THE ISKCON GURU-FAKING BUSINESS

What makes a guru a fake? Let me count the ways: 

Trashing the reputation of other gurus or religious figures with unsubstantiated lies and innuendo, while advancing himself as the most authentic and divinely inspired sadhu alive. 

Expertise in aliening impressionable youth from family and friends and replacing them with cult sycophants whose initial welcome turns into a hell-hole of food and sleep deprivation as well as semi-slavery.

Initiating hordes of fanatic, ignorant disciples and using them as human pack mules to fool gullible truth-seekers with get-enlightened-quick fantasies?

Gang-related activities including harassment of and conspiracy to silence dissenters, whether by beatings, threats, or murder?[i]

Child abuse consisting of, but not limited to parental alienation, loss of childhood, rape and beatings, and abysmal educational quality.[ii]

Ridiculous, contrived belief system full of pseudo-scientific nonsense and vicious, bold-faced discrimination against women and minorities. 

Fraudulent fund-raising tactics?[iii] 

INTRODUCTION

If you think that any or all of these practices are acceptable so long as the guru’s followers give out free food to the poor[iv], WELCOME to ISKCON! 

Before you take out your checkbook or credit card, you might appreciate some background information about the grinning cultists who seem bent on convincing the public that they are “more Hindu than Hindus.”[v] 

In the words of the group’s founder, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami: “although posing as great scholars, ascetics, householders and swamis, the so-called followers of the Hindu religion are all useless, dried-up branches of the Vedic religion.”

This essay will establish beyond a reasonable doubt that it is ISKCON, not Hinduism, which misrepresents “Vedic religion.”

The proliferation of Indian gurus in the West and the rise of the cults of the 1960’s and 1970’s surged due to the hippie culture’s fascination with Eastern mysticism. The Beatles, for example, were initially entranced by the late founder of Transcendental Meditation (TM), Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (d. 2007), and out of them, George Harrison retained his interest in Hinduism, but transferred it from TM to the Hare Krishna sect also known as the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON). 

Other practitioners of what Meera Nanda terms “neo-Hinduism”[vi]during the same period include Sathya Sai Baba and Sri Chinmoy, both of whom still have large groups of followers in India and the West. The influence of all these groups waned considerably after the 1970’s and their international reputation also suffered, fueled in most cases by allegations of sexual impropriety. TM has been the most influential in popular culture: its practices of meditation as a religiously-neutral means of self-improvement largely fueled the West’s ongoing interest in New Age religion and disciples such as Deepak Chopra have lent it a veneer of legitimacy that continues to this day.

ANTI-HINDU SCAM ARTISTS

This year marks the 50th anniversary of Bhaktivedanta Swami’s coming to New York City in 1966 and founding the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. By registering his sect a religious nonprofit, the swami now had the means to accept tax-free donations and open temples as a means to proselytize to Westerners as well as the nonresident Indian population. A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami was an unusually charismatic preacher in an age of numerous competitors. This one-time Calcutta businessman used his marketing acumen and keen sense of the spiritual vacuum affecting Western youths in the hippie era to build in little more than a decade a world-wide organization consisting of thousands of disciples and many temples on a grand scale. 

However, few of the Hindus who throng ISKCON temples and support their programs know that the sect’s founder, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami, never considered the Hare Krishna movement to be Hindu at all. The following are a number of statements Bhaktivedanta made in reference to Hinduism:

The Krishna consciousness movement has nothing to do with the Hindu religion or any system of religion.... One should clearly understand that the Krishna consciousness movement is not preaching the so-called Hindu religion."[vii]

India, they have given up the real religious system, Sanatana Dharma. Fictitiously, they have accepted a hodgepodge thing which is called Hinduism. Therefore there is trouble.

Bhavan’s Journal. 28 June 1976.

We are not preaching Hindu religion. While registering the association, I purposely kept this name, 'Krishna Consciousness,' neither Hindu religion nor Christian nor Buddhist religion.

Lecture on Bhagavad Gita, Mumbai. 1974.

