ISKCON — The Sad Story. General Background Information
In order to properly understand where ISKCON went wrong, we therefore have to distinguish between the Founder and some of his over-ambitious disciples and secretaries who did not follow his orders and teachings. Please do not lump in Srila Prabhupada with his bogus successor-disciples!
“Hare Krishna” is a cultural, philosophical and religious movement which is intended for the reformation and upliftment of the entire human society, but false Iskcon successor gurus have turned the movement into a perverted sect which has to be reformed itself first.
Regrettably, after the departure of Srila Prabhupada in 1977, the institution he founded, ISKCON, became embroiled in a phenomenal amount of negative publicity and scandals. This can be entirely traced to the fact that false gurus have taken over the movement posing as successors and spiritual leaders, although not qualified in the least. Religious propagandists in the garb of devotees, fakes and unqualified students rushed in to imitate their master, women-hater, homosexuals and pedophiles posing as spiritual leaders.
In order to properly understand where the movement went wrong, we therefore have to distinguish between the Founder and some of his over-ambitious disciples and secretaries who did not follow his orders and teachings. Please do not lump in Srila Prabhupada with his bogus successor-disciples!
The false Iskcon gurus who succeeded Prabhupada theoretically accepted the premise that to find God, the false ego must be defeated. And yet with few exceptions they had huge materialistic egos themselves.
Religious scholars say that a crisis occurs when the spiritual leader of a religious movement dies. The success or failure of the movement depends upon how pure the new successor-disciples spread the teachings of the founder, or if they deviate from it.
To a large degree, the Krishna Consciousness Society is in shambles because too many new gurus did not want to spread Prabhupada’s teachings; they wanted to be Prabhupada. Cheap imitators. Because of that, the Hare Krishna movement degenerated into a number of competing cult members that have known murder, the abuse of women and child molestation, drug dealing, and swindles that would impress a Mafia don.
Iskcon leaders have heavily deviated after Prabhupada’s death. They grabbed for power, money and disciples. They were the inner club, heirs apparent to the assets of Prabhupada’s movement. Disregarding his instructions, they put perverts, criminals and sexual deviants in charge of the movement.
What an opportunity! Prabhupada was dead. Now we Westerners, who know better, can carve up the world for ourselves and control the millions of dollars in assets he left, plus control the thousands of followers who are flocking to him, and thereby earn many more millions of dollars.
Unfortunately, when a bona fide spiritual master disappears, rogues and non-devotees take advantage and immediately begin to introduce unauthorized principles in the name of so-called swamis, yogis, philanthropists, welfare workers and so on.The real guru, the spiritual teacher who is a representative of the Lord, establishes these principles, but when he disappears, things once again become disordered through unqualified disciples and false successor gurus, not following the teachings properly.
The exploits of such false Iskcon gurus as Harikesha, Bhavananda, Hansadutta, Bhagavan, Jayatirtha, Kirtanananda, and Rameswara are legendary and extremely embarrassing. They are especially reprehensible because they were GBC-leaders and their GBC peers sanctioned and condoned their activities for many years at the expense of Srila Prabhupada’s reputation, assets, disciples and mission.
These immature and familiar Westerners with no proper training, failed to execute the orders of the founder Srila Prabhupada and deviated from his teachings.
They thought that by imitating his external dress only they could become like him.
They had no idea who He was/is. Power-hungry for name, fame, glory and adoration they artificially posed as successors and took over the movement by politics, disregarding Srila Prabhupada’s instructions and last will.
But this is the story of how the destructive metamorphosis happened; of how good became evil; of how false gurus claim to embody Krishna’s mercy but behave without mercy. And no power, as we will discover, corrupts as absolutely as fanatical religious power.
Since 1987, reformers in the movement have worked to purge ISKCON of the horrors committed by false successor gurus. For this reason the ISKCON Revival Movement (IRM) was formed. They hope to restore the spiritually powerful principles on which the movement was founded, but ISKCON leaders are so quick to ex-communicate and banish anyone who preaches contrary to their corrupted leadership and bogus philosophy.
Dissenters can still be banned, beaten, shot or otherwise intimidated as described in the book “Monkey On A Stick”. Until this mafia-ism halts, many devotees will prefer to stay away and/or remain anonymous. A class-action-law suit filed by Adridharana in Calcutta India, as well as by Windle Turley in Dallas, is presently under way to persecute and purge out the criminal elements in the movement. Many devotees are finally waking up, but still are fearful of reprisals from ISKCON’s bogus GBC/Guru leadership.
We therefore like to request all devotees world-wide, who have been alienated from and abused in ISKCON, not only sexually, but in many different other ways also, such as being banned, beaten, shot at and kicked out of the movement, to file for a follow-up lawsuit to purge out all those criminal elements in the society, and end the bogus GBC/Guru leadership.
Urdhvaga das
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there is definitely something fishy going on in iskcon ….badri Narayan banned me from going to the temple in San Diego just because I took off saffron and went white…..also iskcon Honolulu is very much barley surviving and seems to be no place for a sincere soul trying to go back home back to godhead,……best to just fly ones own ship and hold on too the lotus feet of Srila Prabhupada and other uttama devotees……to many kanishtas that don’t seem to care to make any advancement at least to second class…..especially in Hawaii seems to be the theme …..just go thru the motions just to have nice facility no heart and soul ….robots
the only guru is prabhupade he stated there should be no other gurus they are in it for the money and the money only
1/7/2010
Greetings dear prahbus, and of course please accept my humble obeisances.
I’m bhakta raj prabhu Das–please, just call me Raj.
What can I say, prabhus? ISKCON started out so beautifully–and got so damn ugly when Srila Prabhupada left us. In truth, it had started to deteriorate even before then…only we (then) young, idealistic kids of the 1960’s (ol’ Raj included)didn’t see trouble coming. Or perhaps we did, and just chose to ignore it: “Yes, there are a few guys who seem like bad news characters, however that’ll soon be healed; maybe they’ll even “come around”–or perhaps they’ll just leave and go do their own thing(s), thereby leaving the rest of us in peace to follow Srila Prabhupada’s teachings without all the crapola they threw in.
BTW: I’m an old “Henry Streeter”, and, yeah, if you younger devotees wanna hear the “Planet Henry Stories” (by installment)…feel free to ask Raj or any of the rest of us; place to do that’d be New York City’s famous Ratha Yatra, which culminates in Washington Square Park. Guarantee we old souls will be there. (Maybe we should set up our own booth? LOL)
I guess the tone of this email is rather sing-songy: 1/3 serious-1/3 sad-1/3 ha ha-mode. Maybe that’s the point: Sure ISKCON’s been through the wringer!
Sure many of us have been through the wringer as well! However, there’s a larger truth in the ether.
That truth would seem to be that Radha & Krishna are well-aware of our shortcomings, well-aware of our failures, well-aware of our self-doubts, and well-aware of our righteous indignation at what has taken place. And that’s just it in a nutshell: the very fact that we DO own all this stuff means that we are fine, decent, and caring souls, and we want to be agents for change. Really, isn’t that all God and Spiritual Master expect?
~as for the humor part of it…..please, let’s not take ourselves and life so seriously, prabhus. I do that at times, and then I’ve gotta catch myself and think Oh Raj Prabhu, just stop & be happy, willya?