EUROPE - January 29, 2000 VNN5363
BHAKTIVEDANTA MANOR, ENGLAND, Jan 29 (VNN)
Last week a temple devotee (name withheld) is reported to have committed suicide at the Bhaktivedanta Manor in England. A disciple of H.H. Lokanatha Swami and ISKCON member for some 5 to 8 years, is reported to have hung himself after being told by authorities that he would no longer be able to continue his service as cook or possibly have to leave the temple.
According to reports, some local temple devotees have consequently leveled allegations against Vipramukhya Swami to have caused the tragedy, who is said to have left the country shortly after the incident.
This story URL: http://www.vnn.org/europe/EU0001/EU29-5363.html
Grief At The Bhaktivedanta Manor
EUROPE - January 31, 2000 VNN5371
BHAKTIVEDANTA MANOR, ENGLAND, Jan 31 (VNN)
BY SATYAM DAS
Ambarish Das was found hanged in his home on Tuesday morning, January 18th, with japa beads in his hand. He was a disciple of Lokanath Swami. It is assumed that he died on Monday evening.
Two days before, he had been removed from his salaried position as head of the kitchens at Bhaktivedanta Manor by temple president Vipramukhya Swami. He had told him that he was useless and unwanted. While Ambarish was at the Manor on Monday, some devotees noticed how desperate he looked. Some devotees tried to console him by saying that he had done a very difficult service very nicely for quite a few years. Ambarish replied that this wasn't what he had been told and that he was told that he was completely useless and unwanted.
The devotees in the community can't understand why he had been removed from his position (except that it was noted that someone quite friendly with Vipramukhya Swami was to take over as head of the kitchens). Ambarish Prabhu was already having financial difficulties at the time that the TP sacked him, a fact that was known to and ignored by the management. It is believed that losing this paid position doing something that he dedicated his life for (Bhaktivedanta Manor has enormous numbers of guests visiting each week and especially on holidays like Krsna Janmastami). The whole devotee community (except Vipramukhya Swami) is in agreement that Ambarish Prabhu had done a good job managing such a huge operation, every day, with long hours. His wife was out of the country at the time at the funeral of her own mother, money for which was also coming out of his meager salary.
The Manor devotees are devastated by the tragic death of Ambarish Prabhu, and much fear has been generated as several brahmacaris as well as a few householders are now confiding their own suicidal tendencies. One devotee who has also been faithfully engaged in a paid service position was also sacked at the same time as Ambarish has also admitted his desperate feelings as well.
Understanding that there is an emotional crisis in the community of devotees, several senior devotees tried to officially meet together to discuss what has gone wrong within the local devotee community. Vipramukhya Maharaja opposed the meetings from taking place.
Vipramukhya Swami had left the country suddenly the day after Ambarish's death while the whole community was in the throws of experiencing very painful grief. Now he is back in the country. Many devotees feel that by blocking any meetings that he is trying to prevent them from trying to understand what is causing the massive dissatisfaction in the hearts of the devotees
The devotees at the Manor are desperately clinging to the idea that meetings are going to solve things when it's actually sadhu sanga and hari katha that's missing. Perhaps a future article can discuss real spiritual solutions to the practical problems the devotees in the UK are presently facing, but only after the facts are known by the devotee community at large.
Your Servant,
Satyam Das
This story URL: http://www.vnn.org/europe/EU0001/EU31-5371.html
Comment by PADA
From: angel108b@yahoo.com (pada) - January 31, 2000
[PADA: Some years ago, we personally witnessed a lady devotee die very slowly of cancer. And she told me she was mortified, having been kicked out of her service to the deity, just as the Gaudiya Matha goonda gurus kicked people out of the Gaudiya Matha temples. Well, chalk up another dead victim. Wasn't Vipramukhya the cause of the Jayatirtha murder(s) by spawning that outrageous cult? This dangerous cult leader should be reported to the England immigration authorities and Scotland Yard as the behind the scenes cheerleader for fanning vicious cult activity.]
