Old Lies, New Dress, and What ISKCON
Owes its Children

BY: GEORGE A. SMITH

Jan 31, CALIFORNIA, USA (SUN) —

na sabham praviset prajnah
sabhya-dosan anusmaran
abruvan vibruvann ajno
narah kilbisam asnute

"A wise person should not enter an assembly if he knows the participants there are committing acts of impropriety, and if, having entered such an assembly, he fails to speak the truth, speaks falsely, or pleads ignorance, he will certainly incur sin."
(Srimad-Bhagavatam 10.44.10)

According to this verse from Srimad Bhagavatam, not only are those who are themselves committing acts of improprieties subject to the repercussions of those acts, but also anyone that is present in an assembly with them who does not speak out against the persons performing those acts, or speak the truth about what improprieties are being committed, or speaks falsely or pleads ignorance, is also subject to the weight of those sins.

ISKCON, seen as an assembly, has committed many of the most heinous crimes imaginable and its aparadhas against its movement's children, mothers, Founder-Acarya and against the Vaisnava community are beyond counting. And during all of this time, the surest and straightest way out of the movement has been and remains to be the following of this simple prescription from the Bhagavatam, whereby speaking up and out about the improprieties being committed by members of the assembly prevents one from becoming afflicted oneself with those sins, through bad association that should be avoided in the first place.

Those who followed and who follow this prescription, however, are booted out of it, so what remains within it?

A place where through the accumulation of such sins, no spiritual advancement can be made.

The existing situation within ISKCON makes it both impossible to advance in Krsna consciousness while remaining within it or to even remain at the level of advancement that one has already advanced to if one remains within.

The logic is inescapable, according to Srimad Bhagavatam, no one remaining in ISKCON is spiritually advanced or can make any advancement within it as long as this policy continues of throwing out people who speak the truth regarding the improprieties being committed by its members. Such is the debilitating affect of the weight of the sins of tens of thousands of mad elephant offenses that have been committed there.

The whole situation is completely topsy-turvy, upside down and mad. During Srila Prabhupada's lila, one had to join ISKCON to make the best advancement, but now, since Srila Prabhupada's disappearance, one must actually leave ISKCON to make any advancement at all.

Unfortunately, what is so obvious to us is not obvious to others.

In her article, "What is an Uttama-adhikari?", Margaret Connors, thinking or wanting to think that she can find uttama-adhikaris within ISKCON, states:

"Fortunately Srila Prabhupada has made it possible for us all to identify such worthy association. It is safe to say that there are many such sincere and serious devotees all over the world serving Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's mission and we are all most fortunate to have their association. It is safe to say that the leaders of ISKCON make their best efforts to ensure that such valuable devotees who meet the above mentioned qualifications are carefully selected to represent Srila Prabhupada and his mission"

While Margaret is absolutely correct in her consideration that the Sampradaya Acarya, Srila Prabhupada provided us with the guidelines by which we might determine what association is fit and beneficial and which is detrimental and to be abandoned, she is scrupulously avoiding employing the method of discrimination that Srila Prabhupada gave us, by which we can discriminate between an advanced devotee and, let's say, a demon in devotees clothes:

"One can distinguish between a neophyte Vaisnava and an advanced Vaisnava by their activities."
(Srila Prabhupada, Nectar of Instruction)

And in corroboration:

"By their fruits ye shall know them."
(Matthew 7:16)

By their acts of improprieties you will know them.

In the words of Srila Prabhupada, that Margaret quotes from Nectar of Instruction Text 5, Purport:

"…one may be found to be very seriously engaged in the service of the Lord and strictly following all the regulative principles".

I think what Margaret is doing here is failing to pay very close attention to the words that she is quoting and to the meanings behind them. Perhaps her prospective guru has given her a mission of preaching successfully upon the Sun and converting the aparadhis there, upon which accomplishment she will be given the mercy of his initiation. I know not the cause of her inane rush towards the position in which she obviously feels herself to be an authority on everything, but I feel that she is missing some things, and that through missing them arrives at a destination which it not what it seems to be. In fact, I'd say that in quite a few instances, she's missed the truth completely, and by more than a mile.

