CONJURELLA KRISHNA: SRILA KASIPADA

Or: How I Became A REAL Hippie Guru!

by

T. Casey

Brennan

Copyright 2003 by T. Casey Brennan

This, of course, is a sequel to the earlier CONJURELLA

stories posted at:

<http://www.geocities.com/avalard/brennan/contents.html>

<http://tcasey.inri.net>

<http://pw1.netcom.com/~mthorn/0brennan.htm>

<http://www.konformist.com/mkkafe/tcasey/tcasey.htm>

This is the story of two dreams, two Hare Krishna

gurus, and the Kennedy assassination. In the period

from late 1983 till mid 1985, I had left my adopted

home of Ann Arbor, Michigan and journeyed to

California. In the 1970s, I had been known as a

popular comic book writer, my work appearing in such

titles as Warren comics' CREEPY, EERIE and VAMPIRELLA,

DC's HOUSE OF MYSTERY, Archie's RED CIRCLE SORCERY and

a few scattered small press publishers such as POWER

COMICS, FANTASY QUARTERLY, and the Canadian ORB. But

1983 had found me destitute, and, with the help of my

friends, I traveled to California, hoping for more

professional validation. Favors from a power

structure which now just barely accepted me had been

slim; California had brought me a few scattered radio

and television interviews, a comic con guest

appearance at a building in Berkeley's Sproul Plaza,

and a write-up in the U.N. World Health Organization

magazine WORLD HEALTH, published in every major

language in the world, October 1983 issue, page

30...look for it at your local UN office, your public

library, or your university's public health library --

a follow-up report on me appeared in WORLD HEALTH,

January-February 1986, page 9. Then WORLD HEALTH

magazine editor Peter Ozorio had been supportive of my

purported work, as an award winning comic book writer,

to ban smoking in comic books. Later, in an interview

in COMIC BOOK ARTIST magazine's excellent history of

Warren Publishing Company, THE WARREN COMPANION, I

would admit that it had all been a desperate publicity

stunt. But then, in the mid 80s, it had been a

vehicle for keeping my name and work alive, in a

decade before the internet took hold, when the fans of

my comic books had all but forgotten me.

Though this is a story, not only of dreams, but of

drugs, cults, and murder, it must be prefaced with

background information on my work. The 90s had

produced not only my trade paperback, VAMPIRELLA:

TRANSCENDING TIME & SPACE, a compilation of Vampirella

stories by myself and Steve Englehart, but also my

story of my adventures at the Berkeley Krishna Temple,

whose title was a take-off on the title of my book:

CONJURELLA FEVER: TRANSCENDING TIME & MK-ULTRA. The

story had been published twice, in a comic book called

THE STORK, back when editor Ray Earles had been intent

on making THE STORK look like an underground comic,

and in the Winter 1998 issue of an Austin, Texas based

rock and roll magazine called SALT FOR SLUGS, carried

internationally by Tower Records. March 1984 had

found me penniless in Berkeley; I appeared at the

Krishna Temple there, on 2334 Stuart St., suitcases in

hand, and nowhere to go. I had run the gamut seeking

money from friends and political contacts; Peter

Ozorio had arranged for a check to be sent to me c/o

General Delivery, Berkeley, from a United Nations

account in Zurich, based on the first WORLD HEALTH

article. The check had only a serial number for the

issuer, and an illegible signature, but had been sent

via airmail with a signed United Nations voucher; I

had had no difficulty in cashing the check at the Best

of Two Worlds comic book store in Berkeley, who knew

me by name and professional reputation, but by now, it

was long gone. In that bygone era, the Krishna

people, besieged by scandals, had begun the long

process of excommunicating their ill-behaved gurus,

and, strangely, had initiated the process by ousting

the least offensive of them, saving the worst for

last. The first two excommunicated gurus, Srila

Hansadutta and Srila Jayatirtha, were denizens of the

San Francisco Bay, as I was now, quite unwillingly. I

would have traded an arm to get back to Michigan then,

but no one was buying human arms, so I stayed, quite

miserable and mistreated, in the temple of poor

Hansadutta, whom I later maligned for his escapades,

in the aforementioned FEVER story. In that story, in

had omitted my brief adventure with the Krishna

people's only LSD guru, Srila Jayatirtha, much like my

mentors, saving the worst for last. Jayatirtha had,

it was said, originally been a protege of Timothy

Leary. According to legend, he had renounced LSD

before accepting the Krishna guruship, then later,

resumed the practice, resulting in his eventual

excommunication.

