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Showing posts with label HUMAN DIGNITY. Show all posts
Showing posts with label HUMAN DIGNITY. Show all posts

THE ANTI-ISKCON TIME MACHINE

If you suddenly had access to a time machine, where would you go? What would you do? I know I speak for many readers of my blogs when I say that I would go back to the first time I encountered the ISKCON (Hare Krishna) devotees and observe one of them preaching to a much younger version of myself. To see my face--I was just 14!--glowing with hope and wonder as I was subjected to a carefully scripted indoctrination process would be heart-breaking. Still, I know I (from the future) would never hesitate to confront the devotee and demolish each and every of the Hare Krishna cult’s repugnant and laughable beliefs.That would have been true enlightenment!I only wish someone had had the courage and knowledge to warn me and so many others. Today, that is my mission.

My blogs exist to supply the information the cult leaves out of their so-called preaching and to empower each and every one of you in the here and now.  If you hesitate, the friends or relatives you might otherwise have rescued from these pseudo-Hindu fanatics will waste their lives chasing laughable delusions and eventually find themselves wishing but unable to undo the past. Behind the promises of easy attainment of heavenly reward lies a trash heap of bigotry and pseudo-scientific nonsense most newcomers are kept from encountering until it is too late.



It has been a lonely road writing these essays for my blog during the past eleven years, but the thousands of readers from all over the world who visit it each month have convinced me that my task is worthy. I know these essays have changed lives and saved many families from losing a son or daughter to a cult that will alienate them. If I have helped save even one person from such a fate, my life is a success, no matter how much I have personally suffered.

Finally, a word for those who have escaped from ISKCON or another cult and find yourselves struggling to make up for lost time with family and friends. The time for apologies or trying to ingratiate yourselves with people who might have given up on you years ago is over. Stop blaming yourselves or beating yourselves up for having wasting so many precious years. Youthful idealism is not a crime. Waking up from your delusions is a personal victory, one you will savor more and more as time goes on. Instead of lamenting, re-discover your unique talents and regain your self-esteem by making a MISSION of your own design and one you feel restores your place in the universe. If no one else believes in you, I do.
  
* SEE: https:///2015/08/new-rape-and-insults-wife-abuse-iskcon.html.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this essay can be reproduced in any medium without the express written consent of the author.



RAPE & MONSTROUS ABUSE: ISKCON GURU'S CRIMINAL PAST

ISKCON founder on rape: 
Generally when a woman is attacked by a man--whether her husband or some other man--she enjoys the attack, being too lusty.  A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, Srimad Bhagavatam 4.26.26 purport.

 

Some years ago, during a routine purchase at a department store near where I worked, it happened that the clerk handling my purchase was a Bangladeshi Muslim who noticed my last name and asked me where I got it. I told him that I had once been married to an Indian and then noticed him looking intently at my eyes. He became furious and asked me if I had been abused by my husband. I said nothing, but by that time my eyes were full and I couldn't say anything. He said--rather almost shouted--that his people do not believe in maltreating their wives. After thanking him, I left with my purchase and went back to work, but I have never forgotten that chance encounter. What I now share with you, dear readers, is a great deal of the reason why:
He is now known as Gopal Krishna Goswami and was a Hare Krishna guru with many disciples. It is especially ironic that he was given the honorific title “Goswami”--it is conferred on married men who have abandoned their wives and means “one who controls his senses”--when he took the order of “sannyasa” (an exalted life as a celibate monk) a few years after the events you are about to read. I hope you find this episode instructive and I apologize in advance for the repellent nature of its contents. Here we go: 

No one expects rational behavior from a zombie or a dreamer. Yet both of these states describe what devotees become after years of indoctrination based on the idea that “you are not the body.” In fact, this artificial dichotomy between body and spirit had been the principal means the Hare Krishna movement used to ensnare us. In place of reason, our sincere but gullible minds had been filled with more Hindu folklore and mythology than I care to remember. Healing meant putting the pieces—body and soul—together again and beginning to think for ourselves. During the years shortly after the death of our guru, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, in 1977, legions of devotees left the movement. Some say that the excesses of the GBC, who had usurped the whole guru business and tolerated widespread corruption, were responsible. However, I firmly believe that the real cause was the end of the cult of personality that Prabhupada’s presence had sustained. Once he died, the bubble burst. The GBC and ISKCON leaders responded to the rebellion that ensued by raising their doomsday fanaticism to a fever pitch.

Had I any idea of what Gopal Krishna had in mind when he unexpectedly told me that he would stay overnight with us en route to the New York temple, I would have told him to go straight to hell. Never in my life have I regretted any decision more and never have I paid for it more dearly.


Gopal Krishna was in full demonic mode when my son and I met him at KennedyAirport, getting off the plane without acknowledging us and looking like an enraged wart hog that had been hastily dressed in a crumpled dhoti. He walked along with his gigantic nostrils flared in disgust, as if suddenly aware of his own stench. What I am about to recount is infinitely more disgusting, however: consider yourself warned! 

It began when we took a cab from the airport to my apartment. Totally unexpectedly and in full view of my son, Gopal Krishna began to grab at me (I was sitting in the front seat next to the driver), with a face blank but for the glittering beady eyes and malicious leer of a sexual pervert. Astonished and repulsed beyond words, I tried to stop him, slapping his hand and telling him to stop, but he continued undaunted until we got out of the taxi. Ignorant of what had just happened, my mother and brother greeted him very decently, but he said next to nothing: he had something else on his mind.

