Dons of the “ISKCON” Empire

by Kailāsa Candra dāsa

 

HARIḤ OṀ NAMAḤ

 

evaṁ paramparā-prāptam
imaṁ rājarṣayo viduḥ
sa kāleneha mahatā
yogo naṣṭaḥ parantapa
“Having thus been received by disciplic succession, this spiritual science was understood by the self-realized kings. That great science of yoga was scattered (destroyed) in this world by the influence of time.”

 

Lines of spiritual and devotional disciplic succession are not maintained like organized religions. They require perfect men in an unbroken line of succession in order to continue them. They can be much more easily destroyed than the organized religions of Kali-yuga.

 

The classic example is that Lord Kṛṣṇa reveals to Arjuna on the Battlefield of Kurukṣetra that one such line—which the Lord wishes to re-establish through Arjuna—had been destroyed. That was over five thousand years ago.

 

The Vedic kings at that time were very great men, with some exceptions. Some of them were even self-realized ṛṣis. The brāhmins and sannyāsīs were very great men, very knowledgeable and pure, especially when compared to the brāhmins of today. Yet, a bona fide line of disciplic succession—or at least, a branch of it—had been scattered and destroyed at that time. The Lord wanted to re-constitute it, and Arjuna was selected to do so.

 

The point here is to REALIZE just how easily, at this time in Kali-yuga, branches of a bona fide Vaiṣṇava disciplic succession can be quickly and effectively destroyed in a short space of time. The brāhmins are weaker today. The sannyāsīs—if there are any of them still left—are not as inclined to tapasya and not as knowledgeable. The managers (there are no saintly kings anymore, obviously) are much more prone to corruption and compromise.

 

“This is our management. Very bad management. What can I do? This is our movement. We have to select men from the worst class.” Room Conversation, May 27, 1977

 

“Prabhupāda constructed his movement out of dubious raw material. . . in writing about his difficulties in managing the movement, he made the following striking statement: ‘Kṛṣṇa did not send me any first-class men. He sent me only second and third-class men.’”
ISKCON Communications Journal, 2.1, 1994

 

Notice the date of the room conversation: It is a day previous to that fateful meeting between Prabhupāda and all of his G.B.C. men in his room at the Krishna-Balaram center. Many, if not most, of them had already arrived there by this time. He made it clear in the meeting that he wanted regular gurus, and he did not name a Successor.

 

After he departed, instead of regular gurus, his branch of Lord Caitanya’s Hare Kṛṣṇa movement got eleven pretender mahā-bhāgavats, who functioned like criminal dons in controlling—for their own advantage–everything in their zones. His branch of the Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement was basically ruined when this major deviation went down.

 

Prabhupāda spoke about bad management in his movement more than once. Here is another example:

 

“The Miami situation is a great discredit for us, because we have made such a bad impression on the neighbors that they have had us kicked out. This is because of nasty management. Rupanuga was the G.B.C., and now you are. Why it cannot be made clean? Abhirama has proved his poor management, so he must be replaced.”
Excerpt from a letter to Satsvarūpa, 6-4-75

 

It is common sense that His Divine Grace would not want to highlight the bad management that was gradually spreading in his movement by the mid-Seventies. At the same time, he did not gaslight it. There were many causes of it, and the all-pervading, deceptive influence of the plainclothes pick was one of those factors. It lead to many ills, particularly to rampant dishonesty in dealings.

 

His leaders were becoming puffed up and sloppy by the mid-Seventies. Some of them were becoming narcissistic. A kind of cult megalomania was developing in some of the G.B.C. zones. This would culminate in the dreadful self-apotheosis of 1978, eleven-fold, as we all know.

 

The most important issue here, however, is not the characters, personalities, styles, or methods of those who were controlling the movement. They were the agents of bad management in many cases, granted. Nevertheless, the real issue concerns what the most pliable followers (of those various order-givers of the centers) were converted into under the bad influence of those leaders, viz., what they were turned into by those men who, through various means, controlled them.

