Mad After Krishna

Great posts corboy!

This article MAD AFTER KRISHNA by Paul Ford is an excellent essay on the Hare Krishna movement. While he writes about his experiences following AC Bhaktivedanta, most of the system was followed exactly by Chris Butler, his disciple.

There are some differences of course. Followers left the strict temples on the main land for more freedom and ease to be with Siddha in the 1970's. The diet was better, one could sleep and surf. But over time, Butler began to tighten the ship up, become more secretive, and more of a tyrant.

While the culture of ISKCON was very different than Siddha's band of brothers in Hawaii, they eventually converged when it came to the Hare Krishna notion of guruhood.

ACB created a centralized collectivist temple bueracracy, while Butler formed a decentralized group and encouraged economic independence and business creation. Butler didn't need or want to be anyone's Daddy. But ACB and Butler worked from the same play book regarding absolute, infallible authority over their followers.

The children of Butler's first group of followers proved to be very challenging. These kids were poorly educated and did not turn out to be the loyal robots their parents had been. He responded by setting up systems and rules to maintain future generations. So like ACB, Butler is an absolute authoritarian. They both coined themselves "Prabhupad" and "Jagad Guru".

Here are a few quotes from Mad After Krishna that perfectly describe Butler's guruship (yeah, I made that word up).

Here, ACB and Chris Butler are non-different.

Quote
MAD AFTER KRISHNA Copyright © 1994 by Paul Ford

[*] At first glance, the cults seem to offer a relatively free and open form of recruitment. Closer inspection, however, reveals a demand for loyalty and obedience that is quite astonishing in its intensity.

[*] Another conclusion might be that cult recruitment and induction techniques are more powerfully transformative of the human psyche and spirit than we may care to admit.

[*] One approach to the troubling issues raised by cults...is what others have called "mind control." I will use this phrase to mean a system of powerful social influences that seeks to dismantle and reconstruct the inner and outer selves. The resulting system of control excludes all outside influences while bringing about a form of personal change that is quite exceptional in its speed and depth.

[*] Nevertheless, Prabhupada not only permitted, but actively encouraged, his disciples to believe that he, like God, was omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent...He maintained that he "knew the heartbeat of his disciples," wherever they might be. He declared himself the "sum total of the demigods," the powerful godlike beings who control the forces of nature. He even wrote that the spiritual master was "better than God." No one in the cult was able to challenge Prabhupada's place at the top of ISKCON's power structure.

[*] Prabhupada's claim to authority rested on the assertion that he was the most recent link in an unbroken chain of masters that began 5,000 years ago with Krishna Himself.

[*] (The "disciplic succession" is roughly equivalent of the Catholic notion of an Apostolic Succession from the disciples of Jesus to the current bishops.) The only information I have seen that supports this claim came, of course, from Prabhupada himself.

[*] Prabhupada prohibited his disciples from reading his master's books. It may be that he did not want them to compare his writings with those of his teacher.

[*] Nevertheless, he considered anyone who criticized or judged him to be "envious" of his position, and therefore, unworthy of his "mercy" (blessings). Only a handful of servants and assistants spent a significant amount of time with him behind the scenes. This made it nearly impossible for a rank-and-file devotee to independently confirm or deny any assertions about his adherence to his own rules.

[*] Prabhupada offered special privileges to top leaders

[*] Prabhupada told his devotees what to do at every moment of the day. A cliché in the cult was, "One should become like a child before the guru." He also called the devotee "a cog in a machine," "a dog on a leash," and "a sold-out animal." Although he called on his devotees to serve him unconditionally, his concern for them was conditional. He liked them so long as they were in some way useful to him or to the Movement. When they ceased being useful, he stopped paying attention to them. His love for them was contingent on their obedience to him.

[*] He promised that if they obeyed his orders, he would accept full responsibility for their karma.

[*] Prabhupada maintained that devotees who became "Krishna conscious" no longer needed to fear death...however, he surrounded himself with armed bodyguards when appearing in public.

[*] He taught them to hate themselves, their families of origin, and the rest of the world outside the cult. He taught them to fear their own minds and what would happen to them if they failed to "surrender" it to him. He viewed the world as a hostile place where only the strongest survived, hardly the inspiring or uplifting view of life that one might expect from a holy man.

