How Much Proof is Enough?
BY: RAY LANTHIER
Aug 01, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA (SUN) — What does it take to accept the firm conclusion that in every way, ISKCON is no longer the institution that the Founder/Acarya had established?
The most glaring evidence would, of course, be available only to those who experienced pre-samadhi ISKCON. They would have the gold standard by which to measure the counterfeit currency of pseudo-Vaisnavism now being peddled. It took very little time after Srila Prabhupada’s disappearance for them to ‘vote with their feet’ and just pick up and leave. It seemed to happen almost overnight. Those who didn’t leave voluntarily and did not accept the corrupt agendas were either beaten, killed, or psychologically coerced into leaving.
Their propaganda story, of course, is that these devotees left because of their Vaisnava aparadha. One cannot tolerate the company of pure Vaisnavas if one is offensive. And that is precisely the reason why the bogus ISKCON couldn’t tolerate these sincere disciples of the Spiritual Master and had to drive them out. The Truth is always an offense to the insincere and the duplicitous. ‘Crows of a feather’. Physical coercion is the only option for those who have no philosophical justifications. In fact, it proves they have no philosophical justifications. The Vedic practice is to engage in philosophical debate and the defeated must surrender to the winner. In the case of the philosophically bankrupt, ‘Might makes right’. This is the materialist’s modus operandi.
After so many decades of some much corrupt deception, criminality, child abuse, fall downs and simony (selling religious favors to Hindus) it is no longer an over-generalization to condemn ISKCON as a bogus imitation of what it once was.
It is not, in brief, Vaisnava aparadha. If it can be so argued, then every general statement is an overgeneralization. Certainly calling all the Semitic religions ignorant and low class would qualify as a huge overgeneralization in comparison. Nazi Germany, under Hitler was a fascist state, not somewhere you would want to spend your vacation, let alone take up permanent residence. Systemic evils are real and organizations, states and countries run under corrupt totalitarian and despotic governments are for all practical purposes, evil.
That there might be some ‘nice’ people in them is irrelevant, especially if they do not systematically oppose it. There is enough retroactive evidence for ISKCON’s criminality as there is say, for the criminality of the Mafia. I don’t care whether they claim to be followers of Srila Prabhupada. I don’t care if they want to persist in the illusion that they are non-different from the original ISKCON. An organization can be evil even if not every individual member of that organization is evil. Furthermore, based on the fundamental Vaisnava principle of association - association with evil must eventually contaminate - and become a serious insurmountable anartha. Spiritual life is not for ostriches and sentimentalists.