In her enthusiasm, Margaret rushes past the meaning of so many words and sayings, such as "seriously engaged in the service of the Lord", in hopes perhaps that the sheer number and weight of her quotes will substantiate her beliefs and crush us into submission. But "seriously engaged in the service of the Lord" does not mean pretending to be for the sake of some material reward, nor is it either/or, in addition to being sincerely (seriously) engaged in the service of the Lord that one must also be what else she quotes:

"…..strictly following all the regulative principles, chanting the prescribed number of rounds on japa beads and always thinking of how to expand the Krsna consciousness movement"
(Nectar of Instruction Text 5, Purport)

One must be doing both of these things and ISKCON has a long history of recommending, nay of forcing gurus upon us who are doing neither, and covering up the fact that they are not, and getting rid of anyone who knows that they aren't and who are so bold as to follow the instructions of Srimad Bhagavatam and denounce such improprieties and bhogi-yogis, and yet this is the same ISKCON that Margaret offers to us as one that she and we can trust.

Many of the devotees posting here have been chanting Hare Krsna Hare Krsna Krsna Krsna Hare Hare Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare, sincerely serving the Lord and following regulative principles since before many of those who come up here presenting themselves as being know-it-alls were even born. In addition to this, most of them have had long years of experience within ISKCON, so, just off hand, I would think that they probably have a pretty good idea of the lay of the land, if you get what I mean.

What's fascinating about them is though all this is true, I have yet to see a single one of them "pull rank" so to speak, to any of the know-it-alls who come up here with the thought they know everything. Even you, Margaret, in such a way as many of your ISKCON gurus do, with scorn and contempt and derision. Instead and with a spirit of friendship and humility, they most patiently try to explain to us the reality of the situation, knowing that it is actually very difficult for us to give up our little fever dreams.

It is my opinion that one should at least listen to them, with at least as much attention as we may pay to our own know-it-all jabberings, and with as much of an open mind as one can force oneself to manage. Who knows, maybe by their mercy one day the light will dawn on us and we will realize that we don't really know quite as much as we think we do. They're a lot nicer than me Margaret, they won't rub your face in it.

On one of your most recent postings, your article 'Idle', you made an incredible proposal which suggested that you knew as much, or knew better than the most senior devotees in the world. In doing so, you were more than offensive, you were also provocative. The fact that you were provocative clued me in to the fact that you were also ignorant of what you were talking about, for those who are in the knowing of such things go out of their way not to provoke them. Although most of the time they'll just laugh at it, some of the times they'll not, and its not very wise to piss them off… and a few of them are born that way, pissed off.

Prior to your article, another devotee made an appeal to what seemed to him to be an appeal to them, the spirits of a bygone age. He wrote:

"Once upon a time, when men had honor, they naturally vowed over the graves of their mothers that the pain and sadness caused them by any scoundrel would be avenged if they were worthy of the manhood their mothers gave them. What has happened to us? Do we not look upon the feet of our Godsisters and respectfully call them as our dear mothers? Is their pain not our pain? Are we their worthy sons, or cowardly timid eunuchs looking for a free lunch? "

"The Evil that Child Molesters Wrought by Ravanari das

Now there's a devotee that I'm sure Srila Prabhupada is proud of.

In your article, 'Idle', you make claim by implication that you know better than the most senior devotees, not only here, but on the planet, as to how they are to conduct themselves. You are so bold as to presume to dictate to those who have been dust for hundreds of years what their attitudes should be when they come back.

"Perhaps, if Margaret has time…she could explain to us why 500+ children took ISKCON to court for abuse, both sexual and physical."
(Mahavidya das)

From "Idle?" by Margaret Connors:

"The answer to that is obvious, isn't it? The abuse did occur and some concluded or were induced by others to conclude, that such actions would offer them some emotional satisfaction for whatever pain they felt forced to endure, or the moral outrage they maintain and a desire to punish the guilty that oft times flows from that, or plain and simple - they saw a financial opportunity and elected to reach for it.

