‘Guru Ma’ Advised Him to Get Divorce, Architect Testifies

A former member of a Calabasas-based church testified Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court that he divorced his wife, even though he loved her, because the church’s leader, who he believed to be “God incarnate,” counseled the split.

Gregory Mull, 64, of Westlake Village, who is suing Church Universal and Triumphant, said its leader, Elizabeth Clare Prophet, told him she had a cosmic revelation sanctioning the divorce.

Prophet, known to her followers as Guru Ma, teaches that she receives messages, or dictations, from Buddha, Jesus and other holy “ascended masters.”

Mull lived and worked at the time as an architect at Camelot, the church’s 218-acre headquarters in Calabasas. The trial is expected to shed light on the leadership and practices of the publicity-shy church, which has an estimated membership of 100,000 worldwide.

Marriages Sanctioned

Mull filed his suit, alleging that Church Universal and Triumphant defrauded and harmed him emotionally and physically, after the church sued him in 1981, claiming that he owed it about $30,000. Mull is seeking $250 million in damages.

Mull told the court that members of the sect were married only if Prophet approved. He said he cajoled Prophet into allowing his marriage to the former Kathleen Mull but that Prophet suggested a divorce after Mull told church leaders that his wife had lost her faith.

According to Mull’s attorneys, the couple married in 1977 and divorce proceedings were initiated in 1979.

“Elizabeth Clare Prophet said Kathleen had to leave the next morning,” Mull testified. “I was told not to write to her, call her or give her any money.”

“I still loved Kathleen,” Mull said, but he he sent her wife off the next morning, as Prophet had directed, to live with her ailing mother in Northern California.

Mull’s former wife, who has since remarried, is also expected to testify in the case.

Mull said his wife worked as Prophet’s secretary and was often awakened in the middle of the night to get files and perform other tasks.

‘Dark Soul’

After Mull told church leaders that his wife had doubts that Prophet was a cosmic “messenger,” Prophet met with him, Mull said. She told him that Kathleen Mull’s “soul was very dark and her chances of making her ascension were very slim, and we no longer had to stay married,” he testified.

Mull said the “dictation” concerning the divorce had come from an ascended master named El Morya. When asked by his attorney if he had ever communicated with El Morya, Mull said: “I tried to, but he never answered me.”