FROM UK: We have just heard some shocking news. There was a well known Indian devotee called Ambarisha dasa at Bhaktivedanta Manor he commited suicide. He was very well liked especially by the Hindus. He came from South Africa. He is known to have served as Head Cook at the Manor for many years. However --It is understood that he was sacked from this service which he really enjoyed and a notice was put up on the board by the arrangement of Vipramukhya swami.
His "service" was transfered to Bhaktivedanta Manor Fund: this is where devotees are required to hassle Hindus for money. Many know and say that much of this money that is collected is going to the personal paypackets of the gang of few who control the Manor. Its a well know fact that Srila Prabhupada did not want this *salary paid devotees* business. It appears and some say that Ambarish was humiliated and disgusted as he tried to do a few days of hassling but on last Tuesday he hanged himself. This topic of his suicide is treated as low profile perhaps some good "execuse?" needs to be invented by the Manor authorities yet?
Blame it on his wife since they were newly married? We doubt this will convince devotees or many folk. Its also reported that Ambarish wanted to go to Canada where its said his wife went to go for bereavement with a very close relative. Some devotees say Manor authorities forcefully refused to let Ambarish go with her saying his service was more need here.
Comment by Aruna Das
From: Aruna Das Austria - January 31, 2000
Fie on Vipramukhya Swami for causing the death of Krishna’s devotees. He should go and kill himself, otherwise the Yamaduttas will take care of him. Fie on Lokanath Swami for not protecting his disciple, he has stolen from Srila Prabhupada, by posing as bogus successor guru. Fie on all the devotees of the Bhaktivedanta Manor for supporting this bogus Temple president Vipramukhya, who is not qualified to lead other devotees.
This heartless rascal Vipramukhya should be reported to the local police for mismanagement and thrown out of the temple and country by the whole congregation of devotees. Don't associate with such demoniac people, otherwise you become like them, heartless like stone, without feeling. Shame upon you all, for not protecting your brother, but worshipping homosexual paedophile gurus and bogus swamis. You indoctrinated brainless zombies and robots, without discrimination and feelings, brainwashed by bogus Isk con philosophy. Great Briton reduced to worms controlled by foreign snakes - really great. Why are you not using your intelligence? Please wake up or you will be the next one.
Vipramukhya is also known as Viper-Mukh or poisonous mouth, meaning anyone associating with him will eventually be killed by his poisonous bite. Snakes are always envious without reason to anyone who comes to close to them, biting without warning, killing people. Srila Prabhupada says that there is no need to feed Snakes with milk, they become even more poisonous. So please stop supporting these false swamis and gurus (religious propagandists) who have taken over the Bhaktivedanta Manor for exploiting Srila Prabhupada’s legacy. They don't care for anyone, except themselves. The blind followers follow the blind leaders, who pretend to see, but both will fall into the ditch.
"Suicide of devotees is the result of worshipping bogus gurus and swamis"
Srila Prabhupada: "A devotee should have intelligence to know who is deviating. Surrender by your intelligence but don't surrender your intelligence." (SP to Bali Mardana, 1974)
Aruna Das
[PADA: This below (suicide of devotees) is the result of worshipping bogus gurus. Oh, by the way, my son met his old friend (an ex-GBC guru's son) the other day and that old friend now eats meat, even steaks. This is because many people who follow the GBC system see that it is bogus and so later they become faithless. KKD also says that we should have made one phone call to halt the madness in 1984, yet when we approached his guru Tripurari, he called us a demon and he wanted to get voted into the pedo-lineage? We did much more than one call, we made hundreds of calls, no one cared, especially the Gaudiya Matha clique.
A report says that many other devotees at the manor are feeling suicidal, as was the mood among the followers of Jim Jones, David Koresh, Charles Manson, Aum Supreme, Heaven's Gate Halle Bopp comet-ites, and many similar mad cults at their end. We think this should mood at the manor should be reported to some authorities, and the names of the leaders there should be reported to them for a full investigation. Thanks pd]
PADA's legal counsel needs to know, as soon as possible:
a) The karmi name of the devotee who commited suicide at Bhakivedanta Manor, and the name and address of his parents or other relatives.
b) The karmi name of the above devotee's wife and her family name and address.
