Serving Time

Tara Aders

Serving Time
Kirpal Singh

Kirpal spent three years at San Quentin Prison for his part in the Canadian Lottery Scam.

The Arrest

I arrived to the top of the GRD heap by aggrandizing my ego and strengthening my sociopathic tendencies. This is not a healthy state to be in. We probably need an ego to operate in this world – but a good servant makes a poor master and my ego was king.

Jail started the process of confronting this. When my perceptions no longer supported an idea of who I thought I was, then I was faced with two choices: either start changing or create delusions to continue supporting my ideas. In other words, I had a choice to go from sociopathic to psychopathic, or go through a healing process…

I was inside my bank, waiting for an armed escort so I could take the cash I had just removed from my safe deposit box. I didn’t see the District Attorney of Monterey, Sue Stryker, enter the bank. As I sat looking at my banker, I felt a hand caressing the left side of my face and I turned to look. There was Ms. Stryker’s face for the first time. Her partner grabbed my hands and handcuffed them.

I was taken to Los Angeles County Jail. It’s renowned to be the toughest county jail in the US and I believe it. I was placed with the millionaire’s club (people with at least 1 million dollars bail) and that’s when I got that I was in serious trouble. I was picked up the next day and transported to Monterey.

The majority of people in jail or prison are black. The majority of people in jail or prison are “drug offenders.” In other words, the prison system perpetuates a drug and race war. Don’t get me wrong: there are people in prison who should be there, and about 1% of those people should never be let out.

I spoke briefly with my attorney the day I was arrested. The horror of the situation had me take a closer look at him. I fired him and hired Paul Worthington, a local attorney with a very good win record. My Los Angeles County Jail cell mate was in for murder. It was actually easier being with guys that were looking at a lot of time ahead of them because they didn’t sweat the small stuff. While the other inmates were easily getting into fights over the smallest things, the millionaire’s club was very peaceful and courteous. The alternative was gruesome…

Monterey

I was the telemarketing poster boy in the Monterey newspapers and TV. God knows what the 3HO’ers in the area were going through but it must not have been pretty. My attorney went to work and found a lot of procedural mistakes on the part of Sue Stryker and the Monterey County DA. Judge Phillips got really pissed at the DA for bungling procedures. The DA arranged to meet with my attorney and I received a visit the next day from him. Here was the deal:

The DA was going to arrest my wife and bring all of us to trial, including GurBir and DSK. They were going to charge everyone with conspiracy and GurBir with more material charges. OR I could plead guilty to the felony charges and receive a maximum of three years prison (in those days 3 years was about 19 months with good behavior) with a possibility of probation.

I took the deal…

I considered the whole situation, including my own interest. It was certainly intolerable to me that my son would not have both parents or that GurBir and DSK would suffer for my misdeeds. But please don’t insist that I was noble, since I wasn’t. I was released on my own recognizance in August 1992 and scheduled to go back for sentencing in October 1992.

The bus let me out in downtown LA and I shared a cab to the Robertson Pico area. I had been in recent contact with my wife and called her from a payphone in the area. She didn’t answer the phone. HHSK and SDSK were kind to take me in for the night and I tried calling my wife the next day and still received no answer.

I was at Gurdwara on Sunday when HJSK motioned for me to come into the GRD building. My wife and 2^1/2-year-old son were in his office. While my son was playing, Hari Jiwan started yelling at me about how I treated my family. He was doing his best to act like YB (who wasn’t in town at the time) and humiliate me. My wife didn’t say anything. We never got back together.

Well. I was pretty much an emotional basket case until sentencing and wouldn’t have done my son much good at the time anyway. Curiously, I didn’t feel animosity toward HJSK over that event, although he may be curious whether this sparked what was to come. Sentencing: I received no probation and three years prison, effective immediately on sentencing.

San Quentin

I was initially sent to West Block at San Quentin for “reception.” On our way in we were detoured through a former gym. It was converted into housing 5000 inmates who had AIDS. I think it was done to shock us. However, the impression it created was that this experience wasn’t just about me. The awesomeness of it just floored me.

We were then taken to West Block, where I stayed for about 60 days. It’s located next door to death row for all California males. We were confined to two-man cells. There was sign posted on the wall that said, “NO WARNING SHOTS FIRED IN THIS UNIT.” What that meant was that if they had to fire a shot, they were going to pump it into someone’s body. Otherwise, the ricochet effect would be horrendous.

Everyone was courteous. I mean VERY courteous. Very, very courteous. You bump into someone and immediately say, “excuse me.” The guards addressed us as “gentlemen.” A note of humor: Every night, the guard who made announcements at West Block would announce, “You have X shoplifting days til Christmas.” The Christmas Carols sung on December 24, 1992 were at once ludicrously funny and hauntingly sad…

Jamestown and Soledad

After the 60 days at San Quentin, I was transported to Jamestown. It was a jumping off point for prospects in the fire station program. One had to have minimum security clearance for the job and it was deemed that I had that clearance, but, due to the large amounts of money involved in my case, I should at least be “programmed” behind a fence.

In February, 1993 I landed in the Maximum Security area of Soledad prison for a few weeks prior to going to the minimum security yard. For the first time in months, I was alone and quiet in my own cell. It was the first time in 20 years that I could sleep whenever I wanted to.

