Posted by: IanKoviak ()
Date: March 16, 2016 02:37PM
IT IS A VERY INTERESTING TESTIMONIAL ...PARENT BRAINWASHED ...BRAINWASHING THEIR KIDS AND KIDS BRAINWASHING OTHER KIDS IN A LAND FAR FAR AWAY FROM HOME.
My mother, with whom I joined Butlers group with back in 1990, in New York, was so brainwashed by these idiots that she made it clear to me at the tender age of 11 that I had a choice to either stay in New York with my "Demon/Karmi" father, or travel with her to LA to be with our "guru" and real spiritual family. Even at 10 I struggled with the notion, but mama's persistent indoctrination won in the end. Obviously no responsible parent (unless I was being physically abused—which I was not—I love my father and everything he symbolizes to me) would ever make their child choose such a thing. I spent many years recovering from the lost time I will never have with my father. Unfortunately her newfound spirituality did not lend a hand in "talking things out". I recall walking down the beach in Coney Island with my old man and telling him silly stuff like, "Everything in the world is made of material energy. We are not made of that. We are made of spirit". He looked at me with concern and said, "Son, everything you see and touch is made of matter". Boy did he become a Hiranyakashipu in my eyes that day...
A year later I was being shipped out to the Philippines and the rest is history (I had a 5 year lull where I did not see my father). My mother went on to serve Butler in his Poland center and by the time I made it back to the states some 4 years later she was living in Hawaii—where butler was moving or had moved at the time. We stayed with his group for a little longer then ended up with other gurus and groups over the years. The mantra never changed though. The same mindless ideas and instructions were peddled in each group and you were considered fallen, offensive, sinful—you name it, for questioning anything or not agreeing with things. I always feel ashamed to mention, but I was actually kicked out of the school in the Philippines because a group of us boys roughed up a boy who showed to have gay proclivities. I feel bad to this day. We made amends to the boy, but I guess our anti-gay extremism, rules by butlers lectures, was rearing it's ugly head and things had to shift.
Fast forward to my adult years. After moving on from butler we went "guru-hopping". I got to hand it to my mother, she was actually fearless in her desire to find "the one". I endured many talks where she didn't hold back her vicious emotions about butler, about this and that swami only to land on a small sect in the santa cruz mountains that followed Sridhara Maharaja and Govind Maharaja. Later to become my guru. As I went about my life and fell in love and started a family, I started to feel the burn of my very isolating religious upbringing. I could hardly relate to anyone. I had the same issue when I returned form the baguio barahmacari school. Not only could I not enroll anywhere because I had no legitimate school credits for completing middle school, I also felt very scared and paranoid about attending a public high school, which I never did.
As the years went on and my mother attempted to "bring me back" I resisted and felt that I did not want to do something that did not feel natural and inline with my maturity and ability to digest it. I tried. But it felt off. Always off. It was as if I was trying to shoe-horn my sense of being into another body. Mind you, I had been to india several times by now. We also went through a bitter break up with Butler—who represented a sort of middle ground for us as far as feeling "normal". Afterall, butler devotees cheated on little discreet clickers and did not dress in vaishnava gang etc.
I know it's not chronological, but under the tutelage of Turya Das Mahashaya, I had been a brahmin priest for 3 years. This was after my time in the PI. It was during this time that I was introduced to a more authentic vaishnava way of worship and study. I read all the various works of Bhaktivinod, Swamiji, Saraswati Thakur and so forth. I especially liked Jiva Dharma. I envisioned my life like this. Living in a small forest settlement, chanting 64 rounds a day and serving the devotees. This was not only my function and life commitment, this was what jiva goswami and the followers of our avatar chaitanya did. I was head over heals. The real world melted away. I had no concern for anything else.
I recall returning from vrindaban one year. It was a time spent circumambulating govardhan, waking at 4 am to the sound of loudspeakers blasting the vishnusahashranam and falling prostrated in front of my guruji. Oh, I was in bliss. Well, in bliss masturbating at night and thinking of the cute girls I saw around vrndaban... But whatever, I was in bliss. Everyday was a challenge of cleansing my soul. I hopped into the Jamuna, I smeared my body with clay from the ganga. I visited all the temples and fell like a saffron log on the marble floors of Radha Raman Mandhir...