During the years following their guru’s demise in 1977, the disciples of A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami (many now gurus themselves), reversed his position on Hinduism as they grew more and more dependent on the wealth of the Hindu community both in India and abroad. Instead of denouncing Hinduism, they used the affection the Hindu public tends to feel for the folklore of the butter-stealing, witch-killing, and gopi-loving Krishna and conflated it with the teachings of the philosopher-chariot driver of the Bhagavad Gita. The message was clear: Gaudiya (Bengali) Vaishnavism, with its Hare Krishna mantra chanting and world-wide presence, is what Hinduism should be.

 CROSS-DRESSING BENGALI BRAHMIN AS RADHA/KRISHNA COMBINED?

Magnifying his own role as a self-proclaimed “pure devotee” in a lineage of Gaudiya (Bengali) Vaishnava gurus from Chaitanya Mahaprabhu (1486-1584) to himself was Swami Bhaktivedanta’s chief public relations strategy. The term “Bhakti Yoga” led people to assume that the swami was popularizing just another strand of Hinduism as his predecessors had done. In fact, he intended to supplant them all. For Bhaktivedanta, this meant teaching his followers that he was the latest and greatest guru in the Gaudiya Vaishnava Sampradaya, which he claimed was established by Chaitanya himself and consisted of "pure devotees."

His modus operandi was to initiate as many Americans and other Westerners as his disciples and send them out to open temples where he and his followers would spread Chaitanya’s worship of Radha Krishna by chanting the Hare Krishna mantra and dancing in front of opulently dressed murtis. Yes, superficially it appears to be based on the tiny Gaudiya Vaishnava sect, which worships the cowherd incarnation of Vishnu, Krishna, and claims that Caitanya Mahaprabhu, a 16th century Bengali proponent of Bhakti-Yoga, was an incarnation of Krishna and Radha combined. What sets the Hare Krishna movement apart at first glance is its aggressive marketing tactics and habit of actively seeking converts among non-Indians

Visitors were soon thronging to ISKCON temples to be dazzled by the sheer spectacle of so many gorgeously dressed and decorated murtis of Radha and Krishna, along with the Jagganath idols of Puri and a grouping of five dhoti-clad men whom the devotees explained were murtis of the Bengali saint Chaitanya and his associates. Accustomed as they are to the profusion of murtis such as Durga, Shiva, Vishnu, and Hanuman in Hindu temples, few visitors to the Hare Krishna temples would have realized that Chaitanya, whose devotion to the Radha-Krishna legends and popularization of congregational chanting (“kirtan”) is undeniable, was also the cross-dressing leader of a cabal of Bengali Brahmins with similar practices and tendencies. If not for the reverence that Hindu culture still holds for high-born Brahmins, there is little chance of the Gaudiya Vaishnava contention that Chaitanya was the incarnation of Radha and Krishna together not having been greeted with laughter and derision as it is a transparent denial of his behavior as a gopi-bhava afflicted transvestite.[viii]

INSULTS TO RAMAKRISHNA PARAMHAMSA & SWAMI VIVEKANANDA

Furthermore, what would Indian political luminaries—the current Prime Minister, Narendra Modi comes to mi nd-- if they knew how the founder of the Hare Krishna movement derided the achievements of the Hindu saints who traveled to the West many years before he set foot in New York in 1966. His hostile and ill-informed comments about Ramakrishna Paramhamsa and Swami Vivekananda Swami are prime examples of Bhaktivedanta’s predilection to trash the reputation of the predecessors who cleared the way for him. For example, during one of his “Morning Walks” (08/01/1976), he claimed that the Ramakrishna Mission was “simply bogus propaganda” and “they picked up two American ladies, that’s all.”

A worse combination of envy and breath-taking ignorance is hard to imagine. Perhaps Bhaktivedanta Swami might have benefitted from reading the words of Dayananda Saraswati, who in the Ten Principles of the Arya Samaj wrote that “all actions should be performed with the prime objective of benefitting mankind.” As for his charge that Vivekananda “picked up two American ladies,” Bhaktivedanta could have learned from his example. In this regard, it is well-known that the initiates of the Ramakrishna Mission are all celibates, sanyasins as well women. Vivekananda Swami regarded celibacy highly and his example continues to inspire millions of Indians dedicated to a morally and militarily strong India, including Narendra Modi himself.

