i never chose e.j. gold to be my teacher… i became involved with him indirectly because i was in love with one of his senior students, who i will call x.

i had never encountered anyone like x before…telepathic.. intense..brilliant..after he rejected me romantically, i started treating him like my spiritual teacher...he felt revulsion for the whole fawning thing i did around him..he encouraged me to go see his teachers and encouraged me to be celibate so i could use my sexual energy to 'work on myself.' over a period of five years i was pretty lovesick over x. all i wanted to do was 'wake up' so x would finally love me...(yucky, i know.)

i went on a quest to check out all of x's teachers--the ones i could get to–chief among them was gold. gold was x's primary teacher and according to x, gold was/is the most enlightened man alive. i went to a couple of weekend things in nevada city over a couple of years, and participated in a few things when they were in my city…i barely even saw gold. it was a bit like the wizard of oz... he rarely appeared. i didn’t like what i saw of him–he was scary. and i didn’t like his people too much…their auras were all-gray…i was coming from way too much hatha yoga–totally open, ditsy, but pretty much in love with life and trusting…you know the rest..

as far as i can understand it, my great love, gold’s student, x, set me up and “gave me” to gold.

for five years x would see me occasionally. near the end of this time he began seeing me more, allowing me to help him with a garden he was working on. he talked about gold a lot. he filled me in on gold's (supposed to be secret) way of working ‘tantrically’ with certain women within his community…totally unselfishly, of course…for their betterment…of course.

x told me that the jealousy that this percolated created a lot of stress and discontent. it was a great 'work opportunity' for the women though...x told me some women accepted and some declined. x spoke theoretically of the advantages and disadvantages to accepting this 'opportunity.' when i asked x whether he thought the women should accept or not--he would shrug and say it depended on each woman individually. i wondered what the hell any of it had to do with me. in love with x and a nut about monagamy, i was further creeped out by e.j. gold.

(also, during the years, several other men students from gold's community approached me romantically. i was in love with x and rejected them.)

in typical 'crazy wisdom' parable fashion, x started going into long seemingly-convoluted talks about nature and gardens and ’bees that can pollinate flowers from 500 miles away' (we were 500 miles from gold's community.) and how ’at a cetain stage of the work one must allow their head to be chopped off.'

i was surprised when he showed me e.j. gold's most recent computer game. it was called necromonicon. on the cover was a painting of a woman in a near-dark room with a big book open in front of her. the woman had no arms and there was a gargoyle above and behind her--watching her... it was spooky and the woman had a face i was pretty sure was mine..x showed me the game and we played it (it involved trying to get out of a big scary mansion--and i don't think i was able to get out.)
x made no reference to how much the woman painted looked like me...i didn't say anything because i thought it would seem vain..

it was at this time that a fascinating holy man from jerusalem, who called himself jonathan david, came into my work. we talked for several hours. he had the hasidic dred-things and long white beard. and the whole hypnotic gaze…he gave me his email ‘in israel’ and began emailing 5 to 10 (sometimes more) emails a day. freemasons and kaballah and gurdjieff (he had hung out with bennett in hawaii!?!) political conspiracy theories and on and on..wow. i asked him if he had ever heard of e.j. gold and he said he had...

this email correspondence went on for more than a year, with one respite of maybe 6 weeks when he was mad at me about something and said i was ‘unteachable.’

he told me 911 was going to happen. x also knew 911 was going to happen. i was with x the day before. . so when 911 happened i thought of jd very much. sure enough, in the days JUST after 911, jonathan david resumed out email correspondence. it became more intense than ever. he claimed, as did x, that 911 was a homegrown u.s. conspiracy to incite the end of the world--which was coming soon. he blamed everything on anti-semitism…i would politely try to argue with him sometimes and he would become enraged and call me an anti-semite…i would then try to PROVE that i was not an anti-semite.etc…

he sent me photographs of his ancestors, told me beautiful stories, a lot from hasidic masters. i regarded him as my teacher. there was not one ounce of sexual anything (he was a holy man) until one saturday when the weird sex stuff began. i had been mostly celibate for many years, as x had recommended--so i was amazed when i was practically thrown across the room by sexual arousal in the middle of my lazy saturday afternoon. i’d never felt anything like it…tsunami-like. it travelled all around and ended up primarily between my heart and my head–i spent several hours staring at the ceiling in a state of bliss beyond anything i’d ever imagined. there was no doubt in my mind that it was something very out of the ordinary...and at that point, whatever is was, who ever it was, i was IN LOVE.

when i got around to checking my email i found a confession from holy man jd in israel–HE was my astral lover–surprise! and the two month escapade was launched. he said he had been waiting all this time for the trust between us to be strong enough for this to occur. he was pleased at how strong and clear the connection was. pretty amazed myself. in spite of hints from x, i never had any idea that this was even possible.

