Long Distance Runaround

This is a response to comments on the Pompatus of Love post.

Suchi, India has had soap forever; your comment on cleanliness was really silly. The purpose of Prabhupada saying those things is to try to get his followers disgusted with sex.

Prabhupada’s teachings differ from past acaryas in that he focused obsessively on demeaning everything and anything or anyone that wasn’t directly connected to what he considered “devotional service”. You don’t find such a harsh obsessive demeaning rhetoric in sastra or from past acaryas. They do warn against being swayed by materialistic goals and sense enjoyment to give up the pursuit of God consciousness, but Prabhupada took it to a whole other level because he wanted full time servants who were totally one pointed in their focus in life – serving him. He figured that the best way to do that was to hyperbolize the warnings of sastra about sense enjoyment and materialistic goals in life.

He sought to create a bunker mentality. After I first joined ISKCON, after a very short while, I began to see ISKCON as a refuge from the outside world of evil and darkness. It was drilled into our heads that ISKCON is a pure transcendental society whose purpose was to battle and conquer the societies and cultures of the world at large. I was taught to see the outside civilization as a place that had been transformed by the effects of Kali Yuga into a demonic civilization (except the most spiritual parts of India). Not only was I taught to see everything outside of ISKCON as demonic, but also we were taught to see everything and everybody outside of ISKCON as “contaminating” in the silly way that many Hindus believe they get the cooties from touching people who are low caste or outside of the faith, or by touching bodily excretions.

Prabhupada very openly and obsessively taught that the purpose of ISKCON was for changing the entire world into followers of his teachings. At the least he taught that he wanted to have the leaders of the world become his followers so that they could impose his teachings on the world by force.

Lecture on BG 1.4-5 — London, July 10, 1973:

So up to that point, Mahārāja Parīkṣit, the whole planet was very nicely governed by dictatorship. So we can bring in such dictatorship, provided that dictator is perfectly Kṛṣṇa conscious.

Press Conference at Airport — July 28, 1975, Dallas:

So dictatorship is good, provided the dictator is highly qualified spiritually

Morning Walk — January 21, 1976, Mayapura

Still, if you say, “You are mūḍha, ” they become angry. Such mūḍhas, rascals, they are in the government service. And if you say that “You are mūḍhas, ” he becomes angry. Upadeśo hi mūrkhāṇāṁ prakopāya na śāntaye: “If a mūḍha is advised nice instruction, he becomes angry.” He does not take it. Payaḥ-pānaṁ bhujaṅgānāṁ kevalaṁ viṣa-vardhanam: “If you give milk and banana to a snake, you simply increase his poison.” One day he will come-(growls). You see? “I have given you milk and you…” “Yes, that is my nature. Yes. You give me milk, and I am prepared to kill you.” This is mūḍha. We have to kill this civilization of mūḍhas. That is Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement. Paritrāṇāya sādhūnāṁ vināśāya ca duṣkṛtām BG 4.8 . Those who are actually human being, you have to give them Kṛṣṇa. And those who are mūḍhas, we have to kill them. This is our business. Kill all the mūḍhas and give Kṛṣṇa to the sane man. Yes. That will prove that you are really Kṛṣṇa’s. We are not nonviolent. We are violent to the mūḍhas.

Room Conversation — February 25, 1977, Mayapura

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: Gradually some of the people are beginning to understand what you’re up to, Śrīla Prabhupāda. Some of these big demons in America especially, they are beginning to understand that you are the most dangerous personality in the world to them.

Prabhupāda: To kill “demon-crazy,” LSD. (laughs) Yes, that is my mission. That is Kṛṣṇa’s mission, paritrāṇāya sādhūnāṁ vināśāya ca duṣkṛtām BG 4.8 , to kill all these demons, crazy demons. I have no such power; otherwise I would have killed them. Either establish Kṛṣṇa conscious government or kill them- bas, finish. I would have done that, violence.

Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: Yes, when good argument fails…

Prabhupāda: Kill them. Finish. Just like Paraśurāma did. Kill all them, twenty-one times.

Bali-mardana: Oh, Paraśurāma. I was just reading in that…

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Bali-mardana: …8.3. Very nice.

Prabhupāda: No consideration. Kill them. Due to Paraśurāma, the kṣatriyas went to European side, fled away. From India either they were driven away or killed when they become inconsistent with Vedic rules. So these kṣatriyas and associates… These parts of the world were resided by aborigines, mean uncivilized class. So for so many years associated with them, they have learned killing the an… Otherwise they’re Aryans.