FRAUD AND FALSE PROMISES: MAKING "THE ENDS JUSTIFY THE MEANS"

Bhaktivedanta Swami, on the other hand, valued quantity far over quality in the choice of his disciples and thus quickly accepted as his disciples young men and women who knew next to nothing about his philosophy or personal history. These impressionable youths were simply entranced by the exoticism of Eastern religions that was one of the many escapist fantasies popular during the hippie era of the 60’s and 70’s. That he abused their trust and held them in low esteem was apparent from the beginning.

I remember attending initiation ceremonies where mentally-ill individuals scarcely able to control themselves were initiated as disciples and was appalled at how quickly the dealings between men and women deteriorated due to the poisonous effects of our guru’s absurd and vacuous beliefs about the inferiority of women.

The hastily patched together arranged marriages the swami recommended soon began to fail miserably and the children born of these hellish relationships were taken away after a few years and dumped in gurukulas where their sufferings and abuse left many scarred for life.[ix] After he died in 1977, he left eleven of his disciples to manage ISKCON and initiate disciples on his behalf (a sure sign that he regarded those he so carefully trained as unfit to act as gurus). In short order, they and others sprang to action to take his place and all hell broke lose, with more mayhem and criminality than I can possibly treat in this essay.

Suffice to say, fraud reared its ugly head and infected the Hare Krishna movement from the schools (“gurukulas”), the abuse of government-provided welfare benefits to provide for housing, food, and medical care the cult would not provide, and a highly scripted method of “distributing books” which was nothing more than method to part fools from their cash. These books the ISKCON zombies peddled were advertised as the swami’s translations of puranic literature such as the Bhagavad Gita and Bhagwat Purana (“Srimad Bhagavatam”), but were in fact pastiches of plagiarized translations of other editions as well as the efforts of a few of his own disciples who self-taught themselves rudimentary Sanskrit.

Before long it became obvious that formal fund-raising techniques had to be employed and the main target, as I mentioned near the beginning of this essay, was and is the educated and prosperous Hindu community in India and abroad. However, this pattern of what I call “guru-faking” was not limited to ISKCON and has continued to grow, adapting itself to different conditions while the followers of these gurus have begun to appear more like nascent terrorists than the naïve thrill-seekers of my own generation.

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[i] http://www.nytimes.com/1991/03/30/us/religious-leader-convicted-of-us-charges.html.

[ii] http://www.dallasobserver.com/news/tortured-souls-6394890. Also see: http://www.icsahome.com/articles/authoritarian-culture-and-child-abuse-in-iskcon.

For a refutation of the idea that child abuse has ceased in modern-day ISKCON gurukulas, see:

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/agra/Iskcon-devotee-held-for-assaulting-kids/articleshow/46246724.cms. and http://www.harekrsna.com/sun/editorials/03-16/editorials13730.htm.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvlRAyM3p4Q.

[iii] http://neworleanscitybusiness.com/blog/2011/08/17/local-hare-krishna-group-will-reconsider-its-aggressive-party-patrol-tactics/. For a recent decision on ISKCON’s well-known harassment of travelers at airports, see: http://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2014/08/20/12-56621.pdf. For a useful list from the 1980’s to 1999, see: http://www.icsahome.com/articles/iskcon-in-the-news-cult-observer-1984-1999.

[iv] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/indiahome/indianews/article-2763798/Up-35-students-hospitalised-Bangalore-DEAD-LIZARD-mid-day-meals-causes-food-poisoning.html. http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/bangalore/it-was-not-the-dead-lizard/article6439198.ece.  See also: http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/64-students-fall-sick-after-consuming-mid-day-meal-in-up. Akshaya Patra is run by the ISKCON Bangalore faction of ISKCON, a dissident group that follows the Ritvik policy of initiating disciples on behalf of the founder of the Hare Krishna movement, who died in 1977. This food relief program dwarfs the ISKCON Food Relief program headquartered and run by their enemies from Mumbai. Regarding ISKCON Food Relief, see: http://www.dnaindia.com/mumbai/report-iskcon-to-face-inquiry-into-food-poisoning-vinod-tawde-2189331.

[v] The issue of whether the ISKCON sect can be considered Hindu was decisively answered in the negative by its founder/acharya  A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami. For a useful summary of the supporting documentation, see the Hinduism Today Magazine  article entitled, “Can it be that the Hare Krishnas are not Hindu”?  http://www.hinduismtoday.com/modules/smartsection/item.php?itemid=4499.