Years later, on a final emotional phone call to my mother as a married man of 34, I finally spread my wings and flew. It was a tough flight at first but I got over the shock and kept on flying. When I look back on it all now I can only smile and count my self as fortunate. On many levels. All those seemingly ecstatic years where actually spent in a mild state of paranoia and self-deprecating self-delusion. I walked around a lot these "holy places" just imagining things and pretending. Like a child. And I think that's really the key in a lot of liberating and freeing experiences in life: To feel like a child that is free of real responsibility. To just glide along the surface and not really tae life b the horns. Children experience this type of bliss all the time. It's this state of abandon and complete trust. Most of religion and modern day spirituality capitalizes on this very early human feeling we have as babies and youth. We run around like madmen just throwing caution to the wind and living it up. People who have never had a childhood like this will often take to being very religious and spiritual later on in life. Those that had a very free and emotionally enriching childhood (very few) will often cycle out of such spiritual forays to pursue more rational states. The bummer is that religion and spirituality is so pervasive in society that even the rational and well adjusted mind attempts to find meaning in it to "fit in". Thanks to evolutionary "group think".
It's not that all this spirituality is devoid of any truth or is not beneficial to some. It's the contradictions, the spin, the endless rules and dogma that does not add up (in both the myth and philosophy). You can barely go back one generation without hitting some major discrepancy or event that sounds "off" or in the least odd. Then you have all the crazy gods and stories the float in your brain for years afterward. The verses, the rituals. It all feels backwards and fake and unnatural on every level. And the folks that seem to have deluded themselves to thinking otherwise just come off as the strangest of the bunch. I've had old-timer devotees who were pulling the jaganath cart with me in golden-gate park in SF tell me some crazy stories... one woman told me she actually had jaganath appear to her in dream and tell her how to dress him for mangal aratik... Ok... I'm sure she did. No really, I actually know she did. She actually was so spell-bound by the myth surrounding the Jagganath story that her mind spun a dream around it... Do read the tale of how jaganath came to be, by the way. It's fascinating.
I had so many talks with my mother back in the day and they all amounted to 3 things: Serve a guru who I never met (or saw for a few minutes) and trust and believe in all the words that emirate from his facial orifice. Only hang out with your group. Give money to your guru. The rest of the stuff—the meditation, vegetarianism, cultural rituals and habits that are very "india-centric" and not "global" or "universal" at all—it's all just fluff covering the real message: Stay in the cult, support the cult, follow the cult, preach about the cult etc. No one ever raises their hand and says, "this sounds a bit fishy...". I once asked a practical question about why we need to have a sikhas or why we chant 16 rounds etc—instead of say, learning about how to be good people and communicating with each other and just being a decent person. I was told to chant more cause my heart obviously was not tasting the nectar of the Name. I agree. I was not.
I hear this type of stuff over and over. And it never ceased to amaze me how the devotees—especially my mother, was so critical of anyone who was practicing their own spirituality or even just following another guru in the same damn line. It was almost as if she felt they were going to hell (yama) for following the wrong team. I was sick and tired of all of my conversations ending in this type of talk. In fact, I could barely have a discussion that did not in some way involve my giving something to her temple or guru. I even designed several visa-puja books for the guru. Reading the offerings now makes me very very sad. How could otherwise intelligent people speak such simplistic nonsense to a man they hardly know?
The final straw was when she was having my young children, toddlers, bow down to her altar and tell them outlandish concepts like "you're not your body." while they looked at her in utterly perplexed states. I allowed my kids to bow down in front of her little dressed up statues and pictures of some guru they know nothing about maybe 3 times before I was like NOPE...
Kids should not grow up with this weird ass shit... They will not grow up idolizing some picture of a man and some little statue and chanting some mantras they have no idea what they mean or honestly care. When they are adults they can run the gamut of religions out there and see if something sticks, but I'm not going to shove something down their throat when I myself have no clue what it's really about and question it. And it's not about love, servitude and devotion. That's the picture that's painted, but, oh boy, is it so much more than that.
Over the years I have made it a lifelong study to learn about the history of "sacred India" and it's "sacred sciences". All I can say is that after years of research and study I can say that the "science" of identity is anything but science. Even the ancient Vedic texts did not pretend to unequivocally answer the question of who we are and what we are to do with our life here. We paint this romanticized picture of "vedic science and culture", yet, modern India is a far cry from anything remotely pleasant scientifically and culturally. With millions of people still affected by caste rule, and millions more suffering daily due to basic infrastructure and social/political problems (public toilets anyone?) and an earth-shattering claim to some of the worlds most bizarre and dehumanizing cults and sects—it's hard to see that it has ever been a place of superior civilization and human development.