It would seem that if the wife of the suicide victim was already grieving over the loss of her mother, and as such, this would have been a particularly bad time to approach her husband with a sacking from his service. "It seems like almost unbelievable heartless activity," a devotee was crying to us on the phone. I said, "Believe it, these guys are gestapos, we have to get our heads out of the sand."
It should also be noted that Vipramukhya swami has caused the infamous "guru's head chopping off" incident in England with his sub-violent fanatical support of Jayatirtha. This also resulted in: Thousands of devotees blooping from ISKCON; Hundreds of devotees joining Jayatirtha's cult; Millions of people later reading about JT's murder; Another murder of a dissident in Nepal; At least one suicide attempt in the USA; A loaded gun being brought out in a Berkeley theater by one of JT's followers who was taking the drug "ecstacy"; And who knows what other kinds of drug dealings, beatings, molestations, murders, so on and so forth? A devotee who visited Jayatirtha's "farm" in 1985 said that a young girl maybe nine years old was very oddly walking around naked, everyone looked stoned on drugs, and that the whole atmosphere there looked like a zoo. Of course some of JT's followers wanted to kill me in 1985, and they threatened me as such....pada.
please also read: the fishes
pada1008@aol.com
Chant Hare Krishna and be happy! - If you can -
All glories to His Divine Grace A.C.Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada!
Replies
PADA : Dear Bhumi dd. Good point, we should have some kind of reconcilation, agreed, indeed we have hundreds of associates who are Prabhupadanugas, and they are always STILL being banned, harassed, and in fact the GBC is spending millions of rupees suing our Prabhupadanuga devotees in Costa Rica, Long Island, Bangalore, and who knows where else, meanwhile they pretend there is no money to fix the leaking roof in some of their other temples, no, there is tons of money, millions in fact, it just that they are never going to fix the leaking roof, they are spending all of Krishna's laxmi on buying new Mercedes for their lawyers, thats all. Which is EXACTLY what the Gaudiya Matha folks did after 1936, they spent millions of their mission's money on lawyers. The GBC has not only idolized to the Gaudiya Matha, they have become them, lawsuits ki jaya sir! ys pd
In a profoundly sad development, the death of a devotee in ISKCON's New Mayapur community in France has been deemed a suicide. According to temple authorities, in the early morning hours of July 23 Citra devi Dasi, a devotee for more then twenty years, committed suicide by setting her body on fire. The following is a letter from Hrdaya Caitanya Das, the GBC secretary for France:
"We are profoundly saddened that in New Mayapur on Friday 23 July in the early morning hours (around 1:00 am) Citra mataji committed suicide by
setting her body on fire.
Citra mataji joined ISKCON in Spain more than twenty years ago. For many years she has been serving Their Lordships at New Mayapur with great dedication and in a very devotional mood. Her life was very simple and centered around Krishna. She lived in a room in the castle and had no other aspirations than to serve the Lord with whatever means she had.
Two years ago she became physically more limited in her service because she underwent a hip operation, and to make matters more difficult, she became afflicted with Parkinson’s disease, a crippling disease characterized by muscle spasms and rigidity, tremors, slow movements and loss of control over many parts of the body. She thus had to give up her cherished service of dressing Sri Sri Krishna Balarama; gradually she had to phase out of all her pujari services, but she nevertheless continued making garlands and was even taking care of Tulasi devi as much as she possibly could.
Read more: http://news.iskcon.com/node/3057#ixzz1G1PBVJYj
Asking for forgiveness to the devotees before her departure
After Citra Devi’s departure, devotees started to talk about her, and many said that she had asked them forgiveness for her offenses.
Gaurangi dasi : « Two days before she left, on the vyasa-puja day of my Guru Maharaja, she was sitting at her table making her garlands, and she asked me to forgive her for her offenses. I was wondering why she was doing it at that time since we did not have a quarrel or a misunderstanding recently, which very rarely happened between us anyway. I just put my arms around her shoulder, reassuring her that she could not commit offenses. As I was very busy that day, I did not think more about it, until later when other devotees told me she had done the same thing with them. I then understood that she was planning to go for good.”