 

Consider the perspective that there were four categories most important here: Prabhupāda’s expectation for all of his disciples, his leaders’ divergent programming of the many followers they indoctrinated, cult stratification, and rank-and-file suppression. Concerning Prabhupāda’s expectations for his initiated disciples, we get clear indications about it in the following two excerpts:

 

In a letter to Hansadutta, dated 1-3-69: “Maybe by 1975, all ofmy disciples will be allowed to initiate and increase the numbers of the generations. That is my program.”

 

In the January, 1978 issue of Back to Godhead, in an article entitled “Srila Prabhupāda Speaks Out,” we find the following: “Anyone who follows the previous leadership is a leader. . . All my disciples are leaders. . . as much as they follow purely. If you want to follow, then you can also lead.”

 

Prabhupāda’s expectations for his disciples were high: He wanted all of them to become pure devotees. He wanted all of them to become learned in the essential revealed texts of Vaiṣṇavism. He wanted all of his disciples to become leaders of his movement. He also wanted them to become initiating spiritual masters as soon as possible.

 

It was his EXPECTATION. It was not realized. Indeed, it did not ever come close to being realized. Yet, even as late as his last year with us, he both wanted and expected this . . . but it did not come to pass.

 

How were his disciples to reach what he wanted them to achieve? It was through rigorous, authorized training. Prabhupāda wanted his initial leaders—which primarily meant the temple presidents—to train his newer disciples to reach the standard of his expectations.

 

If you type “train” into the 2003 Folio, it pulls up 193 hits. Subtract some for locomotive references. If you type “training” into the Folio, 135 hits. These totals are not for the whole of the Folio; they are only for the category called “Correspondence,” i.e., references to training mostly in letters to his leading secretaries and presidents.

 

Training was instead surreptitiously replaced by divergent programming in “ISKCON.” How gradual this deviation was varied from center to center and temple president to temple president. We can know that this programming took a major uptick when the plainclothes pick emerged.

 

At that time, devotees were “trained” in the deceptive techniques of ripping off vikarmīs—all in the name of selling books. There was even a video created showing the step-by-step technique for what became known as the “change-up.” It was circulated by a prominent collector in the movement as he traveled from center to center to promote it.

 

Kṛṣṇa consciousness entails transcending the cycle of birth and death by first escaping the reactionary cycle of generating karma, miśra-karma, or vikarma in one’s actions. The immediate goal is to avoid generating reactions. This is accomplished by not acting under the influence of ahaṅkāra, false ego, which everyone who is not engaged in a genuine form of yoga is automatically acting under.

 

“The Lord instructs that one has to become fully Kṛṣṇa conscious to discharge duties, as if in military discipline. Such an injunction may make things a little difficult; nevertheless, duties must be carried out, with dependence on Kṛṣṇa, because that is the constitutional position of the living entity.” Bhagavad-gītā, 3.30, purport.

 

In the beginning, the movement was run, in some very basic ways, like a military chain of command. You followed your orders so as to engage in your assigned seva, confident it was linked to the guru-paramparā. If you followed your orders received from the more advanced devotee above you in the chain of command, then you were assured that you were not generating any kind of karmic reaction whatsoever and also linked to Prabhupāda’s mission.

 

This system worked when the devotees giving the orders (temple presidents and leading secretaries) were fully engaged according to the desires and directives of Prabhupāda. Then, all seva performed under their direction was conducive to naiṣkarma, freedom from karmic reaction.

 

As a spiritual consequence, all such action (seva) produces advancement on every plane for the devotee: physical, astral, causal, and transcendental, beyond the mahat-tattva. Since ahaṅkāra was not being actuated in such authorized Vaiṣṇava activity–even as it was being carried out as if in military discipline–false ego automatically atrophied within every devotee so genuinely engaged.

 

The breakdown of this paramparā system took place when the directives coming from the upper echelons (first and second echelon, the second one being that of the temple presidents), got compromised by ahaṅkāra and material desire on the part of the managers, i.e., those who gave the orders.

