My Time in the Movement



Back in 1975 I was introduced to one of the most remarkable people I have ever met, all the more so as at the time I was a disgruntled teenager living in what is sometimes called the Old South.

This holy man introduced me, and thousands and if not millions of others to an ancient tradition known as Gaudiya Vaishnavism. His name was His Divine Grace AC Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. He was the founder of what is known as the Hare Krishna Movement.

While I was blessed to be in his presence on a few occasions, our time in the physical realm, so to speak, was minimal. Nonetheless, I can honestly say that spiritually this humble swami and his teachings had a most profound impact on my life. Lord Caitanya's enlightened teaching of achintya bheda bheda, which Srila Prabhupada brought to the West, remains an essential cornerstone of my own present eclectic universalist faith.

When Shrila Prabhupada left this earth in 1978 I, as thousands of his other disciples, was crushed. Though he was of an advanced age and though intellectually his death was not a surprise, yet inwardly we were all shocked. Prabhupada was more than our guru or teacher, he was our father, our hope, the pillar around which our lives revolved.

The devotees all dealt with his disappearance in different ways. Personally, I left the temple and went to Florida. I was in a state of shock. After a few adventures in the land of orange juice which I may put on line someday, I found my self back in one of his temples.

I walked in for the early morning worship service (mangal aratik) and there, seated on a great throne (vyasassan) sat my master! I was shocked!

I skirted around the temple room with the other devotees, who were busy chanting the morning japa or prayers, but my eyes were fixed on him. Had Prabhupada, like Jesus, risen from the dead?

As shuffling I finally made my way back around to where he sat, I left the quick walking devotees and feel on my face before my gurudeva. I remember my eyes were filled with tears, I was shaking as I lifted my body from the marble floor and looked up into those divine eyes.

It was not Prabhupada.

Well, it was actually, but it was my gurudeva in a man-made form or image. Still, it WAS Prabhupada. While I had not been in his presence that many times, I had been enough to clearly recognize the divine power which he emanated. I sat at his feet, gazing up at him and quietly chanted my mantra:

hare krishna hare krishna krishna krishna hare hare, hare rama hare rama rama rama hare hare.

Far too soon the lights in the room dimmed, the curtain at the other end of the room was ripped suddenly open as brahmin priests sounded their conks, announcing that it was time to greet the Deities.

Everyone moved toward the alter, bowed three times to their Lordships and sang the old Bengali and Sanskrit prayers.

As the excitement faded away and the curtains again hid their Lordships from our mortal view, I returned to Prabhupada's feet.

As the temple president began to teach the morning class on the Srimad Bhagavatam, an honored scripture, he must have noticed that my attention remained on Prabhupada.

"Jagannath Prabhu!"

I jumped, which elicited not a few early morning chuckles as I recall.

"He's back with us, no?"

Over the next few weeks I visited the temple frequently, but was living in what its owner liked to called a "neo-Taoist ashram" a few blocks away. My time was divided between the temple, the neo-Taoist ashram's meditation room and sun bathing area, and the nearby First Existentialist Church.

As I visited with the devotees and those, now like myself known as "fringes," I began to hear odd reports. Our god brother Kirtanananda was being spoken of as though he were assuming the role of the Movement. This was unthinkable.

I had heard, both in person and on tapes, Prabhupada say that none of his disciples were qualified to take disciples, let alone lead the movement as guru. The more I spoke with people however the more I began leaning toward the thought that of all the senior devotees, Kirtanananda might be the most suitable. Those who thought this way invariably pointed out that Kirtananda even looked a lot Prabhupada. He used a cain, had a similar walk. As most of us, he had become proficient at what I used to call Prabhupadese.

Throughout the Movement kids with thick Southern accents, like myself back then, kids from the Bronx, from France, England, Germany, from all over, began to speak with an Indian accent! To an outsider it must have seemed absolutely bazaar.

I remember, for instance, in Atlanta Balavanta, the temple president, ran for mayor of the city. We all huddled around a television set to watch the debates.

"And you, sir," the reporter asked; "What do you consider to be the worse problem facing the City of Atlanta today?"

