Could You Be Loved

This is a response to a typical devotee who sees what I have said as some big great offense to God and the angels.

swamini you wrote

First of all, Vrajabhumi uses quotes on Krishna conciousness that have been taken from Sri Prabhupad’s books. Why rely on SP’s books to back up your ideas? Haven’t you moved on and found another guru who would be kinder in his words and not so brutish and dictatorial?

Like I already said-I accept him as being empowered some of the time, when he sticks to theological teachings without contradicting sastra. Why do you have a hard time understanding that just because someone is an expert in one thing, that doesn’t make them an expert in everything?

Vrajabhumi is a man/woman with limited resources. You kick Sri Prabhupad and use his books to make your points.

I am not doing anything to Prabhupada, wherever he is, he doesn’t have the slightest idea of who we are or what we are doing, unless he took rebirth here and is reading this blog.

Next thing is why make an enemy of a man who is dead for thirty years? The only thing I smell is she/ he wants to seduce Prabhupad’s followers for herself. Otherwise why reach out to them now?

I am not an enemy of Prabhupada, I just disagree with some things he taught. Are you the enemy of everyone you have disagreements with? As for why I am speaking out; there are a few reasons. Many people came to have faith in Prabhupada as a bona fide spiritual master through his books and his organization or even through his personal association. Many of them had little to no background in Hindu or Vedic teachings or culture and they felt a great deal of indebtedness and humility towards Prabhupada for opening their eyes and hearts to a new and wonderful religious worldview and culture. Because of their previous lack of experience and total ignorance about Hindu or Vedic systems of thought they came to see Prabhupada as the sole or one of the sole representatives of God, Krishna, who was empowered in every single thing he said or did, as if he was God in his perfection and powers. Just like some devotees on this blog in their comments they have expressed the belief that Prabhupada is non-different from his murti due to their ignorance and overestimation of Prabhupada’s powers. That is a false teaching and not supported by any sastra, but they have invested Prabhupada with so much respect that for many they see Prabhupada like a deity.

So what happens when the person whom you see as Godlike tells you that you are an inferior person, inherently stupid, cruel, selfish, worthless for anything other than to be a slave to a man, a prostitute if you do anything but be a slave to a man, that you shouldn’t educate your daughters or they will be prostitutes etc. That you cannot ever do anything that you may want to do that you may find fun or fulfilling otherwise you are a prostitute and will anger God and may go to hell for millions of years?

So I want to help those who have or will believe all of those untruths. Women are not inherently stupid, selfish, cruel, and good for nothing but slavery to men – otherwise they anger God and will be punished. God will not punish you if you have self-esteem and self respect and seek to fulfill whatever dreams and ambitions you have for a fulfilling life. God will not punish you if you have sex for pleasure and for showing and exchanging affection and love. God did not make people naturally amorous only to punish them if they seek to fulfill their natural amorous instincts. Use your common sense, why is sex for pleasure a sin? It makes no sense. Devoting your life to nothing but sex is another thing entirely, that is what is seen as wrong about sex in sastra. Also going without sex for periods of time is good if you use that time to immerse yourself in spiritual learning, that is why brahmacarya is recommended in sastra. But the idea that complete celibacy except for procreation is what is demanded by God and that anything else is a sin and angers God, is just plain nonsense. Use your common sense. Why is sex for pleasure bad?

Also, if you feel that women “are taken advantage of by men” whenever it comes to sex outside of procreation in marriage–then you are no more than a child when it comes to understanding women. How is it that women are 9 times lustier than men but men are always to blame when it comes to sex? Women are to blame for making men lusty, but men are not blamed for making women lusty? Women are held up as some delicate hoity toity delicate creatures that are simultaneously dangerous, wicked, pure and innocent. They are lustier than men but always being taken advantage of by men if actual sex is involved. There is nothing worse than the lure of a woman for sex for men, yet there is nothing worse than a women being taken advantage of for sex by a man. Women are everything bad and everything pure. Sex is always bad except for procreation, so bad that it “defiles” and makes women “impure” and “prostitutes”. Why? Why is it that if the skin of one person touching another when giving a massage is greatly valued by Prabhupada and his followers as really healthy and good and wholesome, but if genitals are involved in touching then that is the worst thing in the universe? How is it dirty or impure? It’s just skin touching skin.