Sita Thakurani dasi : « I quarrelled with Citra Devi many times, but she always told me things with love. Two days before quitting her body she asked me to forgive her. She said, ‘Sometimes I’m cold and distant, maybe I’m offending the devotees. By seeing Citra Devi asking for forgiveness, I told myself I should also do the same and ask the devotees forgiveness for my offenses…. In fact, by asking devotees to forgive her offenses, she was doing it for the act she was about to do which would have consequences for them.”
About a month ago a visiting Vaisnavi asked Citra devi if she was not suffering too much with her disease that was getting worse. Citra Devi had replied, “I don’t think about it, I think about Krishna.” However, despite her austere tendencies, her strong attachment to Krishna and her services, Citra Devi had also confided in someone that she needed a friend. To another one, she had expressed her anxiety of not being able to do much service any more. She probably knew that as her Parkinson disease would progress, she would be able to do less and less and would need someone to take care of her many hours every day. Not too long ago one devotee taking care of old people had offered to help her if she needed, but Citra Devi had declined her offer.
Devotees’ thoughts and feelings
Raymond (A friend of the devotees) : « I did not know Citra Devi very well from a human point of view, because we just greeted each other cordially; however, I knew her very well as a spirit soul. A few days ago, I had come to New Mayapur, and I had crossed Citra Devi on the stairs outside. As usual, we greeted each other with a ‘Haribol’ and ‘How are you?’ This time, however, I had the feeling that she would soon leave this world. Whenever I would meet Citra Devi in the castle, it was not anymore the ‘Domaine d'Oublaise’ , it was the ‘Nouvelle Mayapura’. Citra Devi was representing the typical inhabitant of Vrindavana. I could not help but see her like that; this thought was imposed in my mind, without my will being able to change it. Citra Devi did not evoke the image of a worldly person. She was a nun, a sadhu.”
Gaurangi dasi : «Citra Devi, the way you left your body is forcing us, the devotees living in or around New Mayapur, to reconsider our real priorities: to really take care of all those who have taken shelter of Krishna, accompany them in their trials, mourning, diseases, joys and pains. It is also what pleases Him the most. Citra Devi, you were not the only one to feel lonely in this community. How many suffer from isolation and the feeling of not being valued and appreciated, and take shelter of things detrimental to their spiritual lives? What is the most important in a community? Its walls, its number of hectares and buildings, or its members? Some of us have their family, or their little circle of friends, but overall it’s pretty much everyone in their own little corner. How many times do we invite each other for prasadam, to watch a devotional movie together, or just to know each other better?
Yes, I know, we are all very busy with our services, jobs and families, and many of us are getting old and tired. We’re just a small group of devotees trying to take care of a huge project and many deities. But it does not take much to show a little sympathy : give a phone call to see if everything is all right, share a quote or a realisation, lend a book, a CD or a DVD (useful for our spiritual life of course) , offer some flowers or vegetables from our garden, or just say a few words of appreciation. Asking for forgiveness after having had some harsh words or gestures costs only a little sacrifice to our false ego, but it’s so hard to do it.
So now, Citra Devi, in memory of you, let’s all try to make a difference, however small it may seem, for all the devotees still alive around us. Let’s give them our flowers while they can still smell them. ”
Mathura Vrindavana dasi : « To be able to love each other, to really be here for each other, these things come up all the time, and I know why they do. It’s because it is the greatest challenge we are facing in fact. In itself it’s not an enormous challenge to distribute many books. But the daily challenge of loving the person who is right next to us, with his mind and all his weaknesses, it is the greatest challenge. I dare to hope that if there had been more love between ourselves – let’s for a moment imagine this community producing more love- that Citra Devi would still be with us today.”
