Kṛṣṇacandra Dāsa – Śrī Vṛndāvan Dham: How many blatantly obvious cases of fall down does the general ISKCON devotee have to see before they wake up? How stupid are we as a society to hear time and time again about the fall down within the leaders of our Vaiṣṇava society in the GBC, Sannyāsa asrama and the Rubberstamped Gurus?? Each and every incident of fall downs and deviations that have occurred in ISKCON over the decades has not even caused a tiny ripple in the thick skin of denial and ‘cover up’ consciousness of our devotional community. This is a terrible indictment on the level of consciousness of our worldwide Vaiṣṇava Society.

Below is the broad scope of the deviations and fall downs occurring within of ISKCON hierarchy:

  • The gopi bhava club deviation
  • The taking of śikṣā and dīkṣā outside of ISKCON
  • Opposite sex sexual falldown with disciples and others
  • Same sex sexual falldown with disciples and others
  • Self sexual abuse
  • Pedophilia involving the children of their godbrothers/sisters and their disciples.
  • Child neglect / emotional / physical and philosophical abuse
  • Pornography
  • Misappropriation of donations
  • Fraud and embezzlement
  • Money laundering
  • Gambling
  • Corporatizing / Centralizing of the society
  • Instituting mundane business systems into our society
  • Instituting and maintaining the illegal guru by vote system
  • Impersonating a Vaiṣṇava spiritual master
  • Integration of ISKCON into Academia
  • Religious syncretism
  • Creation of an oligarchy of dysfunctional and authoritarian leadership
  • Urbanizing instead of Ruralizing our society
  • Creating a culture of deceit within our society by covering up all the above corrupt behaviour

The GBC has attempted to cover up or ignore most of the scenarios listed above but word always gets out about their nefarious ways. Our Vaiṣṇava society is well informed regarding the situation. It is like we are trapped in a crazy perpetual slow motion state of standing in the assembly of the Kauravas while they watched on as Draupadi was being disrobed all the while doing nothing to stop it.

The article Indradyumna Swami’s Girls clearly demonstrates the carefree and shameless attitude of these people. However, no matter how you want to look at this, it is really a cry for help from this man. It is like subconsciously he wants to be caught otherwise why would he post photographs of girls and young women in such a blatant and unchaste manner?

However, the real tragedy is not this man’s cry for help, it is the thousands of disciples and followers who look to him for spiritual shelter and leadership. What is the example this man sets by photographing such subject matter?  What could they possibly learn from his example of photographically recording the subject matter of little girls in such an unchaste state? What possible connections do little girls and young women in bikinis or holding little girls in his lap have to the sankirtana movement of Lord Caitanya?

The manner in which the vast majority of devotees have callously ignored the fact that our leaders are corrupt and that they are intentionally ruining our Vaiṣṇava Society is indicative of our level of consciousness as a society as a whole. Our society has become anaesthetised to the foul activities of our leaders. We stand there as if intoxicated while they relentlessly destroy everything that we should hold sacrosanct.

The most precious gift that Lord Śrī Kṛṣṇa has given to us is His Divine Grace AC Bhaktivedanta Swami Śrīla Prabhupāda. We have all allowed our heretical and deviant leaders to relegate him to a ‘Past Ācārya’ who is DEAD! Yes they think, act and train their naive disciples to believe that Śrīla Prabhupāda is an anachronism and that he is DEAD and gone and that they call the shots.

With regards to tolerance of heinous activity in our Vaiṣṇava society there are two factors occurring simultaneously.

  1. Firstly there is the fearful / apathetic non interventionalist criminal community consciousness where we witness a crime whether it is a; moral / spiritual / philosophical / legal or a crime of injustice and do nothing.

This is the mentality of a prisoner who lives under the rule of criminals and has no personal power or enlightenment. The social circumstance is one of fear of authority both criminal and institutional and aggressive retaliation for speaking up and telling the truth. However even inside a prison there is morality that sees perversion, especially to do with children, as punishable by death in certain circumstances.

2. Then there is the discipleship and apologists, ‘dumbed down’ to the point where they blindly accept their authorities without engaging any intelligent rational thought process.

The mass indoctrination and the subsequent acceptance by a vast majority of the active members of ISKCON of the “ŚRĪLA PRABHUPĀDA IS DEAD AND GONE” ideology has severed our society’s link with the paramparā and created a spiritually and intellectually bankrupt society. The fact that we, as a society, ignore or knowingly allow our corrupted and spiritually bankrupt leaders to subvert and change every single aspect of the society that Śrīla Prabhupāda established, is stark testament to the lack cohesiveness to each other and Śrīla Prabhupāda.