In the past Gaudiya teachings had been about spiritual development. But if you ask a follower of Srila Prabhupada about the purpose of Gaudiya teachings, they will often go on about how the world is full of “nonsense demonic civilization”, how everyone and everything is immoral and degraded, how the world needs Prabhupada’s teachings to save them, e.g in order to deindustrialize and transform the modern decadent demonic society into a Vedic golden age where the standard of being a human was to follow very strictly all of Prabhupada’s teachings.

In order to create a dedicated cadre of full time followers Prabhupada changed the basic spiritual framework of Gaudiya Vaishnava teachings. Previously, Gaudiya teachers taught that the purpose of life was to become self-realized and God conscious. Bhakti-yoga was taught as a discipline for self-improvement. Prabhupada changed the conception of bhakti-yoga from an inward looking yoga into an outward looking social and cultural movement. Traditionally bhakti-yoga is about changing yourself, not the world around you^[1].

In ISKCON bhakti-yoga is called devotional service with the stress on service. This language was used by Prabhupada to reinvent what bhakti-yoga was really all about. Previously, bhakti-yoga was defined by the various forms of sadhana, e.g. mantra meditation (japa), singing mantras (kirtan), deity worship (archana), hearing from sastra and sadhu (sravanam), etc. Prabhupada changed that paradigm of bhakti-yoga. Those practices were kept, but the stress was put upon physical devotional service to the guru as the essential and fundamentally required task of bhakti-yoga practice.

In the sastra gurus are said to be necessary and indispensable because gurus were accessible founts of Vedic knowledge for an average person. Books were rare, they had to be hand copied, and the climate of India is not kind to the type of material books were written on. An average guru was nothing more than a walking scripture to one degree or another, and therefore said to be the representative of God. Just like an expert student of Shakespeare represents Shakespeare.

The Vedic scriptures enjoin people to serve the guru because gurus were not supposed to charge money for their services. If they weren’t given service and support then they would have to work to support themselves and their family. Therefore in order for them to do their jobs full time the average person is supposed to serve and support the brahmins (usually) whose roles were as gurus for society.

In Prabhupada’s teachings the guru is a supernatural being who is able to “give you his mercy” in the form of some mystical transference of yogic benediction or power from Krishna. He taught that if you please the guru then Krishna will mystically elevate you to higher and higher levels of God consciousness.

Traditionally the concept of pleasing a guru and getting a spiritual benefit from that was about the guru being pleased with you and then reciprocating by taking his time to teach you. It was a teacher student relationship where you were supposed to pay tuition (through service or money) for your education. It wasn’t about a hidden mystical revelation given to you by God through the act of pleasing the guru, as if God is holding back on enlightening you unless you kowtow and become a bootlick slave to a guru. But that is exactly what Prabhupada teaches as being the authentic traditional guru/disciple paradigm.

The mystic guru does exist within Hinduism outside of the Vaishnava bhakti-yoga schools. In the mystic yoga tradition of Kashmiri Shaivism some gurus are said to have the ability to magically transfer some mystic potency of some type or another to a person by a mystic touch or another mystic action of some type (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaktipat). In Vaishnava teachings a guru’s role is as a guide or teacher, not a being who can use magic to give you enlightenment. Enlightenment comes in stages through the practice of sadhana and through the revelation of God within (antaryami).

Prabhupada twisted Gaudiya teachings because he wanted his followers to believe that the only way for them to go to heaven and avoid rebirth and suffering was by serving him. He taught that the only way to “please” Krishna was by pleasing the spiritual master. He taught that spiritual enlightenment comes from “pleasing” Krishna. He taught that no one can become “Krishna conscious” without submitting to a spiritual master as a menial servant.

His stated goal was to conquer the world, i.e. make everyone follow his teachings. ISKCON teachings differ drastically from traditional Gaudiya Vaishnavism. ISKCON devotees are taught to see bhakti-yoga as split into two parts – 1) spiritual self-improvement 2) proselytizing activities with the purpose of “saving” others and saving the world (literally taking over the world). The emphasis though is on proselytizing as the best way to spiritually self-improve. Their motto is books are the basis, which means that the basis of their devotional service, or bhakti-yoga, is distributing the books of A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami. For the followers of other gurus in ISKCON, their books as well. In order to get people dedicated to following his ideas Prabupada sought to create an us vs. them mentality. He divided the world between his followers vs. everybody else. And he then declared war on everybody else.