it was total amazing bliss in the beginning, 3, 4, 5, hours a day or night…EXCEPT THAT i would sometimes displease him and the whole bliss-thing would unexpectedly turn raunchy and nasty–downright perverted and mean….of course i thought, and this might be true, (i was alone in my apartment after all) it was only my own inner darkness/demons coming up to the light, which is what jd told me it was…he would also say that because my devotion to him was not strong enough, demons were posessing me, during our sessions, causing me to fall into my evil lustful lower nature. only if i could learn to hold the high frequency he was trying to bring me into, would i stop being harmed by demonic external forces. he said he was doing his best to protect me but there was only so much he could do...etc...

i stopped eating and could go with practically no sleep. i broke out in open herpes-like sores all up and down my spine. i tried to hold the high frequency and …well…sometimes i failed, and went crashing through what felt like plane upon plane of glass to a crash landing of what was excrutiating psychic pain. (psychiatrist later told me this is psychotic break.) not wanting to believe that so much evil was in me, i wondered at times if he were somehow triggering the negative episodes he was blaming me for??...or was it all me? i still don't know.

but i was getting more and more upset. i began to notice certain things and started to think that jonathan david wasn't who he said he was:

1) the ‘voice’ of his emails was not consistant. it seemed sometimes like it was not him. it seemed like it was different people at different times.

2) i started receiving more emails from gold’s community–boring stuff…online workshop–this or that. weekend seminar, etc..but a lot more of them than usual and interspersed with the jonathan david emails in ways that seemed weirdly significant...

3) somehow i began to be able to tell that there were other women doing this with him. i caught glimmers–hard to explain–of other women…as if we were in some kind of astral stable--like horses–maybe he came and went, going from one to the other…not clear !!!??? but it was awful…some nights he did not come to me at all…either i had offended him or he was ‘just too busy.’ i was crazy-jealous and obsessed about being with him. aware that i was supposed to be losing my 'lower' jealous etc. personal nature and merging into the great cosmic whatever--i knew i was failing terribly..

4) in the zomboid psychic spaces where i spent untold hours of time those 2 months…the tone was different at different times–like the emails–i began to be able to tell that it was not always him. i could feel him…his essence, the way you can feel anyone you are very intimate with…and i could tell that sometimes it wasn’t him…i sensed others. not a lot of people. but people i didn’t know who they were..i sensed there was ritual maybe…something happening. maybe that my sexual energy was fuelling some astral work that i was not participating in…??? again, i don’t really know…

i started trying to make it stop and i couldn't. i began to really freak-out. i wanted it to stop! (i couldn’t ask my ‘true love, ’ gold student, x, about any of this because he had abruptly and permanantly ex-ed himself from my life JUST BEFORE it began.)

jonathan had called my cell phone several times. (had sung me the most beautiful songs in hebrew.) as my fear and horror (and suspicion that jonathan david was in fact NOT who he said he was) grew–(and i learned that i couldn’t shut him out of me when he wanted to get in) i called my cell phone provider (sprint) and asked them if i had received any phone calls from outside the country…the answer was no…

that was the conclusive moment for me…i began flailing with full strength… the last time he, or they, entered me, it was january 26. 2002.
i had stopped looking at the email at all. i had written and demanded that it stop! i remember looking out the window at the sky..BIG blue sky. my mind broke. it was just broken. i knew something was really really wrong but it was invisible. it was the crashing through planes of glass thing times ten. i was pretty sure there was no one i could turn to for help. who would believe me? i was still just alone in my apartment. there was just space. buti knew this wasn’t the big space of enlightenment. it was a kind of murder.

in the following days or weeks, the few emails from ‘jonathan david’ i had archived in my email, were scrubbed out of my computer. i called my internet provider (aol) they said someone must have hacked into my computer and removed them. they told me i could file a report and they would investigate it–but i was too scared.. i didn’t do anything.

i spent the next several years in a psychotic state. i spent every day convinced that they were constantly monitoring me, speaking to me, entering and leaving my home and my work place--rearranging things to give me creepy messages..etc etc...in december 2005 i finally sought psychatric help and was diagnosed with ptsd with psychosis. i was given a cocktail of meds that stopped the psychosis for the most part and lifted the depression a lot.

reading this i realize i may not have proved to you that gold (and a handful of his senior students) was the perpetrator behind jonathan david. i never asked. it was invisible. i knew they would deny it. i knew they would also imply that i had been given an opportunity for enlightenment and i had failed. i believe this too--to a certain extent--to this day.

but i knew and know it was them. they knew, and know, that i know. it was invisible… it is well known that deception, cruelty and ‘theater’ are gold’s stock and trade. i never imagined it went so far...jonathan david was a role they put on and played. i always wonder about the flesh and blood man i met only once, at my store...i don't know.

one more thing–in those big wide astral spaces, after i had begun to be afraid, i heard a voice--i knew it wasn’t ‘jonathan david’ or anything to do with ej gold, or my own impending insanity. loud and clear, it said, “all this will be seen. all this will be known.”

it has taken six years for me to tell it.. but now i have. when i began looking for information against him--there was nothing. i hope more people can come forward and i hope we can prevent 'newbies' from falling into his lair.

thank you rick ross and institute, for this incredible forum, and for all that you do to help people recover from cult abuse.