Prabhupadanuga Progress Report -- September 2013

Srila Prabhupada 1976, Aindra prabhu is on the left in orange

PADA: The fact that the GBC's goondas have had to hack the Prabhupadanugas.eu and Prabhupadavision web sites is actually a good sign, it means they cannot counter our Prabhupadanuga program. Meanwhile our Krishna1008 blog is getting a record number of hits, going up each month. As we told one devotee recently, even if we said nothing ever again, too many people already know about what we have said.

Their hacking attempts means -- we are having a major impact on their program. It also means, they are getting pretty desperate. How much "success" can they claim by getting a few web sites temporarily hacked, which will then probably be up and running again anyway? Clearly, we are cleaning their clocks. No doubt their people read our sites and then come back to the leaders with questions etc. That means overall our program is gaining steam. We are always getting private messages from people -- on a regular basis -- who are saying the Prabhupadanugas are right, and they are rejecting the GBC gurus. So we are taking over, albeit very slowly.

Unfortunately, it sometimes takes a major ISKCON shakedown / scandal to wake some of the people up in ISKCON. A lot of people have heard about "other scandals," -- but unless the problem affects them directly, they tend to coast along hoping that "the next big problem" will not occur to them personally. Except that after awhile -- everyone eventually becomes swept up and affected by some form or other -- of major GBC guru's mis-managing. The basic problems appears to be -- sentimentalism, good ole boys network-ism, apathy, a general lack of desire to "rock the boat" and so forth.

And so it is with the latest "bad news" from Mayapura, at least two people have wrote to us privately to tell us they are "pulling out" their support for the GBC's guru program, and they are agreeing with our proposal to focus on Srila Prabhupada. Why? Because they see how badly some of these GBC guru folks are behaving. So now they are finally interested in our Prabhupadanuga idea.

Quite honestly, some of these people are so mortified at the GBC goonda-ism, they are telling all their friends to boycott Mayapura. Mayapura is supposed to be the GBC guru's main headquarters, so if this program is more and more being seen as a dangerous criminal outpost, there is really not much else the GBC gurus can forward as their "big success" story.

Mayapura was supposed to be the crown jewel of their program, and its looking more and more like a worthless piece of plastic, or maybe a dangerous place you'd rather want to avoid.They really do not have any other big program to advertise, so if Mayapura's image goes down, and it is, they have no back up "better program." All this helps our argument that they are not doing a good job.

And recently some other people told us the same thing, just after the Mahanidhi meltdown, they are going to follow our Prabhupadanuga idea. And some other people told us the same exact thing after the Prabhavishnu meltdown, they are now going to follow our Prabhupadanuga idea, and so on. In other words, we keep gaining a few people here -- and a few people there, and in this way we are gradually winning. However, it seems to take a major shake down to develop before some people take a lot of interest in what we are doing.

This has been going on for years actually, and has been a pattern all along. For example, even at the start of all this around 1980, we told Sulochana das he should NOT take his family to New Vrndavana. We warned him: this is a bad place to go to and live. We even said to him, you are walking straight into the GBC guru's lions den over there.

Yet Sulochana das thought that there was "no big problem" at New Vrndavana, and that we were "exaggerating things out of proportion." After Sulochana das was there for about two years, he mailed us a tape recording of Kirtanananda swami saying that Jayatirtha's fall down was only "the maya Jayatirtha, just like there is a maya Sita" and "the real Jayatirtha" is actually fully engaged purely in Krishna's service. Therefore, Kirtanananda said -- no one should be alarmed or concerned about these issues.

And so Sulochana das wrote to us to say that he agreed with the maya Sita explanation, and therefore these issues are not a very big concern, thus we are wasting our time being too critical and so forth. Better idea is to just "go along with the (GBC's guru) program."

However, we were very alarmed by this distorted preaching and so we wrote back to Sulochana das, this is not a very good development at all, this means the leaders are trying to bluff, cheat and artificially justify the fall downs of their alleged ACHARYAS. Worse, they are invoking the name of Mother Sita to drag into their debauchee's guru program. So we wrote back to Sulochana, you have to leave there immediately, this is a dangerous situation, because these people have some serious misunderstanding of the siddhanta. He did not reply, and he stayed there.

Then, a few years later -- Sulochana das's children were physically kidnapped at gunpoint by Kirtanananda's thugs, so he called us right away in Berkeley and he said, "I am going to start to work with you to expose these people, you are right, they are a bunch of crooks." In other words, he needed a direct personal "bad experience" before he would take action against these false gurus. And the list of people who waited until some sort of stink bomb dropped in their laps before they rejected the GBC gurus is almost endless.

