Kimberly Bergalis, the South Florida student who believed she contracted the disease from dental surgery in 1987, came to the ashram soon after her diagnosis. Before she died in 1991, she often wrote about Ma in her diary: "Ma said, `Look, honey, we'll fight this together' ... Ma made me feel good when she said, `Of course, sweetheart, I'm here for you - any time.'"
     Marc Cohen, president of the United Foundation For AIDS in Miami, says that his 10-year relationship with Ma "has taught me how to cope with what I do, how to move through the pain of loss without wallowing in it." Cohen is now a member of the board of directors of the ashram, which operates as a nonprofit foundation.
     Of all Ma's admirers, former Orange County Elections Supervisor Betty Carter is surely the most unlikely. The one thing that distinguished Carter through 35 years in Central Florida politics was her flinty directness, hewn from a Southern Baptist upbringing and rural North Carolina roots.

     Eight years ago, Carter was skeptical when her son, Scott, began raving about his new spiritual adviser. He wanted his mother to meet her.
     That was how Carter found herself face-to-face with a Hindu guru.
     "It changed me, talking to her," Carter says. "I don't know how to explain it. I feel calmer now, more kindly disposed. I mean, I've met the president, and honey, I don't impress easy. This woman - she doesn't care what you think of her. She is just totally involved in other people. I don't know how else to say it. She is a holy woman. "
     Her son, owner of Carter Wolf Interiors in Winter Park, agrees. When Carter met Ma years ago, he had been searching for spiritual direction for years. It was a search that intensified when he discovered he was HIV-positive - as was his friend and business partner, Dana Wolf. Both men had given up on traditional religions, many of which still consider homosexuality a disease or a sin. "I had been taught - society had 

taught me - that because I was gay, I was dirty, I was sick," said Scott Carter. "Ma put her arms around me and told me: `You are perfect just the way you are.'"

ROSEMARY HENRY DOESN'T CALL Ma a holy woman. She can't even bring herself to call her "Ma" anymore. She insists on referring to her by her given name: Joyce.
     Henry and her husband lived at the ashram in the early '80s. She says they were so enthralled with Ma that they were willing to give her anything.
     Henry says that when she became pregnant, Ma made an arrangement with her. Ma would raise the child as her own, at the ashram, perhaps to some day become Ma's successor. Henry says, Ma persuaded her to falsify the birth certificate so it looked like Ma was the biological mother.
     Why would any mother agree to such an arrangement? "All I can tell you is, it seemed a great honor," says Henry. "You have to understand, Joyce was God as far as I was concerned, and I was nothing. I honestly thought my daughter was better off with her. Think of it this way. Let's say you are a Catholic. And the Blessed Virgin Mary asks you to give her your child. That's what it was like."
     Eventually, Henry and her husband left the ashram. 

They left their child behind. Henry says a barrage of criticism from Ma - that she was irresponsible, childish, that she did not work hard enough - convinced her that she was unworthy of remaining there.
     Ma denies all this, saying that Henry simply abandoned the child. After she left the ashram, Henry embarked on a healing process. She studied psychology at the University Of Colorado and became a family therapist and a member of the Cult Awareness Network.
     She says her research convinced her that Ma is a narcissistic sociopath - adept at reading people, at telling them intimate things about themselves, but only so she can 

manipulate them for her benefit. After five years of not seeing her daughter, Henry sued, seeking custody of the child. She engaged an expert witness, retired psychiatrist Hardat Sukhdeo, who wrote in court papers of Ma: "Her manipulative behavior very closely resembles Jim Jones."
     The ashram first mounted a defense, then backed down, and in 1987 the child was returned to her biological mother.
     The early '80s were clearly a tempestuous time at the ashram. Several former residents, who asked not to be identified because they still have friends and family there, refer to that era as "the rampage years" because of Ma's behavior. They say she made everyone fashion fur-lined boxes and make patterns with tapestry nails on the wall - for what purpose no one is sure - and sometimes told them to strike each other "to work out karma."
     It was in September of 1982 that Ma was arrested and charged with battery. She and several ashram members were shopping at an Albertson's on U.S. Highway 1 in Stuart when a manager says he saw them opening boxes of appliances around midnight. When he asked them to stop, Ma punched him, knocked him into a store display and scratched employees who came to his assistance.
      Ma's defense was that the store manager had made sexual advances. Three months later, a jury found Ma guilty of battery. 

She received probation.
     Over the years, several outside experts have come to the ashram to check out its health as a spiritual community. J. Gordon Melton, director of the Institute for the Study of American Religion in Santa Barbara, Calif., was hired by the ashram in the early '90s to conduct two studies. He and his team concluded that Kashi had strong leadership other than Ma and that it wasn't a cult. Melton says his biggest criticism of the ashram was that Ma "loved the kids on the ashram almost to excess - so much so that she, at times, appeared to usurp parental prerogatives."     

     Ma's most recent critic is Sal Conti, a jeweler and sculptor

 who was a young, idealistic artist when he saw Ma speak 22 years ago in San Francisco. He soon moved to the ashram and felt he was part of a community that was making a difference. Then, 41/2 years ago, Conti got a chance that many people on the ashram only dreamed about: the opportunity to work closely with Ma.
     Knowing of his experience in the art world, she asked him to help her in a sideline career. She wanted him to help market the religiously inspired canvases and plates she would create and sell. Soon his new vantage point as part of her inner circle gave him a perspective he hadn't had before.
     Conti says she traveled a great deal, particularly during the summer. And she didn't always wind up where she said she was going. Two years running, he says, when she said she was working with the poor in Utah, she was staying at an expensive villa in Aspen, recovering from face lifts.
     Other times, says Conti, when she was supposed to be meditating on a retreat, she was visiting casinos. He says she frequently called the ashram, asking followers to send money.
     Three years ago, Conti said he, Ma and several followers were in New Orleans to make a connecting flight when Ma decided to stay over for a night to visit a riverboat casino, the River Queen.
     That night, he says he watched her lose $25,000 to $30,000 in the slot machines. Some of the money, he says, had been collected from Ma's students for ashram expenses. He says that even though the ashram is always financially strapped, she demanded, and is paid, $100,000 a year in salary.      

     Three former ashram  members, including a high-ranking member of Ma's entourage, support many of the things Conti says. All refused to be quoted because they have family members and friends still at the ashram.