To wit, as soon as my son was asleep in the other twin bed opposite us, he insisted on having sex, answering my protests (I reminded him that he, a GBC member, was openly breaking the regulative principle against illicit sex) by forcing himself on me, claiming that it was his right because “married people can have sex.” I was terrified that my mother and brother might hear us, what to speak of my son. Worse, he treated me as if I were a cheap prostitute by forcing his vile tongue into my mouth and ejaculating onto his soiled dhoti. In the morning, he locked himself into the bedroom alone with me and repeated the night’s performance at least twice. He did the same thing that night.The black-hearted, evil fiend! 

This bedroom was where I used to play with my brothers and sisters as well as my dolls when I was a little girl. 


During Sunday, when we went to the Bronx Botanical Gardens with our son, he tried to grab at me again and was similarly repulsed. What a filthy, evil scumbag! He also called me a prostitute because, according to him, I should have been able to save $100 out of the $400 I earned a month.

What this worse-than-rape experience did to my soul is hard to describe. I knew that I was done with Gopal Krishna forever, but still, trapped as I was in circumstances I could not substantially change without tremendous support and counseling, I felt myself more zombie than human. Moreover, he ended his assault on my body by trying to assault my reason, telling me as we took a cab together to the city Monday morning that nuclear bombs were so freely available in New York City that the drugstores secretly carried them. I laughed out loud at this insanity and got a venomous stare in response. As the cab dropped me off near my humble job on 34th Street, Gopal Krishna, his uglier than warthog face distorted with hate, handed me $100 and again called me a prostitute.

If anything good came out of this nightmare, it was my realization once and for all that evil exists and is personified in people like Gopal Krishna, demons in human form who are devoid of all genuine humanity. Like Harpies from Greek myth, they pollute all they touch. This is undeniably what Gopal Krishna intended when he raped me in my childhood home and when he harassed me in the Botanical Gardens, which had been a beloved refuge for much of my life. Monster! 

When I think of the devotees who used to come to visit my sister and I back in 1968-1969 when we were young teenagers and how innocent and sincere we all were, I still feel blank horror at the thought of Gopal’s deliberate pollution of my childhood home. No wonder I felt I had to get out of there and, taking my son and the ever-present suitcases, flew to Los Angeles and into the final stage of my journey out of the Hare Krishna movement.

For an eye-opening account of events preceding the above horror, please see:
https://harekrishnacultexposed.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-mystery-of-flying-chair-vyas-puja.html.

If you still need more information and an update, see this!
https://iskconcultunveiled.blogspot.com/2016/10/hare-krishna-hackers-beware.html.


This essay is part of a longer autobiographical excerpt that I published on another website more than eight years ago. If you have any questions about the esteem in which my guru held me, you are welcome to look them up in the vedabase of his letters.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this essay can be reproduced in any medium without the express written consent of the author.


HARE KRISHNA SWAMI’S ATTEMPT TO KILL WIFE & UNBORN SON


Attempted Murder in the Second Degree is a Class B Violent Felony punishable by 5-15 years imprisonment.[i]

The following is an account of a horrifying instance of criminal abuse—specifically attempted murder of both a pregnant mother and her unborn son—at the hands of her (so-called) husband, who was then known as Gopal Krishna Das. Moreover, after he abandoned us and left me to raise our son without any financial assistance, he became a swami in 1981 and became famous for his fundraising prowess, accumulating thousands of disciples in the process. Now that Gopal Krishna “Goswami” has learned his soul’s fate at the hands of the Supreme Justice, it is time for his admirers and any interested parties to know the truth. 

NO GOOD DEED GOES UNPUNISHED!

I should have run outside and asked somebody to call the police, people still tell me, but I was so frozen with shock that I could hardly move my feet. Besides, it was bitterly cold outside, even for New York City in that December of 1972 and I was eight and a half months pregnant. I just stood there, looking into Gopal Krishna’s malignant, scowling face—frozen with the same fury that overtook him as he glared at my swollen belly and threw a heavy wooden office chair across the room directly at it. I am writing this today because I dodged the chair and it hit the plaster wall instead. As crimes go, this has got to be one of the worst: the attempted murder of a wife in advanced pregnancy. What an evil, disgusting monster! He should be rotting in jail.

And, no, all of you apologists of the now ISKCON guru “His Holiness Gopal Krishna Goswami,” this is not something you forget, ever. Impossible. Moreover, this so-called ISKCON guru and GBC for much of India, Canada, and Russia, whose birthday is celebrated by his reportedly 10,000 disciples during an annual “Vyas Puja” ceremony filled with tributes and lavish festivities, escaped paying for his crime in the U.S. But if you do indeed believe in the laws of karma, his punishment still awaits him. I was, after all, just like you: I thought that my guru (in my case, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada) could do no wrong and I defended him vigorously and loved him dearly. It’s just that like you, I was under-informed and misguided.