Where is the morality in our society when we allow our leaders to corrupt everything that we should hold sacred and sacrosanct? The stark example of this is how we have allowed the leaders who participated in the neglect and abuse of our children to still remain in position. What we have become is the polar opposite to a society based on Daivi Varnasrama dharma. Just think about it for a second. Which ISKCON leader, be it a guru or a GBC or a Temple President, had to courage and integrity to make an official stand against the widespread and heinous abuse of our children? NONE OF THEM. Every single one of them helped to cover it up at the expense of everything we should hold sacred.

What does this say about us as a society? Can we say we are a moral religious society? Can we say that Śrīla Prabhupāda and Lord Kṛṣṇa approves of us; both as individuals and as a society as a whole?

We have played into the hands of the Demon Kali and allowed the glorious society that Śrīla Prabhupāda established to be corrupted to the point that it creates mindless fawning followers instead of independently intelligent aspiring Vaiṣṇavas.

We cannot place the full blame on the Kali Chelas in the guise of Gurus and GBC and Temple Presidents who have relentlessly preached their dumbing down ideologies. We are to blame for letting them.

Each and every time one of us sits on his or her hands and says nothing or does nothing only confirms the disciple’s belief that they are right and we are wrong. It is way beyond time that we stop only reading material like this or hearing the crimes and offences against the pure devotee His Divine Grace AC Bhaktivedanta Swami Śrīla Prabhupāda and stood up to be counted.

For way too long have we had to eat humble pie and be silent when the disciples of these reprobate gurus make a mockery of our intelligence, Śrīla Prabhupāda and the paramparā. For too long have we had to listen to ‘Oh gurudev said this’ or ‘gurudev did that’ and not say the truth about their gurudev who we knew was fallen.

I remember a conversation with a prospective disciple of a guru, who unknown to them, was banned by the GBC and not allowed to initiate for a period of time. They were confused as to why their gurudev refused to initiate them. As it turned out he did not tell them the truth but said instead that he was too busy and ill to give any more initiations for a couple of years. Why lie? Why deceive their disciples? There is absolutely nothing good in this.

If the prospective disciple was told the truth by their guru that he had fallen down sexually with prostitutes then perhaps the prospective disciple would not have sought initiation from them in the first place. Why? Because they would know firsthand that their so called guru was unqualified to give dīkṣā initiation, which would create a precedent within our society that if applied to all our so called dīkṣā gurus would mean their demise.

The disciples need to know the history of our society, they need to hear the truth about their guru’s misbehaviour and fall down. It is way past the time that we should be concerned about hurting their feelings or sensibilities when they hurt our feelings and sensibilities when they think and act like we no longer need Śrīla Prabhupāda that he is dead and gone and so we should just shut up and put up with them and their gurus. They need to be told the truth. They will never hear it from their gurus or from the GBC who sanitize everything to keep the general ISKCON devotees and especially their disciples dumbed down.

The disciples, if they are sincere, will get over the fact that they were cheated by their bogus gurus and the GBC. They must be told the truth and let them decide if they still want to be cheated. It is only then that men like Indradyumna Swami will finally give up and get real. I am sure that if you were cheated you would also want to be told the truth.

However, these disciples have been cheated by a false belief that their gurus are pure devotees and represent Lord Kṛṣṇa and so they become self righteous and subsequently aggressively defend their guru’s honour and their decision to accept him as their guru.

Devotee: “What do you think of this picture of this Swami in karmi clothes with that young woman under his arm?”

Disciple: “Um… What? Oh that. Well I cannot really see a problem. He is really a very merciful Mahārāja. His preaching style is such that he makes contact with the karmis on their level. He is not taking their association he is giving them his pure association.”

Devotee: “Oh. You can see this? You do not see his face and see his expression, how can this be the expression of a pure devotee who has taken a vow of renunciation and is a member of the Sannyāsa ashram? It seems more like a karmi enjoying the company of a woman.”

Disciple: “Ah prabhu this is the modern world. You are too old fashioned prabhu. The modern people need to know that you can relate to them where they are at. They are far too educated and sophisticated to appreciate the hard sell preaching style of the sixties and seventies.”

Devotee: “So prabhu you believe that it is perfectly okay for a Sannyāsa to freely associate with the opposite sex as a preaching tool as they are actually on a very high spiritual platform? Isn’t it kind of like cheating, like they are conning them?”