In order to get his followers willing to accept such an unusual conception of yoga, his teachings are dominated by the dehumanization or demonization of anything that would distract his followers from 100% dedication to his cause. Therefore, because the main distraction for a man is the sexual and romantic attraction to women, he especially demonized the sexual attraction that women hold for men. Sex with women is constantly compared in explicit terminology to sniffing and licking the behinds of dogs.

The purpose is to create disgust and therefore repulsion towards sex with women. The goal is creating an attitude in men of a desire to live a life of total renunciation of sexual relationships. Prabhupada was trying to convince people that any other aim in life besides being a full time slave to Prabhupada’s plans for world domination was very foolish, disgusting and spiritual suicide. He compared the desire for enjoying the pleasures in life and society to the life of a hog wallowing in its stool. He called non-ISKCON society a society of animals. And he focused obsessively and relentlessly on these ideas.

The result is that hundreds of thousands of people became believers in and dedicated (to varying degrees) to serving Prabhupada’s moral and ethical vision. They believe/believed that path to be the royal road to their salvation, and to the salvation of the world. Many followers eventually lose faith in Prabhupada, and many of those lose faith in Gaudiya Vaishnavism altogether because they think that Prabhupada’s teachings are the authentic teachings of the sampradaya. They see the absurdity of accepting Prabhupada as the true pure voice of God due to their disgust at the many unsavory conceptions he taught. ISKCON has a real problem in dealing with this reality.

There are three types of devotees in ISKCON and among Prabhupada’s followers outside of ISKCON. There are those who are convinced that Prabhupada is the highest type of perfected master savior figure who descended from heaven. To them he is a perfect all-knowing mystically powerful super-being, who even now can communicate with his followers and give them magical mystic power if they “surrender to him”. The second type see Prabhupada as a bona fide spiritual master, but recognize that he wasn’t a god-like being above making mistakes. They essentially accept his version of Gaudiya Vaishnavism as authentic, even though they disagree with certain things he said about women, gays, black people, jews, etc. The third type are those who don’t accept Prabhupada as a bona fide spiritual master or who don’t have much or any faith in Gaudiya Vaishnavism as the be all and end all of spiritual illumination. They keep quiet about their beliefs so they can remain in good standing with ISKCON and amongst the outside community. Lots of Indians fit into this category.

A huge percentage (according to a study by a university professor) of Indians who visit or are part of the ISKCON congregation are there only for networking or socializing with the large community of Indians who go to ISKCON temples outside of India; or they appreciate the opulent deity worship going on in ISKCON temples, and or they appreciate the kirtans and or the religious festivals. Only a small percentage are believers and supporters of Prabhupada’s teachings. I think there are a lot of non-Indian bhaktas as well who are a part of the ISKCON congregation who also don’t accept Prabhupada’s teachings and are there solely to take advantage of the same things as the majority of the Indian community. They know to keep their opinions mostly to themselves.

Many of the leaders of ISKCON must know that Prabhupada’s teachings are off to some degree or another. But, the nature of the ISKCON community is that a person’s leadership position in the organization itself is something that is based upon perception of “purity”, i.e. perceived to be strictly following Prabhupada’s rules and teachings. If you are seen as deviating from a strict vaidi sadhana-bhakti attitude, you will be targeted for rectification by your allies, and removal by your competitors. The worst thing you can do in the eyes of a Prabhupada true believer, or in the eyes of someone looking for power by taking you down, is to openly disagree with Prabhupada. That puts you into the position of an offender. Simply disagreeing with Prabhupada is considered offensive by his fanatical followers and ISKCON. There are countless people who want power in ISKCON, but only a limited number of power positions. Therefore tearing down ISKCON leaders as not being strict followers of Prabhupada has become a regular sport for countless devotees – like big game hunting, at many websites run by Prabhupada’s followers. The smarter leaders and devotees in ISKCON see the problem of Prabhupada weighing down their plans for expansion and their loss of respectability in the wider society, but they are hamstrung by the ever-present threat of a loss of their position and prestige from within ISKCON, or from the unending condemnation by Prabhupada fanatics outside ISKCON.

^[1]From The Harmonist, May 1932, issue number 11. Article originally titled, Sree Chaitanya in South India. Pages 325-326.

By Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thakur

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.