[vi] Nanda, Meera. “Postmodernism, Hindu Nationalism, and ‘Vedic Science’.” http://frontlineonnet.com/fl2026/stories/20040102000607800.htm.

[vii] The Science of Self-Realization. 1977 Chapter three.

[viii] See Sri Caitanya Mangala, 2.9 and the numerous description in the Caitanya Caritamrta (2.15-16; 2.18 112-119 and 203-208. Sri Caitanya’s associates appearing on his sides in the temple murtis are Advaita, Srinivasa, Nityananda Rama, and Gadadhara Pandit, each of whom Caitanya regarded as incarnations of various members of the Radha Krishna and gopi legends.

[ix] Please see my essays on this subject: https://iskconcultunveiled.blogspot.com/2016/01/monsters-and-marriage-iskcons-legacy-of.html,

ISKCON AND ITS DISCONTENTS: LIES & SPIES

The ability of a cult to camouflage itself is an integral part of its survival. Controlling dissidents and blunting the effects of criticism are also priorities. Confronted with an uncomfortable truth, cult leaders often adopt the defense strategy of a poisonous blow fish that puffs itself up to appear bigger than it actually is. 

"WHO MAKES US IGNORANT? WE OURSELVES.
WE PUT OUR HANDS OVER OUR EYES AND
WEEP THAT IT IS DARK."

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA

In addition to blending in and trying to appear disproportionately threatening, cults have infiltrated dissident websites in an effort to control, intimidate, and learn the identity of critics. From a practical viewpoint, dissidents who limit their criticism to chatting with other like-minded ex-cult members on a website will also be less likely to engage in actions that might prove embarrassing to the cult. In this way, even the therapeutic value of discussing one’s misfortunes becomes another tool of cult subversion.

Before I discuss some of the tactics the Hare Krishna/ISKCON cult uses in this regard, I would like to take a moment to discuss a similar pattern in two other major cults that arose to prominence during the 1960's and 1970's and have remained highly influential and controversial.

The Unification Church (“the Moonies”) has diligently worked to transform its image from a family of spiritual autocrats to all-American hyper-conservatives, founding the influential Washington Times newspaper and acquiring United Press International (UPI), among many other business interests. This is a far cry from a cult whose early enthusiasts were known for selling roses by the side of the road. However, these public relation schemes are like a tight, gaudy costume worn by a fat exotic potentate: if he runs too fast, it rips off, exposing his hideous nakedness to the laughter of the general public. 

Examples abound: who can forget the filing of false Federal income tax returns and charges of conspiracy that led to the conviction and imprisonment of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon in 1984? Given the literature and videos meticulously exposing the contrast between the practices and actual beliefs of these and other cults established during the mid-to late 20th century, why do they continue to attract new recruits and what can be done about it?

A few years ago I came upon a website that strongly criticized the Hare Krishna/ISKCON cult’s views about and treatment of women using direct quotations from the teachings of its founder, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. A few things about the website bothered me, however. For one thing, the graphics used were of an unusually high caliber and it also contained a number of direct links to a number of authorized ISKCON websites. What the hell? Apart from the quotations that were concentrated at the bottom of the webpage, most postings resembled Facebook entries written by a punk-rock addicted teenage girl. Before long, as the saying goes, I smelled a rat.

PLEASE HELP SUPPORT THIS WEBSITE!

 

The clues soon began adding up: how else can you explain the bold-faced links to ISKCON temple along with the site’s obvious maintenance and graphics expenditures? Although I contributed a few comments myself, before long I had the distinct feeling that visitors to this site were being taken for fools. Not surprisingly, in short order I learned that the website host, whom we all thought was an ex-devotee woman, was in fact a man. The website soon disappeared and good riddance. However, it was just the beginning.

