Brooklyn Born Ma

Brooklyn-born Ma `Teaches All Ways'

BYLINE: Jenny Vogt, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
DATE: 03-29-1992
PUBLICATION: The Palm Beach Post
EDITION:
SECTION: Newspapers_&_Newswires
PAGE: 12A

The first time Joyce Green Difiore saw Jesus Christ, she was trying out her latest weight-loss plan, yoga.

"All of a sudden I see Christ come up the stairs," she recalled, her eyes flashing. "I don't mean a vision. I mean he was there."

Sitting in a full lotus position from which she was unable to extricate her 250-pound form, she struggled up the stairs on her locked knees in sheer terror.

"I had never known fear like this before," she said, chewing her gum animatedly. "First of all, I was Jewish."

Ma Jaya Bhagavati Cho, a Hindu guru, was born Joyce Green in Brooklyn in 1940. Her mother died when she was 13, and she lived in a cellar apartment with her father, sister and two brothers. They were poor, she said, and devoutly Jewish.

At 15, she dropped out of 11th grade to marry an Italian Catholic. They had three children and raised them all Catholic.

In 1973, shortly after her first vision of Christ, Cho began spreading the message Jesus had given her to "teach all ways because all ways are mine."

"I thought, `Get skinny with Christ or fat without him,' so I took the chance," said Cho, who lost 65 pounds on her "Christ diet."

Cho said she also gave up sex to devote herself more fully to God. "I get a greater orgasm from teaching people than I can get from sex," she said. She eventually divorced her first husband because he was unwilling to share her with her new mission.

Cho's disciples must abide by her rules: no drugs, no alcohol, no meat and no sex unless trying to conceive a child. She said the no-sex rule is no problem: "If someone has an erection, we ignore it and it goes away."

After seeing Jesus, Cho began having visions of Neem Karoli Baba, a deceased holy man who became her guru. Pictures of him are prominent around her Kashi Church Foundation ranch in Indian River County. She said she speaks with him daily.

Among those who heard Cho's message was New Age guru Baba Ram Dass. He gained notoriety in the 1960s as Harvard University professor Richard Alpert when he fed his students psychedelic drugs in experiments. Alpert and Harvard colleague Timothy Leary were eventually fired by the administration.

Alpert bitterly denounced Cho in 1975, recanting statements he'd once made about witnessing Cho's "miracle" of bleeding quarts of blood from her mouth. Cho, who used the name Joya Santayana during this period, had simply spit up a pinkish liquid into a tissue for him once, he said.

Cho said she took Ram Dass' denunciation "with a grain of salt."

"I think he's a great man, a man who likes to serve," she said. But she refused to comment on the bleeding episodes.

In his book, Grist for the Mill, Ram Dass described the difficulty of breaking with Cho. He decided she was not the "Divine Mother," as she had claimed.

"I had been had," wrote Ram Dass, who declined to be interviewed for this story.

Ram Dass also wrote that Cho's boundless energy came not from a cosmic source, but from "energizing pills."

Cho said she has never used drugs in her life and attributes her energy level to 40 vitamin supplements she takes daily. She said she is able to survive on three hours of sleep a night and a 700-calorie diet because of the vitamins. She has also taken cortisone for 11 years to control a thyroid condition, she said.

Cho has hooked up with other celebrities over the years. She is close to folk singer Arlo Guthrie, who describes his spiritual adviser as "absolutely wonderful."

"She has helped me more than any other group of people or person," said Guthrie last year. He and his wife, Jackie, are building a second home near the Kashi ranch, where his two daughters attend school. "When I came to Kashi, I found myself with friends who believed like I did. I didn't have to change my philosophy or my thinking on (religion)."

Guthrie and Cho recently went to Great Barrington, Mass., for the rededication of the church made famous in his song, Alice's Restaurant. But local residents tried to revoke Guthrie's permits for the building after Cho publicly vowed to "bring death to the community and teach the community about death" by using the building for an AIDS center.

Cho said she was misquoted and attributed the community's response to "ignorance, fear, the whole fear of AIDS and homeless children. What I want them to do is accept death as a part of life."

Cho and her followers bought the Indian River County ranch in 1976 and moved there with a small group of followers.

In 1980, Cho married Korean-born SooSe Cho, an eighth-degree black belt in tae kwon do. He splits his time between the Kashi ranch and in Miami, where he has a martial arts school. He also is a part owner of Macho Products, makers of martial arts equipment in Palm Bay.

The red-carpeted living room of their ranch apartment is crowded with shrines and pictures of Jesus, Mary, Neem Karoli Baba and other spiritual leaders. In one corner is a treadmill Cho said she uses daily, in another a big-screen television set.

"My husband supports me," said Cho, who receives a small, undisclosed salary from the church foundation. "I don't have any money. My car is 15 years old."

Cho laughs about her assault conviction in 1982 in connection with a brawl at a Stuart supermarket. She jokingly calls herself a "jailbird." She was convicted of striking three employees at an Albertson's after she was asked to pay for her merchandise or leave, according to court records. Store management had suspected Cho was shoplifting.

Cho said she was simply defending herself after a store manager grabbed her breasts. Police reports said she made no complaint of such an assault. She testified at her trial that a manager had tried to lure her into a back room of the store with off-color remarks.

She was convicted on three counts of battery and one count each of disorderly conduct and criminal mischief. The judge put her on probation for a year, made her pay $200 to a social services agency and ordered her never to shop in the Martin County store again.

"My whole life, never in Brooklyn did such a thing happen to me," Cho lamented. "Never in Brooklyn."

GETTING THE STORY

Reporter Jenny Vogt and photographer Jeff Greene visited the Kashi ranch three times between January 1991 and January 1992, for a total of five days.

The story is based in part on records from state and police agencies. They are: Florida Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services, Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Stuart Police Department, Dade County Sheriff's Office, Dade County Circuit Court and Indian River County Clerk of the Court. Vogt interviewed cult experts, law enforcement officials, eight former disciples of Ma Jaya Baghavati Cho and more than a dozen current disciples. Three of the eight former disciples asked for anonymity, saying they feared retribution from Cho.

Library Director Mary Kate Leming did research for the story.