Ekayani and Son during ISKCON cult
COPYRIGHT 2016 BLOG AUTHOR

This nightmare of cruelty and cowardice was the culmination of the gross neglect I suffered the hands of Gopal Krishna during my pregnancy. He never wanted a child, obviously. By the time he wrote to our guru defaming me and wanting out of our arranged “marriage,” I was just nineteen and never had a home since leaving my mother’s house two years earlier. I lived in the temple with the single women and, at Gopal Krishna’s insistence, we went to a hotel once a month to “try for a child.” Right, you heard it. During this time he had the temerity to complain to our guru about me and got this reply: 
Your wife has proven turbulent, that is the grace of Krishna. I may inform you in this connection about my family life. Actually, I never liked my wife. I was going to marry another, but my father saved me from the danger and he told me that you do not like your wife, that is the grace of Krishna. So don't be worried about your wife. If she wants to re-marry, let her do so, and you'll be free and I shall give you Sannyas [the renounced order] and you will be preaching freely. 
Letter to Gopal Krishna Dasa, 11 May 1972

Trouble is, I was a few weeks pregnant at the time. After he showed the letter to me, I informed him of my condition, much to his surprise. Shortly thereafter he casually told me that he had called our guru’s personal secretary and asked him if he should take sannyas anyway and that he was told to wait until after the child was born. Imagine! What a cruel, inhuman thing to say to your pregnant, teenaged wife. I still had to live in the temple with the women and eat the spicy, ill-prepared food. When I insisted that Gopal give me $2.00 a week to buy a few cups of yogurt to supplement my diet, he gave it to me grudgingly for a while, all the while calling me a “prostitute” for asking him for the money. 

After a few months, he decided that I should go to India to live with his parents until the child was born, but it was unendurable because their apartment was too small and they barely got along. (Incidently, the claim made by Bhakti Charu Swami that Gopal Krishna was “born into an aristocratic family. . . “is pure hogwash: his parents were a thoroughly respectable sort of people and his father had indeed retired from the Navy, but aristocratic they were not. In addition, the claim that their son was educated at the Sorbonne is nonsense: he took his B.S. in India and a few graduate courses at the Sorbonne in Paris and McGill University in Montreal but never got a graduate degree from either place. These are the facts.)

After I returned to New York I had to go to stay with my mother because there was no other place to live. However, when I went to the temple to see Gopal Krishna, he bluntly informed me that “he had no objection if I had an abortion.” What the hell, I thought. I was aghast and told him so. The dhoti-clad goblin wanted me to kill our unborn child and I was already more than four months pregnant! I told him to go to hell in no uncertain terms. Unfortunately for me, the effects of the ill-treatment I had been suffering for so long caught up with me and before long I was doubled-over in pain, with such severe gastro-intestinal agony that I initially thought was dysentery from my India trip, but, as the tests I underwent proved, were entirely due to extreme stress and misery. It got so bad that I was hospitalized for over a week. I vividly remember how touched I was by the genuine concern and kindness of the attending physician; I simply could not believe that anyone cared about me or how I felt. When Gopal Krishna did visit me in the hospital, he flew into a massive rage, blaming me for getting sick and costing him money for the hospital stay. The nurses came running to my room to see what the matter was, but he just closed the door and continued to yell at me.

After I went back to my mother’s house, I slowly began gaining weight and feeling a bit better. Then one day Gopal shows up and says that he found an apartment near the Brooklyn temple. When I opened the door for the first time, it was clear that it was infested with cockroaches and mice. In addition, although it was a small one bedroom apartment, a sheet covered the living room, which Gopal explained was reserved for our room-mate, a young Indian gentleman. The reason for getting a room-mate was, as he explained, to recoup the cost of my hospitalization. Our room furnishings consisted entirely of one wooden desk chair and a soiled old mattress that someone had given him. No bed, no sheets, not even curtains for the windows. I lived entirely out of my suitcase and kept a few things in plastic milk crates. My mother gave me a few household items and baby clothes, but, really, I had hardly anything. A month before the baby was due, Gopal showed up with a used crib with a broken leg. 

Meanwhile, although he was working at his “karmi” job—he was a Marketing Research Analyst at Pepsi-Co and then at Bristol-Myers at their Clairol division, a junior technical position and nothing more—I never knew anything about what he earned and never saw a paycheck or was privy to any of his financial matters. Even when he filed his taxes each year, he would make me sign the form, while holding his hand over the rest to prevent me from seeing what he earned or was receiving as a refund. As far as I know, most of his earnings went to directly to our guru and some went to his parents. So, why did he try to kill me and my unborn child a few weeks before I was due to give birth? For starters, go to the end of this blog page and read the letter to me from my guru, A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami, at the very end. I will explain the context and offer a full answer for any questions my readers might have in an upcoming blog essay. 


Thanks for your patience and, I hope, your understanding.


A Personal Note to My Readers:

A number of readers have asked about my status as “ Gopal Krishna’s wife,” as if I have not made it perfectly clear in my essays about the subject that the so-called marriage occurred in 1970 and was a marriage in name only. We lived together for less than three years and were legally divorced in 1980. In case you lack the math skills of a small child, that was 41 years ago! Enough already.On a related matter, disciples and other admirers of Gopal Krishna “Goswami” might be interested to know that the honorific “goswami” (instead of “swami”) was applied to him in error. Of course, it doesn’t help that he took the sanyasa order from the convicted murderer Kirtanananda Swami. But it took place in 1981, a year after our legal divorce and eight years after we had separated. Gopal Krishna had been single for years and was thus ineligible for the goswami title. Furthermore, our so-called “spiritual” marriage was also invalid because he and others involved convinced me that our guru Srila Prabhupada had ordered me to marry him. Shortly thereafter, when the disgust and misery of associating with Gopal became insupportable, I got up the nerve to ask my guru if he had in fact ordered me to marry Gopal and he denied having anything to do with it. You cannot imagine how shocked I was, but Gopal, being intent on using me to gratify his vile urges, had no intention of doing the decent thing and getting an annulment. So now— better late than never— you know the truth. 