I'm not denying thing that the east has made it's contributions to the question of self-transcendence, consciousness and offering up more than it's fair share of gods and demons to love and fear. Sure. But so has many other cultures around the world. Yet, you do not see people walking around on a mass scale and worshipping zeus or poseidon or any egytian or celtic or greek or roman gods—yet, historically and very well preserved and documented proof is there of their advanced civilizations.
India is beautiful, it's faiths and traditions are awesome as well as it's geography and architecture. But westerners exploiting that and try to sell it as the be-all and end-all of what it means to be human.
There is a reason why western devotees are often warned against traveling to India alone or why Butler devotees are discouraged to go there, period. It's a fucking eye-opener. They don't do it the way we do it out here. There is no men and women sitting on the beach playing guitar and chanting. You'd be breaking like 10 rules in a typical Gaudiya vashnava Math devotees eyes. I'm not kidding.
The reality is this. I tried the krishna cult thing—It's not for me. I don't think it's for a lot of people. It's far from a universal process and it does not stop at "Chant and be happy". Maybe on a good day. But most of the time you are bombarded by heavy scriptural injunctions, rules, levels, and stipulations. Then, once you can stomach that part, you will be asked to dive deeper (and I don't mean algebra and calculus).
The deepest place you can dive is to fully delude yourself that you are a Gopi girl dancing with god. Of course you are slapped on the hand to even consider that you have achieved this state of self-realization. So you are just meant to humbly serve and dedicate your time and energy and mind to hearing, over and over, the same stories, the same mantras, and basically thinking the same thoughts. Eventually, no real new realizations happen, and you are left with a sentiment. You get sentimental about Prabhupada, about the good-old-days on the beach with Butler, about how Krishna is so sweet to let you serve his devotees for so long etc etc etc. Your mind becomes a programmed slate. All science, all wonder, all interest in other things in life that are informative, educational, profound or personal for that matter—all of these things lose their impact and significance because your benchmark for success is how pleased your guru is. I have seen devotees abandon going to college, getting a job, getting in relationships, studying other religions and philosophical works, reading simply for pleasure and doing other activities simply because they feel good and, well, you have a body that can feel... all of this—simply because some guru, professing to know a god you will never see or talk to or have any "real" relationship with, told you to do so, through your guru and the "revealed scriptures" that no archeologist can date to any later than 1000-3000 years.
Date: March 16, 2016 02:37PM
IT IS A VERY INTERESTING TESTIMONIAL ...PARENT BRAINWASHED ...BRAINWASHING THEIR KIDS AND KIDS BRAINWASHING OTHER KIDS IN A LAND FAR FAR AWAY FROM HOME.
My mother, with whom I joined Butlers group with back in 1990, in New York, was so brainwashed by these idiots that she made it clear to me at the tender age of 11 that I had a choice to either stay in New York with my "Demon/Karmi" father, or travel with her to LA to be with our "guru" and real spiritual family. Even at 10 I struggled with the notion, but mama's persistent indoctrination won in the end. Obviously no responsible parent (unless I was being physically abused—which I was not—I love my father and everything he symbolizes to me) would ever make their child choose such a thing. I spent many years recovering from the lost time I will never have with my father. Unfortunately her newfound spirituality did not lend a hand in "talking things out". I recall walking down the beach in Coney Island with my old man and telling him silly stuff like, "Everything in the world is made of material energy. We are not made of that. We are made of spirit". He looked at me with concern and said, "Son, everything you see and touch is made of matter". Boy did he become a Hiranyakashipu in my eyes that day...
A year later I was being shipped out to the Philippines and the rest is history (I had a 5 year lull where I did not see my father). My mother went on to serve Butler in his Poland center and by the time I made it back to the states some 4 years later she was living in Hawaii—where butler was moving or had moved at the time. We stayed with his group for a little longer then ended up with other gurus and groups over the years. The mantra never changed though. The same mindless ideas and instructions were peddled in each group and you were considered fallen, offensive, sinful—you name it, for questioning anything or not agreeing with things. I always feel ashamed to mention, but I was actually kicked out of the school in the Philippines because a group of us boys roughed up a boy who showed to have gay proclivities. I feel bad to this day. We made amends to the boy, but I guess our anti-gay extremism, rules by butlers lectures, was rearing it's ugly head and things had to shift.
