How the Past Becomes the Present What Does the Future Hold for ISKCON?
“That which is in book form lives as long as the book is read.” –Unknown
Renowned Yoga Master Sri Sri Radhanatha fights for truth, justice and the yoga way at a 2012 International Yoga Conference. According to ISKCON News, the conference included “renowned masters from various Yoga schools—including ISKCON’s Yadunandana Swami and Radhanath Swami”
PHOTO COURTESY: https://iskconnews.org/iskcon-swamis-meet-with-yoga-leaders-to-plan-world-yoga-day,3107/
The Journey Home is ostensibly presented as though Sri Sri Richard Slavin’s meetings with each yoga pretender, one after another in a huge chain of bogus Mayavadi gurus, were a step towards “home.” It appears that this premise—or ruse—has fooled many readers who think that the gospels of the Mayavadis have been left behind in a search for and discovery of Krishna consciousness. Unfortunately this is not a fact. Mayavada is still very much alive and well in ISKCON today.
Although practically all of Sri Sri Richard’s old Mayavadi yoga friends have now gone to their own journeys home (to the Kingdom of Yamaraja), still their reeking influences remain. In fact, it is our unequivocal opinion that this odious and impersonal affiliation was the express purpose of introducing all those pseudo-wise and envious members of a Mayavadi Rogue’s Gallery into ISKCON. Though many of the carriers of the plague of impersonalism have entered their own dubious samadhis, the plague they carried continues to fester.
As evidence for this, one merely has to see today’s growing stench of Mayavadic concepts has entered ISKCON. Witness the many manufactured and invented programmes now functioning within the temples of Shri Radha and Krishna that are claimed to be bona fide Krishna consciousness. His Divine Grace the Founder-Acharya would never have approved of manufactured programmes in his temples that nowadays include …
-Yoga exercises for health,
-Sannyasis and brahmacharis becoming YouTube relationship counselors with expressly with karmi appeal;
-Fashion shows and Gurukuli Melas;
-Festivals of color;
-Government-supported “gurukulas”;
-Free food programmes that are not specifically identified as Shri Krishna prasadam but merely as a “midday meal”;
-Hinduization of the congregation;
-Salaries for the “devotee servants;”
-Claims of striving toward world peace;
-Mumbling heartwarming yet meaningless truisms as though they are shlokas of divine revelations;
.. and many other bald-faced deviations.
Make no mistake about it, Prabhus—all these deviations are by the explicit design of the GBC. Mayavada is alive and well in ISKCON, and that is due to the GBC’s very poor leadership on one hand; and somewhere a purposeful desire to mislead Shrila Prabhupada’s society on the other.
All Glories to the Assembled Hindus
In America, from whence this Movement got its great beginnings in 1966, ISKCON’s temples are nowadays accepted as Hindu meeting halls wherein week-end devotees who maintain their gurus like adopted pets meet to socialize and fraternize. Yet—where are the ISKCON gurus in any of these once-great centers to implore the Indians seeking shelter to preach? Where are ISKCON’s gurus speaking strongly and giving emphatic instructions to the socializers. Where are the gallant words that are so pleasing to Shrila Prabhupada? Do any ISKCON gurus have the heart, the guts and the courage to stand before the assembled Hindus and say …
“Go out and preach Krishna consciousness. It was the desire of the Supreme Lord Shri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu that anyone born in India should rise to become guru and teach the world pure love of Shri Krishna! Go out into the world and follow the example of Shrila Prabhupada. Turn to that mleccha next to you at work and interest him or her in Bhagavad-gita As It Is. Krishna consciousness is not Hinduism, and neither are ISKCON’s temples meant to be centers where self-appointed princes simply collect tithes from your hard earned salaries. You are meant to preach sanatana dharma in its purest and highest form by the order of Mahaprabhu.
