chapter 10; enjoying the opulences of The Absolute


 "when i was a young man, i was led to believe there were organizations
that would kill my snakes for me, ie. the government, ie. the church,
ie. the schools, but when i became a little bit older, i understood 
that i would have to kill them myself."
                            ---donavan, "riki-tiki-tivi,mongoose is gone"

     with all the tenacity that had been so obvious in the 60's and 
had led to the kent state students being shot down by reactionary
elements, the united states government was moving on wiping out
any organization they deemed to be subversive. new vrndaban had made
number four on that list and a much more sophisticated justice
department was moving to eliminate that threat. reagan's loss to
his battle with alzhiemer's was not yet publicly known, but the
agencies were aware of their new found liberties, especially at the
highest levels. ollie north was free to run the planet with his
schemes for world domination by the master race and ed meese's
justice department was the group responsible for the "ethnic
cleansing" that was needed to purify the domestic atmosphere.
     in the era of trickle down economics, there had to be something
to trickle down or the economic theory wouldn't work.radhanath knew
that he couldn't approach the recently wounded k swa for money to fix 
the disaster the sulocan whacking had become. there was only one
other place he could go to get the amount of wealth needed to put
things in order. it was the same place large numbers of devotees would
take shelter whenever the ashram life style was lower than the
standard to which they had become accustomed, "the rents". the children
of affluent middle and upper class parents may have temporarily given
renunciation a try, but in the event they ever wanted to backslide on
any of that renunciation stuff, "the rents" were always there and 
willing to help. as puskar used to say,"my mother has been trying to 
make me fall down my whole life!". the one who had originally paid
the passage to india for radhanath would have foot the bill for this
current little spiritual experiment gone horribly awry.
     "for brevity, i need to know what you knew and when you knew it,
mr. slavin.", the lawyer was being as brunt as he had to defend
radhanath from the potential death penalty in kalifornia. he was 
hired to defend and to do that he had to know exactly what his client
was guilty of. radhanath understood that the lawyers intent was to help 
him and yet he still didn't feel comfortable confessing his crimes to
anyone. his knowledge of prison was limited to his experiences with the
KRSNA consciousness movement, most recently tirtha and rshab who had
been arrested and convicted on running a meth lab in the wings of the
columbus temple. it was fast easy money and the fast and easy people, 
the sahajiyas were always very much attracted to that. but that was
all spent and behind them now and the only thing left that needed to 
happen was for a good lawyer to make a good deal. slavin, sr. had lots 
of good lawyers who were expert at making good deals with the law
enforcement officials. he had been a whiskey distributor for the
entire chicago area and he had been a major crime boss in that city
since the kennedy years. he would regularly have company like
frank sinatra, sammy davis, jr. and some of their other rat pack
crony's. his lawyers would strike a deal that would work out well 
for their client.
     the lawyers came back with a package that was far sweeter than
anything that radhanath had hoped for. in exchange for his co-operation,
he would be eliminated from the grand jury indictment completely. to
protect his identity as an informant, all information that radhanath
gave would simply be confirmed by having randall gorby(a person known
to the grand jury) mention that he had heard it from tirtha. since
witness protection would not and could not work, short of exposing his
identity at some temple somewhere, radhanath had been totally exonerated
in the writing of the indictment. swami maharaj had said that in this
system, justice was for sale to the highest bidder and radhanath intended
to go as deep into his daddy's pockets as he had to to get out of this 
one. 
     while yudhisthir was making his deal with the government on the west
coast, two more new vrndabanites were trying to save themselves from the
looming RICO raid. the bubble had burst for those who knew of k swa's
transgressions, but it behooved them, financially, to keep the whole 
thing a secret. sulocan had been right all along and they had killed him 
for that and now the same mood of cover-up had to continue or they
would be somebodys cell-mate, for sure.
     dharmatma had made a deal with the prosecutor's office to sign
whatever document the FBI provided him with. all this was in 
consideration of a lighter sentence, which had been promised him.
imagine when kuladri got the same amount of jail time as dharmatma,
how upset he became. his outburst before the judge was not as well
received as his outbursts had been before k swa, but then he wasn't
turning over $ 5 million a year to the judge, as he had been doing
to k swa. kuladri would only sign a statement of things that had truly
happened, but that was enough to send several people to jail for any
number of years, the only questions remaining were who and for how 
long.
     paul tippen was a detective with the LAPD homocide division and
he and his partner, carlos orrozco, had been assigned the sulocan
murder case. tippen was mark furman with a military style mustache.
a vietnam veteran himself, he knew what former special forces tirtha
was capable of. the case had been open and shut from the start and
the FBI was all over this one. here was a chance to show the metal
he had honed as an officer in vietnam. swami maharaj had declared that
wars are caused by the meat-eating that occurs in the land. "how can
bad thjings happen to good people?" is a question that does not need 
to be asked. who are these "good people" who are not subject to the
effects of their own karma, and are they the ones who are complaining?
it hadn't taken much for tippen to intimidate prem, krsna katha, and
yudhisthir in LA and these from NV were no tougher than their west coast 
counterparts.
