TIMES- ADVOCATE, ESCONDIDO, CA

By Jim Molnar, T-A Staff Writer

ESCONDIDO- Donna sat at the table in the Long Beach diner not far from the Morningland temple and fidgeted uncomfortably. She was nervous about persons at Morningland finding out she talked with a newspaper reporter. “I don’t know,” she said, “if this is the best thing to be doing. But people should find out the truth about Morningland. I have a really good friend who’s still in, and we can’t get together or anything. I mean he’s not really supposed to associate with me now that I’m out.”

Donna was expelled from the Morningland ashram (a spiritual headquarters in Hindu; the temples in Long Beach and Escondido are ashrams) several months ago. Like Tess in Escondido, she was told her sex tapes were bad. Donna said the sexual aspects of many disciples lives that are revealed in Morningland counseling sessions have a tendency to come back as attacks during the so called clearing sessions in which disciples are expelled or suspended. Like Tess and many others, Donna has not rejected the basic elements of esoteric philosophy she encountered in Morningland. Like Tess and many others, she holds positive memories of the days when Donato was alive and regrets what she saw happen to Morningland without his apparent tempering influence.

Like Tess and many others Donna is pursuing regular psychiatric counseling sessions. She said the Long Beach Ashram had perhaps 400 disciples at one time. She estimates the number now at maybe few more than 100. She said many of those who have left are in counseling. Of those who are not, many have gone on to join other esoteric, spiritualist or metaphysical groups. She said Morningland is developing a negative reputation in other groups because of what has happened. Like Tess, Donna is angry, “I want them closed,” she said, but without any hint of the real fury one might expect. “I want my friends back”

The purge, as many former devotees call it, seemed to begin around January, with late night clearing sessions becoming more frequent at the temples. It was then that other aspects of the cult operation began changing, too, she said. The Mind Lock was formed – a group of especially fervent disciples directly under the authority of the nine Morningland gopis. Some persons in the Mind Lock (the term, perhaps is drawn from the television series “Star Trek”; Spock, a Vulcan used a mind lock to unite his personality totally with another’s) became Rainbow Soldiers or Brahmans (the highest of four major castes in India, the priestly group).

The Brahmans function primarily as guards, Donna and former disciples from the Escondido ashram said. They call them Gopi guards because they not only keep an eye on the grounds and doorways of the ashrams, but are assigned to go with the gopis whenever the women ministers leave the temples. “I’ve seen them with a Gopi when she’s doing her laundry,” Donna giggled, and when they go into restaurants and things. It’s really weird, really paranoid, you know?” It might be considered unusual, especially as many expelled disciples were devout and had no desire to leave. Like Donna. “I don’t think I would have left on my own,” she said. “No, I don’t think I would have because when I was in there, well, I just didn’t see things – you know what I meant? They’re good. I mean they really have power over you. I just didn’t think much about anything that seems really wrong to me now.”

Perhaps, considering a certain “xxx” (word not readable during transcription) in the spiritual direction of Morningland that began with Donato’s death in November 1976, the cult’s forces of light are gearing up for battle with the forces of darkness. Sri Patricia was worked to a near frenzy at Donato’s graveside in Oak Hill Memorial Park here on Nov. 11, 1976. Disciples gathered around her as she delivered a speech before a small tree. She told them that the opening from upstairs (Morningland’s term for the plane of the Great White Brotherhood, spiritual masters living and dead in a spiritual hierarchy – “the White House without a fence around it. It operates on an open door policy and in a Oneness never before seen.”) had been no wider than the tree’s trunk 5 years earlier. When Donato took on his human form (he was, she says, the Christ avatar for the Aquarian age, the reincarnation of Jesus the Christ) in May 1971, he just managed to scrape through the opening.

“There was one opening!” Sri Patricia said, “Children, listen! There was just a thread holding us to upstairs.” And the opening was jagged “because of all the atomic wars and all our battles and all our thought forms, and the atomic blasts had jarred that link that he left 2,000 years ago. Sunday morning when he left, the opening is as wide as a door. It is solid. It is blazing Kundalini fire (Kundalini is a yoga term defined by Morningland as the force within that helps us to develop ourselves spiritually as it is activated by the Master)! His work is completed! He united heaven to earth! They’ve got a grip on us! We’re going through that opening! Learn what you can learn, because you’re going to teach what the Master taught. Now the Plan is us. Do you understand? We are. We are the Love. We are the Light. We are the Power. We are the Plan! Do you understand? You are his officers. You are his main officers. You will recruit the troops of Light. But listen carefully. The attacks of war are on against us. And they will appear in your midst. They will come into Morningland and they will smile – but they will be of Darkness!”