“ISKCON is meant to train preachers to follow the example of His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, He gave up everything to preach the message of Krishna consciousness fearlessly and without adulteration. If we as Gaudiyas do not follow his example, how then can we claim to be followers of Shrila Prabhupada? If you have not become bona fide preachers of the message of Shri Chaitainya Mahaprabhu, then you are all failures and your teachers are also failures. You will become successful in this mission not by gathering to give money and socialize, but only when you learn to spread Krishna consciousness by speaking without compromise.”
If you do not believe that this is the sort of preaching that the Founder-Acharya wanted—no, ordered—then have a read of this very pertinent letter from 1968:
My Dear Gurudasa,
Please accept my blessings. I beg to acknowledge receipt of your letter dated 9/23/68, and thank you very much for it. Now, because you are on the field work, you have to meet so many opposite elements. And you have to satisfy them or fight with them with conclusive statements from Bhagavad-gita, and Srimad-Bhagavatam, and as such, it is needed that you should be thoroughly conversant with the truth.
Regarding the Hindu community: Don't expect anything very wonderful from them, as we have got experience in Montreal—they have come in the foreign countries to earn money. As such, you cannot expect any cultural contribution. So you will tactfully deal with them, and whenever possible, vehemently protest against their foolish ideas. But you should try to support your statements on the strength of Bhagavatam and Bhagavad-gita. Best thing will be to avoid them as far as possible. I am concerned to preach this gospel amongst the Europeans and Americans, and I am not at all interested to preach amongst the Indians, because they have now become hodge-podge, due to so many years of subjugation by foreigners, and having lost their own culture.
Hope you are well with your good wife, and please offer Yamuna devi my blessings.
Your ever well-wisher,
A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami
But instead of preaching boldly, the attention of the GBC has been turned to many novel, experimental and manufactured processes that the revered Founder-Acharya would never have approved of in a hundred years of Brahma. Hence the plague of Mayavada association so neatly chalked out in The Journey Home continues to hover over ISKCON like the stench from a garbage pile. The past has become the present.
In this series we have tried to show the dangers of Mayavadi association. Past experiences of rubbing elbows with these bogus rascals, who are all envious demons at heart, is a poisonous influence that continues to infect exponentially like some rampant computer virus. Of the many examples of how the past has morphed into the present, nothing is more obvious than ISKCON’s official news source with its raves about ISKCON’s “leader” Sri Sri Radhanatha having a tête-à-tête with Sri Sri Ravi Shankar to plan an international yoga festivities. Does planning a World Yoga Day with pretentious rascals sound like something Shrila Prabhupada was much concerned with? https://iskconnews.org/iskcon-swamis-meet-with-yoga-leaders-to-plan-world-yoga-day,3107/.
Here is another gem from ISKCON News https://iskconnews.org/all-india-conference-honors-mahaprabhu,1049/ with Sri Sri Radhanatha again sidling up alongside his buddy Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. This was supposed to be a festival honoring Lord Chaitanya. But, No, ISKCON Watery News did not speak of Mahaprabhu as the Supreme Personality of Godhead in the mood of His dearmost devotee Shri Radha, but as a historical figure, as (to quote the article) “India’s 16th Century saint and avatara.”
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar is famous for his countless mundane motivational videos of building meaningful relationships and becoming a better human being. He calls the The Art of Living. Rather than preaching strongly against swamis teaching only mundane materialistic values, ISKCON’s swamis are tagging along. Many have become clones of the latest crop of motivational Swamis getting rich by muttering empty platitudes and posing as all-knowing saints in the process. Here is Sri Sri Ravi Shankar entering into the a “samadhi trance” that resembles someone sitting in an electric chair. It appears on YouTube not as The Art of Living, but as The Art of Fooling.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AEb1rstcbI
In fact, it was Shrila Prabhupada who sent all those Mayavadi wolves in sheep’s clothing running in the 1970’s because the bogus gurus were all afraid of his command of speaking the Absolute Truth. After the sword of Shrila Prabhupada chased the wolves away from the flock, the Mayavadis morphed to create new images of themselves as professional counselors dressed in suits and ties, but speaking the same old hackneyed rubbish of becoming one with the great impersonal nothingness. But today, with the absence of strong preaching in ISKCON, orange-robed imitation holy men have once again reappeared while many ISKCON gurus blithely and obediently tag along in their hollow footsteps.