Fast forward to my adult years. After moving on from butler we went "guru-hopping". I got to hand it to my mother, she was actually fearless in her desire to find "the one". I endured many talks where she didn't hold back her vicious emotions about butler, about this and that swami only to land on a small sect in the santa cruz mountains that followed Sridhara Maharaja and Govind Maharaja. Later to become my guru. As I went about my life and fell in love and started a family, I started to feel the burn of my very isolating religious upbringing. I could hardly relate to anyone. I had the same issue when I returned form the baguio barahmacari school. Not only could I not enroll anywhere because I had no legitimate school credits for completing middle school, I also felt very scared and paranoid about attending a public high school, which I never did.
As the years went on and my mother attempted to "bring me back" I resisted and felt that I did not want to do something that did not feel natural and inline with my maturity and ability to digest it. I tried. But it felt off. Always off. It was as if I was trying to shoe-horn my sense of being into another body. Mind you, I had been to india several times by now. We also went through a bitter break up with Butler—who represented a sort of middle ground for us as far as feeling "normal". Afterall, butler devotees cheated on little discreet clickers and did not dress in vaishnava gang etc.
I know it's not chronological, but under the tutelage of Turya Das Mahashaya, I had been a brahmin priest for 3 years. This was after my time in the PI. It was during this time that I was introduced to a more authentic vaishnava way of worship and study. I read all the various works of Bhaktivinod, Swamiji, Saraswati Thakur and so forth. I especially liked Jiva Dharma. I envisioned my life like this. Living in a small forest settlement, chanting 64 rounds a day and serving the devotees. This was not only my function and life commitment, this was what jiva goswami and the followers of our avatar chaitanya did. I was head over heals. The real world melted away. I had no concern for anything else.
I recall returning from vrindaban one year. It was a time spent circumambulating govardhan, waking at 4 am to the sound of loudspeakers blasting the vishnusahashranam and falling prostrated in front of my guruji. Oh, I was in bliss. Well, in bliss masturbating at night and thinking of the cute girls I saw around vrndaban... But whatever, I was in bliss. Everyday was a challenge of cleansing my soul. I hopped into the Jamuna, I smeared my body with clay from the ganga. I visited all the temples and fell like a saffron log on the marble floors of Radha Raman Mandhir...
Years later, on a final emotional phone call to my mother as a married man of 34, I finally spread my wings and flew. It was a tough flight at first but I got over the shock and kept on flying. When I look back on it all now I can only smile and count my self as fortunate. On many levels. All those seemingly ecstatic years where actually spent in a mild state of paranoia and self-deprecating self-delusion. I walked around a lot these "holy places" just imagining things and pretending. Like a child. And I think that's really the key in a lot of liberating and freeing experiences in life: To feel like a child that is free of real responsibility. To just glide along the surface and not really tae life b the horns. Children experience this type of bliss all the time. It's this state of abandon and complete trust. Most of religion and modern day spirituality capitalizes on this very early human feeling we have as babies and youth. We run around like madmen just throwing caution to the wind and living it up. People who have never had a childhood like this will often take to being very religious and spiritual later on in life. Those that had a very free and emotionally enriching childhood (very few) will often cycle out of such spiritual forays to pursue more rational states. The bummer is that religion and spirituality is so pervasive in society that even the rational and well adjusted mind attempts to find meaning in it to "fit in". Thanks to evolutionary "group think".
It's not that all this spirituality is devoid of any truth or is not beneficial to some. It's the contradictions, the spin, the endless rules and dogma that does not add up (in both the myth and philosophy). You can barely go back one generation without hitting some major discrepancy or event that sounds "off" or in the least odd. Then you have all the crazy gods and stories the float in your brain for years afterward. The verses, the rituals. It all feels backwards and fake and unnatural on every level. And the folks that seem to have deluded themselves to thinking otherwise just come off as the strangest of the bunch. I've had old-timer devotees who were pulling the jaganath cart with me in golden-gate park in SF tell me some crazy stories... one woman told me she actually had jaganath appear to her in dream and tell her how to dress him for mangal aratik... Ok... I'm sure she did. No really, I actually know she did. She actually was so spell-bound by the myth surrounding the Jagganath story that her mind spun a dream around it... Do read the tale of how jaganath came to be, by the way. It's fascinating.
I had so many talks with my mother back in the day and they all amounted to 3 things: Serve a guru who I never met (or saw for a few minutes) and trust and believe in all the words that emirate from his facial orifice. Only hang out with your group. Give money to your guru. The rest of the stuff—the meditation, vegetarianism, cultural rituals and habits that are very "india-centric" and not "global" or "universal" at all—it's all just fluff covering the real message: Stay in the cult, support the cult, follow the cult, preach about the cult etc. No one ever raises their hand and says, "this sounds a bit fishy...". I once asked a practical question about why we need to have a sikhas or why we chant 16 rounds etc—instead of say, learning about how to be good people and communicating with each other and just being a decent person. I was told to chant more cause my heart obviously was not tasting the nectar of the Name. I agree. I was not.