“Get Clear! Get your eyes clear, Get with the Master. They will infiltrate! They will try to destroy like they have never done! But they will be destroyed themselves. Their old thought forms will come back on them. Clear your minds! If you go back down into that conscious mind and that emotional body, you are all Judases! You are betraying the sacrifice he has just given you. Please, listen! Please! If you have never listened before! Our visions we see are true. We are here. We are united. But there are dangers. We will help you and guide you. Keep up! Call the Master in! He’s right here with you. We’re linked. The battle is on! It’s our job to go into the concentration camps of the world and liberate the starving, dying, sick brothers and sisters of the Light. And tear down and burn those rotten concentration camps of the mind, which is controlled by the Dark Brotherhood! And build the city of the Holy Father here, on this planet! We’re going to do it! We’re going to do it together! This is the Plan! And each of you are gallant warriors, and we welcome all who will follow.”

Beginning in about January of this year, the infiltrators began to feel the weight of that speech – even if they had no idea they were infiltrators, even if they believed they were gallant warriors for the Light. Even the Great Invocation is no longer necessary, Sri Patricia said at her new conference in San Diego this week. “She got that from Alice Bailey,” said Donna simply, “Except Alice Bailey’s group said Morningland couldn’t use it any more unless they used it in its original form. So they told us we’d gone past it, that we didn’t need it anymore.” The invocation asks that Light, Love and the purpose of the Masters flow from the mind, heart and will of God so that the Plan of Love and Light seals the door where evil dwells. Morningland’s version changes two things: a line in the original that says, “May Christ return to Earth,” refers to Donato by saying “Christ has returned to Earth.” And Morningland tacked four lines onto the end: “We are the Light. We are the Love. We are the Power. WE ARE ALL ONE.”

Things like the purge, the guards, growth beyond the invocation, the chain-locked doors of the Long Beach temple and even careful scrutiny of former disciples considered a possible threat have indicated to some that the internal changes at Morningland are becoming intense. Much of the vocabulary is taking on a new tone, with space, star ships and some of the ides of “The Urantia Book” becoming more predominant than former disciples remember. At a talk two weeks ago in San Diego, for example, Sri Patricia made several references to Nebadon, supposedly the name of the local universe, according to the Urantia scriptures. The scriptures were inspired by Universe and Superuniverse Personalities by authority of Orvonton Ancients of Days and Gabriel of Savington – including a new version of the life and teachings of Jesus by 12 Urantia midwayers and a narrative by a secondary midwayer who once was assigned to the superhuman watchcare of the Apostle Andrew.

Sri Patricia, apparently speaking as a direct channel from Donato, who she says is in the Mother Ship about 25 miles above the planet, referred to “your planet.” Apparently that is Urantia; which is part of Nebadon, which, with similar creations, makes up the superuniverse of Orvonton. Orvonton is one of seven evolutionary superuniverses of time and space that circle the central universe of Havona, at the center of which is the home of God – according to Urantia. Morningland gatherings that had been called Festivals of Light now are called Star Flights, for example, Space ship illustrations are more common in the cult’s “As It Is” magazine.

Some former disciples believe Morningland is ready for samadhi, ascension – perhaps by way of star ship, some have heard. “I believed it when I was in Morningland,” said Donna. “This is only my opinion, but I think they want a bunch of people now that they can trust and control – and they told the rest of us that we just weren’t clear, that we weren’t willing to work on our problems. “Sometime last year, Tanene (a Gopi) was upset every Wednesday at the Sat Sang (teaching session) because she said there was so much negativity in the air. She was angry. And the gopis and the Mind Lock would go up to the Crestline lodge over the weekend and come back with something new or something.”

“But what gets me – it really does – was the way all of the counseling, all the spirit stuff, all of the classes were just thrown at us, just all over us, when we were kicked out. That’s why I’ve been trying to get my head together. It was hard, really hard. But I guess you could say we really, all of us, really learned something,” said Jill, an ex disciple in middle age who left Morningland voluntarily last year. “When I started, I recognized so many of the metaphysical truths I had studied before.”

“Well, I just stayed with Morningland as long as I enjoyed it,” said Larry, a middle aged man who left. “Brainwashing? Hell, I made my living at shooting pool too long. I knew when I was being hustled because I’ve hustled myself. I just stayed because it was fun for a while. But the thing that burned me, this class – one thing that really made me decide to leave – was when they said that you could lie if you were in your higher mind. Now that made me wonder. If we can lie when we’re in our higher mind, telling a higher truth by lying, I guess, how did I know they weren’t lying to me? You don’t. I couldn’t take it much after that. What’s bad,” said Larry, “is when they take away everything you know and give you them instead, It’s all Morningland. Then they take that away.”

“We’ve explored and studied a lot of good things, said Alan, who has children still in Morningland. “My wife and I met at the Self Realization Fellowship. But if Morningland isn’t programming, what it does is that mind control. I wrote something that you might want to hear. And I think it says it all;

I longed to hear God’s whisper above earth’s roaring song. It was on that blessed day I finally heard him say; “Go Away.”

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