For more on this matter, see:  

https://iskconcultunveiled.blogspot.com/2016/10/hare-Krishna-hackers-beware.html

.

i] New York State Penal Code 125.25.

All rights reserved. No part of this essay can be reproduced in any medium without the express written consent of the author.

SELF-DIAGNOSIS & THE GURU SYNDROME

If a beggar clad in a saffron robe knocked on your door demanding entry with a sob story about how the food another family fed him gave him a heart attack, would you admit him or direct him to the nearest pharmacy to buy a bottle of antacids? I know what I would do. Hypochondriacs at least do not intend to commit fraud by their habits of self-diagnosis, but the wandering sannyasi clearly does.

This type of emotional appeal to decent people is a favorite tactic of con artists everywhere. The modus operandi is simplicity itself: pose as a representative of a recognized charity or religious order and pull the heart-strings of the target with stories of your selfless devotion to your noble cause and the poverty you have endured in its pursuit. If you are lucky, your target will confide in you and he will receive from you a solemn promise that you will keep any information he divulges strictly confidential. However,  this business is nothing more than an attempt to blackmail a trusting soul. Better be prepared:  once the ruse is discovered, all hell will break loose.

These Indian Wizards of Oz will continue to practice their ruses in the West as long as gullible truth-seekers look to them for easy and exotic pathways to the truth. Legions of such fools have wasted their lives pursuing these illusions, and more seem to come out of nowhere bent on the same foolishness. We are all familiar with the claims of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi camp in the sixties that he could teach them “yogic flying,” which turned out to be nothing more than a matter of a guy in a lotus position jumping up and down on a foam mattress. Wildly exaggerated claims abound; for example, followers of Sri Chinmoy claim that “he has written 1,200 books, 62,000 poems, and 14,000 songs.” What is beyond dispute is that these gurus are two-legged myth-making machines and two-faced liars. Osho Rajneesh gained considerable infamy for calling his disciples “sannyasins” and then encouraging them to satisfy their sexual urges like a bunch of frenzied animals in heat. Secretive illicit sexual connections were widely reported of Sri Chinmoy, and more recently, have characterized the sexual proclivities of the youthful guru Nithyananda.


In the case of the founder of the Hare Krishna movement, his self-diagnosis of the “heart attack” he suffered on the Jaladuta (the ship that he took to travel to the U.S. in 1965 with just a few dollars in his pocket) has become the stuff of legend. Trouble is, the extreme distress some travelers experience due to bad food and turbulence is often mistaken for a heart attack, but it is usually just a severe case of acid reflux. You simply do not suffer a heart attack at an advanced age and get up and walk off the ship with your little suitcase. It might be hard to digest, but it’s the truth.

For a new, related essay, please go to:

https://harekrishnacultexposed.blogspot.com/2015/08/new-eastern-cults-as-incubators-of.html

Also see:

http://www.behind-the-tm-facade.org/Transcendental_Meditation-myths.htm.
.
http://www.salon.com/1999/10/20/osho/.

http://www.deccanherald.com/content/57807/cult-preying-feeding-anxieties.html.


All rights reserved. No part of this essay can be reproduced in any medium without the express written consent of the author. 

OF SCAPEGOATS & SUB-HUMANS: THE NEW DELHI RAPE AND CULTURAL PRIMITIVISM

For sheer brutality, the rape, torture, kidnapping, and murder of a young Indian student in New Delhi last month is astonishing, even in a country known for its ingrained misogyny. Protests continue unabated in India and the topic will continue to rivet the news media world-wide for a long time. The low status of women and the ossified state of the Indian legal system make prosecuting the offenders of such cases (few, unfortunately, are reported) very difficult. Moreover, the current state of affairs is also fundamentally incompatible with the rapid modernization that is sweeping across the sub-continent. One thing is for certain: swarms of morally crippled brutes--of which the monsters who savaged that innocent student are a representative sample—have made life a hell for Indian women who venture outside with or without a male escort. Why are so many young Indian men sliding backwards into a state of feral, sex-crazed savagery and why is it being tolerated?

That religion should ennoble rather than degrade humanity is a noble claim, but history has shown time and again that it is often without warrant. Instead, religious beliefs tend to promote self-serving, irrational notions. One of the worst of these uses what psychologists have termed “transference”; simply put, it is the means by which a culpable party seeks to objectify their moral evils and put the blame for them on an innocent party (usually called the “scapegoat”). This practice, visible in the Judeo-Christian scriptures as well as the Vedic system, is fundamentally a matter of a corrupt and powerful individual or entity seeking to ritually purify the self or group from sins for which they are entirely responsible.