Dream and stories of murtis told by Citra Devi
The desire trees of Goloka Vrindavana
One night I was dreaming that I was seeing trees made of crystal, desire trees. They were amazing. I got closer to these trees, and on the same tree I could see all kinds of different flowers. There were thousands of flowers, all shining and effulgent. When I looked on the ground I also saw many things shining there. I was telling myself it was not real, it was then that I realized it was Goloka Vrindavana.
PADA: So very early on when Prabhupada first started this movement, he was having initially big problems with some of his so-called leaders. For example, in 1970 three leaders put him in a room, locked him up, and tried to take over his movement in 1970. So Prabhupada wrote a letter about this: "It is a fact that the great sinister movement is within our society."
So he was already having problems from square one. And he wrote letters, for example: "So by the grace of Krishna we have got sufficient properties all over the world. So there cannot be any diplomacy or conspiracy by any sane man. All these properties and opulence, whatever we have got, this will not go with me when I go away from this world. It will remain here. I am training some of my experienced disciples how to manage after my departure." That was the GBC, the Governing Body Commission, that he was attempting to train up. "So if instead of taking the training, if in my lifetime you people say 'I am the lord of all I survey,' that is a dangerous conspiracy. I shall do everything in my power to fulfill your personal ambitions." So this was written to a devotee named Karandhar, who was one of Prabhupada's early leaders. So he was saying, "Watch out. You guys are apparently trying to take over my properties and opulence now by a conspiracy." So he was already noting that sort of a takeover attempt. Also there was an attempt to make an umbrella corporation around 1972, I think it was, which would have legally put all of the properties of Prabhupada's movement into the hands of a few people, and Prabhupada disbanded the GBC at that time, being very upset.
So in other words, there were various attempts by some of the leaders to take over the movement of Prabhupada by using various clever means. Sometimes they would even package these things as though they were some wonderful preaching activity. For example, Tamal Krishna had a Radha-Damodara bus project, and he used this project. He had buses traveling around the United States distributing books; but when his buses would go to the temples, they would tell the people in the temple, "You're all in maya, you're all householders living like nonsense. You should be brahmacharis. You should be living strictly and traveling with Tamal Krishna." So Tamal used his bus program as a means of extracting manpower from Prabhupada's temples, and actually Prabhupada's whole movement was being gradually shifted over into the hands of Tamal Krishna by this process. So this reached a point in 1976 where Prabhupada told Tamal to go to China. Prabhupada basically said, "You're ruining my whole movement. You're paralyzing my whole movement by taking the people out of the temples." So, of course, Tamal refused to go to China. This was a famous story of a sort of attempt to hijack the ISKCON movement away from Srila Prabhupada by draining away the manpower, money and assets, and putting these assets into Tamal's control.
In any event, there were various aggressive attempts to start different programs and projects that were designed to unseat Prabhupada's authority and bring the authority into the hands of some of these various leaders. In 1976, shortly after this China incident where Prabhupada told Tamal to go to China, I was standing in the Los Angeles temple room in front of Prabhupada's murti – there's a deity of Prabhupada in the temple. It's still there, by the way. I was standing in front of this murti in 1976. Tamal Krishna came up to me and said, "I know you, Puranjan, you're just waiting for Prabhupada to die so you can sit in his seat."
So in other words, here's his psychology. He's thinking I'm standing by Prabhupada in order to sit in Prabhupada's seat. I'm not standing there to worship Prabhupada, I'm standing there because I'm envious of Prabhupada and I want to pull Prabhupada off of that seat and sit myself in that seat. That's what Tamal was saying. So this is a very Freudian slip on his part because really he was revealing his own mentality. He just can't wait for Prabhupada to leave to sit in his seat, because the actual fact of the matter is that about a year after Tamal Krishna told me that, he was himself sitting in Prabhupada's seat.
He was the person who was thinking, "Who is going to be sitting in Prabhupada's seat after Prabhupada departs?" So it may be because there was some psychology all along really: "Who's going to be sitting in Prabhupada's seat? Who's going to be getting Prabhupada's worship? Who's going to be getting Prabhupada's properties?" There was some consideration of this among some of these leaders all along. They were very motivated, as Prabhupada pointed out in many, many letters. So when they perhaps saw that he was going to live for another six years and this was going to cause them a problem (just like it said in his chart, in his jyotish, it said "you're going to live for six more years"), they may have thought, "Oh, my God, he's going to live for six more years. We want to take over now. Maybe we should poison him, get him out of the way, and take over earlier." So that seems to be a very possible scenario.
