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.

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.

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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.

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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

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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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