Disciple: “Prabhu sometimes you have to give bitter medicine coated with honey to a child…”

Devotee: “In other photos the swami is with women but he is wearing his Sannyāsa cloth. Did he intuitively know that he was meeting a sophisticated liberal woman when he woke so he dressed accordingly?

Disciple: “We cannot judge his activities or anyone’s intention in any given situation so how can you tell his intentions are not pure?”

Devotee: “If we cannot judge his intention then how do you know it is good? How can you prove beyond reasonable doubt that his intentions are pure when the photographs show him in his karmi clothes, no tilak, chanting beads and with his arm around a woman…?”

Disciple: “Yes… But what does this have to do with your point?”

Devotee: “What does this have to do with my point? Your belief is that since this devotee is a Sannyāsa in the renounced order of life that he has no sex desire. Further that since he is also in the position of an initiating Spiritual Master all his activities are pure because he says so and the GBC condone his actions and activities?”

Disciple: “Why do you see that what he is doing is something perverted this is your problem not his prabhu.”

Devotee: “This is my problem? You have no problem with a Sannyāsa engaging illicit or illegal behaviour so long as the GBC and your fellow disciples approve or give their approval by their silence? I believe that you are the one with the problem. Come on how can you stand there and see this photo and still believe that there is absolutely nothing wrong with what he is doing?”

Disciple: “Prabhu you must understand that I am very disturbed by your disrespectful and challenging attitude, please there are something’s that are very sacred and must not be questioned. We simply have to give up this challenging attitude for we will never make advancement by fault finding and criticizing others!”

Devotee: “Prabhu I mean no disrespect I am simply trying to understand. At simple face value how can we understand that Lord Caitanya would never even be in the presence of woman and we have no experience of Śrīla Prabhupāda being in karmi clothes with his arm around a young woman so how are we to understand this Sannyāsa behaviour when we have no such examples from the experience and teaching of our Vaiṣṇava tradition.”

Disciple: “Prabhu as I said earlier these are modern times…”

Devotee: “Please forgive me Prabhu but every period in history is considered the ‘modern times’ by its people and throughout the world’s history the Vaiṣṇava tradition has never changed no matter which universe or yuga. This behaviour cannot be reconciled with any knowable fact from our teachings and historic reference so one would have to deem it wrong by our standard.”

Disciple: “As I have said these are modern…”

Devotee: “Yes I know what you said but what I don’t understand is why you insist on not seeing the obvious? What is wrong with your reasoning ability that you should twist what you are seeing as being something that you cannot possible defend. The man is in karmi clothes with his arm around a woman. How more obvious can you get?”

Disciple: “I am still not entirely sure what you are trying to say to me?”

Devotee: “Prabhu you have been brainwashed into believing that no matter how incongruous something is and no matter how much it conflicts with what Śrīla Prabhupāda has taught instructed and mandated you believe that it is perfectly okay so long as the GBC, your guru or your peers accept it.

I find it very difficult to believe myself that you can put aside your rational logical intelligence and accept something that is entirely unacceptable. You would not accept that a celibate Catholic priest would act in this manner yet you find it completely fine that a member of the sacred renounced Sannyāsa order and more importantly someone you claim is a śuddha bhakta dīkṣā guru can engage in amoral behaviour. You blindly accept what the GBC and the gurus have told you no matter what they say and what they do!”

Disciple: “How dare you insult my intelligence and question my decision to accept the GBC and my Guru as my authority!”

Devotee: “I have every right as a follower of His Divine Grace AC Bhaktivedanta Swami Śrīla Prabhupāda to question you, your guru and your GBC when they are blatantly disobeying Śrīla Prabhupāda and making a mockery of our glorious Kṛṣṇa conscious movement. If you act like you are an idiot they how can you expect anyone to treat you as anything else but an idiot?”

Disciple: “No you don’t! The GBC gave my guru and others like him the right to be dīkṣā gurus and how dare you say that they are wrong!”

Devotee: “The GBC?! The same GBC who illegally appointed themselves as gurus immediately after Śrīla Prabhupāda entered into Samādhi? The first gurus they appointed were themselves! You don’t know the history of our movement. You, your guru and your GBC demand to see absolute evidence of their filthy and criminal behaviour and but they cannot show one shred of evidence that Śrīla Prabhupāda allowed anyone to take over his role in ISKCON. In fact Śrīla Prabhupāda mandated otherwise, that he was the supreme authority both during his lifetime and after his death when he incorporated ISKCON! The very same ISKCON that you claim to be a member of!