Indian culture is permeated with myths and superstitions that promote the treatment of women as scapegoats. For example, the Laws of Manu claim that

Consuming liquor, association with wicked persons, separation from her husband, rambling around, sleeping for unreasonable hours and dwelling -are six demerits of women (9.13).i

So, if a woman is “rambling around,” how to control her? The answer, as the slavering beasts in New Delhi have shown the world, is to degrade her. Worse, people who otherwise seem models of propriety have sought to export these warped ideas to the West, usually under the guise of teaching the“degraded West” the Vedic system. Many examples abound, but speaking from my own experience as an early Hare Krishna follower of Bhaktivedanta Swami, this is a familiar and highly distressing pattern. The general tactic is disarmingly simple: praise men for their alleged intellectual and moral superiority and attack women for being dull, lustful temptresses. It amazed me when I was a young teenager to see how readily educated European and American men fell for this nonsense and so I was not in the least surprised to see how Indian men have reverted to using young women as scapegoats for their irrelevance and insecurities. As one commenter to today’s Wall Street Journal writes:

It's high time that these animals get over their gender bias and act like men, instead of sex crazed animals. Further, there ought to be severe penalties.ii

Indeed, but what penalties would be severe enough? The rapists who did the unthinkable to such a fine, intelligent young girl anyone would be proud to call a daughter or sister should be executed after a speedy trial. Enough of dragging out the legal process for decades. Like it or not, gropers will soon find their hands and fingers cut off and others will get doused with pepper spray. In my opinion, the pen might be mightier than the sword, but, in a pinch, the sword will do just fine.

http://nirmukta.com/2011/08/27/the-status-of-women-as-depicted-by-manu-in-the-manusmriti/ This website is an excellent resource for any rational analysis of Hinduism, even for believers.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323482504578227751166162988.html?mod=WSJ_article_comments#articleTabs%3Dcomments.

All rights reserved. No part of this essay can be reproduced in any medium without the express written consent of the author.

LOTUS DREAMS AND CULT ILLUSIONS

No symbol of Eastern mysticism is as easily recognizable as the lotus, with its petals giving shape to the eyes of innumerable deities and its long stem rising high above other aquatic flowers in sublime isolation. The sight of a group of these pink, white, and (rarely) blue beauties is enough to lull one into a trance, an effect only heightened by the saffron pollen glistening on a disk at the center of each whorl of lotus petals. Less known, however, is the habit of this plant to colonize wetlands to such an extent that oxygen is sharply reduced and fish have a reduced survival rate. Too much lotus can mean too little life.


Similarly, the expression “to eat lotus” meaning “to forget” is derived from Western mythology, specifically the passage in Book 9 of Homer’s Odyssey when the Greek hero Odysseus lands on an island inhabited by a tribe that eats lotus for its narcotic effects. When his crew eats the lotus, he finds they become forgetful to the extent that they wish to stay where they are and must be forced to return to the ship. Whether the plant in question is the lotus or opium poppy is unimportant. Life is a journey fraught with perils and difficulties, but using anything that promotes delusions and forgetfulness is a meandering walk to a steep cliff.

Hardened cultists are all perched on this cliff of delusion, holding on to each other as they are buffeted by the winds of reason and commonsense. Why do they continue to adhere to nonsensical beliefs and devotion to so-called gurus and other cult leaders, even in the face of overwhelming evidence that they have been swindled mercilessly? I believe that this phenomenon has its roots in the years they have lost and their inability to fill this void without a new set of role models. Parents who abandoned their children to cults rarely accept responsibility for their actions anyway. The gurus who were treated as if both gods and parents were most often vicious charlatans better off forgotten like the bones dogs bury in fields littered with feces and vermin.

Some ISKCON cultists have lost their childhoods, teenage and young adult years and find themselves in a desperate state when necessity drives them to the outside world. Poor education, irrational beliefs about the universe and human relations prove an overwhelming obstacle to many. Years of expensive therapy are needed in most cases, but how to afford it? No wonder so many ex-cult members return to the cult like dogs to their vomit: they simply feel they have nowhere else to go. The job isn’t merely to get one; it is to start thinking for yourself with a vengeance.

Admit that everything you are entitled to as a human being might not be possible for you to re-capture and then focus on those matters you feel are most conducive to your happiness and well-being. For once, you decide.

On a lighter note and in a related train of thought:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PkcfQtibmU

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this essay can be reproduced in any medium without the express written consent of the author.

THE GITA AND RUSSIA: ANOTHER ISKCON PUBLIC RELATIONS SCAM

The Indian and Russian people have been the victims of a public relations scam orchestrated by a sect masquerading as Hindus. Known as ISKCON (International Society for Krishna Consciousness) and for their street chanting and opulent temples both in India and in the West, this sect/cult is controlled by swamis who see nothing wrong with meddling in Indian politics as a means to legitimize their operations. Their recent alliance with the VHP (Vishnu Hindu Parishad, a fundamentalist Indian movement) regarding the alleged “banning” of the Bhagavad Gita in Russia illustrates this point. This tempest-in-a-teapot is nothing more than a transparent ploy on the part of ISKCON to abuse Hindu religious sentiment and thereby force the authorities in Moscow and Tomsk to agree to their temple and community building demands.

• Far from banning the Gita: in Tomsk, Russia, the court order filed on 30 June, 2011, only concerned part of the translation by ISKCON’s founder, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami. Although this action was supposedly taken at the behest of the local Russian Orthodox Church, the real factor is believed to be a ban the same year of an ISKCON community in that region and also the matter of governmental opposition to erection of a large temple in Moscow. Why did a small part of a translation of a Hindu scripture catch the attention of the authorities in Tomsk at this particular juncture of events? And why did ISKCON try its best to use this minor issue to turn Indian legislators against Russia, one of its most steadfast allies? Instead of encouraging all parties to consider the evidence like rational human beings, the ISKCON leaders exploited the sentiments of Hindus in a ploy to turn them into an angry, seething mob.