Now, at that time, there was massive racial unrest, debilitating poverty, horrible health care, the inner city was virtually infested by prostitutes, street drunks, drug dealers... On and on the problems went, yet our fearless leader looked directly into the camera and in a halting Bengali accent this Southern Peach said: "Well there is no question really. Problem number is the death mills in South Atlanta. Everyday thousands of innocents chickens are being brutally annihilated. This holocaust must be stopped!"

We screamed with delight, dancing in the dinning hall where the television had been brought. As I recall it, the reporter, the candidates and all of Atlanta sat in stunned silence for a good two minutes.

Prabhupada was still alive at this time. My sense of time has never been good. But it was not long until the news came from Vrndavana India. Our beloved father, guru, teacher, mentor and best friend had gone to be with Shree Krishna and Radharani.

After my return from self-imposed exile, the rumors were spreading like wildfire. In Germany Hansadutta was claiming that he was Prabhupada's successor. In LA Ramasvar made the same claim. From all over the world came reports of devotees taking sides in guru struggles. My already fractured faith was now crumbling.

After some time I returned to the religion of my youth, Baptist Christianity. I went to Central America for a a while as a missionary to Honduras and Guatemala. Upon returning to the US, having been inspired by the Baptist "Minister of the Sunset Strip, Arthur Blessit, I shouldered a 12x6 foot cross onto my back and walked from Atlanta to New Orleans and from there to San Antonio Texas, where I was later ordained a Calvary Chapel minister.

In time I began to feel that I was nt being true to myself or to those I preached to. The gospel message, as powerful and enlightened as it is, was no longer enough for me. I missed the spiritual ecstasy of dancing the Deities. Compared to Prabhupada, my Bible teachers seemed, well, lets just say there was no comparison.

For a while I tried to walk both paths. I bought a saffron colored suit (the color worn by celibate Hindu monks) and began to incorporate eastern insights into my Biblical teachings.

At this time, I was a minister of youth at a Church of God in Marietta Georgia. One Wednesday night I was conducting a Bible study with about ten or fifteen teens. The kids knew me enough to know that while I was very "on fire for the Lord," preaching on the streets and occasionally on Christian radio shows, that I was nonetheless approachable, that they could ask controversial questions with immunity.

One boy commented that he could not understand how a God of love could torture people in Hell. As I recall it, he said, "I could see God doing that in the Old Testament, but in the New, not with Jesus' talking about God as love, father and so on."

I took a deep breath and began to explain the Greek and Hebrew words which modern Bibles translate as "Hell." In short, one just means the grave, one is the ambiguous state of death and the other one, Gehenna, was a clear metaphor employed by the Master of Parables. Gehenna was a local garbage dump where fire was used to burn the rubbish. Jesus was saying that to reject God's love would be tantamount to being tossed into that garbage dump. He used a similar yet different example with fishermen, when he likened those who rejected God's love as having millstones tied about their necks and being caste into the sea. Metaphor plain and simple. Had not Jesus explained that he spoke to the multitudes in parables?

They thought that made sense, which it does, but they next asked the obvious, "So, what happens to us?"

It was at this point that took my Bible and began to teach them about the once Biblical doctrine of rebirth, known to most as reincarnation or transmigration.

Suffice it to say that the pastor didn't think this an appropriate teaching and invited me to leave the church, which I did.

The temples were rife with controversy and allegations. It was explained to me that eleven senior devotees had a tape on which Prabhupada, from his death bed, had appointed them gurus. They were to divide the planet into eleven parts, each ruled by one of these diksha gurus.

While it had long been the practice that these and other advanced devotees were conducting initiation rituals, they were doing so fully and solely upon Prabhupada's direction. Candidates would approach their local authorities. If they agreed the person was ready, they sent a letter to Prabhupada, where ever he was. He traveled constantly setting up his Movement.

If the would be disciple had access to one of Prabhupada's scheduled stops, they could go there and receive initiation from him. Otherwise, their authorities would either conduct the rite in Prabhupada's name, or have some more advanced disciple do it. All of this was done in Prabhupada's name. The devotee was in all ways considered a disciple of Prabhupada, not the actual initiator. The initiator was known as a siksha guru. He was a teacher and representative of the diksha guru, Shrila Prabhupada.

