One of Atlanta’s hottest trends raises questions of Kashi Ashram, based on the teaching of yoga, is open to members of all religions and beliefs.

She has become well-known for her colorful language, her attacks on the egos of her students, and what those close to her refer to as a wonderful sense of humor.

“Her personality is large,” says Sita Gange, spokeswoman for the Kashi Ashram. “It encompasses all facets, from the funniest to the most compassionate.”

Ma Jaya is the undisputed leader of the Kashi Ashram in Sebastian, Fla., an 80-acre property with 150 live-in members, as well as ashrams in New York, Los Angeles and Atlanta. Over the course of the past 30-odd years she has built quite a following and has amassed international recognition for her work with society’s castoffs, most recently becoming the first American to attain the spiritual status of Mata Maha Mandaleshwar, a sort of Hindu senior abbess. She has been honored by the Martin Luther King Jr. Board of Preachers at Morehouse College, where her portrait was unveiled by former South African President Frederik Willem de Klerk. And later this year she’ll be honored with the Ghandi Foundation USA’s Humanitarian Service Award.

But while most have chosen to recognize Ma Jaya for her community service, some, including former Kashi members, identify her as the leader of a cult.

Ma attends a meeting at the Atlanta Kashi Ashram in Candler Park about once a year, most recently on April 13, which The Sunday Paper attended. SP entered a room filled to capacity, a gathering of maybe 200 people. Three swamis, one male and two females, sat on a raised platform. Behind them was a chair adorned with a fur throw.

Five or six people began to drum and chant. The crowd joined in, and for the next 20 minutes the beat became more frenetic and the chanting louder. Then Ma Jaya entered the room and took her place on the chair. Children with offerings of flowers gathered in a line and each was welcomed with a hug and lollipop from Ma. When the last child exited, Ma cried, “Stop!” and the chanting stopped.

“This is why I’m a guru,” she said. “You’re like a bunch of vultures.” Then she glanced at the three swamis sitting in front of her, telling the crowd, “I stripped them of their ego today. Look at how humble they are.”

Ma then spoke of giving back to the community, saying that “you have to drink while you pour and you pour while you drink.” She told the crowd that the purpose of life is to give back, not to gain knowledge only to metaphorically climb a mountain to be alone—“Who gives a shit?” she asked the crowd. She acknowledged her habit of swearing and commented on her styled hair and makeup, saying that she knew it was considered unguru-like, but that she liked it that way.

After leading the crowd through a meditative visualization, she offered to take questions—“but not any that begin with ‘I.’”

The male swami pushed a mug toward her from time to time and she would take it, sip and give it back. After several questions, mostly having to do with meditation, she looked at a woman on her left, dressed all in black, and said, “What?” Then she looked at the audience and said, “A dyke on a bike. She’s trying to tell me I can take one more question.”

Ma concluded with a plea for the crowd to serve others and give back to the community, telling stories of tending to orphans in Africa and AIDS patients dying in her arms. She said she didn’t have time to address foolishness. She didn’t have much time on this earth to do all that needed to be done.

Gange, the Kashi spokeswoman, says for a first-time attendee, Ma’s manner might be a little shocking, but most people attending a meditation are not experiencing Ma’s spiritual practice for the first time.

“Most people do not drop in on a meditation. They are in a process where they kind of go at their own pace,” she says. “As is the case with any spiritual practice, people who attend generally come with a friend or have some background or context.”

Dropping in, but not out

In contrast to Ma’s brash personality sits Jaya Das, the manager of the Kashi Atlanta Ashram. Jaya Das is Caucasian, in his 30s, blondish, well-built—a good-looking man. He is calm and soft-spoken, the picture of an eager student of yoga.

It is a Saturday, and the 10 a.m. class—apparently a hot yoga class, because my glasses are fogging in the humidity—has just concluded. Jaya Das and I sit barefoot on the thick Berber-carpeted floor of Kashi Atlanta’s expansive main classroom, along with Agni Ma Mushkin, who, I learn later in the interview, is Jaya Das’ wife. Neither look as if they were given these names by their parents. In fact, I learn, these new Hindu names are bestowed upon students by their teachers.

Both Jaya and Agni have led “previous” lives—that is, they had what most of us would consider more regular lives before they became members of the Kashi Atlanta Ashram. Agni still occupies parts of her old life. She serves as a pro bono attorney for the poor, having worked as an attorney for Legal Aid, the Southern Center for Civil Rights Enforcement and the Georgia Law Center for the Homeless.

“I’d gotten to this point where I was really burned out and [yoga] really got me past being so cynical,” she says.

Jaya Das came to Kashi looking for a way to loosen up his tense vocal chords; he had been the frontman for a band. The group sounded “kind of like early Replacements or Hûsker Dû,” Agni explains. Das says that his experience at the ashram led him to decide that his tense vocal chords were the result of a deeper problem.

“I started doing yoga here and the first thing I realized was that I was not locked up because of my voice—that it was an emotional thing,” he says. “I realized there was a crust around my heart.”

At first, says Jaya Das, his introduction to Kashi was overwhelming.

“We met Ma and initially I thought this isn’t for us,” he says, “but I kept feeling this energy.”

Eventually, both Agni and Jaya Das chose to follow the path that Ma espoused. Jaya left his job as a banking consultant and became the manager of the Kashi Atlanta Ashram. Both live in one of several communal homes the ashram maintains around the city.

Communal living and community service seem kind of strange in the modern Western world, but rather than dropping out of society, Kashi members do quite the opposite—they take part in all manner of community service.

“For this ashram and for all of Ma’s ashrams, service is a way to engage yourself,” Jaya Das says.

And living in the communal houses, says Jaya Devi, founder of the Kashi Atlanta Ashram, just helps to strengthen the bond among members.

“More than anything it’s about creating a spiritual community where there isn’t a bunch of judgment,” she says.