Those born with the special impetus of yogis determined to finish their business in this life, however, would never have wasted their time with such a wasteful endeavor. I suspect that many children, so gifted, elected to stay out of the whole affair.

Certainly at the most, they would have only directed their actions against those who were in fact actually responsible - the men or women responsible for the events that they all claim left them so scarred. It would have been unthinkable for them to attempt to force all the ISKCON centers in the world to pay them some paltry sum of money; as if this could affect their past - much less their futures. "

That there are those who became members of your tradition or some other in some previous lifetime, mystic yogis, or witches and wizards, as we call them here in the West, is corroborated by Lord Krsna in Bhagavad Gita As It Is, so we do not doubt it. Here is the evidence in support:

"O mighty-armed Krsna, does not such a man, being deviated from the path of Transcendence, perish like a riven cloud, with no position in any sphere?

The unsuccessful yogi, after many, many years of enjoyment on the planets of the pious living entities, is born into a family of righteous people, or into a family of rich aristocracy. Or he takes his birth in a family of transcendentalists who are surely great in wisdom. Verily, such a birth is rare in this world. On taking such a birth, he again revives the divine consciousness of his previous life, and he tries to make further progress in order to achieve complete success, O son of Kuru."
(Bhagavad-gita As It Is)

"Born of the Blood is best, but second best by initiation" (B.O.S.)

Such a birth is very rare.

Have you ever met one Margaret? Would you know it if you did? And what I am even more curious about is whether you would have survived the experience? It only takes three seconds of absolute terror to drive a soul out of its body… how much can you stand?

You presume too much.

The dogs howled to herald his birth and the moon filled with blood, and the wind came up like a hurricane and shrieked as if with the voices of the damned "Woe, Woe, Woe to your world", for upon that night, come up the ages, come up the years, was born again along with that dormant divine consciousness, so long ago forsaken, that which had deviated him, that thing for which he lived and died and lived again.

Have you ever met one Margaret, would you know it if you did? And if you had, would you have survived the experience? They say that it only takes three seconds of absolute terror to drive a soul out of its body, how much can you stand?

Your conclusions are speculative, erroneous, heartless and furthermore hated, for they repeat the evil lie, albeit it in a form far more polished than we are accustomed to. The lie, of course, being that the victim is responsible for his or her abuse.

The lie that you take up and preach is forever injurious to its victims and enabling to the perpetrators. It is injurious to those to whom it was first given and always has been told, to the victims, some of whom are already injured past caring about any further injury that this life can do to them. The lie is injurious to the parents of all the children, and the lie is injurious of the children of the children who were molested, and of their children. The lie is injurious to the whole society. The lie must be stopped and must never be told again, and the horrible acts that went along with the lie must never be repeated again.

For those who have suffered the worst, for whom life is only one long misery of thwarted hope ever to be happy, there is only one longed for conclusion to be envied, sought after and realized -- release from the pain that they continually feel. I know, I buried one of them five years ago after he tied a rope around his neck and kicked the chair out from under him. He was my nephew by marriage, my wife's sister's son. Such potential, loved by so many, and yet he tied a rope around his neck and jumped off of a chair. Yes, he had a choice over his actions, dear Margaret, but none at all over the feelings that compelled him to those actions, which no amount of word therapy or aggressive medication, nor anything else that he knew of on this side of the grave could release him from. Finally he just choose to escape from those terrible, terrible feelings that he'd had since childhood, since what was done to him was done, and those terrible, terrible explanations that he'd been given to go with them, that explained to him that his reason for so hurting was because he was worthless, evil, just a little piece of shit whose life had no meaning or hope of good consequence.

