When Will the GBC Stop Soft-peddling Mayavadi Rubbish?
BY: ADI LILA DAS
Jun 24, 2014 — EUROPE (SUN) — In the early 1980's, very soon after the sad physical departure of His Divine Grace AC Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, Suhotra Swami published a book called Apasampradayas, or "the false sampradayas." Perhaps they were tripping over their ambitions on the way to their new Vyasa Asanas, but few caught the Maharaja's message, as obvious as his message was. And that is, since deviations had happened in the form of sahajiya practices since the time of Lord Shri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, then certainly such deviations could and would happen within ISKCON.
His book called Apasampradayas was an alarm bell that few condescended to open their ears to. But by 1978, mere months after the disappearance of the Founder-Acharya, neophyte devotees were occupying the holy Vyasa Asana and demanding the worship of their peers. New cults were forming as poisonous offshoots of the original pure and holy ISKCON. One apasampradayic cult led by an "ex-acharya"—a deviant sect that was directly centered upon sex and drugs—actually ended with the decapitation-murder of the self-proclaimed cult leader. History records the terrible effects to the deviants.
Now by 1980, foreign disciples coming to Vrindavana were falling into the clutches of envious apasampradaya Babajis, and were forming new-fangled sahajiya cults right in Krishna's holy dham. That trend has continued to this day, mostly due to a lack of proper GBC governance. According the Sanskrit Dictionary online for spoken Sanskrit, apa means "away" or "off." Hence, an apasampradaya is a cult or sect that is not linked to the sampradaya because they have parted company and have deviated. They have gone off track and are headed for a colossal train wreck. Indeed, by the time Suhotra Swami pushed the distress signal a mere three years after Shrila Prabhupada's acceptance of maha-samadhi, the foul seeds had already been planted by the GBC as well as by those who opposed them. There was a reign of terror within the temples and outside their walls as persons who should have been acting as servants became tyrannical masters. Now virulent weeds were growing on both sides of the garden fence.
Again, in January 2003 H.H. Suhotra Maharaja raised another red flag. In his In2Me-C Diary he wrote:
"For example, the BBT recently published a book for distribution to the public in the USA. It is a very pretty book written in an up to date style. But it associates Shrila Prabhupada in a favorable way with Vivekananda, a Mayavadi whom Shrila Prabhupada severely condemned. It associates His Divine Grace favorably with a host of other mundane persons, one of whom is still alive and taking active part in criticizing Shrila Prabhupada on the Internet.
"I've noticed that many of our present-day ISKCON devotees are able to shrug this off: "Anyway, the book sells, and who among the karmis is gonna take notice of those details?" Well, for one thing, Prabhu, this is the Internet age. Anybody can get on the Net and type this list of mundane names into their favorite search engine. Voila! Mayavada missionizing and Prabhupada minimizing right there on your home computer screen. But apart from that, the main thing is the book is an offense to Shrila Prabhupada. If the Bhaktivedanta Book Trust would have ever printed a favorable mention of the name Vivekananda during the years of Prabhupada's physical presence on this planet, a bomb blast would have gone off that we would still be talking about now. Just because Prabhupada is not physically visible to us now does not mean he does not know about this book and is not unhappy with it."
The official BBT publication that His Holiness was referencing eleven years ago is named The Hidden Glory of India by Steven J Rosen (Satyaraja das). In that book the introduction of Mayavada was very subtle and almost "proper." But just as a mere spark can cause the burning of a house, or a few insignificant weeds can spread and choke out a garden, so dangers come in seemingly harmless doses.
Even the very name of the book Hidden Glory of India appears to subtly speak of a new direction for ISKCON as an "Indian" (and therefore "Hindu") movement, a fact which has become a reality in the minds of many ISKCON so-called leaders. Today the Chairman of the GBC openly declares himself as a "Hindu Vaishnava Priest". The fact that some of Satyaraja's subsequent "literatures" like the "Yoga of Kirtan practically revealed the grave dangers of planting seeds of impersonalism, seeds that are sure to sprout and choke out the original movement in the form of compromising with the karmis. Today Satyaraja's books have become a major ISKCON direction-bender down the deathly course of Mayavada. He is still listed as one of the Associate Editors of Back to Godhead—which, in other words—means that he is nicely-saddled to help set the direction of today's New Age ISKCON.
The spreading of the poison and the flames in the ISKCON camp have grown so out of hand that today the Society is openly celebrating a book that glorifies staunch Mayavadis. It is absolutely disgraceful that the GBC would sit on their complacent thumbs while Radhanath Swami, following in the footsteps of Satyaraja, promotes his book on world tours all to the worship of fawning ISKCON inmates.
Let us take just one of the many examples of Mayavadi glorification, and in future articles in this series we can examine others. This is from page 234:
Neem Karoli Baba feeding his female disciples while another, her hand up his clothing, massages him.
"One day while I sat at the feet of (Neem Karoli Baba) Maharaji, Ram dass and a small entourage of Westerners unexpectedly turned up at the ashram. This icon of 1960s counterculture, formerly the Professor Richard Alpert of Harvard University, had, together with Timothy Leary, popularized LSD as a means of expanding consciousness.
Upon entering, Ram Dass meekly bowed his graying head in the lap of his guru as a small child might. Affection poured from his guru's heart as he playfully tugged at the graying beard of his disciple and patted his head like a puppy…How beautiful it was for me to see a distinguished Harvard scholar and powerful social icon being treated like a naughty little boy."
