In the year 2525

7 UP vs Limca asked the following questions in the comments to It’s hard to run with the weight of gold post

You wrote:

Vrajabhumi what is your vision for the future of Krishna bhakti in the western world?

It could continue down the path it is on now, i.e. if Prabhupada’s teachings and vision continue to be seen as representing Gaudiya Vaisnavism for most people, the following trends will likely continue: Hindus continue to replace westerners as congregation and ashram membership and temple management because most non-Hindus will continue to be repelled by what they perceive to be an anti-social sexist asexual fundamentalist anachronistic group of foolish religious fanatics.

Why is ISKCON in the western world not the same as it was at it’s height from 1975-85? There has been a decline in membership in the temples. ISKCON portrays this fact to the media with this mantra:

“ISKCON’s membership has grown up, we are no longer teenage and twentysomething fanatics, most people are married and have jobs, we have matured in our beliefs and don’t believe we have to be so insular by living in a commune. And our outreach to the public reflects that. That’s why you don’t see us at airports or parking lots bugging you for money or to buy our books so much anymore.”

I disagree with that belief, as far as I can tell they are mostly still the same fanatics, and the only reason the number of residents in the temples are way down from their height has nothing to do with maturing of devotees. The real reason is because people stopped moving into ashrams and temple communities while at the same time people were leaving. Why did they stop joining and why were they leaving?

Was ISKCON so different 25-35 years ago compared to today?

Well, one thing to consider is that one of the attractive features which impelled many or most people to join ISKCON was the community of devotees. When I joined ISKCON the temple I joined had around 60 full-time youthful energetic people. That attracted me to join. That communal aspect of ISKCON is what attracted many or probably most to join. If the temple had been comprised of 10 or so mostly low-key middle aged people, servicing a large Hindu congregation as their main function, I don’t know if I would have joined, and if I did I doubt I would have stayed as long as I did.

How ISKCON lost it’s mojo

The 1980s was a different time from the previous 20 years. Spirituality was becoming seen as passé in modern culture. In the ’60s and ’70s there was often a spiritual or mystical or esoteric edge in popular culture music and movies. By the mid 1980s western popular culture had become more about making money than it was about artistic expression. Consumerism, materialism and hedonistic excess was seen as cool because it was promoted by corporate greed as the new standard of cool. Accountants had taken over the entertainment industry from artists, and MTV was the new purveyor of cool for society (believe it or not youngins). They promoted a non-stop stream of hedonism as the height of cool. Shallowness was in, reflected in the mass popularity of Heavy Metal hair bands and other strictly hedonistic cultural mindsets. Whereas in the ’60s and ’70s it was cool to reject popular culture for something more esoteric, in the ’80s selfish consumerist Valley Girl culture and brainless consumerist Metal culture had become dominant.

This would prove to be a problem for ISKCON. In the ’60s and ’70s it was cool to check out the Hare Krishna’s because they were so clearly extreme counterculture. In the ’80s counterculture was no longer cool — the dominant culture was cool. Therefore Hare Krishna’s were seen as something to be avoided because they are so fanatically anti-social, sober, sexless and religious. A small number of people from a small sub-culture did become interested in ISKCON for a short time in the ’80s (the hardcore punk scene), but they never provided many new members.

Because of the zonal acharya abuses and because normally a large percentage had always left ISKCON after a certain amount of time — lot’s of people were leaving, but for the first time not many were joining.

By the early 1990s modern popular culture had changed again. The ’80s pop culture of worshiping materialism and hedonism was no longer cool; once again it was cool to be counterculture. The neo-punk band Nirvana and neo-hippies like Pearl Jam were new icons of cool. In the U.K. and Europe there was a major shift of pop culture from the totally mundane to a hankering for the more psychedelic counterculture times of the ’60s and ’70s; manifested in the musical shift away from metal and trendy Hollywood chic into Alternative music and culture, and Britpop.

Once again it was cool to be counterculture, which meant it was good for the Hare Krishna’s. But, by that time ISKCON temples were shells of their former selves (except eastern Europe), they were no longer full of the youthful enthusiastic people which had attracted so many people to join in the late ’60s and ’70s and early ’80s. They had become full of Hindus with a handful of increasingly older low-key westerners.

Liberal social views are more and more seen as the only sane way of living in the western world for most people. The section of people opposed to liberalism are almost all religious people of various stripes, but mostly fundamentalist Christians and Mormons. Ever since the early 1990s modern culture hasn’t really changed. Counterculture is still seen as cool, and it seems that things will probably remain on the same cultural course for the foreseeable future. ISKCON’s brand of counterculture is the antithesis of the current liberal ethos. With the Internet making any and all questions you may have about the Hare Krishna’s easily available, and with temples no longer places of large youthful enthusiastic communal communities, I don’t see the likelihood of ISKCON gaining large numbers of new members. Probably they will also lose Hindu membership as alternatives to ISKCON increase in number for the Hindu community.

