About John and Carla Sherman

Our Mission

Our work, our purpose, and the goal of all our efforts is to make one simple insight into the root cause of all human misery and one simple act of inward looking universally available and accessible within the entire human community.

 

John and Carla's history

Like everyone, John spent most of his life unconsciously searching for the one perfect path out of the wilderness of human life; the one perfect idea, the one perfect thing to think, to understand, to want, to have, to believe, to become that would bring him salvation and satisfaction.  The course of John’s search was extreme compared to most, but the result was the same: nothing worked, nothing ever does.

Late in 1975, when he was 33 years old, John discovered the perfect idea of perfect Social Justice, and set out to become the perfect Communist revolutionary.  joined with a small group of anarcho-communist radicals, and embarked upon four years of bank robberies, property bombings, gunfights with the police, two escapes from federal prisons and two years on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List; all done in the name of supporting the struggles of the American worker for justice.  In the end it came to nothing.

In January of 1976, he was shot and captured during a bank robbery; in March, he escaped. 

In 1978, after two years on the run, robbing banks and organizing property bombings, John was captured by the FBI, tried, convicted, and sentenced to 30 years in prison.

In March of 1979, he escaped again from the federal prison where he was serving his sentence.  In April of 1981, after two years on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list, he was finally captured for the last time and returned to prison.

In June of 1994, in the fifteenth year of his imprisonment, the American spiritual teacher Gangaji came to the prison where John was serving his sentence.  John found himself face to face with her and, in that meeting, discovered himself to be eternally and unconditionally free.  Three and a half years later, in 1998, he was released on parole.

Upon his release, John moved to Boulder, Colorado.  

Carla was born and raised in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. After a series of failed attempts at finding happiness and fulfillment in different careers, in 1998 she came to Boulder, Colorado, where she met John. She went back to Brazil, and a few months later, she came back to the US, this time to California, where she ran into John again. He was working at the Gangaji Foundation, where Carla was a volunteer.

They were married in June of 1999, in San Rafael, California. In 2001, John and Carla moved to Ojai, California, where they live with their cat, Switters. Carla became an American citizen in February of 2007 and, in August of 2007, John was released from parole.

Since 1999, John meets with people from all walks of life to speak about the fear of life, which is what spoils human life, how that comes to pass, what gives rise to it in the first place, how it manifests in the life in general, and what every person can do to be free of it once and for all. In these meetings, John speaks from his experience, listens to reports, and answers questions.

More about John and Carla's work.

More about John's life story.

 

If you are interested in inviting John to speak in your area, please click here.

For more information about volunteer opportunities, please click here.

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All of our meetings and events are always free of charge. All are welcome, with no regard for religious and spiritual beliefs and practices or any other thing.

Our organization is self-supported and we rely on free will donations to continue our work.

You can help provide financial support for our work by making a donation.

RiverGanga Foundation is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit, public charitable organization. Donations are tax-deductible for US residents as charitable contributions.