ISKCON: A CORRUPT, CRIMINAL LEADERSHIP
Unqualified leaders should be removed. This occurs in democratic and parliamentarian governments with regulated systems meant to counter corruption in a country. It also occurred in times of the Vedic civilization, such as when Duryodhana was removed from Hastinapura and when brahmanas removed the evil king Vena.
After Srila Prabhupada’s departure the GBC installed themselves for life as an elite guru club and placed themselves beyond the control or review of any outside persons or bodies, including the general constituency or body of devotees. Thus the GBC has become corrupt to the core with no checks or balances on their activities or policies. This is why the GBC can make preposterous resolutions like, "There is no evidence at this time to support the allegations of poisoning of Srila Prabhupada."
“As soon as there is a little deficiency we must repair it or it will create a big hole and the ship will drown. [...] Without following the regulative principles advancement is doubtful, and one may fall at any moment.” (SPL Rupanuga 4.28.1974)
“…I am in a war with Maya, the material energy, and I need leaders. It is called ‘battlefield commission.’ There are no qualified leaders, but someone has to lead the charge. So you take every fifth man, ‘You are now lieutenant of the squad.’ He is really a private […] It is to be understood that you are not sufficiently equipped for this fight and most of you will go down.” (SPConv July, 1976 NYC)
“Maybe if all these gurus would give up their high profile lifestyle, and stop wasting hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars of Krishna’s money by traveling all over the world, and invest that money into printing and distributing books, the movement would expand at a huge rate. How much do you think the average guru spends on travel per year? I’d guess that the small-scale gurus spend anywhere from $25-50K a year. And as for the “big-time” gurus like Jayapataka Swami, Radhanath Swami, or Indradyumna Swami, I’d say they probably spend $150-300K a year. If they would give up their “guru superstar” lifestyle and print Prabhupada’s books, the movement would flourish. No need to travel everywhere to compete for disciples, fame and Laxmi.” (Chaitanya das, 2009)
Comment: It was revealed by his secretary that Jayapataka Swami’s travel expenses were about $750K/year. And after his 2009 stroke, millions more went to extensive health care and many organ transplant surgeries.
“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” (John Dalberg-Acton) “Myself and the other GBC have done the greatest disservice to this movement the last 3 years because we interpreted the appointment of ritviks as the appointment of gurus...” (Tamal, Dec. 1980)
The ISKCON GBC’s deviations are rooted in “Tamalism” (see Vol. 2: Anti-Prabhupada) which has misled the entire movement, mesmerizing with hopes and promises of fulfilling our immemorial ambitions of becoming as good as God (or guru). This happens by following the bewitching golden deer of concocted, deviant GBC policies. Thus, the delusory original sin is nourished and the “pilgrim’s” progress is blocked by his own doing in a final test of surrender. The ISKCON GBC has completely corrupted and changed the institution which Srila Prabhupada struggled to establish and hoped would change the face of the world. The GBC has spoiled ISKCON, now transformed into an entirely different creature, namely an international guru franchise business. Here are some of the ways the GBC Ravanas have misled themselves and the devotees in general:
(1) Myth Creation: That ISKCON gurus are sent by Krishna to assist Srila Prabhupada, they are pure devotees or empowered associates of the Lord, and that GBC approved gurus are divinely sanctioned.
(2) Secularism: Gurukulas should have mundane and government approved curriculum, devotees seek university education, accreditation to enhance their prestige and careers, parrot medical tyranny programs (and look the other way re: horrendous child abuse).
(3) Unaccountable Finances: Gurus, sannyasis are unaccountable for their finances, given free rein to siphon off temple, deity funds.
(4) Salaried “Devotional Service”: Only a few brahmacharis are volunteer workers, all others are salaried or be given other financial opportunities to justify their service in ISKCON.
(5) Doubts About Srila Prabhupada: The adulterations to Srila Prabhupada’s books, management system, divine Founder-Acharya status, and instructions cause many to doubt in Srila Prabhupada’s perfection, and that his instructions and books need to be modified according to changing cultural circumstances.
(6) Overlapping Directors: The same GBCs, gurus, and sannyasis hold multiple posts throughout the management structure of ISKCON, by which control is held by a small cadre of elite leaders. The GBC is a legal society which effectively owns or controls all ISKCON properties and assets. No more local temple independence, critical thinking.
(7) Philosophical Deviation: Srila Prabhupada’s teachings are widely not being followed in ISKCON. “To honor the spiritual master means to carry out his instructions word for word.” (SBhag 3.24.12 purport)
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Academia: The appeal of mundane position and distinction has led, with no GBC protest, to many senior devotees and leaders entering academia for university credentials, becoming mundane scholars too. Srila Prabhupada is relativized as an ordinary person.