Yes you are an idiot! I am showing you evidence and you won’t accept. How many children were raped and molested by Kiritanananda and his stupid disciples, like your very own guru Radhanatha, did nothing to stop it? They supported him and not only said or did nothing but murdered any opposition to their regime and these reprobates still praised Kiritanananda years after his lecherous and criminal behaviour was exposed!

What is wrong with you that you don’t see it as wrong that a pure devotee molests little children? What is wrong with you that you cannot accept that an old man in his sixties should be parading around with Barbie Dolls in saris taking photos of little semi naked girls on a beach when they are supposed to be in the renounced celibate order?

You dare to try and stop me from exposing a truth!

Disciple: “I am shocked! You are so blind yourself that you cannot accept that we need to have a living breathing guru! You want to bring Śrīla Prabhupāda back but he is not here he is dead! How is the paramapara continued unless someone has the courage to take the role of a dīkṣā guru!

Devotee: “It is courage? Is it courage to lie and deceive? To fool people like you to accepting them as a pure devotee? Is that how you rationalize your decision to accept your bogus guru to be as good as God? Is it courage or is it illusion? Why do you want to believe the lie? This is your problem.

Your guru knows very well he is not a pure devotee. He knows very well that he has no authority to act as a dīkṣā guru when he has no spiritual realization whatsoever or instruction from Śrīla Prabhupāda! The problem is that you don’t know what a pure devotee is! You have to think of your guru as a pure devotee because you made the decision to accept him as such. He will never tell you that you were wrong to pick him as your guru, wrong to pick anyone but Śrīla Prabhupāda.

He knows full well that he is cheating you. He will never admit to you that he is not a pure devotee and he has no authority from Śrīla Prabhupāda because he is a coward. He hopes that you will believe the lie for as long as you can, he knows you to be a sentimental fool who has been bewildered by his Sannyāsa robes and his well scripted speeches and his glorious title. All he wants is your support to cover up his lies, your money so you can pay for his lifestyle, your service so you can build his castle in the sky.

How can you think that the well publicised behaviour of your guru’s activities are the activities of a pure devotee? What proof do you have that they are activities described in śāstra? None. You know it! Yet you chose to over look these discrepancies like you chose to over look the fact that you made a huge mistake in choosing such a rascal as your guru when you know that Śrīla Prabhupāda said we must choose a bona fide spiritual master!

You chose to accept a guru impostor simply because he was presented to you by the GBC and by your fellow groupies. You failed to properly inform yourself by śāstric evidence and you failed to check if there was any such mandate from Śrīla Prabhupāda. You failed to inform yourself on the sordid history of ISKCON. This is your fault. The history of the movement is there on the internet for you to read and educate yourself, yet you chose to ignore the truth and chose to be cheated instead.

Yet you stand there in your ignorant arrogance and accuse me of being offensive? 

You know in your heart that your guru’s activities cannot be supported by śāstra and by Śrīla Prabhupāda instructions yet you twist your mind around this as if it is irrelevant. That it does not matter. That so long as he is being accepted as a guru by your friends and the GBC then you have made the right decision no matter what conflicting evidence is presented to you?

How much of Śrīla Prabhupāda books have you carefully studied? How much of ISKCON history do you know? Even when you came to Kṛṣṇa consciousness you were told to read your gurudevs book on his hippie mayavadi journey and so you were brainwashed into thinking that this book, this mundane self promoting dribble, was the life and times of a pure devotee. You were cheated from the very start! Śrīla Prabhupāda never instructed you to read your guru’s book. He instructed everyone to read his books.

You cannot see that your JBD guru’s life was trying to learn from his so called teachers as a student tries to learn from his professor so that one day he too can stand there and be a professor. But our process is not mundane it is spiritual. You cannot treat Kṛṣṇa consciousness as a theatre where actors parade around professing to be some character. It is not an institutionally contrived position to be a guru or a disciple. The guru is a śuddha bhakta and the disciple is someone who knows this through the eyes of śāstra and so dedicates their life to serve the bona fide spiritual master. These FISKCON gurus, the ones that you defend with your ignorant arrogance are cheaters and you are the cheated. Wake up!

We have come to Kṛṣṇa consciousness to be freed from material illusion and bondage yet you stand here seething with anger because you know you have been cheated but you are too proud to face this fact!

Disciple: “But Śrīla Prabhupāda is dead. He is dead. He is dead!”