But this is the trend in today’s ISKCON when the past has become the present. Much of it, but certainly not all of it, is due to the influence of The Journey Home. Just as the GBC uses Radhanatha to rationalize their needs to manufacture new changes that have nothing to do with Krishna consciousness, so Sri Sri Radhanatha is using the GBC for his own ends. One political hand washes the other. The so-called “bridge preaching” that was ostensibly meant to attract karmis, is now the official version that is preached to devotees. And that is because today’s weak flock of ISKCON sheep want to stay demi-karmis while accepting a week-end “religion of convenience.”
The Radhanathification and Mayavadification of ISKCON is a clever design to pull out the rug from under the feet of the Society. Under the Mayavadi management of a weak GBC the entire society has its legs in two different boats in the middle of the Lake of Confusion, and drowning in a sea of “heartfelt and feel-good oneness” can be the only result for a Society that was meant to be so much more.
Here is another example of many of how the Mayavada past has become the Mayavada present. Here is Yoga Master Sri Sri Radhanatha with Yoga Master Sri Sri Sharon Gannon:
When Yoga Masters meet: Sri Sri Radhanatha with Sri Sri Sharon Gannon
Photo courtesy https://lastingimpression.info/radhanath-swami-joins-prabhupadas-enemies/
And here is the sort of “yoga” that Sri Sri Sharon Gannon practices (danger: not meant for brahmacharis or any other pious persons for that matter). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDHbokA11v4
But what can be done when this is the dawning of a new age of ISKCON with its newly-invented Sri Shri Yoga Masters. Perhaps this is what temple visitors will get an eye full of instead of Deity darshan in the ISKCON of the future because this is “bridge preaching, Prabhus.”
Sharon, these are musicians, not gynecologists! ISKCON’s yoga fad has turned the Society Topsy turvy.
Instead of preaching against Mayavada, as Shrila Prabhupada did, we find Sri Sri Radhanatha in a Mayavadi music video
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=10154799835882164.
We see him attending Mayavadi retreats,
https://www.sivanandabahamas.org/radhanath-swami-final-bahamas-talk/blog-radanath-swami/
He is entertaining crowds with his blues harmonica
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G58_L_I1vZw.
Here https://www.thesacredconnect.com/radhanathswami is a “brief biography” (of nearly 5,000 words!) of Radhanatha’s stunning achievements as “a towering spiritual figure of our time,” whose “singularly important factor is his own pure saintliness.” It states that Sri Sri “Radhanatha’s teachings are a breath of fresh air”—as though what Shrila Prabhupada gift of eternal service to the Supreme Lord Shri Krishna wasn’t “fresh” enough for the followers of Radhanatha. In carefully coded words this pompous article claims that Radhanatha is “harmonizing tradition and modernity.” The actual bottom line of that coded “harmonizing message” is that the author of The Journey Home is selling out Shrila Prabhupada’s movement by “harmonica-izing” ISKCON into a farcical modern hodgepodge.
Think about it, Prabhus. The mission of Shrila Prabhupada has been hijacked by a “new Mayavadic zonalism” that is far worse than the amateurish failed attempt of post-1978. It could only be the worst nightmare of the Founder-Acharya that his trusted servants would inject Mayavada into the sampradaya. If there are among you any genuinely stalwart devotees left, then you must stand boldly against this commandeering of a once-great movement by rogue members of the GBC. Thanks to a conspiracy to water down Krishna consciousness from the very top, the movement will be soon under water unless you speak up.
Your home is what you make of it. Do these stunning revelations of Mayavada within ISKCON give you some idea of what the actual destination of The Journey Home is? Then welcome home, Prabhus.