Next Radhanath pays a visit to Ram Dass at his dharmshala and spares no hyperbole glorifying the encounter:
"Baba Ram Dass opened the door, morning light beaming on his welcoming face. I looked beyond him into his little room which resembled not a residence of a distinguished professor but that of a simple sadhu." Graciously he led me to the only piece of furniture, a wooden bed. After offering me a seat, he, too, sat cross-legged, spreading out his flowing white robes. We faced each other. His graying hair streamed from his balding head and draped onto his back and shoulders. A breeze from a nearby window slightly whisked his peppered beard. His large blue eyes glowed and the faint wrinkles in their corners creased deeply as he smiled. Speaking no words, we simply looked into each others' hearts through the channel of the eyes. Those moments seemed timeless. That long gaze we shared affected my vision so that at times he looked like an innocent child and at other times like an ancient, stoic sage."
The so-called Ram Dass aka Richard Alpert
Well, any seasoned Prabhupada man can easily recognize this drivel as trite Mayavadi crap. When did Shrila Prabhupada, the genuine acharya, ever sit and simply gaze into the eyes of people who came to see him? Neither did Lord Krishna simply gaze into the eyes of Arjuna to communicate the mysteries of Bhagavad-gita. No, knowledge is communicated through speaking and hearing, discussing and preaching. Not simply smiling silently like inmates at a loony bin. But Radhanath toots the party line for the Mayavadis attributing mystic vision to Neem Karoli and renunciation to Ram Dass.
Ram Dass had appeared on the hippie scene with his first book Be Here Now, which unsurprisingly reads a lot like The Journey Home, to my mind. From the professor's pen, here is a Mayavadi jewel (a gem of the synthetic variety) from that treatise of impersonalist doggerel:
"The cosmic humor is that if you desire to move mountains and you continue to purify yourself, ultimately you will arrive at the place where you are able to move mountains. But in order to arrive at this position of power you will have had to give up being he-who-wanted-to-move-mountains so that you can be he-who-put-the-mountain-there-in-the-first-place. The humor is that finally when you have the power to move the mountain, you are the person who placed it there--so there the mountain stays."
― Ram Dass, Be Here Now
Cosmic humor? So it is funny being cheated and lied to? Well, who really is Ram Dass, this "simple sadhu," who ISKCON GBC Radhanath praises to the gates of heaven?
A short biography appears on Wiki wherein his religious conviction is explained:
"At 60 years of age, Ram Dass began exploring Judaism seriously for the first time. ‘My belief is that I wasn't born into Judaism by accident, and so I needed to find ways to honor that,' he says. ‘From a Hindu perspective, you are born as what you need to deal with, and if you just try and push it away, whatever it is, it's got you.'"
His sexual orientation is also explained in the Wiki article:
"In the 1990s, Ram Dass came out about his bisexuality while avoiding labels and asserting that bisexuality ‘isn't gay, and it's not not-gay, and it's not anything—it's just awareness.'"
An article / interview on the website Throughyourbody.com goes even farther:
"Over the years Ram Dass has cautiously spoken about his relationships with men. In the early ‘90s he moved from the East Coast to San Francisco, where he found the liberal environment of Northern California helped him open up about his homosexuality. In 1994 he publicly revealed his gayness in an interview with Mark Thompson for Gay Soul. Ram Dass explains that moving to San Francisco made it easier to come out than when living on the East Coast. Despite this bold move, most people in the meditative communities who knew of Ram Dass did not realize he was gay; and many in the gay community had never heard of Ram Dass."
When will ISKCON abandon this penchant for glorifying spiritual frauds that has been spearheaded by an irresponsible and deeply confused GBC? He does not even follow the basic regulative principles incumbent upon any yogi. But that is all right, too, since there has been active support of homosexual marriage by ISKCON leaders in the past.
I suppose if the GBC ever musters its collective conscience to represent Shrila Prabhupada properly enough to ask Radhanath why he publishes books that glorifies Mayavadis who are not even good renunciates, the answer that he comes back with will be as convoluted and mind-twisting as some of Ram Dass' own pseudo-parables. It is unfortunate, really unfortunate, because with so much coaxing to get back on track from Godbrothers in so many different quarters, the GBC still retains its carte blanche to behave callously towards the message of the Jagat Guru, the person Bhagavata, who was responsible for their good fortune. And as long as they continue down that slippery slope of offending the entire sampradaya with milquetoast compromises, they will carry the Hare Krishna Movement to Mayavadi hell along with them, unless some brave voices continue to fearlessly speak the honest and Absolute Truth.
A few years back Ram Dass had a stroke that left him mostly paralyzed and with serious speech impediments. He lives in Sausalito, California overlooking the San Francisco Bay and watching the blue waters from his wheel chair. Though it may sound cruel, the harsh truth is that there is no "be here now" for you, for me, for the GBC, for Radhanath or for Ram Dass, One must follow the pure devotee back to home back to Godhead, or be left here in this miserable world of samsara enduring birth, disease, old age and finally, pitiless death. Neither the syrupy words of either Radhanath or Ram Dass nor the quasi-Hindu videos of the GBC Chairman Anuttama das will save anyone from birth and death. The Hare Krishna Movement must preach Hare Krishna to be the Hare Krishna Movement. As it is said, "Mother Bhumi cannot tolerate the weight of a liar." Falsehoods and Mayavada pretensions ultimately only serve to enslave the speakers of the lies, even if those lies have been garlanded one thousand times with lotus flowers.
Therefore, don't waste your time reading anything written by Radhanath. Unless you want to share your thoughts in the Sun.