 

At the onset of that breakdown, the above-mentioned false ego and material desire took time to be spotted for what it was. That breakdown, however, could only worm its way into the Hare Kṛṣṇa movement—which it certainly did—due to the gradual incorporation of stratification throughout virtually all of the centers.

 

As soon as someone gets to the top of a cult turtle tank, he suppresses others in order to stay there. This is the material consciousness of over-lording, which is not supposed to be present in bhakti cults. However, when that programming and stratification worked its way into the institutional tent of Prabhupāda’s movement, over-lording, instead of genuine training, was going down virtually everywhere.

 

His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedānta Swāmi Prabhupāda was himself dealt with similarly by his senior godbrothers. He indicated this (usually, indirectly) in a number of places. However, in one letter, he was direct about it. Consider this excerpt from a letter to one of his presidents, dated 8-29-72:

 

“Do not be depressed. All along, my godbrothers gave me only depression, repression, compression, but I continued strong in my duty.”

 

The international center referred to here, throughout its history (even in its earliest years), was a hub of intense competition for superiority; a rotating arrangement of its presidency (soon abandoned, but not at the time of this letter) did not ultimately alleviate the situation.

 

Again, analyze the excerpt. As a gṛhastha, Prabhupada was a pure devotee. He was extremely knowledgeable in all of the Vaiṣṇava śāstras. Yet, he was undermined by many (if not most) in Gouḍīya Mutt who were senior to him.

 

He started a thriving center in Bombay. They took it away from him. He started a thriving āśrama in Jhansi. This, of course, was in conjunction with the creation of the League of Devotees. Two elder godbrothers engaged in political intrigue, and the project failed. Although some of the readers will not be able to comprehend why it was so, his senior godbrothers called him “Swāmi Mahārāj” after he received sannyāsa, a back-handed compliment.

 

None of his godbrothers helped him in the fledgling first year after he arrived in New York City. A disciple of one of his godbrothers—arguably, the only one who was favorable to him (having given him sannyāsa)—snail mailed a poorly packed container (barely deliverable) which contained karatals, incense, and a certificate stating that Prabhupāda was a bona fide preacher in the Caitanya line. Better than nothing, but it did not directly come from a godbrother.

 

In 1972, Prabhupāda specifically stated that his godbrothers compressed his opportunities to develop, and repressed his influence in the Gouḍīya Mutt. This excerpt has just been presented. Please note, although he could have easily done so, he did not incorporate his organization in America as Gouḍīya Mutt. In effect, he de-linked it from having any connection to the remnants of Gouḍīya Mutt.

 

Prabhupāda underwent some depression. However, how long that lasted, how deep it was, and whether or not it was even slightly relevant (once his Western mission got going) cannot be ascertained. The nature of his depression also cannot be ascertained, because no conditioned soul can truly understand the emotions of an uttama-adhikārī.

 

What we CAN understand from his statement is its applicability to both ISKCON and “ISKCON.” Know it well that compression and repression were baked into both cakes—especially integral to the latter thread, obviously. The institution’s leaders were subduing the rank-and-file by bringing them under the sway of oppressors. The overlords also competed for followers and disciples via such subjugation, even while Prabhupāda was here.

 

They quashed the effort of anyone trying to move up in the movement through legitimate means, e.g., via more tapasya and purity, more knowledge and realization, more seva, and/or more spiritual power. Such stratification was meant to keep everyone in his place, and it was effective.

 

The conclusive evidence of this was, of course, the unfettered emergence of the zonal ācārya era. The groundwork had been laid for it while Prabhupāda was still with us. To reiterate, that groundwork was a clampdown on Prabhupāda’s expectations for all of his disciples to become pure devotees, initiating gurus, and leaders. The eleven great pretenders were the chief agents of that clampdown, of course.

 

Another proof was the programming that replaced genuine training in Kṛṣṇa consciousness. More conclusive evidence was stratification of devotees into institutional categories and levels. If they tried to escape from it, they received only negative reinforcement from the higher-ups.

