Image: Krishna and Gopis in the divine world performing a mythical spiritual play, call the maharas leela. They dance in loving surrender and spiritual ecstasy as he plays his flute. It is an esoteric metaphor, not a literal event — and it is certainly not a euphemism for having sex with your guru in the physical world, as my ex-cult stated.
Publication Date: 8 March 2025
By Karen Jonson (Rishika)
(Excerpt from my new book: Sex God — The Secret Life of a Dark, Dark Guru)
There is a beautiful myth in Hinduism about Lord Krishna and gopis. Gopis are female cow-herding maidens who worship Lord Krishna in his youthful form. My ex-cult abused this deep, mystic teaching to help run its secret sex factory.
Before I even discovered the existence of the sex factory, I knew about Krishna and the gopis. The story featured heavily in the teachings delivered by the two gurus and preachers of my ex-cult. The gist of their public teachings was that we ordinary devotees should strive to become gopis in the divine world and live there with Lord Krishna forever.
I write the following in my memoir, Sex, Lies, and Two Hindu Gurus:
The hallmark of Radha-Krishna is the countless divine, loving activities they engage in with each other and with their playmates, the young cow-herding maidens called gopis. Their divine actions are called leelas (playful pastimes), which include everything from dancing to eating to performing loving actions in worship of God.
In our cult, becoming a gopi was the most coveted of all divine states that a human could achieve. Living eternally in the divine world in this form gives souls the opportunity to participate in many intimate divine activities with Krishna, such as the mystical divine dance called maharas, in which it appears that He is dancing with each gopi individually. We were instructed to meditate on leelas like these in satsang—envisioning ourselves participating in these leelas.
As my ex-guru wrote in one of his books: “Radha-Krishna descends on the Earth planet to grace everyone. They grace souls by revealing their love and leelas for them, which are even beyond the understanding and reach of the creator Brahma and Maha Lakshmi.”
This story was so crucial to the gurus’ belief system that male devotees began to wonder how they were supposed to imagine themselves as females in the divine world. One man was brave enough to ask Prakashanand about this issue.
“It’s easy for female devotees to imagine themselves as gopis, but how are the men supposed to do that?”
The guru did not give a crystal-clear answer for his male followers. He replied something to the effect, “Imagine yourself as the male version of gopis.”
However, the male version, called gopas, was not at all the same as the female version. For one thing, the standard story of the gopis and Krishna implies a profound, physical union. Taken out of context (which they did), it is a sexually charged union, suggesting that Krishna and the gopis have a sexual union.
In fact, it’s a story that is a lot like the bridal chamber mythology in esoteric Christianity. The meaning of these ancient mythologic stories is that we are supposed to have a spiritual union with the divine, not a materialistic sexual union. Adding a sexual connotation to the mythological story can be easily used for nefarious purposes by those with selfish intent. And that is precisely how it was used in my ex-cult.
During my talk with Vishwambhari, I asked her about a particular underage girl in the ashram, who Kripalu had clearly taken a special interest in.
“Why does Maharaji spend so much time with Alessia?” I asked.
Rishika
The way she explained their relationship to me was like this.
“You see, she is a very high soul. She loves Maharaji the same way the gopis loved Krishna.”
Later I learned from one woman that this young girl told her what she did with Kripalu in his bedroom.
The answer was oral sex and intercourse, just like everyone else.
The girl, who was just thirteen years old at the time, added that she believed she was a gopi sharing intimate divine activities with Krishna.
When the gurus’ sex cult was exposed, many devotees who did not already know about it assimilated this new information into their existing belief system. JKP used a beautiful, ancient mythology to justify Kripalu having sex with and raping women and girls. The myth involves Krishna as a young boy and females called gopis. Gopis are young milk maidens who are madly in love with Krishna and play with him in dozens of ways. But they are all divine entities, not worldly in any way.
However, JKP used this ancient myth by telling females that gopis loved Lord Krishna with kama-bhava (worldly desire). They got the chance to perform ras lila (divine dance) with Sri Krishna. Because Kripalu teaches that there is no difference between guru and God, and we can see and touch the guru, but not God, we should love the guru as if he is God in the same way—kama-bhava. So, Kripalu’s devotees believed that just as Krishna “makes love” to the gopis in the divine world, Kripalu makes love with women on Earth.
But my ex-cult’s abuse of the Krishna-gopi fable was a gross corruption of this beautiful mythology.
RIshika
The truth is that it is a very deep spiritual teaching story. It is mystic symbolism at its best. It is filled with symbolism that inspires and guides people toward the goal of every human life—to return to the divine world from which we came.
To return to our original spiritual essence, we need to spend more time meditating. When we do, our inner spirit transforms that which is worldly into that which is divine. The most powerful way to meditate is through symbolic stories. Symbols speak to our subconscious. In fact, it’s the only language our subconscious understands.
The beautiful story symbolizes the achievement of the eternal goal of every human—union of the jivatma, ego, with the paramatma, supreme self. The story is a symbolic metaphor that describes how we elevate our inner consciousness from the material plane to the divine plane—the level of consciousness from which we once fell. We achieve this by meditating on stories like these. They have the power to drown out the wickedness of the world and raise us to higher levels of consciousness.
The symbols in the mythical Krishna-gopi story have deep meaning. In this mythology, Krishna is the youthful version of God, either a child or young adult. This represents the pureness of God. Krishna is always a bluish-black figure because that color represents the meditative state we must enter again and again to achieve higher levels of consciousness.
Gopis are symbolic devices representing the Krishna, Christ, or Buddha spirit guide within each of us.
rishika
These powers are part of our consciousness. As pure powers, it can heal us and elevate us to higher states. Gopis are female because, symbolically, the feminine is our spiritual aspect.
The gopis were asleep when they heard Krishna’s flute call them to the maharas leela (dance). This represents how we are asleep in the world, not realizing that we’re supposed to be working toward awakening our higher levels of consciousness.
The sound of the flute is the music of our soul. It helps awaken us. It represents the harmony within our spirit. The melody that arises from the flute awakens our inner gopi—our higher Krishna, Christ, or Buddha consciousness.
The maharas leela between Krishna and the gopis is an eternal dance of the fundamental creative forces of the universe.Krishna represents the male principle in creation, known as purusha. The gopis represent the entire female element, prakriti. The maharaas represents the eternal dance of prakriti and purusha—spirit and matter. It is the interplay between yin and yang. It is an expression of joyous overflowing bliss.
From a spiritual standpoint, the play is regarded as the union of the individual soul with the supreme soul.
Rishika
Once the jiva (living being) transcends the boundaries of gender, mind, and body identification and immerses all the senses in transcendental love for God, it culminates in a rapturous union, like a small wave dancing in the immense sea of spirit.
The maharas occurs by moonlight, because it represents breaking through the darkness of our lower consciousness into the divine light of our higher consciousness.
What the maharas leela does not mean is that the gopis are having sex with Krishna. That is a wicked misuse of this deep, mystical, and beautiful teaching myth by my corrupt, fake ex-gurus.
Read the whole expose about my ex-guru in my new book.
On Amazon
Sex God — The Secret Life of a Dark, Dark Guru
Copyright © 2012-2025 Karen Jonson/RishikaXcult. All rights reserved. No part of this blog post may be copied or duplicated without the express permission of the author.
