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.

Montreal, 1970. Photo taken by Gopal Krishna Dasa (1944-2024).

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

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

A FOOL'S PARADISE

If a fool is born every minute, it is just as tragic that their foolishness survives their childhoods. Gullible people are emotionally needy, usually in response to abuse and neglect in the early years. Betrayed and lonely, they seek those who value their services and reward their loyalty. Cults, gangs, and other sociopaths commonly take advantage of these wounded personalities. Whether they use the guises of enlightenment or rebellion against authority to dupe their followers, they are doubly criminal: they use lost souls to commit crimes and rob them of their souls in the process.

As I write in my newly-updated website, iskconcultunveiled.blogspot.com, another development in this soul-destruction business has firmly taken root in the practices of the ISKCON or Hare Krishna cult. No longer characterized by ex-hippies and similar types in America and Europe, today the supporters of this proto-Hindu group are primarily Indian in origin.

 Respect for tradition and generosity characterize this large, educated, and prosperous group. However, they have been as just duped as the earlier followers who joined ISKCON in the decades after its founder-acharya, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami, took his ideas to New York City in 1966. Unknown to the sincere Indians who, under the mistaken impression that these ISKCON temples are genuinely Hindu, these temples are edifices built on repugnant and anti-intellectual principles. My new essay, “ISKCON and Pederasty, Part Two” will prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that what I speak is the truth.

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

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

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

SEX ABUSE CLAIMENTS WIN BIG--JUSTICE AT LAST!

Champions of Liberty and Fairness, rejoice! A few high profile sex abuse cases were resolved today and yesterday, both of which deal with the abuse of minors over the course of many years.

The case in the news today (for details, see http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/08/10/us/AP-US-Priest-Abuse-Lawsuit.html?_r=1&ref=us)concerns an abuse case dating from the 1970's and gives hope to survivors of decades-old abuse: An Illinois man has received a $6.33 million settlement for abuse he suffered at the hands of a parish priest over the course of five years. Another black eye for the Catholic Church, especially since this case involved the hiding of the priest's misbehavior and the way the Church "quietly shuffled him among parishes."

Yesterday's news was even more significant: Warren Jeffs, the leader of the breakaway of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (also known as the FDLS) was sentenced to life in prison for sexually assaulting one of his child brides, in this case a twelve-year old girl. Please read the full article (http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/08/09/us/AP-US-Polygamist-Leader.html?ref=us) to get a fuller picture of this bizarre case. This case shows how the so-called marriage of grown men (often old enough to be the grandfathers of their victims) to children exists in this country. This cult, like so many others,is led by a charismatic leader who takes their money, controls their most intimate activities, and insists that he is divinely inspired.

Put a pajama-style outfit on this man and change his religion, and Jeffs would be comfortable as a tribal leader in Afganistan or Pakistan. Put the priest, who got away with abusing his young parisher without any punishment for 40 years,in a saffron robe, and you have a swami or another cult leader who sexually abused minors and now sits on a throne-like chair, dispensing moral precepts to his gullible followers. Worse, many cult survivors are expected to simply "forget" about their abuse by family and friends, most of whom might wonder why the victim has trouble with dating and is often a loner. It is just wonderful to see that this man, now undoubtedly middle-aged, finally has been compensated for his suffering. $6.33 million for abuse that occurred "dozens of times in five years" seems hardly enough, but it is a start. May the girls who were robbed of their childhoods in the FLDS case get enough money to bankrupt that corrupt parody of the Christian religion and wipe it off the face of the Earth.

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NEW WEBSITE: "THE ISKCON CULT UNVEILED" IS ONLINE!!!

After more than a year in development, my new website, "The ISKCON Cult Unveiled" at https://iskconcultunveiled.blogspot.com is finally online. It will definitively reveal, for once and for all, how an irrational, deadly idealogy subverts normal ties to family and country.

The evidence to support this claim will be directly taken from the letters and other published writings of the founder of the Hare Krishna cult, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami ( also known as "Prabhupada"). For example, what follows is a transcription of an especially damning series of comments about this guru's views about women. (Please note: Trivikrama was a disciple of the swami and Dr. Patel was an early Indian admirer of the cult.)

Morning Walk, 9 January, 1977, Mumbai

Prabhupada: I condemn everyone, that “You are all dogs and hogs.” And United Nations a pack of dogs barking. That’s a fact. And in Chicago I said, all women, “You cannot have freedom. You have got only thirty-four-ounce brain, and man has got sixty-four-ounce.” I told them. So I became a subject of very great criticism.

Trivikrama: Women’s liberation.

Prabhupada: I denied, “No, you cannot have.” I told them. One girl in the airship, she was seeing like (makes some gesture-laughter). I asked her, “Give me 7-Up.” “It is locked now.” So I frankly said that “No, no. You cannot have equal rights because your brain is thirty-four ounce.” Actually that’s a fact. Where is woman philosopher, mathematician, scientist? Not a single.

Dr. Patel: Apart from that, I mean, they are made for a particular mission.

Prabhupada: How they can have equal rights? Up to date in the history there is not a single woman who is a great scientist or great philosopher or great…

Dr. Patel: Madame Curie was a…

Prabhupada: All bogus. (laughter)

Dr. Patel: You are getting too harsh on them because…

Prabhupada: No, no. How can I give you equal rights, because your brain is less substance.

Dr. Patel: We cannot degrade our mothers that way.

Prabhupada: It is not degrading. It is accepting the actual fact.

These statements are outrageously ignorant and complacent, but, worse, were accepted by legions of Western ISKCON disciples who should have immediately corrected the swami with the truth. Brainwashing, however, had succeeded in perverting the minds and actions of many young people who simply wasted their lives (and ruined many others) in the pursuit of an exotic delusion.

Comments and explanations will be included, but the purpose of this new website is for the damning information to speak for itself. It will hide nothing and, as such, its contents will be sensationalist in the best sense of the term. For example:

• An original essay, "The Guru-Faking Business," which will offer an introduction and concise history of the descent of the ISKCON cult into the mire of criminal abuse;
• It will also guide the reader to easily obtainable sources where the Swami's support of racism, child abuse, and the mistreatment of women are unmistakeable;
• A handy resource for people to want to extricate a family member or friend from ISKCON (or any other cult) and need to familiarize themselves with the persuasive means that ensnare vulnerable souls.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

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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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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