 

The fourth and final proof was (for the devotees who did not knuckle under to this) being oppressed, depressed, suppressed, and compressed by many methods. This brings us to one particularly effective method. It was the subtle method of utilizing past statements or orders (which had lost their validity over time through changed circumstances) as if they were still completely relevant and applicable.

 

The validity (or lack thereof) of past orders from the guru–when applied to the present—must always be considered in terms of nitya and naimittika. Consider the following excerpt from ŚrīĪśopaniṣad, verse 13, purport:

 

“Such accomplishments are possible only when one worships the real Krishna and not some fabricated “Krishna”invented by foolish men who are without knowledge of the intricacies of the science of Krishna . . .”

 

Is there anything more eternal, powerful, pure, and perfect than Krishna? Yet, herein it is verified that there can be a fabricated Krishna that people worship. The orders and injunctions of Prabhupāda were stated (or demanded) in variable settings. He set up a chain of command which was obliged to carry out his orders without change or compromise

 

. . . but did they?

 

Was the zonal imposition anything more than an invention? Was the forced worship of conditioned souls on opulent, elevated seats—even by their godbrothers and godsisters–anything more than a concoction? What about F.D.G.? Just three examples have been provided here as illustrations of the principle; be assured, there are more than these three.

 

TATTVAMASI

 

All such deviations were carried out through the corporate agency of ISKCON. When seva was actually being performed according to authorized direction, that was the real ISKCON (the real Krishna). When that was being actuated, then the orders, the institution, and the paramparā were all non-different. Since the leaders were carrying his orders, desires, and injunctions when that was actualized, then Prabhupāda could order them to be followed.

 

However, all of that was from long ago. Notice again this part from that ŚrīĪśopaniṣad quote:

 

“Knowledge of the intricacies of the science of Krishna.”

 

Prabhupāda likened this science to a ripened fruit, something which was delicate and fragile, in the sense that it could easily be deviated from and its intricacies thus lost. Since deviation works to create a doppleganger, the changed movement would be made to look like the real thing later. Consider this:

 

“The knowledge mercifully given by the Lord is like a perfect fruit passed down from the top of a tree. The fruit must be passed delicately. If someone drops the fruit, or lets it fall, or in any way mishandles it, then the whole fruit is spoiled. If the bona fide spiritual master is in the line of disciplic succession from the Supreme Lord, he is careful to pass the fruit of Vedic wisdom to us without personally motivated interpretation.”

 

The system of absolutes–including Prabhupāda’s orders to follow his leaders from back in the day–was spoiled when bad leaders facilitated major deviation. Was there anything careful about how they imposed it? It was previously somewhat subtle and gradual, but not when the zonal ācārya imposition became the new vanguard. That was imposed as the equivalent to a smash and grab operation!

 

Deviation means motivated interpretation as to how to carry out the mission. Such motivation springs from ahaṅkāra. When the movement and its leaders became deviated (and thus did not carefully pass down the knowledge of the real Krishna), the science of Krishna was scattered. It remains scattered. It then became the duty of those previously under that bad command to spot and reject all of it.

 

Once spotted, it becomes obvious that ISKCON was converted into “ISKCON,” the latter still being considered sacrosanct only by bewildered followers who have remained bamboozled by that institution. Their refusal to wake up entails those unfortunates continuing to follow deviants who brought in all of the inventions via personal and group ahaṅkāra, the latter being the “ISKCON” egregor.

 

The “ISKCON” confederation utilizes past warnings and admonitions of Prabhupāda for its own purposes. However, their applicability has become invalidated over time. To be spooked by previous warnings from the Ācārya (orders and admonitions from long ago) leads to congregational and institutional avidyā, all of which went down in his name, being wrongly believed to be perpetual.

 

However, Prabhupāda gave us warnings in the other direction, viz., that his movement could become deviated and thus devolve into an apa-sampradāya. Those are the warnings, admonitions, and orders that we should now heed. We should reject the others, because time, place, and circumstance has rendered them not only inapplicable, but false and counter-productive.