Of course, Sulochana did become a major headache for the GBC's gurus once he was determined to go after them, and he deserves considerable credit for giving his life to oppose them. And many other people who got burnt have also joined our efforts, and that process is still going on, people are getting burnt, and then joining our idea. That process is still going on today.

We recall buying food and clothes for Sulochana, and giving him money to print his booklets, because he was basically waging his war without any job or income. Thus, for some of us its a big effort to fight these gurus, especially when others are not helping that much, and this too discourages other fighters from joining. Basically, apart from us, hardly no one was supporting Sulochana das's campaign. The people he was associated with in Los Angeles just before he departed were not really big fans of his work, and they did very little to support him, although some of them had a little sympathy for his program. So nowadays at least we have some sort of rag-tag group of rebels, and we are therefore able to offer some help and hope to each other.

Anyway, as one devotee said to us, being with (current) Krishna devotees is like being in a house that is on fire -- and most of the people in the house are sitting in their easy chair doing nothing -- until the fire starts burning their own feet. Only then do they suddenly jump up, take notice, and start to complain about the fire. They sit around and keep seeing others getting burnt, for years and years together, but that is not THEIR problem. Its only a problem when they get burnt personally. In the meantime, the ISKCON house is gradually burning to the ground, and there is hardly anyone left in the burnt out shell of the house.

So its sort of like, picking off one person at a time until there are no persons -- left? This also happens in the horror movies. There is a group of college kids that goes camping in a remote cabin, and then after awhile they say, hey where is Joey? Later, where is Sandra? Later, has anyone seen Fred? Finally, there is only one guy left and he is in danger of disappearing due to some horrible monster etc.

MORAL of the story? If they had all pooled all their energies together in the first instance, when the first person disappeared, they might have saved themselves. Otherwise, they are getting picked off one by one. This is basically what happened in ISKCON, one person disappeared at a time, and no one noticed until it was basically -- too late. So now we are dealing mainly with the refugees from that situation, although clearly many people even inside corporate ISKCON are also reading our materials.  

And thus people keep asking us, "is this apathy? A lack of empathy for others"?

And we have to reply, "not sure what it is"?

We also tried to get a hold of Chatur Bahu das when we heard he was opposing the gurus, but he thought "I do not need to work with others, I will meet the leaders in private and challenge them." As soon as we heard he was going to meet the leaders in private to complain, we tried to get a hold of him to warn him -- this is very dangerous. That is what Taru did, and he was killed.

Then Chatur Bahu was murdered, and the police thought it was an inside job. In other words, Chatur Bahu failed to understand what kind of trouble the GBC gurus really are. Until it was too late. And this has happened no doubt to others, they tried to address problems without realizing how to go about that process safely, and so they were hurt or killed. This meantime discourages others from opposing, because it's the so-called "Monkey On A Stick" effect, a warning to others -- not to oppose the regime. A lot of devotees have criticized our approach of going to the police, media and outside authorities, ok but we are alive and a number of the people who did not do that, are not alive?

At this point however, there is not that much fear of the regime. Unless we are at their headquarters in Mayapura, or maybe at some other remote places that they control, there is not much they can do anymore to "strike fear" into their opponents. The GBC gurus are losing credibility as a force to be feared and respected, so every day -- more of the little peons are rejecting and challenging. These are great developments.

The problem with our rebel groups however, is that they tend to be disorganized and sometimes they will fight each other. Look at Afghanistan's rebel infighting. That has been a problem with the ISKCON rebels as well. At the same time, we are still making good progress overall because our idea simply makes sense, we need to worship the pure devotee. Its sort of going forward -- in spite -- of all the problems of moving it along.

The Catholic Church also got to a point where it was so very corrupt, the common people started to branch out and create a "reform" based on the idea that we can worship the guru "Lord Jesus" directly, and there is no need for a "living spokesman of God" aka the Pope. Their reform took centuries to develop however. It was only when people finally got totally fed up with the abuses from these Popes that people gradually said, we have had enough, we are going to worship Lord Jesus. This same identical process is also going on in ISKCON gradually, but a whole heck of a lot faster than occurred in the Catholic Church.

All considered then, our ISKCON reform is doing pretty good. Instead of having to wait for centuries, we are getting people to worship the pure devotee now. Our reformation is going ahead, despite all the problems, its still progressing. And our reform seems to be accelerating this year, we have had many problems going on with these gurus that has discouraged people from remaining loyal to them, and has encouraged more folks to consider our proposals. And it seems more people are saying, hey aren't these gurus a little bit evil, maybe even demoniac, or even, aren't these gurus like Kali Yuga personified? Yep, people are getting more doubtful about their position, and they are thus taking a look at our position. This is all good news! Jaya! ys pd