But this was the tale of two dreams. In 1996, I had

written a story called "Castle Mirage: the Prelude -

Conjurella", alleging my own, and my late parents'

unwilling involvement with the JFK assassination. It

was posted immediately by several conspiracy sites,

inspiring dozens of Internet fan pages about me, and a

host of sequels, of which the Hansadutta story,

CONJURELLA FEVER, was only one of many. Ironically,

the original CONJURELLA story did not see print off

the Net, till it appeared with title and contents

shortened, in the St. Louis-based political conspiracy

magazine, STEAM SHOVEL PRESS, issue #19, summer 2002

issue, as "JFK Redux - Castle Mirage" on page 21.

So that was the first dream. The second must come

later in this story, after I tell what I left out in

CONJURELLA FEVER, after I tell of my meeting with

Jayatirtha, and his eventual murder. Unlike the first

dream, the second may not have happened at all.

Unlike the first dream, the second may be only a joke

among my many fans and followers, and, like my

ill-fated ban-smoking-in-comics campaign, only an

excuse for further professional exposure. Unlike the

first dream, the second may be blasphemy; unlike the

first dream, the second may be the lowest form of

self-promotion; unlike the first dream, the second may

be truly, truly evil. So, for now, I will wait in the

telling of the second dream. And for now, I will tell

only the facts of my meeting with Jayatirtha.

It was on Thursdays, as I recall, that Jayatirtha's

disciples came to the Berkeley Temple of Srila

Hansadutta, where, by early 1985, I was firmly

entrenched as dishwasher, semi-unwelcome guest, and

impoverished semi-follower of Srila Hansadutta.

Except for ingrained rowdiness, the Hansadutta

devotees, as the Krishna people call their followers,

were not significantly distinguishable in their

philosophy from their former parent group, the

International Society for Krishna Consciousness or

ISKCON. Hansadutta's followers were aware of their

guru's inconsistencies, apologized for him, and

followed him anyway, still attempting to promote among

their supporters the ISKCON position condemning

intoxication of any kind. Hansadutta had regretted

his inability to follow that position; Jayatirtha had

not. Jayatirtha had been defiant, and, following his

removal from his formal position as ISKCON guru, had

taken to selling marijuana and LSD at HIS temple,

across the Golden Gate Bridge, in mountainous Marin

County.

So it was on Thursdays that they came, I think. Like

the Hansadutta devotees, they danced and chanted

before the deities, the magical statues of Krishna on

the temple's altar. The deities had not been invented

by the Hare Krishna people, the system had been

created thousands of years before, in India, when

Hindu priests began the tradition of calling the

presence of Krishna into statues of his likeness. To

Christian missionaries in India, it had been idolatry,

but to T. Casey Brennan, abandoned and impoverished in

Berkeley, the beaming statues had been his only source

of inspiration in a cult which, it seemed, had set

themselves at variance not only with him, but with the

rest of the world as well. The Berkeley devotees

frequently hated each other, hated the stifling rules

and regulations of ISKCON, and, at times, hated their

own guru, but loved the deities. Consequently, the

presence of the Jayatirtha devotees before our temple

altar was not always considered proper, but I did not

give a damn. I needed a secondary refuge besides the

Berkeley Temple -- I advanced on the Jayatirtha cult,

hoping to shift my loyalties, as I had done so many

times before.

A Berkeley Hansadutta devotee named Dave had taken to

the Jayatirtha followers before I had, and they to

him. So much so, that they had offered him

Initiation. Initiation, in the Krishna people, works

like this: the trainee is initially a Bhakta, and is

known by this tile, followed by his name, in this

case, Bhakta Dave. But when he receives Initiation,

he is given a Sanskrit name, and renounces his former

life -- in this case, Bhakta Dave was henceforth to be

known as Deva Das.

So on that day in 1985, a carload of Berkeley devotees

embarked, with only minimal support from their

comrades in Hansadutta's temple, to accompany Bhakta

Dave on his initiation, and to smoke marijuana and

take LSD in the process. Along the way, someone said,

Srila Hansadutta was thrown out of ISKCON because he

was into guns, Srila Jayatirtha because he was into

LSD. I could not let that conversational opportunity

slip away; T. Casey Brennan, former writer of comic

book stories known for their quality and idealism in

the '70s, was now a bitter cynic.

"I like both guns and LSD," I said, "So I like them

both. Maybe they should get together on it -- start

the 'LSD-GUN NEWSLETTER'." I think, only Bhakta Dave

laughed. But then, that was the way of most of my

jokes in Berkeley. We stopped along the way, to check

tires or something. Bhakta Dave and I walked to the

back of the car. He took out a pack of cigarettes,

shook one up quite professionally, and offered it to

me. I took it, and we both lit up, as the other

devotees in the car looked around scowling.

