Shrila Shakespeare-ananda—

Something is Rotten in Mayapura

Something is rotten in Mayapura

Enter HAMLET, HORATIO, and MARCELLUS

MARCELLUS: Something is rotten in Mayapura.

HORATIO: I fear my lord that the GBC hath fallen into the shadow of Maya, for that which is not can in no way be that which is. And having forgone the instructions of the very one they are avowed to serve, they have together one and all grasp firmly the tail of the devil and are now propagating Mayavada—for that is the sum and substance of that vilest of imitation shastras The Journey Home.

HAMLET:  Indeed ‘tis true that Mayavada does not actually even exist for what is this fabrication of impersonalism but a figment of the imagination of the lord of tama-guna, Shiva Shankara himself.

MARCELLUS: Indeed, ‘twas Lord Chandrashekhara himself ornamented with the glow of moonlight and a garland of cobras who descended in Kali Yuga for to trick the conditioned living entities into thinking that the atomic fractional particle can somehow equal to the Supreme Whole.

HORATIO: Yes, and a thousand times yes, my lord, for when he appeared as Shankaracharya under the order of Lord Narayana to speed up the effects of Kali Yuga it became the easy way out for any pretender who could recite “it is all one.” And leave it at that, I fear. 

MARCELLUS: Indeed, ‘twas the four-handed Lord Himself who ordered His devotee Lord Shiva to take the form of a sannyasi in Kali Yuga and boggle them one and all. Such is the power of tama-guna that the weak minds of confounded sense gratifiers became convinced that this world—a temporary existence haunted by continual birth and death—is a mere pleasure garden wherein the delights of eternal enjoyment are theirs, and their alone. And such stupid men with intellects befitting donkeys pose as yogis, even as a silent GBC celebrates their ignorance.

HAMLET: Very true, Marcellus, listen to many, yet speak to a few. For what greater or crasser stupidity on the part of the living entity can there be for one who figures himself qualified to stand and walk on equal footing with the Supreme Personality of Godhead Himself? His journey home is a skate upon thin ice and only the direst of consequences await any ignoramus who poses as the all-knowing Godhead. Such is the verdict of the Ishopanishad for I have read it there. 

HORATIO: The breath of the Supreme Lord Shri Krishna in the form of the Vedas casts sweet scents in the direction of His elects who shelter continually at His lotus feet. Yet for those Mayavadis who attempt to usurp His position through a deluded claim of oneness, that same breeze becomes as a blazing hurricane that burns as the fire from the terrible mouths of the Vishwarupa—the very Universal Form that Arjuna witnessed at Kurukshetra destroying his combatants. One may doubt the stars are fire, or that the sun doth move; or truth to be a liar. But one must never doubt the Lord Krishna’s love for His pure devotees.

MARCELLUS: In such a way Shankaracharya’s spurious and false doctrine most foul, call it either impersonalism or Mayavada, became popular amongst the atheistic and demonic classes—hell bent as they were on the gratification of their own senses. For it is well known that one may smile, and smile, and be a villain.

HAMLET: When the mystified living entity who is nothing more than an insignificant atomic particle, albeit an eternally personal one, considers his position to be equal to He Who controls the cosmos, then such a bewildered wretch can be said to have utterly wasted his human form of life—and nothing else can be said in his favour. While the Supreme Lord does Himself work tirelessly for the maintenance of every atom of the universe, self-indulgent living entities who have fallen under the deluding sway of Mayavada smugly pose as having taken the position of God. Thus they speak the same ghostly litter to one another—claiming a sort of mythological oneness or the like—and beckon their followers unto the darkest regions of damnation.

“Hath the GBC no fear of near-eternal damnation that they should in slyness promote a picture our beloved Lord Gopala Krishna beside a pile of human skulls?  Is there no end to such impertinence from within their ivory tower?”

HORATIO: Indeed I might add, my lord, if thou shalt permit me, that Mayavada appeals only to the least intelligent of pretentious spiritualists—those very ignorant souls who wish to cloak their repulsive and pig-like pleasures of the temporary form of the body as some medallion denoting spiritual advancement. Words without thoughts never to heaven go. And when sorrows come, they come not single spies. But in battalions.