...So also from a historical point of view, this can be understood. In the 1930's, there was a plot to 'take over' the Gaudiya Math mission of Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thakur, who was Srila Prabhupada's guru. And, of course, one of the first things they did was, according to various sources, they poisoned Srila Bhaktisiddhanta because he was in the way, so he had to be eliminated. And so some of the prominent members of the 1936 Gaudiya Matha leader's faction, supposedly the trusted 'leading secretaries' of Srila Bhaktisiddhanta, they actually poisoned him; and then some of them claimed to be his guru successors. The same party that killed him then said, "Well, we're his pure successors." This exact thing happened in ISKCON also. Prabhupada was killed. He said, "I'm being poisoned." Then the people who were there when he was being poisoned said, "We're his dear most purest followers, his successors." So the parallel is rather unnerving if you think about it. And in the 1930's, what happened was that the first wave of gurus, some of their corruption became exposed, and so a second wave came forward and they claimed to be the successors of the successors and so on. In this way dozens or even hundreds of false "gurus" could benefit from their false guru franchise business, established at root by killing the founder.
Srila Prabhupada summarized the 1936 takeover plot by saying their false gurus were "self appointed," and that they used their false claim of being "the appointed successors" to "usurp the properties." So this is a common story in history, the butler kills the master and he changes the master's 'last will' so he can usurp the master's property, or really he steals the master's house by eliminating the master and then using various clever tricks to make it appear that he deserves to be the proprietor of the master's empire. And all along he claims that he is the dear most loving servant of the master, and many times he may fool others into thinking he was the most sincere servant of the master. Yet after some time the family and friends of the master become suspicious, and then they are always making life difficult for this deviant butler since they know he usurped the property.
This is by the way another reason so much corruption has occured in ISKCON, and it still goes on. There is a sort of political situation where one leader cannot remove or expose another leader sometimes because they 'have the dirt' on each other. So imagine the poison cadre, they cannot remove each other easily because there is the problem that the other members of the plot might expose the whole 'usurp and takeover' scheme, if not the poison plot. Thus, many of the people in the room when Srila Prabhupada said he was being poisoned, like for example Tamal Krishna, Bhavananda, Jayapataka, Jayadvaita, Bhakti caru, and perhaps others, they always seem to have big posts and nice incomes. They are the eternal darlings of ISKCON.
And there were others in that room like Adridharana who are acting very suspect as well. First, he told me there was a big alarm at the time in 1977 over the poison complaint, that the poison complaint was very suspicious. Then later he said, let us make the criminal GBC plotters members: the next wave of leaders for ISKCON? Then he said, there was never any poison complaint? Then he said, he had "defeated" and nullified Srila Prabhupada's poison complaint? Then he said, we have to defend the position of the apparent poison plotters and take shelter of their web site?
Anyway, whatever storms and catastophes occur in ISKCON, most of these fellows seem to be always protected and provided for. So, some of us have concluded that unless the butler's takeover plot, the usurper's plot, or what some would call 'the poison root plot,' is fully uprooted, ISKCON will remain in a sick and diseased condition of pervasive corruption. Just like when there is an active cancer tumor, the whole body is afflicted, and unless that tumor is removed the whole body is always weak, ill, tired, and there is always the feeling that something is wrong. Yadubara prabhu summed this once by saying that ISKCON is like a place where a dead body is hanging and no one can talk about it, this was shortly before the poison case emerged. Just after that we launched the poison case we said, Yadubara is right, there is a dead body in our midst, it is Srila Prabhupada's, he was poisoned. Yadubara had a psychic realization that there was some dead body not being attended to, and this was destroying ISKCON, and this was correct.
My God, Krishna please stay beside them.
There WILL be full justice.