The Golden Age?

This is a reply to a comment from Caitanya das to The Bizarro World post.

I like your “Is ISKCON a cult?” post. I also wrote a post with the same title http://harekrishnawomen.wordpress.com/2008/07/01/is-iskcon-a-cult/

My post differs from yours in it’s focus, yours shows the views of a young man’s recent experience of ISKCON, and how, contrary to ISKCON leader’s claims — the organization seems to have changed little from the zonal acharya days.

As for the post you link to in your comment — what you said is the main cause of your leaving ISKCON is a very common experience and reason for people leaving ISKCON, or changing their focus from the temple or farm to focusing on marriage and family.

I still don’t see you understanding how ISKCON came to be like it is. In the very first post on this blog I speak to the misunderstanding by people like you who have the idea that ISKCON’s social problems are caused by something other than the teaching which they have been taught to believe in.

You mention that people should be careful and consider the backgrounds of ISKCON gurus or leaders because they were “beef-eating mleccha hippies” or maybe criminals or homosexuals. But the reality is that “beef-eating mleccha hippies” were the people who started the peace and love movement of the 1960s, they were the people who started the new age movement, they were the people who joined ashrams and communes and ISKCON. Gay people as well are mostly nice people — from my experience. The actual reality of the situation, which you don’t seem to understand, is that essentially nice, peace and love promoting people — maybe ignorant in various ways — joined ISKCON and had their worldview radically altered overnight.

They than became narcissistic in a sense because they were taught to see the people of the world divided between Us and Them, with Them being subhuman, and Us being divine saviors. By thinking oneself to be a divine savior it is easy to mistreat others in the name of your superiority — even other divine saviors whom you have disagreements with; when in truth you are just an average person who has been led to believe that you are way more spiritually advanced than you actually are. Which is an exploitative tactic you have succumbed to, i.e. “by your surrender to me you become superior to everyone else in every possible way.”

In your post “ISKCON should mean love” you mention how ISKCON life is loveless, how people are not treating each other with love. But, if you would have seen these people before they joined ISKCON, you would probably have seen them act very differently.

In a culture where doing anything but “devotional service” is seen as a sin to varying degrees, people become judgmental as a way of life. The relationships between bhaktas who live outside of ISKCON (or an ISKCON-like organization) are usually very different than what you are complaining about within ISKCON.

This is mostly due to bhaktas in ISKCON being very judgmental of everyone and each other. They are fed a daily diet of being told that your status or value as a human is based upon the level of your “surrender” to ISKCON and your guru. They are fed a daily diet of being told that if you don’t strictly follow all the rules and regulations imposed by ISKCON — than you are subhuman. Renunciation of “material pleasure” is taught as a virtue in ISKCON, and conversely enjoyment of material pleasures is taught as being a sign of selfishness.

All of these things create a culture of judgmentalism and resentment. Resentment is reserved for those who you see as enjoying more material pleasures than yourself, especially if they are leaders, while judgmentalism is the order of the day. Add to that mix — denigration of women as a whole, and you have a recipe for social unpleasantness.

Another problem or misunderstanding that I see all of the time from people like you, which leads to your feelings of being unloved — is that your conception of ISKCON is that it is a society, in the sense of a culture or ethnic group, rather than ISKCON being what it actually is — a church organization.

Traditionally in India the temple is a place of worship and or sadhana. If there is an organization comprised of many priests, i.e. monks or swamis and brahmacharis, or even householders, still the temple is just a place for worship and sadhana. People come and go, they may live the life of a brahmachari for a while, then they move on with their lives. Just like today in some Buddhist countries young men are expected to live a few years as monks in the temple, or even in the Mormon community young men are expected to join a mission and live as brahmachari monks for a few years. A very tiny percentage of people would remain monks dedicated to the ashram or temple for longer periods of time, or maybe become lifelong renunciates.

In ISKCON you have something different, where instead of the temple and ashram being a traditional model of worship and learning for students within and a part of a wider society and culture, you have an attempt to create a society and culture based upon what was traditionally simply a place for spiritual learning and worship. Because this attempt to create a society and culture — which is based upon denouncing and renouncing the wider culture around them (except in holy places in India) — has the rules and regulations of a traditional ashram — it is bound to be a failure in the sense of creating a harmonious culture and society.

Most people cannot tolerate for very long the ashram lifestyle of strict rules and regulations. Traditionally people would spend just a few years in an ashram where they would receive a spiritual education and then they would lead normal lifestyles outside of the ashram, or they would join when they were retired and wanted a spiritual education. ISKCON tries to create an insular society where they are taught that they are not just a temple or ashram, but they are a new society, a new Eden. But of course since over 95% of the people who join ISKCON end up leaving, the society they have created is constantly in flux, and therefore that is another reason that there is no possibility of sustainability for the development of a cohesive society.