The sexual taboos which Prabhupada introduced and which are believed by many Indians are ridiculous. They don’t have such taboos in Goloka, which is considered to be the perfect society, so why are these ridiculous taboos believed by people who see Goloka as the perfect society? You can believe all your nonsense of all of your sexually retarded taboos if you like and pretend you are superior to everyone else because of it, but it’s a fraud.. How many devotees are actually celibate or only have sex for procreation? I bet zero or almost zero. You can lie or pretend otherwise, but anyone who is honest with themselves knows this to be the truth. Plus the idea that loss of semen for men is unhealthy and causes less intelligence is wrong. It is totally bogus. How can intelligence be caused by semen? What is semen but some chemicals? Chemicals do not cause intelligence; intelligence comes from Krishna, not from chemicals. Loss of semen doesn’t make you unhealthy either. That is a myth propagated by the tantric yoga traditions, which seek bogus mystic powers, and is a contamination into the bhakti tradition which is supposed to teach that health is karmic. It is your destiny to be healthy or unhealthy regardless of what you do. God controls health and intelligence, not chemicals in semen.

I want to help to liberate people from their mental slavery which can cause pain and heartache and unhappiness. I want devotees to know that God won’t be disappointed in or punish them if they stray from what Prabhupada taught as “bona fide” spiritual values and morals and ethics when it comes to the things I discuss.

Fight a man when he is alive, Not when he is dead and does not know the difference.

I’m fighting ignorance, superstition, mental slavery, abuse, self-loathing, unhappiness and misinformation.

Swami Iconoclast, You want to battle with a man who thirty years dead. Be HONEST. Tell us what is your agenda. We know Sri Prabhupad would not a care about your points, he is dead for too long. BUT It matters to you that his name is debased. Be Honest and say why. That is my big curiousity.

Next point is, we dont think Vrajbhumi is a woman. She is too gritty for one. She is not timid, so she is not a lesbian either… BIG OFFENSIVE WORD !

I guess you have had very little contact with or awareness of women outside either a small circle or a culture of demure submissive women, at least when they are around you.

Try these on for size:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40qTXlNJj9s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeaPKuiyPK0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KztMzFA1bJo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tk8hXlSKst4

Many of these ‘offensive’ statements attributed to Prabhupad actually were said by Krishna. Like the verse in which Krishna says women, sudras vaisyas can attain him.
Demeaning statements about women blamed to Prabhupad can be sourced back to the Indian scriptures. If you want to blame, blame Krishna and scriptures. Then what ? Be honest and go somewhere else… some western church or whatever.

I don’t think so. I know that there are many Vedic related scriptures where you may find something in some book like the Manu-Samhita. I don’t accept everything taught in all Vedic scriptures because interpolation is all to common by interested parties in order to push an agenda. Unlike other religions because of the climate in India and the way that books were written there are no books which date back before the Muslim conquests. Not only would Hindu scribes in the service of Kings or local rulers add things or take things out of scriptures, but also the Muslims during their long reign in India were busy interpolating sastra in order to get people to give up Vedic beliefs and culture and adopt Islamic ideology, culture and religion. The British were also guilty of interpolation in order to try to convert Hindus to Christianity by planting horrible things in various sastras and then printing and distributing lots of those books. Hindu culture was changed radically after the Muslim conquest and sastra was changed in many cases. That is why I quoted Bhaktivinoda Thakura in an earlier comment of mine where he says more or less what I am saying (see below), that we have to see with our heart when something seems wrong in sastra because of the influence of changes to sastra by people over time. Because the Manu-Samhita was seen as the religious lawbook for Hindus, that is now the most horrific and barbaric of Vedic sastras. It was seized upon by various interested parties because of it’s significance as the law book for society and interpolated so extensively that it is pretty much useless. If you read it you will be shocked at it’s promotion of the most horrific punishments for trivial caste transgressions. Also if we look at other gaudiya teachers they do not teach about women like Prabhupada, Sripad Narayana Maharaja claims those teachings about women are not backed up by sastra and that they are bogus.

All this debate will have a positive result if you take that step. But you won’t. You know why ? Because you are looking for fame as a Krishna concious guru. And you depend on using the books and followers of other people to gain your end. You don’t have the gall to create your own.

I will use whatever resources Krishna makes available to me to speak the truth. You can accept or reject or speculate as to my motives all you want. It doesn’t matter to me.

When will you people look inward and learn something about yourself? I can see it all from here.
Be true about who you are. Give up the pretence and ambition once and for all. Move on to another group if there is any decency left in you and be an honest true Christian.= or whatever you choose It would be a better position than what you hold now… This goes for all those who hate Prabhupad but want to seduce his followers.

