I was an admirer of the Zapatistas since the first videos that I saw early in 1994 when Commander Ramona, an ex-nun Zapatista rebel commander, led the attack to take San Cristobal de las Casas in Chiapas. Even though they had machine guns and were fighting I could see that they were very dignified people by the look in their eyes behind their masked faces. The noble eyes behind their masked faces as well as the brightly-colored indigenous clothing underneath bullet belts and machine guns revealed who these rebels truly were: organic farmers. I felt there was an invisible grace guiding them. I didn't quite know why, but I just felt this very strongly as a first impression. It was a very lucid realization for me that awakened a strong sense of social and moral responsibility and activism. Later, the brilliant, humane discourses of the Zapatista commanders and sub-commanders like Ramona and Marcos revealed that there was such a beautiful and humane spirit guiding them. They won so many hearts around the world with their earnest discourse. Although I was a student in the U.S., I was drawn to them and attended some talks by Liberation Theologists priests that were Zapatista sympathizers who came to speak at the University of Texas at Austin.
I was soon distracted from the Zapatista movement, however, by my involvement with some yogis in India who turned out to also be revolutionaries. Although I admired Indian yogi-revolutionaries like Aurobindu and Subash Chandra Bose, I was personally more yogi than a revolutionary and I thought of these Ananda Marga yogis more as monastic social activists like Vivekananda who practiced and taught yoga to keep themselves and human society physically, mentally and spiritually strong. I never thought of them as the machine gun or grenade carrying types until they made a debacle of an arms drop from a Russian airplane full of machine guns, rocket launchers and grenades over their main ashram in Purulia, India.
As a liberal arts student that had just graduated the university, I went to an Ananda Marga ashram to do doctoral studies on tantra yoga when the arms drop occurred. Far from being an mere academic experience, I was becoming deeply immersed in the very high spiritual vibration at Ananda Nagar. It was clear that much spiritual work had been done in this environment. I felt that my meditation was 5 times as strong there! By just closing the eyes, one enters into deep, effortless meditation in such an environment. Despite all that has happened with Ananda Marga, those experiences always help me remember that the philosophy and spiritual practices of Ananda Marga have a very pure origin.
After a nice meditation one morning I hear there was an arms drop in a nearby village and then the military arrived. The arms drop was a typical botched-up Ananda Marga operation and the arms fell in the wrong place and it was reported to the local police and military. They discovered it just in time. The simple locals live like people from thousands of years ago. They discovered these unknown objects which had very nice boxes and canvas bags. At the time they were making cob houses and were just about to throw some sturdy hand grenades into the cob mixture.
I was immediately thrown in jail with a few other people but soon released under house arrest. I wasn't allowed to go anywhere, but just to stay within Ananda Nagar and continue to enjoy deep meditation. I was questioned by the Indian CBI but they weren't interested in my testament. I think it was the file clerk that they used to briefly question me. However, I should have suspected that they questioned one of our arrested companions for a very long time. I didn't think much of it at the time.
The public scene around A.M. after the arms drop was all very fun, especially when I was used as a public speaker to defend A.M. in front of the press. It was all a game to me until I realized I didn’t know what was really going on and was unknowingly lying to the BBC and India Times when the A.M. Central press secretary sent me to give interviews. Several months went by before I recognized the faces in the newspapers as those of Ananda Marga monks who had been visiting the ashram with our arrested companion that was thoroughly questioned by the CBI. They were planning the arms drop at this time. All the while I was helping A.M. to blame their old foe, the communist party of Bengal, of falsely defaming Ananda Marga like they did so many times in the past. Needless to say my academic studies were terminated and I was deported after we were declared innocent in court. An official told me I would be blacklisted by immigration and would not be able to return to India. He was being friendly and told me I just needed a new passport with a different name in order to come back to his country. I changed my legal name from Enckhausen to Eckhart only to try to go back to India, but A.M. became a living hell for the honest monks, nuns, and lay members and it was no longer possible for me to return. Since then the organization has done nothing but diminish due to internal strife, scandal and political conflict.