MARCELLUS: Yea, and verily it be so, for cheap learning of cheaper philosophies merit only economical results. The Mayavadis dub their pretended enjoyment of this dead corpse of a body as being a sort of yoga, and thus they imagine that they have sanctified and made proper their illicit sex while in fact the net result of sin is unwanted population. Thus we see all over the earth worthless and fallen individuals due to this deadly influence of Mayavada. I have even heard tell that many of the yogis promoted in this darling of the GBC, The Journey Home, are actually rapists and violators of the sacred thrones of their female followers. God hath given them one face, and yet they have made for themselves another. If we are true to ourselves, we can not be false to anyone.

HORATIO: And since the GBC in their blindness hath certified genuine Mayavadi literature nonsense under the title of The Journey Home, this most pompous treatise of likely fabrications scribed by one American Swami is hawked in centers of our Founder-Acharya in a dozen languages throughout the world. When those who are meant to pour sweet water upon the roots become complicit in discharging poison at the base of the tree, then there shall be only the bitterest of fruits for their feast.

HAMLET: This above all to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man, what to speak of to Shri Guru. For, there are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Yet when the leaders follow falsity ignoring the natural cycle and heir avowed service to Guru and God, then what can be said of the congregation? What do we read then in The Journey Home? Merely words, words, and more words. Not even the ladies on the GBC doth protest, methinks.

MARCELLUS: Verily the lawbook for mankind written by our guide Manu doth state that the violator or women should be sentenced to death, and the act must be carried out swiftly. And let the deed be witnessed by the public. Those who violate women while attired in the saffron cloth of the priest should be stripped naked, painted black and marched to the gallows on public streets upon the backs of donkeys. 

HORATIO: Yet nowadays the snake oil yogis who are glorified in The Journey Home are celebrated in their samadhi tombs by posthumous followers while living victims were left in dysfunction to nurse their wounds. Is it proper to invite such despicable personalities into the family of the genuine acharya simply because the GBC has become a body of castrated eunuchs? 

HAMLET: Let such a verdict as ordained by Manu stand firm as a message to others who would claim to be God for the sake of exploiting the most innocent of the land. As I stand here today, my ire has been tweaked for within the pages of this Mayavadi fairy tale hath they shown our sweet Lord Shri Krishna posed alongside a mountain of skulls of impious Romans. Furthermore, The Journey Home glorifies men the level of vicious canines, men of fangs whose desires are hidden behind robes of saffron and who call themselves “swamis.” The GBC should come to their senses for celebrating the reputations of sadistic dog-like men dressed as holy monks is not without dreadful punishments—and the clock is ticking on those who print, translate, distribute or in other ways facilitate the distribution of The Journey Home.

MARCELLUS: Do none of these pretenders to glory sitting upon the GBC believe in the fifth canto of the Bhagavata? For therein I have read of the horrors of the Naraka regions that are described for our benefit in great detail. ‘Tis not a mere fiction or work of a sage’s imagination; rather the Bhagavata speaks of a very real and disastrous fate that awaits both the malefactor and the reprobate.

HAMLET: If thou minds not, dear Marcellus, kindly recount what you have read in that holiest of all scriptures.

MARCELLUS: The horrors that await the impious are dreadful; verily such detestable destinations also await their followers as well as any reader who celebrates such roguish men. An assemblage of ghastly creatures known as the Yamadutas violently seizes the subtle bodies of corrupt exploiters at death. Nothing less than this has awaited the Mayavadi rapists who though praised to high heavens above in The Journey Home are the basest of demons. The ranks of Yamadutas drag the unwilling scoundrels now in their forms as pretas with a subtle rope along a protracted and very hot and dry road deep into the southern side of the Universe. There they queue up for King Yama on his throne and wait for him to cast his verdict. The Dharmaraja’s secretary Chitragupta doth hold in his hands the very akashic records denoting the innumerable sins of each offender. Once having read the transgressions aloud to the King of Dharma, the lord of the dead then speaks his inalterable verdict once and for all. Thus commanded, the Yamadutas drag the pretas from the court since now the impious offender must undergo a very long series of unimaginable tortures within the twenty-eight hellish worlds of Naraka. There, my lord, the pain is incredible and beyond my description. Even so, it is an irony that death in the kingdom of the lord of death is not an option. And that is because the subtle body once “killed” simply returns to life again and again for what seems like infinity of cyclic misery. 

HORATIO:  Yea, verily it is so, Marcellus. For I have heard from our scriptural authorities that those regions of suffering have been designed for the deviants who willfully misuse this human form of life and decry acts of devotion unto the Supreme Lord. There in Yama-loka scoundrels who did not follow scriptural injunctions, but who wasted their lives by acting whimsically—are placed into the hell known as Asi-patravana while along with them go the followers of these rascals. This Asi-patravana is a great forest of trees with fronds and giant leaves as unyielding and as sharp as swords. The Yamadutas drag the offenders and their unwise followers through this dense thicket of razor-sharp blades causing gallons of blood to flow. Still, no death awaits—simply the prospect of more pain and suffering in payment for their sins.