Why, you might ask, would leaders—most probably initiating gurus-- of the Hare Krishna cult engage in subverting the authority of its founder/acharya in such a brazen manner? The answer is two-fold: unlike the vast majority of ISKCON devotees and the mostly Hindu community that make up the bulk of its donors, the present-day gurus of the movement are well-versed in the lectures, speeches, and commentaries of A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. They also know that his preposterous and ill-informed notions about race, women, and so-called "Vedic Science" cannot survive rational scrutiny. For instance, his notion of slavery as the ideal state for blacks and women:

19 March, 1976, Mayapura, India:

Prabhupāda:  And the women are declaring, “independent.” They are begging door to door to a man, “Please give me shelter. Give me a child,” and they’re independent. One American woman, was…. She was speaking that “In India, the woman are treated as slave. We don’t want.” So I told her that it is better to become slave of one person than to slave of become hundreds. (laughter) The woman must become a slave. So instead of becoming slaves of so many persons, it is better to remain satisfied, a slave of one person. . . . And our Vedic civilization says, narī-rūpa pati-vratam: “The woman is beautiful when she remains as a slave to the husband.” That is the beauty, not the personal beauty. How much she has learned to remain as a slave to the husband, that is Vedic civilization. 

Taped conversation of  Srila Prabhupada and disciples (14 February, 1977, Mayapur, India):
Prabhupada: Sudra is to be controlled only. They are never given to be freedom. Just like in America. The blacks were slaves. They were under control. And since you have given them equal rights they are disturbing, most disturbing, always creating a fearful situation, uncultured and drunkards. What training they have got? They have got equal right? That is best, to keep them under control as slaves but give them sufficient food, sufficient cloth, not more than that. Then they will be satisfied.

Of course, the swami's endorsement of slavery for blacks and women is bold-faced nonsense, good only for belly laughs and informing would-be Hare Krishna followers. If that were not enough, here's what he has to say about the brains of women:

3 February, 1975, Hawaii, (Lecture on Srimad Bhagavatam)

Prabhupada: To understand Brahman is not the business of tiny brain. Alpha-medhasan. There are two Sanskrit words, alpa-medhasa and sumedhasa. Alpa-medhasa means having little brain substance. Physiologically, within the brain there are brain substance. It is found that the brain substance in man is found up to 64 ounce. They are very highly intellectual persons. And in woman the brain substance is not found more than 34 ounce. You’ll find, therefore, that there is no very great scientist, mathematician, philosopher, among women. You’ll never find because their brain substance cannot go. Artificially do not try to become equal with men. That is not allowed in the Vedic sastra. Na striyam svatantratam arhati. That is called sastra. You have to understand that woman is never given to be independence.

So much for "Vedic science"! Srila Prabhupada followers! Next time you become seriously ill, what will you do? I bet you will run for your pitiable life to the best modern hospital you can find and eagerly submit yourself to the hands of a specialist, who very possibly will be a woman and whose medicines and therapies were developed using modern research techniques in laboratories where men and women work side by side. Mantras, Deity-worship, and other means of selectively denying reality won't help you, what to speak of your literal scripture readings. Time to wake up and clear the cobwebs off your underutilized "brain substance"! 

If the swami's views about brain size were true, the sperm whale, a mammal possessing, at 7.8kg, the largest brain on the planet, would enslave all of us as one gigantic, jagad-guru:

Sripada Whale-ji giving underwater SB lecture

Secondly, many of these gurus have amassed more disciples than their guru ever had and have also become experts at manipulating donors to enrich their coffers and fund the building of elaborate temples. In short, they have turned into self-deluded, dhoti-clad megalomaniacs bent on supplanting their guru. They want to be him:

HEAD OF ISKCON? http://www.narendramodi.in/shri-gopal-krishna-goswami-maharaja-head-iskcon-meets-pm-modi-428324.

These puffed-up charlatans are fully aware that they have wasted their lives chasing delusions. Like video-game addicts who have lost touch with reality, many senior ISKCON devotees in leadership positions live like petty tyrants drunk with power surrounded by hordes of their fawning acolytes. Most of all, they fear critics who would expose their candy-coated fake Hinduism to the public (especially the genuine Hindu organizations and politicians whose support is essential to their mission).

Aware that donors continue to be cultivated almost entirely by personal contacts, fancy events, as well as invitations and newsletters sent by ordinary mail, these cultists show little concern about criticism in blogs or other kinds of social media. However, if even a few of the influential people ISKCON has spent years cultivating finds an impassioned, impeccably researched diatribe written by an ex-cult member sitting in their mailboxes, it might spark an angry confrontation with significant financial repercussions.[1] Spending a relatively insignificant amount of money covertly funding a fake anti-ISKCON website is a small price to pay for avoiding such a disaster.