So many years after the Purulia Arms Drop, the arrest, house arrest, and Indian Supreme Court case, I contemplate my memories of Ananda Nagar and remembered how there was a humurous, supposedly ex-Marine giving fitness training to illiterate tribal boys who were used as lackeys by Ananda Marga. At the time I really believed that Viirendra, the ex-Marine, was helping train official guards to protect the election boxes of the Indian state for the upcoming elections. It sounded rather odd that the Bengali government would trust its foe Ananda Marga with such a duty, but I didn't criticize this inconsistency at the time because I was so distracted by the humorous environment of the "fitness training." Virendra finally got to be in charge as a drill sargent. He had some sensitive yogi qualities but was really a jar-head at heart.
The trainees underwent rifle training one day with a b.b. gun. All 30 of them took turns with the one and only b.b. gun. It was just like the one I got on my 8th birthday. An old guard of the V.S.S. (the elite guard of Ananda Marga) took pride in being the leading official and decided to instruct the trainees himself. He instructed one boy to point the gun at a nun, who like us, was peering over the fence and snickering at these antics. "Okay, you hit the target, now point the gun at the nun, right between her eyes," the guard said. The nun was laughing and screaming at the same time saying "no, no" while we were roaring with laughter at these Gomer Pyle antics. Viirendra grabbed the gun, invoking the archetypal drill sergeant from Full Metal Jacket and screamed, "I'm gonna shove that gun up your ass, soldier." That sweet nun and the Indian boy fortunately couldn't understand these words. It was all too comic and absurd to accept as reality. This is ample proof that Ananda Marga is not essentially a terrorist organization. The system tried to impose it on them with infiltrators like Viirendra, but militant radicalism really wasn't in the nature of the majority of the monks and nuns.
I was recalling this several years later and remembered this incident. I already knew there was great conspiracy and CIA infiltration in Ananda Marga. I hardly understood who were the links in this alliance, who were the betrayers of Ananda Marga that help the CIA turn Ananda Marga into a terrorist organization, but later realized that I already knew the most important conspirator. I almost forgot about Viirendra entirely until recalling those memories years later. I recalled that he disappeared just a day or two before the Arms Drop and some of us simple observers were sent to jail. And a few years after that I hear that there is a pentagonal meditation room in the Asheville, N.C., in an Ananda Marga community where Viirendra has settled. That is ironic because in my experience, people in Ananda Marga, especially in the U.S., put special spiritual significance in architecture, especially architecture for meditation rooms. Hexagons and hexagrams are more of their style, not pentagons. They chose the design and didn't purchase the building as such.
Prior to this home, he lived in a recluse ranch in Colorado where a proud monk named Krsnananda would visit him. K. told me himself that Viirendra had to report to the people in the black helicopters that came to see him at his hidden ranch. K. also told me that his brother, who is also a monk, was in the airplane when the arms were dropped. As a cresciendo I also get news that Ananda Marga made it on the top 10 terrorist list of the FBI around the year 2000. This understanding turned my whole Ananda Marga experience upside down and inside out. All the while that I was lost in deep meditation at Ananda Nagar and beginning my studies at the research institute, these miscreants were planning an international conspiracy with the CIA against Ananda Marga.
The producer of the documentary cites another author that considers it is likely that Kim Peter, or Nirvananda, was aided and protected by the CIA. The producer leaves the question open for scrutiny. Some people in A.M. were informants to the CIA and the senior members of the organization knew of this. Kim Peter worked in North America with a gang of A.M. monks. He is still seen as a Robin Hood type of figure. In the beginning, they only smuggled electronics into India to raise money for orphanages and schools. However, they later moved on to greater ventures. Many members of this underground mafia extended into immoral and dangerous international mafia connections. Some were caught and forced to be informers to the FBI and the CIA. I knew who some of these people were and I think they were used as tools to help frame Ananda Marga as a terrorist organization. After the Purulia arms drop Ananda Marga was placed on the FBI’s top 10 global terrorist groups list for several years. Now, they are practically non-existent in North America. However, we must thank them immensely for showing us a bad example of Ananda Marga. They have made it very clear what Ananda Marga is not and have perhaps liberated this great philosophy from a corrupt international crime family that Ananda Marga has become.