• A letter dated 1 November 2011 written by Gopal Krishna Goswami (ISKCON “governing body commissioner” for much of Russia and India) and addressed to Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s principal secretary and a copy of which was sent to Sonia Gandhi and External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna, repeated the court’s assessment by a panel of experts that “Krishna is evil and not compatible with Christian values.” Why this claim was made and what passages in the Gita might have instigated this assessment are never referred to; indeed, the ISKCON public relations machine took this claim and used it to inflame anti-Russian sentiment by Hindus over the world by treating this court order as a wholesale war on Hinduism by the Russian government.

• Facts: The Bhagavad Gita is a philosophical treatise composed between 200 BC and 200 CE; it consists of 700 verses in eighteen chapters and concerns the conversation between the warrior Arjuna and his charioteer, Lord Krishna (the incarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu). It is itself a part of the great Indian epic poem, the Mahabharata. Although many scholars regard it as an allegory, the ISKCON movement takes it literally and places it as occurring approximately 5000 years ago. The translation by A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami includes his commentaries after each verse. It is some of these commentaries that incited the court order last year in Tomsk, Russia.

Understanding the situation of Arjuna in the Gita is essential to understanding why the panel of experts cited by the court in Tomsk claimed that “Krishna is evil and not compatible with Christian values.” The action begins with Arjuna’s inaction, for, just as the great battle of Kurukshetra was about to begin, he had his chariot parked between the two parties, one of which consisted of his own tribe, the Pandavas, and the other of his 100 cousins, the Kauravas. In other words, this was a giant fratricidal war. Arjuna was simply overwhelmed with grief at the thought of slaying so many of his relatives and at this juncture Krishna advises him for much of the poem on his duties as a member of the kshatriya, or warrior caste. Among the most famous and, for our purposes, most relevant passages in the Gita occur in Chapter Two and are quoted below using the translation in question and a brief excerpt of the commentary on each verse by A.C.Bhaktivedanta Swami:

• Chapter Two, Verse 26: “If, however, you think that the soul is perpetually born and always dies, still you still have no reason to lament, O mighty-armed.”

Commentary: “No one laments the loss of a certain bulk of chemicals and stops discharging his prescribed duties.”

• Chapter Two, Verse 27: “For one who has taken his birth, death is certain; and for one who is dead, birth is certain. Therefore, in the unavoidable discharge of your duty, you should not lament.”

Commentary: “Why should be afraid of or aggrieved at the death of his relatives since he was discharging his proper duty?”

The problem with these verses and their commentary from a Western point of view should be obvious: what philosophy Krishna is expounding here is based on reincarnation and the caste system. Although few would deny that the Indian caste system is a social abomination that has used and still uses the idea of birthright to elevate others while subjugating and degrading vast numbers of its people, the commentary goes further by treating the verses as examples of philosophical nihilism.

Today, reading these commentaries, I am reminded of Stalin’s famous observation that “a single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.” Indeed, the number of enemy combatants Arjuna reportedly killed during only day 14 of the 18-day war was 109,350. Of course, this is all fantasy out of an epic poem, but the point is clear if you are a follower of ISKCON and believe it to be literally true: mass slaughter is a great glory as long as you are doing your “proper duty.”

If that point of view is not evil, what is? How can grief at the loss of life during war be a sign of weakness and, worse, how can a human body be considered “a certain bulk of chemicals?” It seems that the Indian legislators who were whipped into a frenzy at the thought of a far-flung Russian community banning only one of the many translations of the Bhagavad Gita should have sat down and actually read the passages in question. However, like so many people who claim pride in their religion’s scriptures, few apparently took the time to actually read what they are defending.

Finally, I would like to close with a quotation from the 1 November, 2011 letter I referred to earlier in this essay: "We fear this unprecedented attack will trigger rampant bigotry and would unwittingly make it difficult for the Indian government to be seen fostering security, defence, political and economic ties with an intolerant and oppressive society."

Gopal Krishna Goswami need not fear any such reactions from either the Indian or Russian peoples regarding his guru’s commentaries on the Bhagavad Gita. Rather, what he and ISKCON should fear is that all this attention will lead many of those involved or appealed to in this case to actually read the passages in question and see for themselves what irrational, inhumane, and bigoted dogma they truly are. Banning is hardly needed; all the Russians need to do is insert a warning to each reader at the beginning of each book and be done with the whole business.

For more about ISKCON as an intolerant cult, please see the entries in this blog entitled, “Islamic Tribalism, Converts,and Terror: the Case of Russia," "The ISKCON Vedic Cultural Center Hoax," and also my website: https://iskconcultunveiled.blogspot.com.

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HARE KRISHNA MATING RITUAL REVEALED

"I was rotting in my household life." 
A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, Room Conversation, Bombay, 21 Sept. 1973.

It has often been observed that the stricter the religious sect, the more obsessed it is about sexuality. This is most certainly the case with the Hare Krishna devotees. Of the four “regulative principles” whose practice is required of all aspiring and initiated ISKCON followers, the most onerous is the one banning any sexual activity not specifically intended for procreation. Furthermore, according to the direct instructions of the founder of ISKCON, A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami (“Srila Prabhupada”), privacy was out of the question as to when the conception might take place: the married couple intending to “try for a child” would have to appear before the congregation in the temple in the morning and announce that they would be doing so that night. 