However, it is a bitter and uncomfortable truth that avoidance is the coward’s reaction to confrontation and informed argument. So is abusing the trust of others, especially when you know that they are turning to you for comfort and healing from extremely traumatic experiences. Remember that the term con artist refers to people who extract confidences from other people and then use the information for their own nefarious purposes.To exploit people who suffered in a cult and managed to extricate themselves is a grim, diabolical business.

The cold war strategy of containment is used by these so-called anti-ISKCON websites to herd dissidents together and thus keep them from disturbing the cult’s donor relations. Most of the few that operate with any form of sophistication are rife with signs that they are both funded and maintained by the cult itself. Apparently the idiots who believe that the sun is closer to the Earth than the moon have so little respect for the rest of us that they frequently overreach and engage in preposterous exaggerations that give themselves away almost immediately. 

New! Don't Miss: https://harekrishnacultexposed.blogspot.com/2016/11/a-note-to-my-readers-voice-crying-in.html.

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

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[1] Ironic, isn’t it? Yet, after many years of experience in not-for-profit fundraising, I can tell you it is the truth. 

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]

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.

Author Holding Infant Son

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. 

https://harekrishnacultexposed.blogspot.com/2015/08/new-rape-and-insults-wife-abuse-iskcon.html

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

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Please note: If get get the message “ the page you were looking for does not exist on this blog,”just hit “ home” and you get to the list of blog postings. Scroll down and there it is!

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.

MISSION STATEMENT

Enlightening readers about the beliefs and practices of the Hare Krishna (ISKCON) cult is the sole purpose of this blog and its companion, The ISKCON Cult Unveiled, at https://iskconcultunveiled.blogspot.com. Many of the essays I have written over the past ten years deal with controversial issues and others deal with basic philosophical concerns.

Like most cults, ISKCON is two-faced: it has a private side that it reveals to its adherents and another is reserved for the public. Exposing the truth about both aspects of the Hare Krishna movement is vital for a number of reasons that I will summarize shortly. Before I continue, however, let me introduce myself.

Back in 1967, my sister and I (we were 16 and 14 years old, respectively) saw a group of Hare Krishna devotees dancing and singing at one of the famous Central Park “Be-In” hippie events in the “Summer of Love.” One of the devotees approached me and invited me to the group’s “love feast” that they held every Sunday. (For more details about our actual visit, please see my blog essay, https://harekrishnacultexposed.blogspot.com/2010/07/reductive-thinking-and-cult-propaganda.html) I began high school that September and in December, my sister and I were initiated by the founder of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami (also called “Srila Prabhupada”). My initiated name was Ekayani and my sister’s became Indira.

Ekayani “married” at 17 years old!

Our guru had come to New York only the year before, so I became at that time both one of the earliest and youngest initiated devotees. We certainly were sincere and stalwart devotees, going to school during the week and worshipping our deities at home and living for the weekends when we would take the subway train to the temple and help prepare the Sunday love feast. We also carefully read all of the scriptures our guru translated (or so we thought) and for which he also prepared commentaries (“purports”), such as The Bhagavad-Gita As It Is and the multi-volume Srimad Bhagavatam (Bhagwat Purana). We also created oil paintings of various scenes in the Krishna legend in our spare time.

After two years, my elder sister married a devotee and moved to St. Louis to start a temple there. Her loss left me to pursue my devotional service in near total isolation, but I persevered. Tragically, just after I graduated from high school, I was told by my sister, her husband, and Srila Prabhupada’s personal secretary that our guru had ordered me to marry one Gopal Krishna dasa, an Indian (now the guru Gopal Krishna Goswami) then living at the Montreal temple. I was only 17 years old and a virgin. (As it turns out, Srila Prabhupada told me himself that he had never given such an order.) For me, that horrific event ended the honeymoon phase of my involvement with the Hare Krishna movement.