Philosophically speaking, I have always favored non-violent ideas and a more strict idea of ahimsa or non-violence. The idea of "just" wars has always disturbed me but war is a reality of this world that always haunts the pacifist. The Zapatista revolution helped me see that sometimes the most moral and responsible people have to make these most difficult decisions and truly take action. I had just finished studying Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath" at the end of 1993 and was reminded so much of the mentality of Steinbeck's Jim Casey (J.C.), ex-preacher turned revolutionary, kind of like Comandante Ramona. Whenever I thought of the Zapatista plight I remembered my internal revelations and the look in the eyes of the rebels and I simply hoped that these good people would be guided from on high. However, the Ananda Marga failure made me see how extremely difficult such a revolutionary decision really is. Certainly West Bengal needed a revolution against the communist dictators, but they did not have the popular support of the people. Ananda Marga fell so short of victory in this humiliation and instead showed the world with this and each new and continued scandal that it was but a spiritual mafia with a really twisted and corrupt vanguard of priests. Now they only vaingloriously preach the words of their master like silly parrots without having done anything productive and substantial in decades. Those people remain within. Those few left who are really doing the work are forced to be rebels and work outside of the corrupt organization. Their projects continue because they truly help people and people in turn help them.
Just after the Zapatista revolution and during the Ananda Marga debacle, the subtle discourses of the Zapatista commanders like Ramona and Marcos showed the world that the Zapatistas were not violent terrorists but very noble and dignified people who had no other alternative for the survival of their indigenous culture other than taking up arms. Their allies of Liberation Theologists, intellectuals, humanists, and righteous hippies soon came to their aid and have since then formed a very positive international society of humanist-intellectual activists to ally the indigenous Zapatista revolutionary community. They voluntarily put down their arms without surrendering them and have instead been building schools and cooperatives for the indigenous communities of Chiapas and have been the most powerful and recognized voice of resistance against capitalist globalization.
Anandamurti, the preceptor of Ananda Marga, wasn't anti-violence in the strict since like Gandhi. He saw a well-planned revolution as humane in that there is a quicker end to injustice when peaceful means are exhausted. However, he never said "it is time, let us revolt and start a war now." My opinion is that he would have been very pleased with the revolution of the Zapatistas, their ideals, and the fruit to come from those actions and ideals. I see nothing closer to the ideals of Prout co-operativism and economic decentralization (the social outlook of Anandamurti) than with the Zapatistas. I am afraid the wayward disciples of Anandamurti who planned the Ananda Marga arms drop lacked the discernment of when to use force (what else is a huge airplane full of weapons dropped over their main ashram to be used for other than violence?) because they ended up in utter humiliation and have endangered their whole social movement thereby. They ended up making it on the FBI's top ten terrorist list for several years. If these amateur revolutionaries wouldn't have attempted the arms drop and other shady activities they would have only had to deal with the negative propaganda of the very corrupt and dubious Indian government and would perhaps still have some respect in the world eye. The Ananda Marga monks tried to become as divine as they claim their guru was. Their quixotic vanity made them fall into an underworld that they have yet to get out of. The Zapatistas rose up from below. From great humility they have attained great prestige.
I don't doubt that the fall of A.M. was aided by international intelligence that always protects the global capitalist system. The quick rise of Ananda Marga in India during the 60's and 70's made many people nervous. Neither the Indian CBI nor the CIA wanted this spiritual and social revolutionary movement to spread beyond India, as it quickly did. Nowadays, after the death of the great leader, Anandamurti, this expansion has stopped and the movement falls apart everywhere. I recently heard about an Oxford publication where the author speaks of A.M. as a jihadist movement! Although this is far from the truth, it is true that Ananda Marga is no longer such a vigorous and respectable movement and it certainly isn't an easy task being an Anandamurti apologist! If the social and spiritual ideals of Anandamurti are in fact true and tested, then they will live on, perhaps in better ways and forms, and with practical examples.
One does not hear of anybody calling the Zapatistas a jihadist movement, however. Perhaps one would if they would have failed. I admire the Zapatistas for their courage to confront a Hydra physically much more powerful than they. However, what I respect most about this movement isn't only that they were great warriors but that their continued success has really been sustained by a very well coordinated international solidarity movement and a very deep indigenous wisdom guiding them. Instead of building batallions, they are building schools and developing their communities sustainably with a very dignified collective spirit. When I hear their maxim "Para todos todo, nada para nosotros,"(For everyone everything, nothing for us) I can't help but hear the Perennial Philosophy of non-dualism sprouting up from Chiapas in a very unique, special and rebellious color. However, I love the fact that there is no religion or sectarianism for the Zapatistas. It is much more interesting to see their silent, natural spirituality manifest through honest sincerity and practical humanist ideals.