If that were not indignity enough, both partners were required to spend the day chanting 64 rounds of the Hare Krishna mantra on their japa beads, which means that they would be rapidly mumbling it for a total of 6,912 times. In practice, this is a sort of self-brain washing ritual designed to rid the mind of any anticipation for the act to follow, which, in any case, was supposed to be limited to one fast act during which the couple was supposed to be chanting Hare Krishna anyway. Artificial insemination would have been far more humane.

HARE KRISHNA/ISKCON MATING RULES ARE EVEN WORSE

The process soon became the butt of jokes and whispers among many devotees because of the sheer ludicrousness of the situation: since you were supposed to think only of Krishna during the brief copulation, couples were sometimes overheard frantically chanting the mantra during the minute or so that the man was supposed to muster an erection to shove into a woman who might as well have been in a coma. If pregnancy did occur as a result of this indignity, the woman was expected to return to the brahmacharini (unmarried women) ashram, take her rest on a sleeping bag on the floor like everybody else, eat the same food (except for an increased milk allowance), and then give birth in a municipal hospital with the bills paid by Medicaid or another medical welfare program paid for by hard-working taxpayers.


For the excuses and some outcomes of these sick practices, please see: https://iskconcultunveiled.blogspot.com/2016/01/sex-lies-and-sadhu-making.html


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THE ISKCON "VEDIC CULTURAL CENTER" HOAX

It is no secret that the Indian Cultural Society operating here in the U.S. and the venerable Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan in India are Hindu in orientation, despite their purported mission to showcase and preserve Indian culture. The approximately 180 million Indian Muslims might have an issue with this and justifiably so. However, since Hinduism is the indigenous religion of the Indian sub-continent, the organizations representing Indian culture have wisely focused on the arts and community values, particularly in their outreach to the NRI (Non-Resident Indian) population. There is simply no comparable Indian Muslim counterpart to these types of organizations either in India or abroad and that fact brings me to the topic of this posting.

Here in New York City we have recently concluded our tenth commemoration of the terrorist attacks on September 11th. While at the time it was unavoidable given the circumstances, the mosques and religious schools attended by Muslims living in this country have been the subjects of intense scrutiny since then. No matter what the reason, alienating an immigrant group distinguished by its widely-admired work ethic and strong family values does not come without a price.

How foolish, then, is the ISKCON cult’s brazen co-opting of the “Indian Cultural Society” and "Vedic Cultural Society" labels to hoodwink Indians (both resident and non-resident) into spending their hard-earned cash to fund the spread of a belief system that most would find both repugnant and illogical. So, instead of the temple in question bearing the name of the resident deities (e.g.,“Sri Sri Radha Govinda Mandir”), you have the “ISKCON Hawaii Cultural Center,” or in Pune, India, the “New Vedic Cultural Center.” Unbelievably, in Almaty, Kazakhstan, ISKCON has established an “Indian Cultural Center” despite the fact the NRI population in the entire country is less than 1,500! How can it make any sense to try to convince the people of Kazakhstan that they need to emulate Indian cultural values?

The practice of changing the name of a controversial group to blend in with reputable organizations is a guerrilla warfare tactic that is commonly referred to as “hiding in plain sight.” It is a simple ruse that, among other things, helps the group in question to evade detection and evaluation by governmental agencies and the general public. In education, matters are as bad or worse. For example, ISKCON runs a “Vedic Cultural Center” in Sammamich, Washington, that contains a "planetarium" which is nothing more than a view of the universe from a profoundly anti-science Vaishnava perspective. Schools run by the Hare Krishna group world-wide share this fault of educating students to pass the government-administered tests while teaching them a view of the universe which adheres to a literal Vedic model which is primitive and, frankly, ridiculous. This view includes such howlers such as the belief that “Vedic” astronomy teaches us that the Earth is a disk supported by four elephants in space and that the moon is an inhabited “heavenly” planet.

Moreover, despite having spread these beliefs in the West, the founder of ISKCON, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami, never regarded his organization as a form of Hinduism. I can tell you that this is true from my experience in the 13 years I spent in the Hare Krishna movement. In fact, the swami never observed the typical Hindu festivals of Holi or Deepavali in our temples and viewed the devotion many Hindus feel for Shiva, Ganesh, and Durga as mere demigod worship. I also know that he would have also regarded the re-naming of temples to blend into the Indian Cultural Center model with indignant anger and disbelief. Better stop all of this subversive business and admit that using all of this imitation and flattery to pick the pockets of sincere Indians yearning for a taste of the mother country is a cruel joke.

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CULT DIETARY RESTRICTIONS: THE EXAMPLE OF ISKCON




One of the most laughable and irrational dietary restrictions I had to follow as a Hare Krishna devotee--beyond the prohibition against eating meat, fish, and eggs--involved shunning garlic and onions. We were told that these naturally pungent bulbs grew only in "dirty" conditions and also have a nasty side effect of making one more passionate. I remember blushing violently when I repeated this nonsense to a Sunday feast guest, who immediately told me that I was talking absolute nonsense. He was right of course, but at the time I repeated this irrational garbage like a sari-clad puppet. Truth is, I never really believed in the prohibitions against garlic and onions, particularly after we were told that a good substitution is asafoetida ("hing" and here's where things get really nasty.