This is the stage where I fell completely apart. I guess I could have opted for continuing a delusion about who I was. But there was enough of that kind of activity around me and it didn’t look very promising. The enormity of having lost everything that was important had me in tears for most the time I was alone in the cell. At that point I still held on to the idea of being a 3HO Sikh; that was a reference point that I would hold for a few more months. However, most of the ideas I held about who I was were crumbling.

My family of origin was disappointed about what had happened, but they supported me in a way that just wasn’t there from the 3HO sangat. I appreciated the letters to the judge from the sangat, but everything stopped once I was in prison. There was a massage therapist from Santa Monica who wrote me and that was about it.

I requested no visits from family or anyone else and I received none.

This was the time in my life where I started the reconciliation process with my parents. Slow going and awkward at first, it has improved enormously since.

I was not in a position nor was I inclined to dream up ways to “bring the 3HO racket down.” Actually, once having left, I needed the distance to heal. There’s an old Moslem proverb, “He who plans revenge should dig two graves.”

The rumor about my conversion to Islam must have started this way. Once I was on the minimum security yard, I contacted the inmate head of the Muslims and asked if I could use their devotional space to teach a yoga class, which I did. I’ve not been a member of a religion since 3HO. I mainly taught the stretching exercises without any of the YB crap thrown in. It was good for me to do it myself prior to working out on the weight pile.

The only violence I personally encountered in prison was this episode: I was living in a minimum security dorm, and I closed a window that was blowing some cold air in (it was December.) An inmate that was doing heroin wanted the window open. He came up to me, looked at me, and punched me in the face very quickly and lightly. He had made sure that no guards or inmates were looking. I got the message and realized that there would be no point to responding. I threw an extra blanket on and left the window open. We got along fine after that.

By the time I got to the minimum security yard, I was ready to have some kind of schedule. My bunkmate and I became friends immediately. He helped me get a job as a clerk at the Lieutenant’s office.

My businessman identity in LA was a response to the fact that $35,000 a year in 3HO, especially in LA, was the poverty level. Once I had some rest, I could easily do the program in prison. It was a lot easier than living in a barn in the middle of winter in Espanola and working 16 hours, 7 days a week with only 4 hours of sleep. In some ways it was a relief compared to the life I was living in LA up to that point. In the asylum that was 3HO, we were the inmates and prison was my exit.

Having eggs for the first time in 20 years was divine. I stayed away from meat and fish till I got out. My schedule was: wake up, breakfast, work, yoga, weights or jogging, dinner, rest. My bunkmate and I buddied up for most of it. Some people asked us if we were gay because we were so tight. It just wasn’t so. I having nothing against being gay; I’m just not wired that way.

The last 6 months were the best. I got a perspective that it was all one big pajama party. I put my hair down and my blue denims were my pajamas. I’ve not worn my hair up since…

As for Harbhajan Singh…

This is a combination of conjecture, observation, extrapolation, and reflection. Therefore, please consider the following as truth as reflected through identity, rather than Higher Self truth.

Harbhajan Singh Puri was working the customs agent beat in India in the 1960’s when he saw the hippies coming through customs with pocketsful of cash for their gurus. Having studied with various masters, and with a little bit of hocus pocus, chutzpah, and genuine Indian cunning he decided to set up shop in the USA. YB knew that he could get away with anything as long as he personally did not break any laws or evade any taxes.

He developed a classification system for prospects. This included:

How much of a challenge they were. He always like to dominate and the more challenging they were the more it showed how he could dominate
How many assets they had
How much of those assets they were willing to share with him or an entity he created
To what degree they could induce others to share their assets
To what degree they could pull in new prospects
There’s enough said about this, so I don’t need to elaborate.
How much they said yes to anything he asked for no matter how immoral, illegal, or unkind
How well they kept secrets
To what degree they would they engage in their own self-deception
How much political clout they had

With this classification scheme, he could play God to his self-created universe. After all, God created the world and developed a classification scheme with plants, rocks, animals, humans, etc. Any person coming within his sphere of influence was at once subjected to this system and plugged into a structure that included a complex web of personalities, businesses, ashrams (real estate holdings), non-profit entities, etc.

People moved up and down in the classification tier based on various tests. YB knew fully well that everyone had their breaking point, and, best of all, he knew what that breaking point was. If they rated well with him, he would not push past this point. If they no longer rated well or if it served YB, he would push past that point and the subject would leave the kingdom. There was usually a trauma associated with the event, since the subject had less of many things (including self-esteem) upon leaving than upon entering the kingdom. YB managed these traumas with various exit strategies. Occasionally, they would blow up in his face, aka Premka and Mark Baker.

How much did Harbhajan know? Actually, it was everything, and he was adept enough to know it before you did.

The prevailing attitude at GRD was that all businesses in this country operate in an ethical continuum. Only about 40% (during the toner room’s final days it was more like 12%) of first time “customers” paid their invoices. These were (in HJSK’s words) “self-selecting in their own unethical accounting practices.” In other words, a business that couldn’t mind its books was doomed to fail anyway. Most GRD people genuinely felt they were developing a relationship with their customers, just as a nurse who slowly administers poison to the terminally ill patient to ease their transition…