It has had a very unique effect on modern human consciousness, at least for those who have approached them. I really do see them as dignified organic farmers who would rather be with their families on their land instead of having to fight another war. I try not to even consider the idea that there could be war again. I don't think it is out of fear of violence but rather the belief that there are also undiscovered and unseen ways to fight a revolution against petty materialists. If peaceful, conscious, and collective organization and the moral dedication to a new ideal of living was not working, then they still would not be around after all of these years and would have been annihilated by the Mexican government. They obviously have had the support of enough people to have made their movement a success. The mature rebels of the world have to keep helping them and other non-vanguard and local grass-roots movements to continue to move forward in peace and a wise resolution of these seemingly insurmountable problems that the whole planet faces under the Capitalist Hydra.
I have been writing about the Zapatista movement recently because I am inspired by their progressive post-revolutionary ideas and how they inspire the revival of indigenous culture. "Zapatismo" refers to a social and cultural movement based on the ideals and institutions of the Mexican revolution that continues into the modern Zapatista revolution. Although the Zapatistas deny political association with other ideologies, it is hard not to see some parallels with Libertarian Socialism. The Zapatista movement has evolved from an armed rebellion into a movement of "civil resistence" as well as very inspiring revival of indigenous culture. I approach the movement from far away, as a foreigner. I have only talked to some intellectuals and activists to get a general feel for their ideology and their projects and I like them very much. I look forward to learning about the various aspects and institutions of this movement.
When I first visited San Cristobal, I saw a flier for a lecture on indigenous Mayan stories. The man in the photo had a very friendly vibration and I thought he looks like a very interesting person, a story-teller. The lecture had already happened and I forgot about the man on the flier.
In San Cristobal you see many indigenous and you wonder if they are Zapatistas or not. Many of them have been influenced by Zapatismo but not all are from Zapatista communities. As to where the zapatista army is based, I really am not certain.
I think the only time I ever saw a zapatista soldier was when a man approached me in the mountains. I saw a man with a walky-talky approaching me. He looked like he had military training based on his physique but didn't even have a mask. I wasn't sure if he was a Zapatista but i was meditating near one of their communities on top of a mountain, so I thought I finally will see a zapatista. He approached calmly and just looked at me. I had been lost in deep meditation for hours. He looked friendly and had a t-shirt that said "Inlakesh" which means "I am you and you are me"; exactly like the idea of "namaskar". I asked him if it was alright to be there and he said there was no problem. Like I said I don't know if he was a "Zapatista" or not but it made me continue to contemplate. I returned to my meditation and saw many things.
A few weeks later, I just happened to enter a conference where scholars were talking about "Zapatismo." A woman asked if the Zapatistas had a concept for the "Supreme Subjectivity," a term which I had only heard of in Tantric philosophy. I was dumbfounded....."Who are these people? The scholar happened to be the person whom I had seen in the flier and he responded by saying that the Zapatista communities were very spiritual but they have no generalized notion for god, or the "Supreme Subjectivity." It is for them to decide. I liked that response. Later, that scholar approached me and asked if I was "Geronimo." These people continue to surprise me.
I try to read their literature, expecially the communications from EZLN, but the message is so lucid that I have to take it in slowly because the impact is so intense on my mind. Their discourse is really about the most fundamental human issues of justice and dignity. It is great humanist philosophy that is the result of 500 years of suffering and terror. Their humane ideals extend far beyond the indigenous of Chiapas and teach us a little about the nature of universal humanity. Each time I learn something more, I have greater and greater respect for these bold people who have endured 500 years of exploitation and the most terrible sufferings yet have managed to achieve something so great. For me, it is not an academic past time or intellectual hobby but a descent into the abyss to find an encounter with truth.
now that our own community has passed through a terrible halocaust of our own in the north, I have seen, felt, and heard so much terror that I can now begin my studies without the temptation to suppress these painful truths.