Academia: The appeal of mundane position and distinction has led, with no GBC protest, to many senior devotees and leaders entering academia for university credentials, becoming mundane scholars too. Srila Prabhupada is relativized as an ordinary person.(9) False Doctrines: Re-initiation, need for a “living” diksha guru, GBC is ultimate spiritual interpretative authority, women diksha gurus.
The ISKCON GBC, gurus, and leaders have misled ISKCON for many decades and have failed to faithfully represent him. The Srila Prabhupada quotes below on the mundane scientists, false religionists, unauthorized gurus, etc also apply to those misconstruing his teachings to serve the interests of their fraudulent ISKCON guru businesses. Srila Prabhupada also espouses that fraud should be exposed.
The spoiling of the Hare Krishna Movement is widely understood through obvious facts and history, yet it continues and becomes more pervasive, debilitating. It comes from the basic, underlying conflict between the ambitions of its false gurus and Srila Prabhupada’s Divine Mission. This deep tension may not be easily seen by those on the inside, but competing parties (Acharya vs. Ravanas) means conflicting purposes and disharmony. The society is in a state of confusion, and only when this irreconcilable dichotomy of purposes is philosophically recognized, can ISKCON’s anomalies be rectified. If those who insist on posing as diksha gurus were to depart from the ISKCON institution, establishing their own temples with their own organizations, and ISKCON was restricted to Srila Prabhupada’s followers, only then will harmony, potency, and purity return.
“The horrors of the last 30 years were due almost entirely by the GBC posing as Vatican ‘Cardinals’ whose authority flowed from the Pope, and who then ruled with ‘absolute authority’ over a self-created hierarchy imposed on ISKCON.” (Naranarayana das, 2006)
ISKCON is the home for Srila Prabhupada followers, not those who follow other gurus, not those who blatantly distort and disobey Srila Prabhupada’s teachings, and not for those who take a fallible, vote-approved pretender as an institutionally mandated diksha guru who is required to supposedly connect to the parampara. The ISKCON guru sub-cults grow ever more bizarre.
GBC ASSUMES FUNCTIONS NOT GIVEN BY FOUNDER-ACHARYA
The GBC functions and duties as instructed by Srila Prabhupada do not include manufacturing new systems for endorsing or voting-in of initiating gurus. If Srila Prabhupada did not give it, we do not need (or want) it. The GBC’s duty is simply to properly understand Srila Prabhupada’s instructions and try to implement them, with no authority to add new procedures or policies which were not already instructed or in place by Srila Prabhupada. They did not hear Srila Prabhupada’s warnings to not do what the Gaudiya Math did after 1937? The idea that the GBC has unrestricted authority to do as they please in Srila Prabhupada’s name has brought the Hare Krishna movement to its present state of corruption and spoliation.
Srila Prabhupada created the GBC as an advisory body in ISKCON with very limited powers. They could not even change the temple president without the approval of a temple’s membership. Many letters to this effect are listed in Vol. 8. Yet, it is now standard procedure for the ISKCON GBC/gurus to appoint (with no members vote) temple presidents who are loyal to their corporate and guru policies, even when their choices are opposed by local devotees, or even after these acts have resulted in a history of gross mismanagement and corruption.
INCREASING ISKCON BUREAUCRACY WITH GBC AT THE TOP
The GBC increasingly centralizes ISKCON’s bureaucracy, adding new “laws” every year to the ISKCON Lawbook, more GBC papers and policies, by-laws, management levels and structures, training seminars, rules, and meetings. Originally it was only GBC, sannyasis, and temple presidents. Now ISKCON bureaucracy of officeholders has proliferated. But, with more bureaucracy, things have only worsened.
"Once there is bureaucracy the whole thing will be spoiled. There must always be individual striving, work and responsibility, competitive spirit, not that one shall dominate and distribute benefits to others and they do nothing but beg from you and you provide." (SPL Dec 22, 1972)
WHY GIVE THIS MONEY TO SRILA PRABHUPADA?
“Once in Mayapur, Kirtanananda said to me ‘Why are you giving all that money to Prabhupada? You should give it to me, in America we are protected. The communists will come and take these buildings away... Prabhupada is making a big mistake.’ I was shocked by what I heard. At that time, Kirtanananda was considered by Satsvarupa to be the greatest [...]. My answer was, ’I do not care what he does with the money. He can flush it down the toilet, for all I care, I just love to give it to him.’ Srila Prabhupada… told me once in his room in Vrindaban:
‘My guru ordered me to go to the west, and I did that. My main service was to translate these books and I did that. I have a personal desire to build these temples in India. That is my personal program. But my disciples will not give me money and my head is getting hot. I have to translate these books, write many letters, and I am thinking how to raise the money to build these temples because my disciples have their own programs and will not give me money.’" (Gurukripa das, 2009)
This attitude prevails today in ISKCON (pioneered by Tamal), that we know better than Srila Prabhupada, and we will do it better our way.