Everyone who knew him loved him and told him what a good person he was, but that didn't help, because of the way he felt, and because of the bullshit he'd been fed in his childhood that he had no choice but to accept considering how he felt so bad.

Your statement that makes it seem that they, the victims, have a choice of whether or not to "endure" their pain is misleading, as it is presented in such a fashion as to make us think that you know what you are talking about from a scientific or psychological perspective (what to mention from a spiritual perspective), when in all actuality, you don't.

For those who cannot see past your educated sounding presentation into your ignorance (or deliberate feign of ignorance), then this:

All societies and almost every human being comes to interpret their existence in terms of metaphysical models to which feeling components become attached.

A pleasant experience is compounded by a pleasant explanation while an unpleasant experience. There are two levels of experience available to us from the perspective of conditioned living entities, both are physical - the subtle and the gross. There is the gross or direct experience of being punched in the face or having your ribs kicked in, and then the subtle, or the interpretive conclusion that you are given that goes along with it. The gross level of experience is holistic, while the subtle is a combination of such things as past models, attribution needs (not necessarily yours), and anxiety.

The interpretive conclusion or metaphysical model, once accepted and internalized, is difficult, even almost impossible to remove because it has become intertwined with the feeling component. In other words, you can spend a hundred years on a psychologist's couch and still get up feeling just as bad, because the failure of word therapy alone to reduce the affects of, what to speak of removing such feeling models, is notorious in psychological circles. Some even claim that it may not be possible to ever remove a model completely at all, because it is beyond conditioning and associated with an imprint.

Feelings are real, as real. We have direct experience of our feelings. As such, feelings cannot be completely denied nor, due to their connections to our feelings can the explanations for them be denied. The feelings cannot be completely rejected nor can the explanation be completely. They can be pushed away, avoided, they can even be blocked for a time by medication, drugs, sex, but they can never be completely gotten away from. Unfortunately, as we have seen, in the minds of so many of the children of the Krsna Consciousness movement, only death can free them.

What Margaret, with all of her knowledge of how a devotee returning to this life should behave and act has left out, although surely she must be acquainted with the fact, is that not even death is a guarantee for freedom from impressions taken in a previous life. There is in actuality only one thing that can remove these impressions completely, and one would think that ISKCON, of all things, would be acquainted with this fact -- and that being acquainted with it, and mindful of their responsibilities, would step up to provide it to those in need, when their own organization is responsible for their desperate need of it.

That one thing, of course is liberation, jivan mukta, liberation while you live. But ISKCON, poor ISKCON is still stuck in promoting the lie that the little shits deserved what they got, and worse, and still seems to intend to help them work through it. If they couldn't rape them to death or beat them to death perhaps they can just neglect them to death. Good old ISKCON, it just gets better every day, doesn't it?

The most horrible thing about these feeling models is that not only is it very difficult to disassociate ourselves from them, but the model often becomes independent of any further bad or good experiences -- any further rapes, beatings or abuses actually causes the feeling that was associated with the experience originally, not actually the physical pain, but the far worse emotional pain that resulted from it, the pain so deep that it makes you wish that you never had feelings, that makes you want to cut your heart out, to pray to Lord Krsna to take away your soul.

The thoughts are not feelings, but they elicit the feelings.

Superficial or "positive" thinking has very little power over these metaphysical models which have become part of one's self-identity or psychological make up, ones false ego. If the underlying metaphysical feeling model is not in accordance with your positive thinking, it's not going to help very much for you to think positively. After a time you may simply keep it up as a charade for the benefit of your mum or some others whom you love, so as to reduce their anxiety over your welfare. And you may become so convincing that everyone comes to think that everything's alright with you, until they find you dangling from a ceiling beam with a rope around your neck. That was the way with my nephew.

Positive thinking is a deliberate effort, but those damn models run on automatic. Eventually you just get to tired of keeping up the show and resisting anymore, and since you don't want to bring the rest of the world down with you, your family, your loved ones, you just make a quick exit, thinking that in time they'll understand and get over it. You leave a note then tie the rope.

Understand yes, get over it…, never. It is a sacred oath, it is a fervent prayer. You stand by a grave side of your loved one and swear upon your soul that you will never, never, never rest until whatever it was that killed your nephew, you son, your daughter, your wife, as sure as if they themselves had tied the rope around their neck, is itself dead, destroyed forever.

Srila Prabhupada shared this sentiment" "Child molesters should be thrown out of the movement but first they should be hung."

When it's only an individual that is responsible for the death of your loved one it's much simpler to get justice, but when it happens to be a whole damned society, it can take a while… many, many years, lifetimes perhaps. But Krsna, by whatever Name you call Him, hates more than you do those who are responsible for such things. By His power you'll live to see it, even if you have to wait a few lives until you do, just keep up the good work and never fret. That's what I think.

In your presentation, Margaret, you cast the victims of the abuses in an unfavorable light every chance you get. You accept such explanations as are supportive of your conclusions, ignoring any that are not.

You are suggesting that they are not really bothered by what happened to them so long ago, not really suffering any more from it, just that they are greedy, petty, spiteful and vindictive, not at all sincere or serious about Krsna consciousness, or just misled. Why, I don't think that you could do any better even if ISKCON were paying you for it.

First you dehumanize them, remove from than any value, then you can destroy them and no one will cast a glance of blame at you. That's a psychological strategy for dehumanizing the enemy that was perfected by the Nazis and adopted by the U.S. government. Is that is your strategy, to use it now upon the devotees so that they will begin to think of the guru-kulis as their enemies, or the enemies of your ISKCON? It sure is subtle, and unethical too. Better watch it, Margaret, because if they catch you, they will pull your shingle.

Certainly it is the strategy of those whose positions you reproduce here in your arguments.

Even if what you claim is true in some cases in regard to the victims and their motivations, so what? Ask not what ISKCON deserves from them, ask what they deserve from ISKCON. For what ISKCON did to them, it should be flattened into the earth. So what if some of them want some money out of it? Who made them that way? AND it is certainly not true of all of them, or of even a great proportion of them, who for some reason still love Krsna and Srila Prabhupada and only did what they did as a last resort and for the benefit of the movement.

Nor is it true cowan, what you claim of those who take their birth again for the completion of his unfinished business. Although I know of only one instance of this. From it, I know that your mistake is to imagine that they are both all upon the same level and cognizant of themselves as being any different from those around them, or of what is guiding them. That someone who attained to some spiritual status in a previous birth would disdain an involvement with what the other - what would you call them, first time around initiated devotees? - are involved with is a major blunder. You can only come to this conclusion by portraying the guru-kulis as being not only spiritually but also morally deficit in their motivations, without worth or merit in what they are attempting.

If on the contrary there is an actual and spiritually bona fide, moral and social obligation for them to take ISKCON so to task that it would never dare to do again what it did to them to anyone else, or to take responsibility for what it did, then your whole conclusion goes sailing out the window. If this later interpretation of the motivations of the guru-kulis is even correct on the part of some of them, pray tell us Margaret, how would a born again hard core devotee brother or sister, parent, child or friend react to the situation? Might they take your precious ISKCON as it has become, roll it up into a ball and shoot it through a loop into the trash? They might Margaret, they might, if in the end they saw their brothers and their sisters so despairing of any hope that Srila Prabhupad'as movement would ever become what Srila Prabhupada intended it to be. If they saw that it was only going to continue to exploit and abuse people, harbor and award child molesters and abusers, they might.

The spiritual master is the sum-total of all the power of the demigods. They might not be that quite up to snuff, but it has been claimed of the one that I know of that he has raised storms, torn up rivers from their beds and wiped out an entire society. Whether this is true or not who's to say, but these things did happen and in such a way as to suggest that either he or forms of God/dess that he worshiped accomplished them. And I believe it true, so I doubt not that they'd have some advantages not usually considered to be part of the human complement. I know, I know, sounds pretty far out, but talking about people who are born again with powers and abilities and consciousness carried over from previous lifetimes leads right up to it. And "Yogi" refers to "Mystic" yoga, and mystic yoga implies mystic or magical might. In a Newtonian universe it all sounds silly, but that is only due to our being conditioned into being fundamentalist materialists and into thinking that the fundamental materialists have it all figured out.

