READ AN EXCERPT: Chapter Twenty Eight ~ ON THE DEFENSE

One morning I was called into a very special meeting. I knew from the location that only the most elite members of the ashram would be present. I slipped into the confidential conference room that very few people knew about though it was just a few steps away from the room I shared with Helen. About twenty of the usual faces were gathered, sitting on the carpeted floor – secretaries, swamis, some department heads, people who just seemed, for whatever reason, to have won Gurumayi's favor over the years.

I noticed many of them had left colorful plastic sandals at the door. The sandals were pretty and good for the monsoon rains. Anything except plastic rotted and molded, never drying out. Gurumayi must have given the bright sandals out recently to some group in which I hadn't been included. Of course, no one mentioned them. They were just suddenly there, lined up at the door.

Katy Parsons welcomed us into the meeting and led us in the opening mantras. She had been around for a few years now, one of the most popular people in Siddha Yoga. Gurumayi seemed to love her and always wanted her around. And everyone else liked her too.

Katy was friendly to everyone, not just the elite. When she gave talks it sounded like a real person speaking. When Katy had first come to the ashram with her chubby, amiable husband and her seven-year-old daughter, her hair had been short and prematurely gray. She'd been some kind of non-profit executive out in the corporate world. Now she wore punjabis and her hair had grown long and become blonde.

Katy had a self-deprecating humor and was highly respected. Even though she was so new, Gurumayi had put her in all sorts of top executive positions – working with trustees and the board of directors -- the kind of positions that landed people in perpetual meetings and stress. But here in Ganeshpuri I saw Katy sometimes just walking around with Gurumayi as if she had plenty of leisure time. Katy was allowed to carry a small camera in the ashram and take pictures of anything she wanted. Snapshots. It was a strange sight. No one else – outside the official photography department -- was allowed to photograph anything, another new rule. Like everyone else, I liked and trusted Katy for her unaffected ways, and she always expressed a sincere warmth for me.

This morning Katy said that Gurumayi had asked her to come and give us an update on the New Yorker magazine article. We already knew something about the New Yorker article. It had started back in South Fallsburg the year before, just before I left. A journalist from the New Yorker magazine – one of the oldest and most prominent magazines in the country -- had begun visiting the South Fallsburg ashram and preparing an article about Siddha Yoga. Right from the start the journalist had raised alarm. She asked questions. The standard answers did not satisfy her. Instead of taking in all that the ashram had to offer, accepting our explanations for everything, she kept wanting to know what went on behind the scenes.

Since I was one of the heads of Registration back then, I had been put on alert. “Page Magdalena the moment the New Yorker journalist arrives,” I had been told, and there was a big flashing message in the journalist's computer record so that we wouldn't forget. The journalist was not to leave the lobby or go anywhere in the ashram without someone going with her.

By the time I was in India the New Yorker article was looming. The journalist wanted to print all sorts of rumors about Baba. We had been told the rumors, whatever they were, weren't true. The journalist was writing an article about the ashram, but I knew she couldn’t understand our practices or teachings at all. She was an outsider looking in. There was no way she could do justice to the greatness of Gurumayi and Baba. She would demean them, misrepresent them. The ashram had asked the magazine repeatedly not to print the article, but plans for publication, Katy said, were going strong.

"We have to stop this article from coming out," said Katy. "That's why you're here this morning,"...