I hear this type of stuff over and over. And it never ceased to amaze me how the devotees—especially my mother, was so critical of anyone who was practicing their own spirituality or even just following another guru in the same damn line. It was almost as if she felt they were going to hell (yama) for following the wrong team. I was sick and tired of all of my conversations ending in this type of talk. In fact, I could barely have a discussion that did not in some way involve my giving something to her temple or guru. I even designed several visa-puja books for the guru. Reading the offerings now makes me very very sad. How could otherwise intelligent people speak such simplistic nonsense to a man they hardly know?
The final straw was when she was having my young children, toddlers, bow down to her altar and tell them outlandish concepts like "you're not your body." while they looked at her in utterly perplexed states. I allowed my kids to bow down in front of her little dressed up statues and pictures of some guru they know nothing about maybe 3 times before I was like NOPE...
Kids should not grow up with this weird ass shit... They will not grow up idolizing some picture of a man and some little statue and chanting some mantras they have no idea what they mean or honestly care. When they are adults they can run the gamut of religions out there and see if something sticks, but I'm not going to shove something down their throat when I myself have no clue what it's really about and question it. And it's not about love, servitude and devotion. That's the picture that's painted, but, oh boy, is it so much more than that.
Over the years I have made it a lifelong study to learn about the history of "sacred India" and it's "sacred sciences". All I can say is that after years of research and study I can say that the "science" of identity is anything but science. Even the ancient Vedic texts did not pretend to unequivocally answer the question of who we are and what we are to do with our life here. We paint this romanticized picture of "vedic science and culture", yet, modern India is a far cry from anything remotely pleasant scientifically and culturally. With millions of people still affected by caste rule, and millions more suffering daily due to basic infrastructure and social/political problems (public toilets anyone?) and an earth-shattering claim to some of the worlds most bizarre and dehumanizing cults and sects—it's hard to see that it has ever been a place of superior civilization and human development.
I'm not denying thing that the east has made it's contributions to the question of self-transcendence, consciousness and offering up more than it's fair share of gods and demons to love and fear. Sure. But so has many other cultures around the world. Yet, you do not see people walking around on a mass scale and worshipping zeus or poseidon or any egytian or celtic or greek or roman gods—yet, historically and very well preserved and documented proof is there of their advanced civilizations.
India is beautiful, it's faiths and traditions are awesome as well as it's geography and architecture. But westerners exploiting that and try to sell it as the be-all and end-all of what it means to be human.
There is a reason why western devotees are often warned against traveling to India alone or why Butler devotees are discouraged to go there, period. It's a fucking eye-opener. They don't do it the way we do it out here. There is no men and women sitting on the beach playing guitar and chanting. You'd be breaking like 10 rules in a typical Gaudiya vashnava Math devotees eyes. I'm not kidding.
The reality is this. I tried the krishna cult thing—It's not for me. I don't think it's for a lot of people. It's far from a universal process and it does not stop at "Chant and be happy". Maybe on a good day. But most of the time you are bombarded by heavy scriptural injunctions, rules, levels, and stipulations. Then, once you can stomach that part, you will be asked to dive deeper (and I don't mean algebra and calculus).
The deepest place you can dive is to fully delude yourself that you are a Gopi girl dancing with god. Of course you are slapped on the hand to even consider that you have achieved this state of self-realization. So you are just meant to humbly serve and dedicate your time and energy and mind to hearing, over and over, the same stories, the same mantras, and basically thinking the same thoughts. Eventually, no real new realizations happen, and you are left with a sentiment. You get sentimental about Prabhupada, about the good-old-days on the beach with Butler, about how Krishna is so sweet to let you serve his devotees for so long etc etc etc. Your mind becomes a programmed slate. All science, all wonder, all interest in other things in life that are informative, educational, profound or personal for that matter—all of these things lose their impact and significance because your benchmark for success is how pleased your guru is. I have seen devotees abandon going to college, getting a job, getting in relationships, studying other religions and philosophical works, reading simply for pleasure and doing other activities simply because they feel good and, well, you have a body that can feel... all of this—simply because some guru, professing to know a god you will never see or talk to or have any "real" relationship with, told you to do so, through your guru and the "revealed scriptures" that no archeologist can date to any later than 1000-3000 years.