"Shrila Bhaktipada" has invented a new mantra that is the essence of all religions, the Vedas, and even Srila Prabhupada's books: "Thank you Krishna for now as it is."
Dec 25, 2011 — USA (SUN) —
There is no place on earth where new-fangled religious cults can be created like India. With bogus personality cults centering on invented forms of "yoga," and with the ancient land's Hugging Mothers and God-men in every village, India is the Cult-loka of the world. Though cults certainly prosper the world over (because weak-minded persons are everywhere), India has more "incarnations", "avatars" and imposter Mayavadi "gurus" than anyplace on Earth.
While few people are charismatic and unscrupulous enough to create their own cult following, the formula is quite simple for those psychopaths who do have the knack. What is required is a captivating figure who doesn't mind bending the facts of an otherwise ordinary life to create a suitable history. His birth becomes divine. His early years were not spent growing up, but in pastimes demonstrating his divinity. One more little detail is that he also must have the heart of a sociopath beneath the exterior of a friendly insurance salesman. He must crave to be worshipped and this is his dominant emotion.
Often cult leaders are slaves chained to perverse tastes. They release their sexual or murderous desires in bizarre secret rituals which they treat either as insignificant acts, as an ordinary part of their "religion", or even as divine revelations. The history of Kirtanananda's New Vrindaban is too well known in this regard. Recently another "esoteric" off-shoot cult of ISKCON was smashed when distraught "disciples" published photos of their "Babaji" in compromised positions.
Of course, the part of the "sadhana" that include sex and murder always comes later, because one thing cult leaders have in common is an uncanny shrewdness. They are chess masters at outwitting those around them. Though they pose as simple devotees and fool us for a time, they are not pure. The mischievous cult baba seduces his followers by feigning affection for them while really only craving that he remains propped up as the indisputable object of adoration.
A cult leader has no need for a conscience. Neither does he have any aversion to tailoring to his own whims the genuine dharma that has been enunciated by the Supreme Lord through His representatives. The true path of religion is secondary to his psychological need for a blind following. For the cult leader, creating a new approach to religion is essential to keeping his herd branded and corralled. In other words, out of the established process he creates a familiar-looking faction of his own design. The genuine process is kept as long as it can be used as a ploy or bait. In truth, the trappings of an existing religion have nothing to do with his new-fangled imitation dharma, but they are thrown into the water as a fish hook. The followers feel secure in their familiar-looking "reflection religion" because they are not aware of the psychological Three Card Monty the cult leader is playing as he subtly shifts the religious process into its nouveau incarnation.
Jim Jones and even Charles Manson used this formula very effectively in their presentations of "Christianity." And like Jones and many others, it seems that cult leaders would rather go to their graves as psychopathic mad men than admit they are less than perfect. Change and adaptability are not for the infallible leader; they are only for the persons who seek their shelter. Continuing over a period of time of adding small, subtle changes to a long-established dharma insures that the converts to the new path will worship their poser guru unflinchingly. It is hypnotism in slow motion.
Like quick sand that pulls the victim in slowly, cult victims do not realize they are doomed to asphyxiation until it is too late. Along their way to their spiritual demise, deviant changes in the traditional structure have created a sense of a unique and isolated family among the followers. Changes insure that the cult figure, and not the Supreme Lord, will remain at the center of his myopic flock. Words like "love" and "family" are very important to cult leaders. Such terms instill a sense of obligation into the followers, who are often lonely victims of broken families, tragic relationships or loveless existences. The cult leader's expressions of reciprocal affection are really more like a gun meant to extract loyalty and service than share compassion.
Once the victimized cultist realizes he has been cheated, he falls into a sea of moroseness, thinking that it is his karma to live a loveless life forever. The real tragedy is that the unfortunate follower has been swindled out of the opportunity to find genuine Krishna consciousness, which he now often rejects in despair.
Only a devious cult leader can instill such hypnotic devotion into a captivated following, and the late Kirtanananda das was one such entrancing individual. Amazingly he left America disgraced as a convicted felon, yet he managed to re-create in India a full cult following complete with an assembly of obedient, blind and gullible sheep.