Such a person might quite to the contrary of Margaret's opinion view such an involvement as his spiritual duty, especially in consideration of the fact that the surest way for evil to triumph in this world is for good men and women to do nothing.

In your presentation, you are continuing to provide the unpleasant explanation that the rapists, abusers and murderers gave to the children then, the lies that they told to them. It's just a more polished version of blaming the victims (the innocent children and their innocent parents) trying to shift the blame from off the backs of the perpetrators and the institution that supported and supports them and onto the victims. "It was the children's fault and the fault of their parents." This type of argument seeks basically to exonerate the monsters and to make them if not actually heroic for "helping" the kids "work through" some difficult karma, and being oh so merciful for raping or beating them only once instead of for the hundreds of times that they deserved for their grievous sins, at least a lot less responsible if not completely blameless.

Your presentation seeks to convince us that you are only the messenger of the truth, when in fact you are a representative of only the most evil and injurious lies. You begin your article 'Idle' with a statement to the effect of identifying yourself with Srila Prabhupada and his presentation, as if the two of you are indistinguishable -- in fact, as if the two of you were actually one or as if actually you were the superior and Srila Prabhupada only assisting you by providing evidence to your account. You say:

"Mahavidya das, I offered you HDG Bhaktivedanta Swami Srila Prabhupada's clear explanation of the root cause of anyone's suffering in this material world. You cannot extrapolate from that my advocating a scintilla of apathy….yada, yada."

You are an advocate of Hell, Margaret, and that is no extrapolation, but as to the point, we see that here you are offering yourself as if you are a transparent via medium between ourselves and Srila Prabhupada and the Supreme Personality of Godhead, that you are offering us the absolute truth, the truth as it is. But you're not.

The problem with your claim is that all generalities based upon specific experiences are false, when however they are repeated long enough they appear to be true.

No, no Margaret. I'm not saying that Srila Prabhupada was doing this, No, Srila Prabhupada was telling the truth, but you are lying.

"The devotee is always right. The non-devotee in the shape of the empiric pedant is always and necessarily wrong. In the one case there is always present the Substantive Truth and nothing but the Substantive Truth. In the other case there is present the apparent or misleading hypothesis and nothing but un-truth. The wording may have the same external appearance in both cases. The identical verses of the Scriptures may be recited by the devotee and the non-devotee, may be apparently misquoted by the non-devotee but the corresponding values of the two processes remain always categorically different. The devotee is right even when he apparently misquotes, the non-devotee is wrong even when he quotes correctly the very words, chapter and verse of the Scriptures."

Thakur Bhaktivinode
Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur Prabhupada

I suggest that you read the whole article, Margaret, and pray to Krsna for some degree of realization so that you may appreciate and understand it.

The devil can quote scripture for his own advantage but when the father of lies opens his mouth, no matter if he is quoting even God's own words, only lies come out. If you think that Srila Prabhupada would have ever spoken these words to a child that had been raped or had his face beaten in, then you do not know Srila Prabhupada.

You are following in the devil's footsteps, telling the same evil lies that were told to the children by their abusers and by the society that supported and enabled such abuses. It is a tradition into which these children were indoctrinated and which to this very day still handicaps them.

ISKCON owes them more than money, it owes them what Srila Prabhupada meant it to be, for them and for everyone. It owes them such a quality of association that liberation, attending like a handmaiden, rushes up on their appearance to kiss their pains away. It owes them devotional service to Krsna, not to some damn pervert or megalomaniac, but to Krsna, 24/7, each and every day. My opinion.

All glories to Srila Prabhupada
Hare Krsna
Bhakta George

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