Devotee: “You stand there and boldly proclaim that Śrīla Prabhupāda is dead! He is dead – to you! You have to believe that he is dead because you cannot admit that you are wrong. Your living guru is a farce and you know it.

Take a look at yourself. Hear yourself. You stand there proclaiming that Śrīla Prabhupāda is dead and you have no idea what you are saying. How can you be so self-righteous that you can speak like that and not think it is the most serious offence against a Vaiṣṇava?

Yet what do you have to offer in his place, some new age guru espousing love and peace and glorifying mundane pseudo religionists as his teachers and hardly mentions Śrīla Prabhupāda. This is why you falsely believe that Śrīla Prabhupāda is dead. You have been cheated into to thinking that your guru can do no wrong. Even if he calls a snake a rope and you get bitten and subsequently envenomated you still adamantly refuse to believe that you have been poisoned by a Kali chela. Thus you become infected and enslave yourself to the putana guru, the false guru. You have been cheated by a fool. 

Disciple: “How dare you call my guru a fool!”

Devotee: “How dare you say that Śrīla Prabhupāda is dead? How can you stand there in your dhoti and kurta with your tilak on and your hand in your bead bag and declare that once a Vaiṣṇava dies he is to be forgotten and in his place some new age Jewish charlatan should be accepted as a bona fide guru! You can’t even prove to me that you are an ISKCON devotee?

Disciple: “You have gone too far!”

Devotee: “No you have gone too far. This is Śrīla Prabhupāda’s ISKCON not your ISKCON. I have no problem with your guru imitating Śrīla Prabhupāda and starting his own religion. He can take all of you with him and it would not make a difference to the Sankirtan mission.

The only difference is that when your guru dies, and be certain he will, history will remember him and you all as the ones who betrayed the pure devotee His Divine Grace AC Bhaktivedanta Swami Śrīla Prabhupāda. There will be no Temples in his honour all his assets will be stolen by his senior disciples and he will be forgotten.

Śrīla Prabhupāda and ISKCON will still be here. He and you may think that Śrīla Prabhupāda left his guru’s mission to start his own and so you will have some twisted ideology to support your heretical move to leave ISKCON but in actual fact your gurudev is not a Ācārya like Śrīla Prabhupāda, if he leaves he leaves end of story.

Śrīla Prabhupāda did not leave he continued and expanded the Gauḍīya Math. Your guru’s leaving ISKCON will only be a rebellious and traitorous move nothing more and nothing less. He and you will be forgotten.

You have only one choice if you are actually sincere about your spiritual life. You have to reject your guru for being a rascal imposter and accept Śrīla Prabhupāda. Of course it is up to you. However, please don’t stand there and pontificate that your guru is a pure devotee and get angry if I challenge your illogical sensibilities.

Disciple: “Offender! Offender! I must run from your presence like a snake runs from a forest fire!”

Devotee: “Yes run! Run away from the truth and seek false comfort in the belief that I am an offender to your heretical guru and GBC! But know in your spiritually bankrupt heart that I will never bow down to your belief that a dīkṣā guru can be a cheating rascal and anything but a śuddha bhakta who has actually seen Kṛṣṇa.

I will never again eat humble pie at the expense of the truth and Śrīla Prabhupāda’s purpose and good name. This is Śrīla Prabhupāda’s ISKCON and it is for those who seek the truth and desire to increase their consciousness of Kṛṣṇa by serving the śuddha bhakta His Divine Grace AC Bhaktivedanta Swami Śrīla Prabhupāda and not for the likes of you and your false guru.

Now wouldn’t that be nice! To be free to stand up for Śrīla Prabhupāda instead of always having to feel like you are the bad guy if you try and defend Śrīla Prabhupāda. To be free to call a spade a spade or a thief a thief in Śrīla Prabhupāda’s ISKCON without fear of aggression from the disciples of these reprobates!

Why must we live in their shadow and let them have the upper hand by making us feel bad for speaking the truth and exposing their false gurus? It is time we stood up for ourselves and for Śrīla Prabhupāda. They are the ones who should be humble not us! They are the offenders, the aparādhis; not those of us who speak the truth.

The more we ‘stand up and be counted’ the less power these gurus and their disciples will have within our Vaiṣṇava society and the sooner we will be free of their heretical yoke so our Vaiṣṇava community may flourish and grow in clear unadulterated and unhindered service to the pure devotee His Divine Grace AC Bhaktivedanta Swami Śrīla Prabhupāda.

Originally published: 26th September 2011