Though they are by now entombed in their samadhis, the rapists in saffron described in The Journey Home have found themselves a new home along with their followers.

HAMLET: And what of the officers of the law, verily those who are empowered to scribe the very laws they expect others to follow yet care not a fig for their own injunctions?—the GBC, for example. For is not the GBC the law-making body of the Hare Krishna Movement deemed by the faithful as the genuine world religion? It is unto them that the millions of members have placed their trust and guidance—though, verily, with their propagation of The Journey Home it appears as though they have degraded into a body of Mayavadi-worshipers.

MARCELLUS: Sadly it does appear so, my lord. Such abusers of position are mercilessly dragged repeatedly through yet another hellish region that is even more fearful than Asi-patrvana. For, as Sage Vyasa decrees in the holy Bhagavata: “A government official who poorly administers justice, or who punishes an innocent man, is taken by the assistants of Yamaraja to the hell known as Sukaramukha, where he is mercilessly beaten.” The very name Sukaramukha itself implies “the hell that is as fearful as the impious mouth of a gigantic boar.” There, as stated in the Bhagavata, “In Sukaramukha the most powerful assistants of Yamarāja crush the person who has misused his position exactly as one crushes sugarcane to squeeze out the juice. The sinful living entity cries very pitiably and faints, just like an innocent man undergoing punishments.”

HAMLET: And such is the pitiable condition of this weak governance that collectively is lacking in even a pinch of wisdom. Those who would fain to commit such an aparadha either in their undying arrogance or endless ignorance by releasing Mayavada upon a gullible public have only created a contemptible following for themselves. Never are the swans ever seen to flock amongst the crows.

MARCELLUS: Fie upon the lot of them, and a thousand times fie! But please, O Horatio, who might these rapist scoundrels be by name? For I have never heard that such treachery and impiety could exist even within the order of life that since time immemorial was set aside for renunciation.

HORATIO: Innocent Marcellus, hath thou not heard the names of Swamis Satchidananda, Swami Rama and Swami Muktananda? For dozens of ladies who offered their services to them as students were raped and violated and left by the wayside. ‘Tis no joke when our mothers, sisters, and daughters are defiled. Just view the tragedy that nowadays in Vaishnava circles even the sightless eyes of the leaders are turned away from the direction of plighted women.

MARCELLUS: O, the crime! Let a great curse fall upon these defilers of the cloth and let them remain in the regions of Naraka until Lord Vishnu with His inhalation and Anantadeva with his fire of anger put to a finish once and for all in the final moments of this universe.

HAMLET: Indeed it should be so, for according to Shri Ishopanishad whosoever doth pose as God Almighty for the sake of exploiting and cheating a foolish public doth drag his lame following to hell with him. And those who support and glorify such fiends in the guise of saints are likewise taken asunder along with each of their victims.

MARCELLUS: My lord, it is correct what you say. Whosoever accompanies the Mayavadi, rides along in the same horse-drawn carriage.

HAMLET: Exactly that is the issue just as I am speaking it, dear Marcellus. Though this be madness, yet there is method in't. For the naga-pasha ropes of the Yamadutas, and danda staff of the the lord of the dead—Yamaraja—are impossible to escape when the pretas of unrepentient Mayavadis are drawn out. Indeed, something is very rotten in Mayapura. For …

To oppose Mayavada, or not: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer a corrupt GBC
The slings and arrows the outrageous fortune 

Of opposing Shrila Prabhupada’s teachings,
Or to take up the pen against a sea of impersonalism,
And by opposing The Journey Home, to end them? 

To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks 

Of the leadership of cowards.
That Mayavadi’s are heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Then which direction shall we take?
Must give us pause: 

Where's the respect for servants of the Lord?
Or shall the calamities of a life misused be overlooked;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of the Yamadutas,
The wrongs of an oppressive GBC, the proud leader's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of the GBC office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life of Mayavadic delusion,
But that the dread of something after death, the regions of Yamaraja,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns after reading The Journey Home, 

It puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills of Mayavada we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
So be that as it may, let us continue 

To fearlessly preach as did Shrila Prabhupada.

    Hare Krishna, Prabhus.