Bhaktivedanta As He Was
Straight from the horse’s mouth
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Radhika Bianchi
When Bhaktivedanta brought his first American disciple, Kirtananda to India, Kirtananda's fantastical expectation was shattered. India was not the spiritual land he envisioned it to be. Everything was filthy and pathetic. The temples were in bad shapes, some abandoned. There was no fanfare to welcome them, no Hare Krishna movement. Vrindaban was in squalor, the heat and stench were intolerable and there were swarms of flies and insects and cockroaches the size of his fingers. Kirtananda was shocked to observe while Bhaktivedanta was washing his hands outside the temple, his entire body was covered in flies, he looked pitiful and helpless. His spiritual master was very much an ordinary man, not the Krishna's annointed celebrity messiah of New York, even arguing with a cab driver for his measly change. The experience was just too overwhelming for an average American, let alone for a Hare Krishna.
Kirtanananda must have been disappointed. He had probably imagined a scene from a Cecil B. DeMille epic, with thousands of robed devotees dropping to their knees, offering obeisances to their spiritual master on his return from conquering America. They would rush to his side with a palanquin and hoist him over their heads. Then they would bear him through the cheering, orchid-throwing crowd.
Monkey On A Stick, Chapter 2, p. 59
Kirtananda pleaded that he leaves, after suffering a bout of dysentery. Upon his return to New York, he led a schism, called the movement, The New Vrindavan in West Virginia's Appalachia. He taught Interfaith and embraced Impersonalism, but got back to ISKCON franchise only after both parties agreed it's for their mutual benefit.
So it wasn’t Siddhaswarup who was the first schismatic Krishna guru. It has always been shady from day one.
Hindus are not by nature preachy. The average Hindu agrees their cosmology is not for the mainstream. But not the Vaishnava branch, whose worship of one god, Krishna, makes their belief more palatable to the Judeo-Christian West. Perhaps, it was from the Christian missionaries proselytizing in India that the Vaishnavas got the idea of bringing the ideology to the West. Before Bhaktivedanta, the Vaishnavas, just like other Hindu sects just kept to themselves. There was a movement among Theosophists, even the Nazis to bring esoteric Hinduism into Western thought. Literary giants like W.B. Yeats, T.S. Eliot, Immanuel Kant and the likes, incorporated Hindu concepts in their works, but nothing purely theological as what the Hare Krishnas brought. Plus, it was a great timing – during the late 60s, the delusional hippies were clamoring for a cultural and psychological shift. The mischievous and sex-crazed god Krishna was the perfect fit for the flower kids against the boring long bearded white dude in the sky. Jesus deserves a cooler dad.
If followers could justify, let alone practice those horrible, bigoted and even criminal things Bhaktivedanta said and wrote about women, gays, black people and karmis in general, only means they have rejected rationality. When you rejected rationality where does your act end? There is no more boundary, outside reason is a free-for-all, everything gets purified if used for the glory of Krishna, including drug and blood money. The end justifies the means.
Believers just need to look back into the lives of Bhaktivedanta’s first disciples – Kirtananda, Hansadutta, Jayatirtha, Bhavananda, Guru Kripa, Balimardan … the criminal list goes on and on. People died under these successors, children and women were sexually and physically abused, yet they are not enough for followers nowadays to question their faith. For the Science of Identity, suddenly, Siddhaswarup is the right one?
You cannot wake people up if they enjoy deep sleep, even if the house is burning.
Straight from the horse’s mouth
[www.youtube.com]
More from:
Radhika Bianchi
When Bhaktivedanta brought his first American disciple, Kirtananda to India, Kirtananda's fantastical expectation was shattered. India was not the spiritual land he envisioned it to be. Everything was filthy and pathetic. The temples were in bad shapes, some abandoned. There was no fanfare to welcome them, no Hare Krishna movement. Vrindaban was in squalor, the heat and stench were intolerable and there were swarms of flies and insects and cockroaches the size of his fingers. Kirtananda was shocked to observe while Bhaktivedanta was washing his hands outside the temple, his entire body was covered in flies, he looked pitiful and helpless. His spiritual master was very much an ordinary man, not the Krishna's annointed celebrity messiah of New York, even arguing with a cab driver for his measly change. The experience was just too overwhelming for an average American, let alone for a Hare Krishna.
Kirtanananda must have been disappointed. He had probably imagined a scene from a Cecil B. DeMille epic, with thousands of robed devotees dropping to their knees, offering obeisances to their spiritual master on his return from conquering America. They would rush to his side with a palanquin and hoist him over their heads. Then they would bear him through the cheering, orchid-throwing crowd.
Monkey On A Stick, Chapter 2, p. 59
Kirtananda pleaded that he leaves, after suffering a bout of dysentery. Upon his return to New York, he led a schism, called the movement, The New Vrindavan in West Virginia's Appalachia. He taught Interfaith and embraced Impersonalism, but got back to ISKCON franchise only after both parties agreed it's for their mutual benefit.
So it wasn’t Siddhaswarup who was the first schismatic Krishna guru. It has always been shady from day one.
Hindus are not by nature preachy. The average Hindu agrees their cosmology is not for the mainstream. But not the Vaishnava branch, whose worship of one god, Krishna, makes their belief more palatable to the Judeo-Christian West. Perhaps, it was from the Christian missionaries proselytizing in India that the Vaishnavas got the idea of bringing the ideology to the West. Before Bhaktivedanta, the Vaishnavas, just like other Hindu sects just kept to themselves. There was a movement among Theosophists, even the Nazis to bring esoteric Hinduism into Western thought. Literary giants like W.B. Yeats, T.S. Eliot, Immanuel Kant and the likes, incorporated Hindu concepts in their works, but nothing purely theological as what the Hare Krishnas brought. Plus, it was a great timing – during the late 60s, the delusional hippies were clamoring for a cultural and psychological shift. The mischievous and sex-crazed god Krishna was the perfect fit for the flower kids against the boring long bearded white dude in the sky. Jesus deserves a cooler dad.
If followers could justify, let alone practice those horrible, bigoted and even criminal things Bhaktivedanta said and wrote about women, gays, black people and karmis in general, only means they have rejected rationality. When you rejected rationality where does your act end? There is no more boundary, outside reason is a free-for-all, everything gets purified if used for the glory of Krishna, including drug and blood money. The end justifies the means.
Believers just need to look back into the lives of Bhaktivedanta’s first disciples – Kirtananda, Hansadutta, Jayatirtha, Bhavananda, Guru Kripa, Balimardan … the criminal list goes on and on. People died under these successors, children and women were sexually and physically abused, yet they are not enough for followers nowadays to question their faith. For the Science of Identity, suddenly, Siddhaswarup is the right one?
You cannot wake people up if they enjoy deep sleep, even if the house is burning.