Tulsi Gabbard Pictured at Altar Dedicated to Her Wacky Anti-Gay Guru
This is Tulsi Gabbard placing flowers at an altar dedicated to her 'guru'—a man whose group she denies ever being part of.
The photograph of President-elect Donald Trump's pick to be director of national intelligence shows how a teenage Gabbard took part in a ritual dedicated to Chris Butler, the leader of the Science of Identity Foundation, while she was a student at one of its boarding schools.
It was obtained by the Daily Beast along with an image from the program for her second marriage, in 2015, which includes a special blessing from Butler, under the name he uses, Siddhaswarupananda.
Both images shed further light on Gabbard's connections to the Science of Identity Foundation. On Monday The New York Times quoted Gabbard's spokeswoman as saying 'she has never and doesn't have affiliation' with the group.
Gabbard will face a Senate confirmation hearing on Thursday, when the Intelligence Committee will consider whether she should have unfettered access to America's most closely guarded secrets. But Republican senators are not united behind her and have voiced doubts about her views and even whether she understands the role she has been selected for. John Cornyn, of Texas, said Monday, 'I think the jury's still out.'
The importance of Butler and his Science of Identity Foundation—which is an offshoot of the Hare Krishna movement, itself an offshoot of Hinduism—to Gabbard had gone under the radar for years. Butler is a man followers call a living god but who is also accused of running a 'cult' by former followers. Gabbard called Butler her 'guru' in 2015.
Gabbard was around 15 when the photograph of her at Butler's altar, the first visual evidence of her participation in the group, was taken in the Philippines. Her parents, both deeply enmeshed in Butler's movement, had sent her to one of the group's boarding schools there.
Her office declined to comment on the photo to the Daily Beast.
The Daily Beast revealed earlier this month how Butler had ranted anti-gay hate on a tape from the late 1990s, shortly before Gabbard first ran for state office in Hawaii on an anti-gay marriage platform. She has previously said that her views on same-sex couples' rights have 'evolved' and voted to overturn a constitutional ban on gay marriage while in Congress.
When the Daily Beast asked for comment on Butler ranting about gay people being 'deviants' and comparing homosexuality to beastiality, Trump's transition team said reporting on Gabbard and Butler was 'Hinduphobic.'
Meanwhile Butler's group hired a crisis PR firm and pointed the Beast to a long 'open letter' complaining about 'media attacks that perpetuate harmful Hinduphobic narratives and rhetoric.' An SIF spokesperson said, 'We will not engage with sensationalist narratives driven by political motives, rather than fair reporting.'
But a former member of the SIF, Anti van Duyn, has written to members of Congress to express concerns about it. She told The New York Times that it warned Gabbard is 'under the complete influence of' Butler, and alleges that he 'harbors ambitious political goals,' although she did not claim to know them.
The SIF group is not part of mainstream Hinduism, and multiple former members told the Daily Beast that they believed it to be a cult—something Butler and his followers have long disputed. Some requested anonymity because they feared retribution by the group for speaking out.
They told the Beast that Butler exerted almost 'complete control' over his followers, who had to treat him as god on earth. Butler took the name Jagad Guru Siddhaswarupananda Paramahamsa. He is addressed as Jagad Guru, which translates as 'world teacher' and carries the meaning that he has the last word on everything. The former followers said the group had little to do with Hinduism, accusing it of being focused entirely on Butler. Notably in the 1990s it hosted Christmas celebrations 'in honor of the appearance of Jesus Christ.'
Butler, born in 1948 in New Orleans, was brought up in Hawaii where he now lives as a virtual hermit. He leads as many as 10,000 followers, according to estimates by former members, from his compound in Kailua.
Those former SIF members painted a picture of a controlling 'cult of personality' in which, they said:
Every day began at 5 a.m. where followers prayed to an altar with Butler's image, then made offerings of food and flowers to the 'guru,' like in the photo of Gabbard.
Children were made to listen to his 'insane' lectures as he swore and used homophobic slurs.
Butler lived in an aluminum foil-wrapped room in his Hawaii compound because he believed it would shield him from infectious diseases, which he was 'paranoid' about contracting.
He divided his followers into 'As, Bs and Cs' to determine who was allowed near him—and only those who 'quarantined' for two weeks could approach him.
Followers working for free in his home and kitchen had to follow dozens of rules, including that they paid 'obeisance' as soon as entering the house.
Butler's control extended from childhood into adulthood, determining who people could marry and where they could work.
Those who left were ostracized so completely that one man said he was not even told about his father's death.
The Science of Identity Foundation emerged in the late 1970s when Butler split from the Hare Krishna Consciousness Movement after the death in 1977 of its leader Srila Prabhupada. Both Gabbard's parents went on to become key parts of the movement. Like many initial followers of Butler, Gabbard's father Mike had been involved in the Hare Krishna movement, a letter seen by the Daily Beast confirms.
In the 1980s, Mike Gabbard became the unpaid personal secretary to Butler and took on the name Krishna-katha das, according to documents reviewed by the Daily Beast. Meanwhile, her mother Carol took the name Davahuti Dasi and worked on the group's finances. Among his tasks were seeking masseurs for Butler, who at the time was also going by the name Srila Prabhupada.
Rama Renson, a former member who was an almost exact contemporary of Gabbard, accused the Science of Identity Foundation of being a 'cult.'
'It's very controlling, very much like it creates this very limited belief system and perception and control,' he said. 'Chris Butler has a way of hijacking people's fear and their belief system. They believe everything about him. It's a cult of personality.'
Renson was born in New Zealand to parents who were followers of Butler. They then moved to Hawaii to be closer to the guru.
'He's the pure holy, the literally only living representative of God and he's right about everything,' he told the Beast. 'If you go against him it's the worst sin and you'll be the equivalent of burning in Hell, tortured for eternities.'
Worship of Butler began at the family altar in followers' homes at 5 a.m., with a prayer to the Jagad Guru. One follower said it was still etched in their memory and recited, 'The lotus feet of my spiritual master are the only way by which we can attain pure devotional service. I bow at your lotus feet with great awe and reverence; by your grace one can cross the ocean of suffering and attain the mercy of Krishna. My only wish is to have my consciousness purified by the words emanating from your lotus mouth. Attachment to your lotus feet is the perfection that fulfills all desires. You are my lord, birth after birth.'
Butler was on a spiritual quest as a young man which brought him into contact with the Hare Krishna movement. But when he started his own group, he moved into a Hawaii compound where, witnesses said, he lived in an aluminum foil-lined room because of his paranoia about infectious diseases.
Those who sought to come close to him would have to 'quarantine' for as long as two weeks before being permitted into his home, the Beast was told. As the new head of his own sect, Butler adopted Srila Prabhupada's tradition of being waited on by his followers, but added his own rules.
Among the most bizarre was dividing his followers into 'As, Bs or Cs' to determine whether they were allowed to approach him.
Butler's personal servants were called 'As,' working closely to him in the kitchen and preparing meals, massages, which meant they were not allowed to go into stores and had to remain 10 to 20 feet away from public places.
'Normal people' who could go into stores were called 'Cs,' and they would do most of the shopping and supplying, a former follower said.
Only a few rare people were awarded status as a 'B,' such as Butler's wife Wai Lana. They had to put clean clothing on when they went to work in the kitchen, and all furniture and cars used for transportation needed to be covered.
A former follower who spent time working in the kitchen said that all food and supplies brought into the center for Butler needed to be sanitized. A document seen by the Beast shows five pages of rules for workers, with the first rule saying, 'Pay obeisances when entering the SPV home.'
'We had to first sanitize them outside with alcohol. Vegetables and (produce) were soaked in an acid water solution,' the former kitchen worker explained. 'Basically, my entire job was dish sterilization. I wasn't even a cook. They basically needed an entire 12-hour shift dedicated to this sterilization.'
Butler's living space, dishes, and personal effects also needed to be sterilized. 'They bought this machine from Japan that sterilized,' the former follower added. 'All of his dishes had to be safe in the oven for an hour at 350 or higher degrees, or sanitized in acid water with alcohol.'
Obeisance to Butler covered the whole of the followers' lives, one former member said, particularly when it came to education.
'From the late '80s all of us kids were removed from public schools because he didn't want them influencing our minds away from our service to him,' one former member wrote in testimony shared with the Beast. 'So from that point we were home schooled, until there were schools established in the Philippines. After that all the children were sent to the boarding schools there for intensive schooling.'
Gabbard's parents first home-schooled her then sent her to one of the Philippines schools, which were segregated by sex.
One former member, a male contemporary of Gabbard's at the schools said they were designed to implant devotion, discipline, indoctrination of Butler's beliefs and needs. The school had about '30 to 50 boys' in each level from the U.S., Australia, New Zealand and parts of Asia. Keeping the students segregated by sex kept their minds off sex and they were 'brainwashed' to view the opposite sex as entirely different species, the ex-follower alleged, and said that by the time he came of high school age, he was 'traumatized.'
'When I came back, I was all freaked out and scared of girls. It took me a couple years to kind of get over that stigma, but I was very socially awkward,' they said. 'I left there in '97, '98, then they closed the school down for a couple years after that,' he said.
Former followers accuse Butler of retaining control over followers far into their adult lives, including deciding who they could marry and where they could work, while people who left the movement were ostracized from their families. Gabbard's first husband Eduardo Tamayo was also brought up in the SIF.
Fear of retaliation from Butler's associates and estrangement from family is another way Butler traps many followers under his control, former followers alleged.
'Butler was God's voice on earth, and if you questioned him or offended him in any way, you were effectively offending God,' wrote a former Butler follower named 'Lalita' in a 2017 essay, who is known among Butler former followers. She explained, 'Because we believed in reincarnation, that meant that you would be reborn as the lowest life-form imaginable and then have to spend eons working your way back into God's good graces.'
Questioning Butler is spiritual suicide, she wrote, 'which was seen as worse than death.'
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