LONG LIST OF LOST PROPERTIES AND TEMPLES SINCE 1978
There is a long list of real estate properties since 1978 that were lost to mismanagement in foreclosure, fire sales, with sale proceeds also misappropriated. Srila Prabhupada often warned against this.
(1) Manhattan Skyscraper, W. 55th St, sold shortly after Srila Prabhupada’s departure; the great New York ISKCON yatra is lost. (2) See list of sold, lost farm projects in Ch. 11. (3) Rettershof Castle, Germany: Srila Prabhupada said not to sell; but sold anyways. (4) Chaitanya College: England manor house with gurukula, sold, lots of money lost. (5) Coconut Grove, Miami: Beautiful 10 acres and temple in the very best location; sold, then regretted. (6) North Miami Beach Hotel and temple: 13 stories, on beach, sold cheap at market’s bottom, horrible loss. (7) Buffalo Temple, Bidwell Pkway: Sold, now there is no temple in this college town where 40+ devotees joined 1968-1983.
The above list is partial, there were many more. A list of some nice temples from the early days that are long gone due to ISKCON mismanagement, even though Srila Prabhupada insisted, once opened, to never close them: Manila, San Antonio, Albuquerque, Winnipeg, Tallahassee, Minneapolis, Memphis, Nashville, State College, PA, Ann Arbor, MI. And countless others worldwide, for which there are no records or history. Catastrophic disaster by GBC misleaders.
BACK TO GODHEAD (BTG) MAGAZINE COLLAPSES
BTG magazine was started by Srila Prabhupada in India in the 1940’s and from 1966 became a primary mode of literature distribution in ISKCON, reaching a height of 2,000,000 copies a month in USA-Canada alone, a combination of subscriptions and mass distribution by temples. By the early 1980s book distribution had precipitously fallen and BTG’s were piling up unsold in temple storerooms, as devotees fled ISKCON and their crazed zonal gurus. With GBC approval, a zany plan to shift BTG to solely subscription basis was made, reducing it to a monthly circulation of 3,000. The subscriptions went to many multiples of the $6/year price, further discouraging subscriptions. The temples no longer got copies to sell, although many wanted them in bulk. This was a huge disaster and management bungle, and has never been corrected. BTG almost closed operations several times, requiring subsidies from the BBT to survive. Further, BTG has now become a mouthpiece for corrupt GBC policies and an advertisement for ISKCON gurus, hiding ISKCON’s troubles behind phony feel-good stories.
EVOLUTION OF THEIR GURU SYSTEM
From 1978 until present, ISKCON’s guru system policies have evolved like the desert’s shifting sands, which were sometimes sudden and great, as in 1987 when ISKCON more or less abandoned the zonal successor policy. For a decade the GBC insisted Srila Prabhupada had empowered and appointed 11 successors who were pure devotees in spite of their “momentary lapses” of basic Vaishnava practices. Due to a revolt by temple presidents, this system was replaced with another concoction by GBC vote approvals of more new initiating gurus. They hoaxed the movement with a lie of appointed gurus, then hoaxed again by declaring Srila Prabhupada authorized them to devise guru election methodologies (fool me twice). Since 1987 continuing adjustments have evolved ISKCON’s speculative guru policies, and the disobedient misleaders have run ISKCON into the wastelands of deviations, betraying their mandate as the protectors of Srila Prabhupada’s mission.
THE GAUDIYA MATH FLIP-FLOPS
The GBC in 1978 claimed Srila Prabhupada had advised them to consult Gaudiya Math’s Sridhar Maharaja in Navadvipa for philosophical guidance, and they took his advice to design their zonal acharya system of gurus (who soon fell down). But 2 years later the GBC forbade devotees from going to Sridhar Maharaja for anything. The GBC shifted their policies to suit their shifting deviational purposes. First, it was politically expedient to have Sridhar Maharaja support their conditioned-soul guru system, and later they banned him, as too many devotees were leaving ISKCON for his “shelter.”
Then in 1990 the GBC quoted heavily from Gaudiya Math’s Narayana Maharaja in their ISKCON Journal issue, but in 1995, the GBC banned six of their own “gurus” from even communicating with Narayana Maharaja, in which they all were suspended for 2 years. First, the GBC quoted from Narayana Maharaja to silence those who questioned the GBC’s guru-initiation system, then later Narayana Maharaja was deemed a sahajiya, as Srila Prabhupada had forbidden association with the Gaudiya Math. One day they say this, the next they say the opposite. This flip-flopping has destroyed GBC credibility.