You need to find a better spot to look from since it is obvious you have difficulty in reading and understanding what I have written on this blog. Many devotees need to lighten up with the sturm und drang routine. There needs to be a more balanced and light approach to Krishna bhakti than the version presented by ISKCON. The version presented by ISKCON comes across like a cult to most people. One of the causes of that is because of the unbalanced antagonistic view it promotes of opinions that differ from Prabhupada. If you disagree with anything Prabhupada said then you and your opinion is at the least viewed as without consequence and at the most demonic. There is no middle ground for most devotees. If someone learns a religious philosophy well enough to become a scholar in that religion and thereby gains the ability to teach it effectively, that scholarship and teaching ability doesn’t automatically make that person Godlike. Nor does the fact of being able to create a large religious organization automatically make one Godlike. There are many successful preachers in most every religion who due to their theological scholarship and teaching ability have been able to build large religious organizations. Look at Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and his success with TM, or Sri Sri Ravi Shankar and his great success, or Rajneesh or Satya Sai Baba, and countless other Hindu and non-hindu religious organizations. Does their material success or their ability to make a lot of converts mean that they are perfect? Their followers revere their gurus as Godlike and therefore if someone has a different opinion than that of those gurus they are rejected in the same way that Prabhupada’s followers reject dissent from Prabhupada.

Prabhupada had a very distinct version of gaudiya bhakti. You won’t see a similar vision in the writings of any previous acarya. The big difference is that Prabhupada saw his mission as not just teaching about gaudiya theology, like all the previous acaryas did. Throughout his books and lectures and conversations we get theology with a huge dose of sociology as well as social and cultural criticism. He didn’t see his job as just being a traditional guru in the gaudiya sampradaya whose sole job was to educate on gaudiya theology. He saw his job as creating what he considered “Vedic society” outside of India, and getting Hindus in India to embrace his version of Vedic society and to reject their version of Vedic society as well as modern ideas. Was he really qualified to do all that? After all what kind of experience did he have? He was never involved with running an organization before ISKCON. And because of that lack of experience and qualification his vision was unable to be realized. For starters – the gurukula disaster.

He saw ISKCON gurukulas as essential and invaluable for the training of the devotee’s children to become an army of dedicated full time workers for ISKCON. They were to be the ground troops in his vision of ISKCON changing the modern cultures of the world. It was widely taught in ISKCON that Prabhupada said that the children of the first generation of gurukulis would “take over the world”. The problem with this ambition is that as good a theological scholar as he was, he was not really qualified for the daunting task he set for himself and ISKCON. Nor was it a realistic goal. The gurukulas turned into a major problem and have given him and ISKCON a sordid reputation the world over. He simply didn’t have the managerial skills to do what he set out to do. Nor did he see the emotional damage to taking away 5 year old children from their families for a life like a perpetual boot camp. Adults have a difficult time living ashram life, for children it can be a nightmare. Prabhupada couldn’t see how children were going to be adversely affected by essentially destroying their childhood in the name of “changing the world”. The people he put in charge of overseeing the gurukulas were not qualified, and Prabhupada himself didn’t make sure everything was going on professionally, and the result was an unmitigated disaster.

Then there was the succession issue. He left ISKCON in very bad shape even though he had a lot of time to get things ready before he left. He had set up the GBC to be elected by temple presidents. That was the logical way to manage. But he never saw to it that the system was followed through with. He was closer to certain disciples than to others. So he never enforced the electing of GBC which kept the disciples he was closer with in the GBC. When he knew he wasn’t going to be around much longer he didn’t realize just how bad a shape he was leaving the management in. Not only that, he didn’t realize how unqualified, for a number of different reasons, that many of his closest disciples were, to be leaders of ISKCON. The result? An unmitigated disaster. Not only did his chosen leaders become prima donna narcissistic power mad self deluded control freaks which caused an exodus of many of Prabhupada’s disciples, they also didn’t fix the gurukula problem when faced with it, and they caused many more newer problems.

Then there was Prabhupada’s lack of understanding that most of the “intelligent class of people” are going to see his views on sex, women, blacks, Jews, gays, Hitler, science and cosmology, and modern society and modern people in general, from highly objectionable, to highly offensive. He had an opinion on almost everything and it was always extremely negative if it was in some way not seen by him to be in harmony with “vedic culture” or “4 regulative principles”. He didn’t realize that if you want people to become Krishna bhaktas then it would be very counterproductive to make them think that Krishna bhakti comes with all sorts of offensive and objectionable unnecessary baggage. The result is that ISKCON gradually has changed into a society mostly for Hindus who aren’t bothered by what most non-Hindus are bothered by in Prabhupada’s teachings. Outside of India ISKCON membership and congregations have been continually changing; with non-Hindus leaving. The only place that non-Hindus are still a major force for ISKCON is in the former communist bloc countries in Europe. That is because Krishna consciousness came there 20 years later than the rest of the world. So they are experiencing what ISKCON in the rest of the world experienced in the 1970’s and early 1980’s — very fast growth. But even that has slowed down. There are some western European countries where ISKCON is doing alright, certainly better than the United States, Canada and Latin America, but still it’s not like it was 25-30 years ago. It’s been steadily downhill as far as membership and congregation. Mostly they have people coming and going, mostly young people, and many of the people are second and third generation devotees. The internet has changed everything. It used to be that you had to get a book or go to a temple to learn about ISKCON. Now you can go online and get any question you can think of answered. And for most people they are not going to like a lot of the answers they find. So the result is that gradually ISKCON is turning into a force in India and in Indian communities – and nowhere else. Even in India the “intelligent high class” people are mostly going to reject Prabhupada’s teachings for the same reason that non-Hindus do. Right now there is strong support from Hindus, but as more Indians accept a more non-traditional westernized liberal egalitarian outlook on life, as has been going on for the better educated and higher classes, and the wealthy and middle class younger generations, for years now, support for ISKCON will not be there very much from them, nor outside of India.