We crossed the Golden Gate Bridge and reached

Jayatirtha's Temple in the mountains. Somewhere, we

had crossed an expanse of smoke-belching factories.

One of the girls had commented that she disliked the

smell of the factories. But this was 1985, and I was

intent on portraying myself as a conservative.

"Myself, I don't like the smell of the unemployed,

homeless people that are left when the factories close

down," I said. That didn't get much of a laugh

either. That same year, I appeared on KFCB's

CALIFORNIA TONIGHT show, a religious talk show from

Concord, clad in suit and tie, with shoulder-length

California bleach-blond hair, made that way from

constantly walking around in the sun (usually to avoid

the Berkeley Krishna people) -- host Ron Haus had

given me the biggest build-up I'd ever received on a

TV talk show, noting letters of support from Art

Linkletter and the aforementioned UN WHO articles --

and called for a return to the comic book burnings of

the 1950s, as inspired by religious groups and a

crusading psychologist of that bygone era. It had

been my last TV appearance, as of this writing, in

2003, and was last broadcast, I believe, on

Valentine's day of 1985.

But here I was no star, no celebrity; here I was the

least of the Berkeley Krishna people, accompanying

Bhakta Dave for his initiation by a rival guru, the

now legendary and murdered Jayatirtha.

We parked and entered the huge mansion. My first

impression was that it was bitterly cold, as the

mountains in Marin usually are in winter. Jayatirtha

had not yet arrived, but we approached the altar.

Krishna's statutes were upon that altar, as was a

photograph of Jayatirtha, but so also were statues of

Jesus and Mary, in defiance of ISKCON regulations

forbidding such things. I turned to one of the other

devotees and said jokingly, "These are dangerous men,"

though, in fact, I was impressed by their soft-spoken

gentleness. It was that T. Casey Brennan cynicism

again, and again, no one understood, and no one

laughed.

At some point, we were each provided with The

Sacrament: LSD on rice paper, embossed with the word

YES. Some weed was smoked, and periodically, I asked

for more of the pleasant rice paper LSD. The devotees

complied, tearing the YES squares in half with some

difficulty, supplying me with half a hit at a time,

each time I asked.

Gradually, due to the LSD, my mountainous

surroundings, and the diverse nature of Jayatirtha's

followers, I began to get the impression that I had

entered some strange fairy tale kingdom. A hunchback

arrived, some children, some Indian-born Hindus, and

assorted Berkeley hippies, all in the bitter,

shivering cold. It was night now, and Dave and I

walked onto a wooden porch overlooking the majestic

Marin landscape. At last, Jayatirtha arrived,

apologized for the cold, and said it would be better

when the fire sacrifice began. Though young in

appearance, he had long gray hair, also in defiance of

standard Hare Krishna custom, which preferred the

shaven-headed-with-ponytail look. Jayatirtha was, it

was said, Jewish by birth, and a British citizen.

Though expelled by ISKCON, his tremendous charisma had

caused Temples to spring up in England and India and

elsewhere in Asia, following him still, whatever his

course.

Bhakta Dave, of course, had the seat of honor, but was

not handling his LSD as well as I, or the others.

Later, though I was not present, he told me that, as

he sat down, he suddenly shouted "They're going to

kill me!" and bolted for the door. "I was scared," he

told me later, back at the Berkeley Temple. Still

with that 1985-style T. Casey Brennan cynicism, I'd

replied, "If I'd known that, I would have pulled a gun

and shot you in the back." But the gentle Jayatirtha

had said, "You have to come back and sit down now,

Dave. We're going to begin." And it had worked.

Now, not to be self-deprecating, but most of my life,

I've been just a tad out of synch with what I'm

actually supposed to do. The Jayatirtha initiation

was no exception, and the LSD had nothing to do with

it. My last television appearance had been in 1985 in

Concord, California, but my first had been in the

1950s in Columbus, Ohio, on a children's show called

THE FIVE AND TEN SHOW, so named because you had to be

between ages five and ten to be on it. A row of

children, including me, were supposed to do a dance

with motions to "jump down, turn around, pick a bale

of hay". I did all that, but completely out of synch

with my child colleagues, and the last scene found me

still spinning awkwardly, as the rest of the line of

children bowed and left the stage. The Jayatirtha

fire sacrifice experience was similar. On an altar

fire of burning aromatic wood, we were instructed, on

signal, to throw a handful of rice on the fire and

chant "SVA-HA!"; it's Sanskit, I didn't know what it

meant, I still don't. So each time the devotees

shouted and threw the rice, I waited five seconds and

did the same after them, and each time, they all

turned to look at me contemptuously, as had the other

children on THE FIVE AND TEN SHOW.