 

When the orders of the guru are directly connected to eternal religion, that is a manifestation of real dharma. When such is the case, it is known as nitya-dharma or sanātana-dharma. If we consider that dharma when it is in the form of his orders, the guru-vāni, then those orders also qualify as nitya-vāni, i.e., applicable in all circumstances at all times.

 

In contrast, religion which was only applicable to time and place circumstances is known as naimittika-dharma, and it is temporarily of some limited value only. When Prabhupada’s orders were subject to devaluation and invalidation due to adverse time and place circumstances—and, unfortunately (due to deviation) were actually invalidated–then those particular orders no longer are nitya-vāni.

 

“ISKCON” leaders continue to utilize naimittika-vāni in the guise of nitya-vāni, particularly in relation to Prabhupāda’s statements about his movement in general, or about ISKCON or the vitiated G.B.C. in particular. They want their followers to believe that all such statements from back in the day remain automatically absolute or nitya.

 

However, once major deviation enters, they are not automatically to be categorized as constant of application. Any follower who falls victim to such “ISKCON” propaganda (naimittika-vāni surreptitiously converted into nitya-vāni) is not employing higher intelligence (prajñā). Disciples and followers, without real knowledge, are prone to naively believe such worn statements and orders (which are little more than slogans now) to be automatically integral to nitya-dharma, automatically linked to the guru-paramparā.

 

This is because those followers believe their movement to be nitya-dharma. Deviation, through the agency of bad leaders, (along with time and place circumstances), have rendered this belief false. The corrupt leaders easily control people who believe such paramparā pabulum. Indeed, all active (and dependent!) members functioning within that cult are controlled by its bureaucratic structure, combined with constant negative re-enforcement, which is required in order to keep the concoction running.

 

“ISKCON” is run as an oligarchical tyranny. It is also a bureaucracy that appoints its initiating spiritual masters through a concocted device known as a No Objection Certificate. It previously voted them into the post, which was just as deviant–but, obviously, in a different way.

 

Institutional designation has always been the hallmark of “ISKCON,” even going back to the zonal ācārya era. All eleven of them were voted into their office and their zones by the vitiated G.B.C., with only one commissioner voting against that proposed resolution.

 

A genuine guru in Prabhupāda’s line is a spiritual master if and/or when he reaches the platform of madhyam-adhikārī. That special (and rare) attainment does not, however, automatically make him an initiating spiritual master. Yes, upon attaining madhyam, he is a śikṣā-guru and a vartma-pradarśaka-guru. Nevertheless, any such blessed disciple needs more than that in order to become a dīkṣā-guru in Prabhupāda’s branch of Caitanya’s movement.

 

A genuine guru is NOT designated as such by a corporate entity, by a commission, by a bureaucracy, or by a group or committee of any sort. Consider this excerpt from a letter to one of Prabhupāda’s leading secretaries, dated 12-2-72:

 

“Krishna consciousness movement is for training men to be independently thoughtful and competent in all types of departments of knowledge and action, not for making bureaucracy. Once there is bureaucracy the whole thing will be spoiled. . . Forget this centralizing and bureaucracy.”

 

This excerpt must be categorized as self-evident. Yet, we all know that “ISKCON” is now chock full of bureaucracy, and such has been the case for many years. Those bureaucratic departments are not meant for streamlining important services to the rank-and-file. On the contrary, they are meant to serve as buffering mechanisms of delay (sometimes, even damage control) in order to protect vested interests from being directly challenged by underlings.

 

Such an unauthorized paradigm of centralization is a bureaucratic arrangement. In “ISKCON,” this arrangement also determines who can be an initiating guru in it . . . and who cannot. If you submit an application (or someone else does on your behalf—and not without your encouragement) and wait in queue to be recognized as a dīkṣā-guru, you most certainly are NOT a guru.

 

Institutional guru means bogus guru. A bogus guru gives improper initiations, while bureaucracy pervades the whole anti-Vedic arrangement. The No Objection Certificate is a symbol of a bureaucratic meddling. Any such centralization scheme has no place in genuine Vaiṣṇavism.