One requirement for establishing a cult is the creation of some new innovation. From the film that follows, notice that "Shrila Bhaktipada" has invented his own English-language mantra for his cult followers in Ulhasnagar: "Thank you, Krishna for now as it is." They claim that the essence of the Vedas and Srila Prabhupada's books is in this secret mantra. Such subtle deviations are not apparent to neophytes. After all, it appears bona fide since Lord Krishna is being thanked. Therefore, cheap, blind followers do not recognize when they are being bamboozled by a charlatan in the name of dharma.
To observe the layers of subtle changes takes standing back and looking at the situation with an outsider's concrete objectively. Skeptics endowed with such a vision who enter into a cult environment are quickly recognized as "troublemakers" by the leader. They are condemned as enemies and are quickly assigned walking papers. For many, the realization comes with great difficulty that their divine leader (who "loves them more than anyone else") is an unstable personality. They are reluctant to "betray" one whom they have become psychologically bound to as a personality addiction.
Therefore the book that Shriman Hrishikesh das Prabhu (Henry Doktorski) is presently working on, "New Vrindaban the Black Sheep of ISKCON, about his seventeen years as a resident of New Vrindaban under Kirtanananda das (who initiated him) is an extremely important document. I have read certain chapters of Hrishikesh Prabhu's expose and have found that it is a true and reliable historical canon. It is neither sensational in tone nor is there any bitterness (which, had there been any, could have been forgiven). His book will remain long after Kirtanananda's "samadhi" has been torn down (which is its likely fate, considering the expected reaction of Indians once they read the book).
Hrishikesh's hard work will serve as a beacon to see that no further personality cults will arise like fungus within ISKCON. Every ISKCON member should read it so that cultish Zonal Acaryas or charismatic swamis never arise again to obscure the work of Srila Prabhupada. By such vigilance, no greedy and self-worshipping Mayavadi (ahangropasani) will ever again arise to obscure the genuine sacrifices of the Founder-Acarya, Srila Prabhupada.
In closing, it could be mentioned that the success enjoyed by Christianity and Islam is due to continuously honoring the founding prophet being as the central figure of those respective religions. ISKCON will likewise survive only if Srila Prabhupada's position as Founder-Acharya is never compromised. Becoming guru in the Gaudiya Vaishnava sampradaya means always offering due deference in a mood of submissive worship to the previous Spiritual Master without fail.
From the following film about "Shrila Bhaktipada's" 73rd birthday, we can see all the elements of cult mentality displayed while the genuine forms of Vaishnava worship have been gradually diminished. And as bona fide methods of adoring the Supreme Personality of Godhead Shri Krishna are eroded, as seen in the film, suitable new insertions appear conveniently to replace them. Let me adapt an example that Srila Prabhupada gives in the Krsna Book. Just as in the summer season when the ponds dry up and the fish cannot realize that their numbers are slowly depleting, so the cult followers do not realize that the genuine forms of worship are being surreptitiously substituted with concocted processes that have no potency to deliver a conditioned soul from the concept of gross bodily ignorance.
In the film, all the elements of substituting the position of God with that of a self-proclaimed non-sampradayic "guru" who is unquestioningly hailed as divine are easily recognizable. Notice the careful subtlety of the wording of the film. See how Kirtanananda das "appeared" and was not born. Note that his activities with his family members are spoken of as a sort of lila. Note that he is regarded as an acharya or even divine incarnation which, while feigning humility, he never objects to. Note that his going to prison is presented almost as a tapasya or enduring religious persecution. Note that Srila Prabhupada is minimized if not entirely obscured, and is only presented in relation to his "star disciple." Note that Lord Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu is not mentioned once, nor is Hari Kirtan, throughout the entire film. It is cultism pure and simple.
Each of these are general red flags indicating a cult leader has some hidden agenda that he will reveal once he has completely usurped the throne of the genuine Sri Guru. For those who ever thought "it can't happen here" and were surprised that "it" did happen in New Vrindaban, it is even more astounding that the situation could be quietly duplicated once again in Ulhasnagar, India. Enjoy the movie.
As a post script, we can point down the bleak road that cultism leads once the cult figure has died. The film about Kirtanananda above features in the shadows an up-and-coming Indian cult guru. Thanks to Kirtanananda, this disgraceful presentation of non-sampradayic guruism is exactly where the cult-of-convenience of Bhaktipada has lead:
