Spreading the Poison to a Center Near You

The Yogification of ISKCON

As devotees we have nothing against yoga—rather, we welcome it. And that is because yoga simply means “linking,” which implies by its highest definition linking with the Supreme Lord, the Yogeshwara Shri Krishna. Krishna is described as the Yogeshwara or “Master of all mysticism” in the final verse of Bhagavad-gita (18.78). Krishna tells Arjuna the secrets of genuine yoga throughout their divine conversation. 

Soon after their discussion becomes serious (in Bg 2.48), Krishna says:

yoga-sthaḥ kuru karmāṇi saṅgaṁ tyaktvā dhanañjaya
siddhy-asiddhyoḥ samo bhūtvā samatvaṁ yoga ucyate

Be steadfast in yoga, O Arjuna. Perform your duty and abandon all attachment to success or failure. Such evenness of mind is called yoga.

The Lord advises his disciple (Bg 8.8) to become yoga-yuktena—or to constantly meditate upon the Supreme Lord:

abhyāsa-yoga-yuktena cetasā nānya-gāminā
paramaṁ puruṣaṁ divyaṁ yāti pārthānucintayan

He who meditates on the Supreme Personality of Godhead, his mind constantly engaged in remembering Me, undeviated from the path, he, O Pārtha (Arjuna), is sure to reach Me.

Lord Krishna further describes yoga to Arjuna in the chapter entitled “The Yoga of the Supreme Person.” In verse 15.11, He shows through the word “yoginaś” that the yogi is one who endeavors to become Krishna conscious.

yatanto yoginaś cainaṁ paśyanty ātmany avasthitam
yatanto 'py akṛtātmāno nainaṁ paśyanty acetasaḥ

The endeavoring transcendentalist, who is situated in self-realization, can see all this clearly. But those who are not situated in self-realization cannot see what is taking place, though they may try to.

There are many more descriptions of genuine yoga in the Bhagavad-gita As It Is. We are not so narrow-minded as to dismiss yoga since yoga culminates in bhakti-yoga, linking in love with the Supreme Lord Shri Krishna through surrendered devotional service. We are opposed to the cheap adulteration of yoga by profiteers, such as those who are described in The Journey Home. We join with all genuine Vaishnavas in opposing anyone who tries to sell a whirlwind fix-all course in the form of physical exercises and deceptively call that yoga.

We all know only too well that whatever is being hawked as “yoga” today in storefront yoga schools and “ashrams” is not yoga at all. Twisting the body this way and that actually has nothing at all to do with yoga. Exercising the body to feel better, eat better, sleep better, relate to others better and enjoy better sex has nothing to do with yoga as taught by Lord Krishna Himself. 

Such misleading false yoga propaganda is nowhere no more evident than the video testimonials of students on the website of Govardhana Eco-village, Radhanatha’s Yoga Paradise one hundred kilometers north of Mumbai. Rather than an Eco-village, it has become an Eka- (“oneness”) village due to the preponderance of impersonalism there. And from that Eka-village the poison of Mayavada is fast spreading all over ISKCON due to a feeble and incompetent GBC. The apparent root cause for this demise in Krishna consciousness is the influence of The Journey Home and its proponents on the GBC.

The Journey Home proves what dreadful effects the written, published word can have. Since people tend to believe books, the result of The Journey Home is the rapid destruction of Krishna consciousness under the nose of a somnambulistic, lazy and self-absorbed GBC that supports Mayavadi rubbish by promoting The Journey Home.

On the yoga page of the Govardhana Eco-village website https://www.ecovillage.org.in/yoga/ we are encouraged to “discover our inner yoga.” To that end, there is a testimonial by one Janakinath Dasa, who is wearing the saffron garb of an ISKCON brahmachari. Go to the page and have a listen to his yoga spiel—and see if this is what Krishna taught about yoga in Bhagavad-gita. Decide for yourself if this sort of preaching is what the Founder-Acharya intended for the celibate students of his ISKCON. Does the GBC think that Shrila Prabhupada gave up everything—his house, family, career, and society—only to embark penniless to a strange and terrible world of Kali Yuga to spread the Holy Names of the Supreme Lord and see cheap yoga teacher training courses arise in his organization?

From this effervescent Janakinath Das we learn that through the Yoga Teacher Training Course at Govardhan Eco-village, he has made an “amazing journey” that “teaches higher consciousness to deal with life’s challenges and problems.” 

Life’s hurdles, we learn, can be “turned into a wonderful gift” through “the wisdom of the East.” With straight-faced confidence he testifies that the yoga course teaches how to “develop a deep and meaningful relationship” with “people you meet from all walks of life.” He assures us that this “amazing course” teaches in just twenty-eight days how to meet headlong any problem life throws at us. And he adds that you also learn “the ability and skill to teach and share with others.” … And that is for a nice sum of money, no doubt—because teaching B.S. in the name of yoga is a lucrative trillion dollar business worldwide.

Meet Aarti: Only twenty-eight days to eternal enlightenment. Check out her “lineage,”folks.

Nowhere in Bhagavad-gita does Krishna tell Arjuna to do yoga so that he can deal with life’s challenges and have meaningful relationships with all sorts of different personalities. We would also like to ask Janakinath dasa Prabhu how many colleges there are that teach courses on any subject—any subject at all—that in just twenty-eight days certify graduates to become teachers. In The Journey Home Radhanatha speaks of the Himalayan yogis he encountered on his adventures. How many Himalayan sadhus would accept disciples for twenty-eight days, and then send them out into the world now reborn as sages qualified to enlighten others.

But who is doing the teaching of this 28-day yoga course at Govardhana Eco-village? The site lists Aarti—“an eternal student, a preacher of traditional yoga” —as one of the center’s two cheery “Yoga Coaches.” 

The site states that, “Aarti’s first acquaintance with Yoga came at quite a young age with Yoga Vidya Gurukul, Nashik (Swami Satyananda lineage-Bihar School of Yoga).” Now as devotees in the line from a bona fide spiritual master, we have a big problem with this description of “lineage.” That a lineage must be bona fide is a founding principle of Krishna consciousness. As we all know, there are four genuine disciplic lines, or lineages, and they are the Vaishnava sampradayas. And any teachings that fall short of what is presented in the sampradaya lineage must be rejected. So is this Swami Satyananda and his “lineage” bona fide? 

According to Wiki, Aarti’s “lineage” from Swami Satyananda descends from Swami Sivananda—a Mayavadi of Rishikesh who does not represent any sampradaya. Wiki says, “In 1964 (Swami Satyananda) founded the Bihar School of Yoga (BSY) at Munger, with the intention that it would act as a centre of training for future teachers of yoga as well as offer courses on yoga.” So this is the same yoga school and yogi with whom Yoga Coach Aarti’s “lineage” arises.

Wiki glorifies Swami Satyananda by saying that he “conducted a 12-year Rajasooya Yajna which began in 1995 with the first Sat Chandi Maha Yajna, invoking the Cosmic Mother through a tantric ceremony.” Now wait a minute. Swami Satyananda conducted a Rajasuya Yagna? The Rajasuya Yagna can only be performed by a king of the earth after conquering all quarters. Furthermore, the Rajasuya Yagna takes more wealth than can be found on the entire earth today. And it certainly is not meant as a tantric offering before a horrific and angry form of “the Cosmic Mother” like Chandi. So this is another instance of an ambitious yogi’s bluffing propaganda, just as we have seen time and again in the ashrams of countless swamis, yogis and avataras who write their own legends—and which are recounted many times in The Journey Home.

Goddess Chandni

But there is more to the “lineage” of Swami Satyananda. Wiki goes on to say,

“Testimony given to (Australia’s) Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse from 2014 in various ways implicates Swami Satyananda and his successors. According to reports of the Commission, Swami Satyananda was a violent sexual abuser. The testimony before the Royal Commission involved child abuse, rape, gang rape, coercion and physical abuse such as beatings and at least in once instance, the knife cutting of a young girl by Swami Akhandananda. They involve Swamis deploying spiritual "teachings" to manipulate young people into having sex with each other and with adults. The testimony points toward a pattern of psychological, physical and sexual abuse, carried out by numerous Swami’s against numerous children and young adults. Into the abuse inquiry, a female victim stated that yoga guru Satyananda Saraswati subjected her to violent sexual acts but she didn’t speak up because she would have been branded a criminal.”

Govardhan Eco-village should be more careful about predators whom they describe as having a “lineage.” But when the money is so good, who cares that the lines of a serial predator’s “lineage” are being blurred with the genuine lineage coming from Shrila Prabhupada and the great Brahma-Madhva-Gaudiya sampradaya? 

Perhaps Aarti herself is not aware of the nasty reputation that the head of “her lineage” took to his grave. But then, why doesn’t she simply become a follower of Shrila Prabhupada and teach genuine yoga, the yoga of Bhagavad-gita As It Is? Or is there no one to convey the original teachings of His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada over at Govardhana Eco-village? Perhaps they are all too busy reading, studying, learning the lineage of The Journey Home.