The only way to reverse that trend is to change. They need to be more liberal in their social views. They need to be less about negativity and finding fault with people’s lifestyles, and instead be more about positivity and focusing on bhakti as being fun — instead of bhakti being about boring repetitive renunciation, slavishness to a guru, and negativity about everything and everyone else.

But, the leaders of ISKCON gain their spiritual authority in the eyes of ISKCON members — and therefore their livelihood — from dogmatic conformity to Prabhupada’s teachings and version of Gaudiya Vaisnavism — and his vision for ISKCON. Often they think he was some super genius who knows better than anyone else how to “spread Krishna consciousness.” Prabhupada of course was ultra-negative and anti-liberal and anti-social. As long as ISKCON, or anyone really, presents Prabhupada as the Jesus figure of their teaching or organization, in these modern times they will never gain much traction outside of Hindus looking for someplace to worship and congregate. Prabhupada and his teachings are what most all western people who would be interested in bhakti-yoga are going to reject about ISKCON or anyone else who teaches like Prabhupada.

What about the other Gaudiya organizations and people?

Narayana Maharaja is what is attracting people to join his sangha. Once he is gone their organization (which is small but has a lot of followers and sympathizers) will face the same fate as ISKCON unless they change. While Narayana Maharaja doesn’t teach exactly like Prabhupada, he still focuses on renunciation and anti-social memes in his teaching. That’s why like ISKCON he doesn’t gain much in the way of new membership — outside of ex-ISKCON members. He initiates a lot of people, but he has no standards for initiation — anyone can be initiated, and many if not most don’t take Gaudiya Vaishnavism seriously for long if at all. If his followers, who are mostly ex-ISKCON members, continue on with his organization or with new ones, nothing will change as long as they continue on with their current teaching ideology. They will become like ISKCON if they get the funding to build more and bigger temples.

Sridhar Maharaja’s organization is in a similar situation, although less so because they are less anti-social and less focused on renunciation in their teaching, and therefore more attractive to an average person. But, still they are like Narayana Maharaja’s sangha in that mostly they are ex-ISKCON devotees who were educated by and have faith in Prabhupada’s teachings as being authentic and super genius. As long as people rely on Prabhupada and promote him or his teachings, they will never gain much of a following amongst westerners.

The same goes for the other smaller Gaudiya sanghas and gurus coming from the Gaudiya Math or ISKCON. If they try to emulate ISKCON or Prabhupada, they will never gain much of a following. ISKCON’s fast and large growth was fueled by the counterculture revolutionary spirit of the ’60s and ’70s. Once that faded away ISKCON’s growth stopped in the western world — except eastern Europe, which due to communism was exposed to ISKCON much later. But they are going through the same phases that the rest of ISKCON in the west went through. Now, with the rise of the Internet, and with social liberalism fanatically believed to be the only sane option by the only people who would be interested in bhakti-yoga in the west, that growth spurt of ISKCON will not be replicated as long as you teach the same things as they do. If you do you will simply end up as they have — temples comprised of sentimentalists, neophytes and exploiters.

As for the rest of the Gaudiya Vaishnava world, i.e. those outside of ISKCON or Gaudiya Math lineages; temples are non-existent outside of India, and even in India there is hardly any organizational structure, mostly just individual temples or sadhus. They are generally inaccessible for various reason for most westerners, and oftentimes look at westerners as low-class people to exploit for their wealth.

So, the immediate future looks bleak for Gaudiya Vaishnavism in the west. The only organized groups are in the hands of people who don’t understand the misdirections they are on and pushing forth. They think they have to “keep the message pure” and not change what they have received from Prabhupada or other similar gurus to present a watered-down version to attract more followers. What they don’t realize is that their version isn’t actually “pure”, and that’s the reason they remain so insignificant and with transitory membership. Of course, the neophyte fanatics who think Prabhupada was some perfect supreme god sent to save the world won’t see the truth of what I’m saying. They will continue on with their delusions of grandeur and tilting at windmills, believing that “only if we put Prabhupada at the center will everything work out” — not realizing that Prabhupada has been at the center of Gaudiya Vaishnvism in the west for the last 40 years; and what has been the result? A handful of exploiters got rich, Hindus enjoy more temples, and a lot of people ended up with little to show for their “devotional service” besides a sense of superiority. Very few have actually advanced to the purpose of Gaudiya Vaishnavism, and even than — that was only after leaving behind the influence of A.C Bhaktivedanta Swami.

What would you like to see 10, 20, 60 years down the line?

I don’t think in those terms about the future. The future has already been planned out and will proceed according to that plan. Whether or not Radha-Krishna plans on changing or expanding how Gaudiya Vaishnavism is currently presented in the western world? Maybe. If so, we will see a radical revision of the Gaudiya Vaishnava scene in today’s world. As it stands today, outside of India, as a movement it’s a fiasco, ruled over by power hungry neophyte exploiters posing as super advanced gurus-whom-you-need-to-serve-in-order-to-be-saved-from-hell.