     in january of 1986, tirtha and mr scam failed to find 
sulocan on their hunt to LA. the search was called off in early
february when sulocan was arrested and charged with carrying a
concealed weapon. helga bryant was the typical harried mom, worn
to a frazzle by her son's involvement in this cult. she had warned sulocan
that things were getting out of hand and she didn't want him carrying
a gun. when he was arrested on the weapons charge, she had refused to 
post his bail and prefer ed to let him meditate in police protection and 
custody. as with most prisoners, all of his personal effects seized
from the motel at the time of sulocan's arrest were bagged and secured 
in the prison safe. just how safe then is a prison safe?
     the warden of the moundsville prison was warden bordenkircher.
there had been more successfully filed lawsuits against this man
than any other in WV prison history. the corruption is legendary.
the warden had political aspirations and the KRSNA's were a
registered voting block of 350 in a county where that many votes
would decide almost every election. in conjunction with the FBI, who 
were telling sulocan one thing on his face and another behind his back,
this warden used NV to execute sulocan while using the sulocan murder
to rid themselves of k swa and the menace that NV had become.
     the warden had called kuladri up and asked him to come down
to the prison. he said he had something that kuladri and the rest of
k swa's protectors at NV could surely use. the FBI had gone through
all of sulocan's belongings and they felt that the information contained
in sulocan's diary might be helpful if new vrndaban were to try to
track sulocan down again. unbeknownst to the new brijabasis, the FBI
had been involved in the ill fated jan-feb assassination attempts
and they were amazed that no one from NV questioned anything out of the
ordinary when gorby would disappear like superman to a phone booth 
and then he would re-emerge with more information on sulocan's
whereabouts. "randall had friends", that was all they knew and all
that they wanted to know. as long as his friends were able to give 
them the information they wanted, it was a good thing. it was all good.
    the feds had recruited randall gorby, a regular visitor to the NV 
compound, to assist in the taking down of the NV community. randall 
had been helping PB with the brick factory that PB was supposed to
be making operational. little did randall know at the time, but PB had 
been intimate with randall's daughter. randall gorby was your typical 
west viginia hillbilly and if someone was having sex with his daughter,
that person was going to get a shotgun put against their back. there were
some problems that prevented that scenario from playing out. for one,
the girl didn't let the information out for a while until after it
had happened. for another thing, randall had ties that it would hurt
him to sever. another point was that PB had been replaced at the brick
factory by someone who could actually get the job done and randall had
lost that reason for contact with the commune. also, PB was married and 
the prospects of him marrying anyone else, let alone a karmi workers
daughter, were nil.
     now that randall had found out about the abuse of his daughter,
he was livid. he was also bound by circumstances to plot his revenge,
rather than to exact it boldly. that plan was to do as much damage
to the commune as he possibly could and this turn of events that had
started with the k swa head bashing incident gave him ample opportunity
to get close enough to put quite a few of them away for quite some time.
at this point, that was the best he could hope for, so he set out with 
that goal in mind.
     kuladri was shocked to find the warden opening sulocan's personal
effects bag and showing him all the things the FBI thought were important 
for the NV assassins to know. NV's new found love, the warden of the
prison, was a refreshing change from the strained relations that had
been between the county sheriff and the community and kuladri felt
they were finally coming to the point of appreciating the KRSNA commune.
nothing could have been further from the truth.
     the current county sheriff, bob lightner, may have been very
successful at removing septic sludge, but that did not make him a
constitutional scholar and most of the red neck police of the era
were not very inclined to respect anyones freedom of religion unless
the religion was one that they approved of. to find out if your religion
is one of those on the approved list, you might ask a muslim scholar
or a jehovah's witness about your Deity worship as pleasing or
displeasing to God and just listen rather than explain them your point 
of view on the matter. the KRSNA commune had been refused admittance into
the ohio valley league of churches because none would accept this as a
bonafide religious expression, but rather as the most heinous
abomination before God, idolatry.
     the FBI considered the local county sheriff to be a boob and
prefer-ed to work through the warden. sulocan was the perfect answer 
to the problem of how to usurp the county sheriff's authority and
still keep the FBI behind the scenes, simultaneously. by assisting
new vrndaban in the surveillance and detection of sulocan, and with the
aid of agent provocateur gorby, the FBI would be able to turn this
feud into something that would work against both of the sides in this
fratricidal war. after gorby's house was blown from it's foundation,
the FBI tried to charge the KRSNA's with further murder charges, but
the grand jury was not convinced and charges on others were never filed
as of this writing. gorby's testimony had already been given in 
deposition and his physical presence was no longer needed by the FBI.
in fact, the fact that gorby could point the finger at radhanath,
rather than at k swa made gorby a wild card the FBI no longer wanted.
tirtha claimed to have inside information from the prison grape vine
that it was the FBI and not the KRSNA's that leveled gorby's house.
police accept that informants quite often become collateral damage.
gorby had been mentioned throughout the indictment as "a person known 
to the grand jury". now, having conveniently put k swa in jail for a
murder that radhanath had ordered while k swa still had feeding tubes 
stuck down his throat, the FBI and the grand jury both forgot that
they knew this individual. mission accomplished.