 

And just who are these bureaucrats? They are the “ISKCON” Party Men, of course. They love centralization. They love all kinds of corporate arrangements. They think that the superficial stability it provides leads to both individual and cult confidence. They think wrongly, as it instead gradually leads to further deviation and degradation.

 

This has already been evidenced over time. In that same 1972 letter (excerpted above), we find further proof of the foibles of a so-called Vaiṣṇava movement that is seeped in bureaucracy and centralization:

 

“Do not centralize anything. Each temple must remain independent and self-sufficient. That was my plan from the very beginning. Why you are thinking otherwise? Once before you wanted to do something centralizing with your G.B.C. meeting, and if I did not interfere the whole thing would have been killed. Do not think in this way of big corporation, big credits, centralization—these are all nonsense proposals.”

 

All such nonsense proposals are emblematic of showbottle religion. Such pseudo-Vaiṣṇavism ultimately centers around making a show of the Deities . . . but that is not necessarily the initial development. In the case of the “ISKCON” major deviation, a different show surfaced first.

 

At first, the deviated cult agreed to make a show of an unqualified (but charismatic) man taking opulent worship. The show of the Deities sometimes takes second fiddle to the show of a pretender super-ācārya of Kali-yuga. That’s how it played out in “ISKCON,” as we all know.

 

In that first stage of institutional deviation, the “ISKCON” movement was run via a kind of gangster accommodation. It can be compared to the American Prohibition era, where all the local dons agreed to divvy up the city into separate sectors in which they would bootleg alcohol. This was similar to the zonal ācārya era, where the “ISKCON” dons divided up their empire of the world into various initiation zones.

 

At that time, each of them was the showbottle center of their zone. The Empire ran through the agency of emotional ploys used on the rank-and-file (such as love-bombing, favoritism, bribery, and paltry recognition). The ploys varied from zone to zone. Of course, those were only effective on the inmates who still believed in that con job.

 

Just like the Roaring Twenties (where the ultimate enforcement was murder), if you did not go along with the eleven new heartbeats, enforcement was applied. Ultimate enforcement in the “ISKCON” gangland entailed being ostracized, along with character assassination.

 

If you criticized the new guru worship, the “ISKCON” Empire preserved itself, i.e., it struck back hard! Murder was not often employed, but that is not to say that it was completely eschewed. Quite surprisingly, only one of the zonals ever wound up in prison, but he also beat a murder rap.

 

It was all nothing but a showbottle demonstration of pseudo-spiritual fervor. Prabhupāda spoke or wrote many times against such showbottle pseudo-spiritualism, but it was nevertheless gaining steam (part of the “ISKCON” competitor thread) in his movement by the mid-Seventies.

 

He was unable to nip it. Consider the following four quotes in order to gain a clearer understanding of that sahajiyā harbinger, which would dominate his movement in the late Seventies and the first half of the Eighties:

 

“If you want real benefit of spiritual life, don’t be showbottle. Do you know showbottle? The medical shop, a big bottle. It is full of water only, and color is red or blue or something like. But the real medicine does not require. . . Real medicine does not require a showbottle.”
Platform lecture in Hawaii, 1-23-75

 

Real medicine means chanting rounds on the beads and studying the books in order to gain transcendental knowledge and realization; this results in higher intelligence. Showbottle devotional service works against these developments. It always has, and it always will.

 

“Unfortunately, there are many so-called followers of Caitanya Mahāprabhu who are satisfied simply to construct a temple, make a show of the Deities, collect some funds and utilize them for eating and sleeping.”
Caitanya-caritāmṛta, Ādi, 9.47, purport

 

This is a later development, after institutionalism replaces big gurus with big egos in big zones (that is the “ISKCON” history). Making this show is what developed in the form of The Second Transformation and The Third Transformation, after the heady days of the zonal ācārya imposition. Notice “many so-called followers” in the quote. If the shoe fits, then perhaps the institution that it fits is wearing it.