But I digress. I do, however, want to make it perfectly clear that I knew the founder-acharya of the Hare Krishna movement personally (in fact, he never failed to greet me whenever we met, even when there was a crowd of other devotees present). I also wrote many letters to him, all of which he answered, sometimes at length (see one very influential photocopy of one at the end of this blog page). Critics of my views, all absolute strangers who never met me or my guru, think their fanatic adherence to his now-thoroughly discredited views entitles them to diagnose me as an insane person and recommend that I seek professional help. Such persons are themselves delusional and, should they ever find the fortitude to reject the nonsensical beliefs they slavishly follow, will find themselves on a therapist’s coach for years to come.

It is a daunting task to summarize the truly bizarre beliefs that our guru held and that he insisted we accept without any investigation on our part. As I and many others have written elsewhere, the problem seems to have its source in his belief that Gaudiya (Bengali) Vaishnavism is the ultimate expression of devotion to Lord Krishna, despite the fact that the philosophy of the character of Bhagwan Sri Krishna in the Gita and the Indian folk stories about the antics of Krishna and his cowherd gopis cannot be compared. He also held that Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, a Bengali Krishna enthusiast, was an incarnation of both Radha and Krishna together, ignoring the obvious: read the Chaitanya Charitamrita and a picture emerges of a cross-dressing Brahmin whose ”devotional” proclivities are better left unstated.

How could I, a woman who, after leaving ISKCON after wasting 13 years of life there, manage to earn a B.A. and M.A. while raising my son alone and working a demanding, full-time job (I have worked for a total of 33 years), if, as Srila Prabhupada insisted, women have half the brains of men and (I quote) “there is no very great scientist, mathematician, philosopher among woman.” In these and other laughably ignorant comments about so-called Vedic science— coming from a one-time chemist who, by his own admission, never read the Vedas—A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami proved that he lacked the authority by education and common sense to represent the wisdom of the Bhagavad Gita to the West. How could we naively sit by and listen to this man state that the moon is farther away than the sun and the astronauts could never have gone to the moon since it is a “heavenly” planet and they never worshipped the moon-god Chandra in the first place?

Rather than continuing to hide their fundamental beliefs under a cloak of secrecy, ISKCON leaders and members should adopt a full disclosure policy immediately. Your lives--your souls--deserve no less. We  are all reminded from the lethal building collapses in the news that to live in a building with a faulty foundation is to court disaster.

Before ending, I want to restate that my writings are intended solely to educate and inform. Furthermore, I strongly believe in freedom of religion, but still insist that children, who, as the gurukula tragedy taught the public are helpless in such an irrational and abusive world view, are educated in public or private schools with a state-approved curriculum. I also despise and disavow any kind of discriminatory views, whether they concern women, ethnic groups of any kind, races, or religion. Lastly, I want to make it clear that the views expressed in this blog are mine alone and that I labor on them without assistance and have never received any financial help of any kind to support my efforts.

Just out! Please see: https://harekrishnacultexposed.blogspot.com/2016/11/a-note-to-my-readers-voice-crying-in.html

Select Essays on Various Topics in This Blog

Abuse of the Legacy of Ramakrishna Paramhamsa and Swami Vivekananda:

https://harekrishnacultexposed.blogspot.com/2012/09/standing-on-shoulders-of-giants.html

ISKCON Pretends to be an Ambassador of India's Cultural Heritage:

https://harekrishnacultexposed.blogspot.com/2011/10/iskcon-cultural-center-hoax.html

Using the Bhagavad-Gita to Advance ISKCON's Ambitions in Russia:

https://harekrishnacultexposed.blogspot.com/2012/03/gita-and-russia-another-iskcon-public.html

Female Infanticide and Selective Abortion:

https://harekrishnacultexposed.blogspot.com/2012/01/sequin-for-mr-al-zahrani-very-short.html

Evils of Arranged Marriage and Treatment of Widows in India:

https://harekrishnacultexposed.blogspot.com/2010/03/widows-and-child-brides-no-more.html

Child Abuse in ISKCON and Organized Religion:

https://harekrishnacultexposed.blogspot.com/2011/08/sex-abuse-claiments-win-big-justice-at.html

Link between Cultural Intrusions in Russia and Terrorism:

https://harekrishnacultexposed.blogspot.com/2011/01/islamic-tribalism-converts-and-terror.html

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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 see: https://iskconcultunveiled.blogspot.com/2016/11/iskcon-and-indignities-rational-look-at.html.

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