After Prabhupada's passing, it was generally understood that this system would remain in effect. Would be initiates would approach their authorities and if the were found to be worthy according to Prabhupada's books and oral teachings, they would be initiated as Prabhupada disciples.

This alleged tape however sought to change everything.

I went to our temple president requesting to hear this tape. He explained that he had heard it, that it was authorized, but that it was not available for the devotees to hear!

What! The most important tape in the Movement, the tape which ordered us to accept out unqualified god brothers as our gurus, and we were not to hear it?

Nonsense!

I traveled extensively for the next couple of years. During this time I visited countless religious traditions. I stayed in Catholic monasteries, Buddhist and Hindu ashrams, I slept under bridges... but through it all my goal was to find someone somewhere who had a copy of this tape and hear it for myself.

Time passed and I ended up in Los Angeles, traveling with one of their education parties. We mainly scammed people out of their money under false pretenses.

By this time a new term had been coined, "Cheating the Cheaters of God." As the various scandals mounted, deprogrammers continued to kidnap devotees, brainwashing them more surely than the Movement ever had, the public attitude toward the Movement declined, to put it mildly.

Kirtanananda had turned New Vrndavan, the showplace of the movement, into a battleground where dissenters, including a good friend Solocana, was killed, where countless children were sexually and mentally tortured.

It was not just there of course. Bogi-yogi Hansadutta was driving around the city of Berkeley blowing the windows out of cadilac car lots and maintaining his own little empire in Berkeley at Mount Kailash in Mendicino County.

Finally, while traveling with the LA temple's South Asian Cultural Exhibits in Arizona, I finally heard the tape.

"This is it!!!" I shouted. What the hell kind of joke is this!!!"

But it was no joke. A cruel and power mad hoax which all but destroyed the International Society for Krishna COnsciousness (ISKCON), Prabhupada's Movement, but it was not a joke.

The tape was the worst splice job I'd ever heard. You would hear Prabhupada on some busy street, cars zipping by, horns honking.

"Prabhupada," a voice would say. "What about Hridayananda?"

Next you'd hear a click, then the sound of water flowing and a vina playing in the background. "He will do," Prabhupada would say.

Then a canned sound, like in a small enclosed room, "...and Hansadutta?"

The sound of a temple room filled with chanting devotees, Prabhupada: "Huh, oh yes, him too..."

On and on. It was unreal! No wonder the devotees were not allowed to hear it!

In disgust I moved to Molokai, then Maui Hawaii where I lived as somewhat of a hermit for a bit over a year.

Since then, that was 1981 I believe when I returned to the Mainland and moved to Berkeley, I have only had limited contact with the Movement. I stayed at Mount Kailash for a while, spent a few weeks in the Berkeley Temple a time or two, but since moving here to Santa Cruz California in 1993ish, I've only been to an ISKCON temple a handful of times.

Santa Cruz is the US headquarters of the Caitanya Gaudiya Math, a Movement created by one of Prabhupada's god brothers in the fifties. As ISKCON fell several of their devotees joined with them. This movement today is led by Govinda Maharaja and, based upon my personal experience with them, they are using many of the same fund raising methods as ISKCON. I've seen enough dishonesty for one lifetime, so I don't visit this temple either.

As for the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, so as not to be sued, I will say only that the vast majority of their current members are the disciples of these con artists who stole Prabhupada's Movement.

ISKCON has now admitted the tape was a fraud. Some of the original bogi-yogis are now dead, killed by their own disciples, some are or have been in prison and others, like Hansadutta, have left the Movement. Hansadutta now runs a trailer court in Northern California. He maintains a tiny temple room on the site and a few of his ex-disciples still to come to visit from time to time.

ISKCON is less than a poor reflection of its once greatness. It is ruled by a Governing Body Commission (GBC) and has scores of "gurus" claiming disciples.

Over the next few months I will be uploading a lot of information about the Movement, what went wrong, what remains and how to still receive the necter which Prabhupada gifted us with.

Submissions, reactions, comments and questions are invited.

So, now you know more than you ever wanted to about me!!! I wonder if anyone has actually read all this! If so, PLEASE let me know!

To my godbrothers in and out of ISKCON I offer my respectful obeisances. All glories to Shrila Prabhupada!

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