 

“In India, we have got some showbottles in the medicine shop. Some red water put into the big bottle and with electric light. That means advertisement: ‘Here is a bottle of medicine.’ But that is a showbottle, red water. So, red water will not cure the disease. . . It is (stated) clearly according to Bhagavad-gītā. showbottle demonstration will not make you successful. You have to be really bottle of medicine. . . If you want to be satisfied becoming a showbottle, then, that is a different thing. Remain a showbottle, but if you want really actual success, then you cannot adopt that process.”
Platform lecture in New York City, 9-14-66

 

Notice that this lecture took place in Autumn, 1966. Prabhupāda knew how the devolution of his movement would transpire, so he tried to prevent it by such warnings in advance. He could not prevent it, and the zonal ācārya catastrophe is proof of that. As such, this quote now serves as an advance warning for our benefit . . . a warning made a decade in advance.

 

“ . . . you are simply wasting time by going to church or temple or mosque or any nonsense. Notpādayed yadi ratiṁ śrama eva hi kevalam. Simply waste of time. So, don’t become a showbottle of religious life. Actually try to understand what is religion, what is God, and make your life successful.”
Platform lecture near Moundsville, W. Virginia, 9-6-72

 

“It’s church! It’s church! It’s church!” One godbrother had a dream wherein Prabhupada shouted this to him. An institutional religion contains institutional gurus. It performs institutional initiations, which only produces devolution, especially after the improperly initiated people take over when the initial sahajiyās slowly die off.

 

The Sanskrit word śrama is important here; it means USELESS. Showbottle devotional service is not real seva. It is performed by individuals with a grudge. It it performed by audacious and powerful people who hurt inside.

 

Those eleven great pretenders were all hurt men. It is a fact that Prabhupāda chastised them. Some, he chastised hard. Some, he chastised often. He did not appoint any of them as his Successor. In point of fact, he did not recognize any of them as gurus. How could he do so?

 

As such, they each nursed resentment. They each nursed a grudge. They decided to misuse their power. As a result, through the facilitation of the vitiated G.B.C., they climbed atop the shells of turtles below them, rose to the top of the tank, and became self-appointed mahā-bhāgavats.

 

Sure, there was a vote, but that was rigged. The eleven constituted just one vote shy of one-half of the governing body, but their influence on it and in it and over it was at least eighty percent. Through G.B.C. imprimatur (which they engineered), they passed the guru resolution of 1978. This was without any input from the non-G.B.C. godbrothers, and very little (almost negligible) resistance from the other commissioners, since those fellows did not want to jeopardize their status in the governing body.

 

The eleven rascals enforced worship of themselves by everyone else in the movement, including godbrothers and godsisters. The whole show was nothing but a pseudo-devotional abomination! They harmed everyone who did not fall in line, who did not serve them . . . what to speak of those godbrothers who opposed and exposed them!

 

The colossal hoax known as the fabricated, so-called “ISKCON” confederation is a pseudo-spiritual scam. It has been a showbottle since the Spring of 1978. It is a showbottle of a different color now. The First Transformation was bright, red water advertised as potent medicine, but which, when you drank it, poisoned you.

 

The Second Transformation was a showbottle of a different color. It was pink-colored, but just as poisonous, yet in a different, collegiate way. The Hinduization of “ISKCON,” The Third Transformation, is just as poisonous. It is green-colored water, since it is so dependent upon the Hindoo money in order to stay afloat.

 

However, in due course, it will fail like the others. The initial wave of “ISKCON” leaders were, in the words of George Harrison, just like weeping atlas cedars: They needed to grow and grow and grow. Finally, they were stopped, but the needle in and the damage done!

 

All of those leaders (and many of today’s) are individually loaded with resentment. They have harmed many of their godbrothers over the course of the last four decades. They gave pain, and they are receiving pain in return.

 

Those devotees remind them of what they have done. The memory of that causes them pain today. The memory of past aggression is not successfully repressed in the oppressors. They begrudge that. This causes them continued psychic pain, so they must find new ways and means to afflict those they formerly oppressed (who they can still harm), because those devotees serve as painful reminders.

 

In summary, hurt people hurt people.

 

SAD EVA SAUMYA