COVER-UPS
For years the GBC hid Harikesh Swami’s problems, hoping they would go away. Bhakti Vikas Swami (ISKCON guru) confirmed Dec. 15, 2016: “Of course, the GBC kept Harikesh’s madnesses covered up for years.” Many GBCs knew for decades (seen in unpublished GBC decisions) that Prabhavishnu “Swami” had been visiting prostitutes in Bangkok. Satsvarupa finally admitted to improper relations with a married woman, but only after devotees forced him to confess. Umapati “Swami,” ISKCON guru, was widely rumored over many years to be sleeping with Chinese male disciples, but he denied this. Finally, the GBC suspended him as guru and sannyasi when the evidence became overwhelming. Bhavananda’s escapades were well known but tolerated and even defended by some GBCs. As Bhakti Vikas Swami put it: “If there was incontrovertible evidence to back these allegations, well, we would have to take this very seriously. The proof would have to be very strong to warrant punitive measures.” (2016)
The GBC does not keep watch over itself, except by cover-ups. Those pointing out anomalies are branded envious troublemakers and blasphemers of “exalted devotees.” ISKCON has floated along for decades in a bubble of make-believe, where everyone is afraid to look, hear, or speak, except in support of the tyranny and charade. Rumors of leaders’ indiscretions are ignored. Everyone has something to hide. Why rock the boat? After 40 years of repeated scandals and cover-ups, the institutional leadership still has no methodology to investigate rumors or maintain GBC-guru integrity. This speaks to their total corruption.
Misleaders must be investigated to ensure purity, performance, and accountability. In ISKCON, proof of GBC-guru scandals always comes from private sources, not the GBC. This was true with Srila Prabhupada’s poisoning evidence and the child sex abuse, which the GBC still denies. Devotees must be the whistleblower watchdogs.
CONCLUSION
If Srila Prabhupada physically came back for a tour, he would not be pleased with today’s ISKCON. He hoped the men he had trained would at least maintain and perhaps expand further. Instead, the institution has deteriorated and been spoiled. Book distribution has collapsed. His books are adulterated with 5K+ changes in the Gita alone and often key books are out of print. ISKCON gurus regularly are exposed as fallen, yet the GBC covers it up. Basic philosophical issues are not openly addressed with participation of the devotees; instead the GBC imposes forced compliance with deviant, contradictory, or vague policies. Financial, philosophical, moral, ethical, spiritual corruption is at all levels and there is no accountability. Competing guru franchises are increasingly more loosely affiliated with ISKCON.
Due to misleadership, many disasters have befallen ISKCON. Is Srila Prabhupada even still present in ISKCON? His name, instructions, followers, and assets are exploited by disobedient misleaders who have caused so much damage that they may as well be his enemies. They make selfish choices contradictory to Srila Prabhupada’s interests, exploiting his mission to their own advantage. Any sincerity remaining in the GBC body is overshadowed by the effective guru board elite, a controlling central committee or cartel, focused on their private guru businesses, with little interest for Srila Prabhupada’s standards.
They cannot even perform at any sane level of meeting their responsibilities, leading to the exodus of all advanced, qualified devotees since 1978. The best men are gone; those remaining are “yes men,” sycophants, new disciples, guru wannabees, etc. A picture emerges by chronologically reading Srila Prabhupada’s letters, which Sulochan described in 1986:
“Prabhupada’s whole strategy changed dramatically in July of 1970. He freely started giving sannyas (celibate renounced order) to his male followers instead of encouraging them to marry. He stopped encouraging devotees to open temples and instead to distribute books. He wrote very heavy letters indicating the character of many leading disciples was way below the mark. They clearly show why Prabhupada became disgusted with these ‘top men’ and ultimately why he decided to leave the planet early.”
The role of the GBC in Srila Prabhupada’s mission is to act as guides to the devotees, showing how to follow Srila Prabhupada’s instructions. In this, they have failed due to disobedience and ambitions.
“A siksha-guru who instructs against the instruction of spiritual, he is not a siksha guru. He is a demon. […] First offense is guror avajna, defying the authority of guru. […] Then everything is finished in the beginning. Guror avajna. Everything is there. If one is disobeying the spiritual master, he cannot remain in the pure status of life. He cannot be siksha-guru or anything else. He is finished, immediately.” (SPLecture)
(From Ch. 13, Vol. 6, Deviations Spoiling the Sankirtan Movement)
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