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What began as 40 bag lunches 10 years ago has turned into a weekly outing that feeds between 400 and 500 Atlanta homeless each Wednesday.

“We’ve created a relationship with them,� says Jaya Das, who accompanies Jaya Devi to distribute the Street Meals. “The sandwiches are really a vehicle for letting people know they are not forgotten. Ma always says there are no throwaway people.�

Jaya Devi is also well-known for her work with AIDS patients back when people were still scared of contracting the disease from toilet seats.

“They were so discriminated against,� she tells SP. “That sparked me more than anything.�

Members of Kashi Atlanta also spend time with young patients at Egleston and Scottish Rite. Twice a month, members spend time with the kids in the hospitals, teaching them to make puppets and other projects during art time, and they also teach twice-monthly yoga classes during Tot Time, reserved especially for young patients ages 18 months to 5 years.

“I believe the patients have a joyful experience. It contributes to their healing,� says Meryl Franco, special events coordinator for Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. She says she has never had anything but positive experiences with Kashi members and sounds a little bewildered when asked if she thinks Kashi might be a cult: “I’ve never gotten the impression they’re a cult. I think they’re a really wonderful group of people.�

It’s just such a reaction—Franco’s bewilderment—that has Kashi’s Gange concerned about the impact of SP’s article (parts of which were read to her for verification of facts before publication).

“Going into a spiritual opening, you’re fragile, you’re open for maybe the first time in your life, and seeing an article like this, it makes you question your heart’s guidance,� Gange says. “Your heart is saying ‘this feels good,’ and you feel good about it, but then you hear this and it brings in the whole thing about doubts again. It puts people back in a place where they are judging.�

She adds, “You are speaking your truth and then you come up against an article like this and you think ‘maybe I shouldn’t delve into this.’ And I’m not just talking about Kashi. There are huge numbers of people looking into yoga right now, a lot of people are searching, and this could hurt them. That’s what hurts about this kind of article. I see their struggle.�

What’s a cult?

Kashi’s image as a “cult� came under wide scrutiny during a spate of high-profile bad press in the early and late 1990s. A former spokesman for the group, Richard Rosenkranz, made a sudden departure from the Kashi organization in Roseland, Fla., in the midst of a divorce proceeding. While Rosenkranz alleged that he had suffered abuse while a member of Kashi, he settled his divorce out of court before witnesses had the chance to testify on his behalf.

In 1982, a couple who had also been Kashi members in Roseland left the group, leaving their 1-year-old daughter in the care and custody of Ma Jaya. Seven years later, at the couple’s behest, a SWAT team removed the girl from the Kashi group during an outing that she, Ma Jaya, and several other members had taken to a local movie theater.

Gange says the police removal of the child was unnecessary, that the parents knew they could have peacefully come back for the girl at any time and they had always been welcome to visit her.

“They basically just left and asked Ma to raise her,� she says. “They abandoned the child, they left her here, and that [the removal] was very traumatic for the child. She didn’t know those people. She was taken from the only mother she had ever known.�

She surmises that they felt guilty about leaving the child and the guilt prompted such a dramatic way of getting the child.

She points out that now Kashi has a positive, close relationship with local law enforcement in Florida as well as with the county commission and the mayor. The ashram is considered a well-established part of the community, not an outsider group where one would see such incidents.

“For 35 years, we have not had one crime,� says Gange. “That should say something.�

However, cult expert Rick Ross claims that there is evidence that the Kashi are indeed a cult.

“I certainly wouldn’t recommend the ashram to anyone under any circumstances,� Ross tells SP. “Joyce Green, who calls herself Ma, is a person who has absolute control over the ashram without any meaningful accountability.�

Ross cites the three criteria for a destructive cult that Dr. Robert Jay Lifton first posited in his 1981 critical study, “Cult Formation�:

• The leader must have absolute authority and be at the center of the cult.
• There must be a process of indoctrination that impairs critical thinking.
• The leader does the group harm.

Ross says he believes that Kashi meets all three of these criteria.

“It is a personality-driven cult,� he says. “If you remove Ms. Green from its center, the group loses definition.� He adds, however, that not all personality-driven cults are destructive, pointing to Mother Teresa and the Sisters of Charity. Nor does the Buddhist sect surrounding the Dalai Lama appear to be destructive, he says.

“These are groups that are personality-driven and defer critical thinking to leaders who do no harm to them,� Ross says.

Gange counters, “Ma has been compared with Mother Teresa. She’s been called the Mother Teresa of the West, and she’s very good friends with the Dalai Lama.� She explains that Ma has created a celebration called World Tibet Day in honor of the Dalai Lama.

Besides, Ross’ Web site offers hundreds of links to articles on everyone including widely accepted figures like Benny Hinn and Jerry Falwell.

Another expert, Dr. Norman Adler, a professor of psychology at Yeshiva University in New York, says that, although at first glance the Kashi ashram may appear to outsiders to be a “cult,� the doctrinal devil is in the details. He says that the word “cult� is not a word used by scholars, but he agrees to employ it for the purposes of this article.

“‘Cults’ are kind of in the eye of the beholder,� Adler tells SP. “Sort of like how history is written by the winners.�

Adler says he is aware of Lifton’s criteria for destructive cults, but he says that there are other, more succinct ways of examining groups to determine whether they are dangerous to themselves and society. Foremost among the red flags is a leader’s demand that followers sever ties with their former lives and families, as well as a requirement that they give up their earthly possessions, possibly to the leader. Most importantly for the sake of identifying a “cult� is whether a leader commands followers to commit acts that run contrary to their own values or society’s values and laws.

Kashi doesn’t seem to fit into any of these criteria, and Adler says that some of the behaviors in which they engage actually separate them from other groups that have been considered cults—like members holding down regular jobs and interacting with the rest of society through service to the community, for instance.

“That’s unusual,� he says, “and I think that’s a healthy sign.�

Stephanie Ramage and Julie Douglas contributed reporting to this story.