[*] The Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution prohibits slavery; yet the cult recruited thousands of devotees to work hard all day every day without pay.

[*] totalitarians, whatever their platform, work hard to manipulate language.

[*] As a rule, the longer a devotee spent in the cult, the more difficulties he met with while trying to leave. While in the cult, he received no formal education and little or no training that might be useful for a job in the real world.

[*] One of the many contradictions of the cult was that although it declared itself the representative in the West of traditional Hinduism, most Hindus rejected it.

[*] In addition, longstanding tradition in mainstream Hinduism prohibited a guru from accepting money or property from a disciple. In contrast, Prabhupada accepted from his devotees a lavish lifestyle for himself.

[*] To my knowledge, no legitimate religious leader, Hindu or otherwise, asserts that he is "as good as God" or permits the worship of living humans as God. No legitimate religion separates children from their parents or wives from their husbands.

[*] God speaks only through a single, fallible human being, and only concerns Himself in a loving way with a tiny, exclusive cult. He judges all people according to a single, rigid system of rules.

[*] Another aspect of daily behavior over which the cult tried to exert control was personal cleanliness. ...The implications of the dogma concerning cleanliness were clear: the devotees were clean and godly, and the karmis were dirty and ungodly.

[*] Prabhupada required the devotees to renounce everything associated with the world outside the cult. He instructed them to give up everything he regarded as incompatible with their duties and responsibilities in the cult. These included money, possessions, jobs, religion, and even, in many cases, spouse and children.

[*] When devotees became ill, the cult offered them Hindu home cures or no treatment at all. ...the cult insisted that the devotees' illnesses were caused by their lack of faith, their forgetfulness of Krishna, or the slackness of their devotional attitudes. That is, illness was God's punishment for one's sins, and the way to cure an illness was to "surrender" one's life to the guru and Krishna.

[*] the cult insisted that the devotees' illnesses were caused by their lack of faith, their forgetfulness of Krishna, or the slackness of their devotional attitudes. That is, illness was God's punishment for one's sins, and the way to cure an illness was to "surrender" one's life to the guru and Krishna.

[*] The cult controlled the devotees' sex lives. It encouraged them to feel guilty about their sexual thoughts — not to mention their sexual activities. The cult considered the physical part of love — even kissing — to be dirty and motivated by the basest of instincts. The emotional part of love was nothing more than sentiment, the sworn enemy of spirituality.

[*] The cult discouraged and even tried to eliminate family life as we usually understand it outside the cult. The leaders usually determined who married whom

[*] He linked his idea of "mercy" to his ideas of duty and service. Just as service was a one-way street, so was mercy. The disciples followed the spiritual master's orders "without hesitation and without consideration," and only he could bless or validate their efforts. That is, the price of forgiveness was obedience and servitude.

[*] One of the more seductive aspects of the cult was the promise that, while chanting, a devotee would experience "transcendental ecstasy" or "bliss," the feeling of having risen above ordinary, mundane existence. This often-repeated assertion fulfilled itself whenever the devotees had intense feelings, whatever their actual nature or origins. They interpreted these emotions as the "transcendental" emotion of which Prabhupada spoke so often.

[*] Similarly, the leaders labeled as "anxiety" or "agitation" any feeling that was untoward or bothersome. In this way, the cult interpreted the meaning of the devotees' emotions, carefully and conveniently attributing all positive feelings to itself, and all negative ones to the world outside the cult.

[*] One may also see a cult experience as a form of extended hypnosis. At prearranged cues, devotees did, said, and felt no more nor less than what the cult told them to do, say, and feel. The trappings of the Krishna cult — the costumes, decorations, incense, music, and vocabulary — became triggers or cues that reminded them of the imputed divinity and their duty to serve it. In addition, the leaders subjected the devotees to many posthypnotic suggestions.

[*] Prabhupada wrote that you and I have just two choices: to serve Krishna, or to serve Maya.

Let's see Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard spin out of her connection to Butler and her “grandfather spiritual master” ? Is her obedience to them above all others?