For one thing, asafoetida is a sulfurous gum resin that is usable as a spice in tiny amounts and only after it has been browned. Otherwise, it has a fetid and rather disgusting smell, much like a huge trove of rancid gym room sneakers festering in a hot locker room. This was the stuff we used to season much of our soups and vegetables, which only goes to show what lengths people will go to when deprived of their garlic and onions.

However, that's not the worst of it: the sad truth is that no other plant ingredient has a longer history in the preparation of black magic potions than asafoetida (which is one reason it is also known as the "devil's herb"). It also has medicinal properties, though nothing to compare with the health benefits of onions and garlic. The idea that these foods are non-Sattvic is derived from the conception of the three gunas (sattva, rajas, and tamas, representing goodness, passion, and darkness, respectively). These were originally representative of innate qualities and linked to the Hindu trinity of Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva in their capacities as Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer (Maitrayaniya Upanishad). Furthermore, the Bhagavad Gita (17:2) treats the three gunas as innate qualities of individuals, which is treated by some commentators--Swami Dayananda Saraswati is a famous example--as proof that the spiritual preceptor, ignoring the caste of the parents, should assign a caste to a student upon completion of gurukula training based on his knowledge of the child's innate qualities.

The link to diet came much later with the concept of the Ayurvedic diet, which advocates foods considered to promote Sattvic qualities and proscribes foods that are considered to encourage lower tendencies. Here we enter into the realm of folklore and magic. It is understandable, given the great antiquity of Vedic culture, but personal experience and reason should step in at this point and assert themselves, for who else can attest to these qualities affecting a person but the man or woman ingesting the food in question? We know for example, that onions are ubiquitous in Indian cooking and that India is the world's leading exporter of onions. If onions and garlic had such debilitating effects on the Indian people, they would have run riot years ago and destroyed themselves in a vast onion and garlic precipitated holocaust.

So much for forsaking garlic and onions; instead of eating these healthful foods, we spent years eating a spice whose use is almost universally regarded as an important part of black magic potions and smells abominable into the bargain. Better eat with your health in mind and judge for yourself what is in your best interests.

Still undecided? Please seehttps://iskconcultunveiled.blogspot.com/2016/11/iskcon-and-indignities-rational-look-at.html.
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ISKCON AND THE SIN OF GREED, Pt. 2

Although the whole “Maharani” episode was ridiculous from start to finish, one incident has remained fresh in my memory. It happened on the occasion of a reception I held for Taittiriya (Maharani’s initiated name) and her husband Bali Mardan at our apartment at the corner of Kane and Henry Streets. At the time she sported a fair-sized bulge in her abdomen, which she asserted was a multiple pregnancy. This claim was highly disputed:how could this hag (she could have been anywhere between 40-55, but to me, a 20-year old mother, the thought of anyone her age pregnant or claiming to be pregnant was simply—no pun intended—inconceivable) with her veiny hands and seamed face be slated to become the mother of a bunch of babies? Maybe, I thought, she is wearing a pillow under her sari or has bunched up the part one tucks in to resemble a belly? So, imagine my raised eyebrows when she told me matter-of-factly that our guru Prabhupada told her that the four fetuses she was allegedly carrying were four incarnations of Vishnu, each with four arms. The thought of sixteen arms waving about inside of her was funny beyond words, but I kept a rapt facial expression once I heard that it was Prabhupada who told her that bit of lunacy. Crazily enough, I never doubted the veracity of her account; however, I also knew beyond question that the old bird had been taken for a ride.

Before long it was clear to us that Taittiriya had been initiated by Prabhupada (in Los Angeles in 12/73) and married shortly thereafter by the scheming hypocrite Bali Mardan for the express purpose of getting at her money. Remember, those were the days when ISKCON devotees were ubiquitous in airports, conniving the public into buying literature that was in most cases almost immediately thrown into the trash. So the prospect of tolerating the antics of this shriveled brown monkey--whose effrontery and hauteur were driving most of us into the trees ourselves—was really no big deal. Yet something was profoundly wrong in the monkey house:there were no babies and, you guessed it, no money. How Prabhupada reacted to this state of affairs is clear from his letters. Here’s an excerpt from a letter he wrote to Taittiriya shortly before her ruse was discovered:

I have got very good respect for Japanese people. So far I have met the Japanese boys and girls in our temple here, they are so well behaved that I was astonished that they were more respectful than my direct disciples. (September 15, 1974)

But after it became plain that she was penniless, his reaction was quite different. Here is an excerpt of a letter dated November 28, 1974 that Prabhupada wrote to my spineless ex-“husband” Gopal Krishna in response to letter he wrote acting as if he had discovered Taittireya’s ruse:

She is old, like great grandmother. Because you are a devotee you could not tolerate the nonsense.

In fact, it was only after my continual urging to do something about the scandal at the temple and after the scandal was common knowledge that Gopal—a black-hearted villain if there ever was one—wrote to Prabhupada acting as if the discovery was his. Regardless, you can draw your own conclusions about this account of a cult’s greed and immorality without my pointing out the obvious. One thing is certain: Maharani was clearly an example of one who, to paraphrase Shakespeare, was more sinned against than sinning.

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