Unless ISKCON radically changes it’s teachings from a Prabhupada-centric take-no-prisoners style of “everyone is crap but us” style of teaching, to a more traditional style of teaching where theology is taught without all the excessive baggage of Prabhupada’s vision of changing the “world of demons” into the “enlightened vedic culture” of institutionalized misogyny and sexism, racism, casteism, homophobia, the idea that you must live a life of complete and total rejection of society, and total renunciation of all “sense gratification” — or you are an animal — then ISKCON will continue to slide into it’s place of irrelevance for most people.

From The Harmonist, May 1932, issue number 11. Article originally titled, Sree Chaitanya in South India. Pages 325-326.

By Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thakur Prabhupada

The world stands in no need of any reformer. The world has a very competent person for guiding its minutest happenings. The person who determines that there is scope for reform of the world, himself stands in need of reform. The world goes on in its own perfect way. No person can deflect it even the breadth of a hair from the course chalked out for it by providence. When we perceive any change being actually effected in the course of events of this world by the agency of any particular individual, we must know very well that the agent possesses no real power at any stage. The agent finds himself driven forward by a force belonging to a different category from himself. The course of the world does not require to be changed by the agency of any person. What is necessary is to change our outlook on this world. This was done for the contemporary generation by the mercy of Sri Chaitanya. It can only be known to recipients of his mercy. The scriptures declare that it is only necessary to listen with an open mind to the name of Krishna from the lips of a bona fide devotee. As soon as Krishna enters the listening ear, he clears up the vision of the listener so that he no longer has any ambition of ever acting the part of a reformer of any other person, because he finds that nobody is left without the very highest guidance. It is therefore his own reform, by the grace of God, whose supreme necessity and nature he is increasingly able to realize, by the eternally continuing mercy of the Supreme Lord.

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We Must Think for Ourselves

Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakura

The Bhagavata teaches us that God gives us truth as He gave it to Vyasa: when we earnestly seek for it.

Truth is eternal and unexhausted. The soul receives a revelation when anxious for it. The souls of the great thinkers of the bygone ages, who now live spiritually, often approach our inquiring spirit and assist in its development. Thus Vyasa was assisted by Narada and Brahma.

Our Shastras, or in other words, books of thought, do not contain all that we could get from the infinite Father.

No book is without its errors.

God’s revelation is absolute truth, but it is scarcely received and preserved in its natural purity. We have been advised in the 14th Chapter of 11th Skandha of the Bhagavata to believe that truth when revealed is absolute, but it gets the tincture of the nature of the receiver in course of time and is converted into error by continual exchange of hands from age to age. New revelations, therefore, are continually necessary in order to keep truth in its original purity. We are thus warned to be careful in our studies of old authors, however wise they are reputed to be.

Here we have full liberty to reject the wrong idea, which is not sanctioned by the peace of conscience. Vyasa was not satisfied with what he collected in the Vedas, arranged in the Puranas and composed in the Mahabharata. The peace of his conscience did not sanction his labors. It told him from within, “No, Vyasa! You cannot rest contented with the erroneous picture of truth which was necessarily presented to you by the sages of bygone days. You must yourself knock at the door of the inexhaustible store of truth from which the former ages drew their wealth. Go, go up to the fountainhead of truth, where no pilgrim meets with disappointment of any kind.” Vyasa did it and obtained what he wanted. We have been all advised to do so.

Liberty then is the principle which we must consider as the most valuable gift of God. We must not allow ourselves to be led by those who lived and thought before us. We must think for ourselves and try to get further truths which are still undiscovered. In the Bhagavata we have been advised to take the spirit of the Shastras and not the words. The Bhagavata is therefore a religion of liberty, unmixed truth and absolute love.