide.
He lived in luxury, but announced his financial need to recruit new donors. He told them he was celibate while having sex with many of his female students from the beginning of his career.
Swami Chetanananda at Gold Beach Estate
He told us not to park our brains at the door of the meditation hall – to be critically watchful of him and his senior students. Still, he publicly ridiculed and distanced himself from any of us who dared doubt or question the practice, him, or his inner circle.
He told us that the only thing we had to surrender was our tensions, when we were expected to sacrifice everything to his program: our families, our girlfriends if we were men, our bodies if we were women, our daughters’ bodies if we were parents, our money, our former religious beliefs and morals, and our sense of belonging in society.
Christmas Day Gold Beach 2021
He took the greatest pleasure in pointing out their faults publicly or behind their backs.
His covert message: If we had sex with him, gave him expensive gifts, sent him on first-class vacations, and surrendered to his every wish, we would be welcome in his “inner circle.” Our liberation would be accelerated.
His public message was that the Nityananda Institute was not a cult because we were all free to leave. But his overriding message was that it was disastrous to leave your spiritual teacher.
He took credit for acts of generosity. But the gifts he gave, the people he helped through college, the training courses for his staff, and the Asians he supported were funded by devotees.
He preached about the unconditional love that flows from the guru/disciple relationship. He derided ordinary love between people as primarily contractual: You scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours.”
However, his bottom line on how we should treat him was clearly quid pro quo: “You must treat your donkey [guru] well if you want him to work for you.”
He told them he was selling them art and gems below their value. But he overpriced these by many times their value.
He told young women students that they were not destined to marry or have a fulfilling relationship. He told young women they should not have children or that their children would be born deformed. He told women that sex with him would advance their spiritual lives.
He broke up relationships that ashram members formed with “outsiders.” He separated students from parents, spouses, and children not part of the group. He told them that if they left him, they would become violent, crazy, or die. Or they would commit suicide.
He attempted to control ex-members with threats and used his current devotees to deliver manipulating messages, emotional blackmail, and accusations of betrayal and vindictiveness.
When confronted, he denied ever doing these things.
We mourn multiple losses: marriages denied, delayed, or broken at Swami Chetanananda’s suggestion; failed marriages and relationships arranged by Swami Chetanananda; the opportunity to bear children destroyed; professional careers delayed or missed; important family events unattended; talents and passionate interests ignored or dropped; morals, integrity, health, and finances compromised.
We mourn the loss of friends and family still inside the group.
They wrote their letter in 2008.
It is the truth that ultimately liberates people, not lies. We hope this letter helps free and heal students caught in Swami Chetanananda’s web of deception and manipulation, and prevents others from suffering as we have.
Fourteen years have passed since they wrote it. Not much has changed.