As we had been given the LSD, we had been told proudly

that the building had once been the old Owsley LSD

factory, since reopened. Owsley, like Leary, had been

one of the early LSD pioneers. So I was tripping

heavily by the time of Jayatirtha's sermon, as he

finalized the initiation of Bhakta Dave, who, at some

point, had become Deva Das. Jayatirtha told Dave that

now that he was receiving initiation, the most

important thing was that he be a good person.

Jayatirtha paused eloquently, and added "Now that

isn't always possible. But, always to try..."

I shall never forget those words or that sermon.

After the initiation, we went to Jayatirtha's other

mansion, and Jayatirtha led us in a song of his own

making, "Temple of Peace". I was deeply moved. In

the morning, we returned, and our driver was still

feeling the effects of the LSD, speeding down the

treacherous mountain highway at a breakneck pace.

Dave, now, Deva Das, and I tried to calm him by

nervously invoking the philosophy. "Well," I said, my

cynicism replaced by mortal fear as the high-on-LSD

driver negotiated the mountain curves at 90 or 95,

"The devotees don't care about speed; no, the devotees

have a more relaxed kind of lifestyle..." Deva Das

chimed in, "No, the devotees don't care about speed,

hare krishna, hare krishna, krishna krishna, hare

hare, hare rama, hare rama, rama rama, hare hare..."

But the driver was chanting, "I love speed, I love

SPEED!" I never thought I'd make it through alive.

But I did. But Jayatirtha didn't.

Later that year, in the fall, I believe, the

Jayatirtha temples made national news when they were

raided, and LSD, marijuana, and cocaine, plus a half

million dollars in British and American currency were

seized. The story was carried in USA TODAY, and the

San Francisco papers, and safely back in Ann Arbor, I

saw footage of a hooded Jayatirtha in custody on

television. Amazingly, there was no trial to follow,

and no mention of the raid in the later books and

articles chronicling criminality in the Krishna

movement, though numerous pages are devoted to his LSD

usage and sales. The raid and its consequences have

simply ceased to be. History has been rewritten, even

by ISKCON's self-professed staunchest critics.

Several years later, Jayatirtha was found murdered in

England, his head cut off, and a knife driven into his

chest.

A berserk former devotee was arrested and committed to

a mental institution. No credibility was assigned to

the theory that Jayatirtha had been murdered by the

CIA for becoming too indiscreet with the LSD they had

helped prepare for him at CIA LSD laboratories...the

raid was not the reason, after all, it had never

happened. Those who persisted in this account were

told what was, they said, the REAL story. In hushed

tones, they told what they said was the SECRET truth;

the berserk devotee who had killed Jayatirtha had been

inspired, not by the CIA, but by Jayatirtha's WIFE,

whom he was in the process of leaving. And after the

CIA blew Kurt Cobain's head off for the exact same

reason, they told the exact same story about HIS wife.

The names were changed, but the story the same, but

then, I said there was a second dream, didn't I?

So this was the second dream. Jayatirtha's followers

told a bit different story about his excommunication

than did ISKCON. The Hare Krishna movement had been

begun in America by an aged guru, a Hindu by training,

though he despised that word, preferring the more

specific term, Vaisnava. He was known as His Divine

Grace, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, usually

called, simply, Prabhupada. They Jayatirtha devotees

told me that Prabhupada had appointed Jayatirtha as

his sole successor, a position not easily refuted,

since his papers allegedly denoting succession upon

his death, now appear, even in the eyes of the most

impartial observers, to be, at best, unclear, or, at

worst, forged or altered. I

In the second dream, there are two initiations taking

place, one on this plane, one on a higher plane of

existence. Here, Bhakta Dave was being initiated as

Deva Das. But in the higher plane, the gentle,

eloquent Jayatirtha tells the cynical, self-promoting

T. Casey Brennan, "When I am murdered, you must take

up my place, and tell what you know on the Kennedy

assassination. When I am murdered, you must become

Srila Kasipada, in direct succession to those who came

before us."

"You are Srila Kasipada," Jayatirtha said, in the

dream, "Meat-eater, fornicator, blasphemer, the last

and the worst of Krishna's gurus."

And, you know? I guess I am. And that was the story

of the two dreams, how Bhakta Dave became Deva Das,

and Srila Jayatirtha became a murder victim, and the

cynical, blasphemous T. Casey Brennan became Srila

Kasipada, the last and the worst of the Krishna gurus.

The End