An example is their constant inability to create “varnashrama communities”. ISKCON’s idea that they need to create “varnashrama communities” has been a failure because in order for that to work you need a lot of people dedicated to living in rural areas who are willing to live off of the land and cows. The reality is that very few people will dedicate themselves to that because once you have tasted nectar it’s hard to go back to gruel. Therefore when you have so many modern conveniences and pleasures easily available to you, hardly anyone is going to give that up to go live on a Neo-Luddite farm community for very long. You may attract people with a romantic notion of “going back to the land”, but unless they are forced to stay there, most people will quickly realize how much they miss all of the material opulences available in modern society which they have taken for granted all of their lives. Add to that all of the social problems within ISKCON, and we can conclude that in it’s present form with it’s present ideology, ISKCON will never be able to fulfill it’s dream of large scale “varnashrama communities”.

We see so many resentful ex-members of ISKCON who are disciples of Prabhupada and who believe they have been forced to leave some mythical paradisaical society when they left ISKCON. They don’t see ISKCON as a church or monastery or ashram where they spent some time to become spiritually educated, they see it as an ethnic cultural phenomena, a spiritual society which they want to live in but cannot for various reasons. We see them obsessively rant and rave on websites about the perceived deviations and faults of ISKCON leaders over trivial matters like wages or accommodations for Hindu cultural events, or theological issues about gurus. They remember a time when they were young and Krishna consciousness and bhakti-yoga was new, maybe they were convinced that they were the saviors of the world. That level of excitement couldn’t last, it occurs when Krishna consciousness is new to you.

But because they left ISKCON for one reason or another having to do with the direction of management often while still in their youth, many of them believe (consciously or subconsciously) it is being in ISKCON which was the cause of what they experienced in their youthful enthusiasm and excitement. They believe that if they could get back in an ISKCON where everything is going on the way they would like it to be, i.e. get ISKCON back to some perceived golden age where everyone followed Prabhupada — that everything will be exciting and that they will be enthused and blissful again because they will be able to save the world again.

The reality is: Those people need to move on. ISKCON was always dystopian, not utopian. The bliss they experienced was in spite of ISKCON, not because of it. Even if ISKCON changes to their liking and they move back into the society, they will still not recapture what they experienced years ago. Krishna consciousness is about a progression of consciousness. What they experienced when they were new to Gaudiya Vaishnavism was based upon the newness of Krishna consciousness and the idea that they were special saviors of the world. After bhakti-yoga becomes routine the excitement and enthusiasm of the newness of the past is not the same, but if you are advancing you will experience the bliss of the development of your relationship with Radha Krishna. Instead of your bliss coming solely from the conception of your being “saved” and being excited to “save the world”, your bliss will also come from bhava and rasa.

But the problem with ISKCON, due to Prabhupada’s teachings, is that you are led to believe that you are unqualified to delve deep into your self to discover your relationship with Radha Krishna. You are led to believe that all you are supposed to do is hear and chant and preach. You are also led to believe to see the world around you as Mahamaya — to be ignored and avoided as much as possible.

When in reality the authentic teaching is that we should try to see Krishna controlling everything because that way Krishna can reveal that control and presence everywhere to us. The world of Mahamaya is a conceptual world, it’s based upon the vision of the seer. The ignorant person doesn’t know that Krishna is present everywhere and in control over everything. They live in the world of Mahamaya. They see everything as a chaotic interaction between the modes of nature. The enlightened person knows that everything is a manifestation of Krishna’s energy and therefore they are eligible to experience Krishna everywhere. They may live in the same physical plane as the person who lives in the world of Mahamaya, but the enlightened person lives in the world of sat-chit-ananda, the spiritual world — Where mango, apple, orange, banana, and peach trees — are wish-fulfilling trees. Where everything is made of chintamani (wish fulfilling gem) because everything is a manifestation of Krishna’s magical power fulfilling all of our needs and desires.

And therefore Brahma spoke:

cintāmaṇi-prakara-sadmasu kalpa-vṛkṣa-
lakṣāvṛteṣu surabhīr abhipālayantam
lakṣmī-sahasra-śata-sambhrama-sevyamānaḿ
govindam ādi-puruṣaḿ tam ahaḿ bhajāmi

In a variety of abodes comprised of wish fulfilling gems, surrounded by millions of wish fulfilling trees, coming and going, fragrant and charming (or with milk cows), resorting with pride to hundreds of thousands of Goddesses of fortune — is Govinda, the primeval person, whom I adore.