Krishna cannot really be lost or contaminated by anything, but it may appear so in our world of mundane illusion.
PADA: All I can say is, when me and Sulochana started to write papers exposing the child abuse in places like New Vrndvana, we were hunted to be killed. He was killed and I would have been killed, except the FBI informed the Berkeley Police that I was "next on the hit list."
The police were doing undercover surveillance on me, and when three goondas from New Vrndvana were chasing me down the street, probably to kill me, the police undercover car started its siren and they had a loud speaker in the car, "everybody freeze." That's why I am alive today. Yes, almost no one was speaking out, therefore the few us who were speaking up, we became targets. After that I had to call the police every day and they wanted to put me in FBI witness protection, and give me a whole new identity. I did not take it, and they thought I was going to die as a result. ys pd
*** Again, a form of mass behavior -
*** Thank you Puranjan das for standing up for us. And thank you Steve Bryant for being a hero. If it hadn't been for all your work -- between the two of you -- most likely the FBI wouldn't have raided in '87 and mostly all those kids would have been kept in their abusive situations.
*** Thank you Puranjan das for standing up for us. And thank you Steve Bryant for being a hero. If it hadn't been for all your work -- between the two of you -- most likely the FBI wouldn't have raided in '87 and mostly all those kids would have been kept in their abusive situations.
[PADA: Thanks for your comments. Yes, you are right, many adults knew there were big problems, and yet as a group they did not speak up because they wanted to "save the (corrupt) corporation." Worse, a lot of people painted me and Sulochana as "liars and cranks" to discredit us, and many folks still say that -- because they are upset we challenged their corporate entity. We even had some fools recently saying that the criminally hijacked ISKCON is "the golden spiritual body." Really!
This form of "worship of corporatism" corruption happens sometimes in other large institutions -- for example in the Catholic Church and similar organizations -- people wanted to save the corporate church entity -- and the corporate sympathizers may even allow children to suffer to "save the mother church." There was also recently a big expose of some Christian "homes for children" in Ireland -- that were set up in the early 1900s -- where hundreds of babies and children died from apparent neglect, and the bodies were tossed into a large sewage tank. In other words, the institution was collecting money to "help the poor children," but the money was siphoned off and going elsewhere. Obviously, a lot of people knew something was amiss all along, but they just could not gather enough support to oppose the institution.
So it sometimes happens that large institutions create bad conditions for some of their more vulnerable and helpless members such as women, children, or the elderly, and its hard to make the institution accountable. We also read an account where fetal skeletons were uncovered within the mortar walls of a large ancient church during a recent renovation. Apparently, some of the "celibate nuns" were being made pregnant (probably by church authorities?) and then the nun's babies were aborted.
And then -- the bodies of the babies had to be hidden to suppress the scandal, so the babies bodies were sealed into the mortar walls. And in India there seems to be a big problem now with Dalit girls being attacked and so forth, and this is being covered up by a sort of "save the higher class or corporate entity" mentality. So there is a sort of pattern of these events from time to time.
Anyway, our attack on New Vrndavana in 1986 resulted in many of the children being liberated from that program after it was raided by the FBI. Many families simply left New Vrndavana and their children were taken out of that environment. And yes, many of these children would have remained in that bad situation for years longer had we not got them liberated. And when we launched another attack against the abuse culture starting in 1997, the same thing happened, many children were pulled out of the schools and they too were liberated. Of course we had some critics who were infuriated with that, because they still have sympathy for the oppressors.
Yes, needless to say, this has caused no small about of anger, resentment, and backlash against us from people who wanted to defend the post-1977 corrupt corporation and the culture of abuse that was going on. You are further correct when you say, when people get into this "lock-step" mode of thinking -- they might sacrifice themselves, their families, their children, and everything else, to save "the corporation" at the expense of the victims. And this is very dangerous for the victims. So we did the right thing by getting children removed from these situations, however messy it may have been in the process.
We know a story of a little old lady Catholic nun who was opposing the Church for its abuses. She was shipped off to "tend to the rose gardens" in a small town, to silence her. She kept working at it, and later on she helped some big powerful lawyers put together a case against some of the priests. Later on, the Church was forced to reinstate her back into her job at her big city Church. So this type of thing is going on in many shapes and forms all over.
In any case, we warned Sulochan das in the early 1980s not to send his family to New Vrndavana -- because we were starting to see patterns of "personality cults" developing already by this time. Even after Sulochana went there -- we sometimes talked on the phone -- and he said it was getting "more weird" over there, but he was going to try to "stick it out" because his wife was so sentimental about being there. There were major cracks in the regime early on. However, being very kind - hearted generally, ok and a bit too sentimental, many devotees tried to -- stick it out, wait, hope, tolerate -- thinking it would get better, but it just got worse.
The hippies in Haight Ashbury were also being overwhelmed by criminals in the 1970s. Crooks were even getting out of jail and heading straight over to the Haight -- to go back to their criminal program. So the crooks were gradually taking over the Haight area, and the acquiescing hippies were being robbed, beaten, raped and victimized. There was a sharp increase in robbery, mugging, cocaine drug dealing, rapes and so forth, and the hippies were part of the problem -- because they were reluctant to call in the police or take any measures to counteract the crooks.
Pretty much similar thing happened in post-1977 ISKCON: as the crimes increased, the devotees (mostly former hippies) were reluctant to push back, and so the crooks took over. Eventually, the city of San Francisco had to buy 20 brand new cop cars, all designated to patrol and police the Haight area, but its still a scary place because there are still a lot of crooks there. So this was almost inevitable, after Srila Prabhupada was poisoned and / or removed, then the pressure cooker of people who wanted to sit in his seat exploded.
Anyway, we think that now people are going to start to pick up the pieces and move ahead, and many folks are moving ahead. Some people are saying that we are in favor of ISKCON Bangalore because we want some sort of structured institution. Right, and that is also what Srila Prabhupada wanted. We simply cannot make big temples with big deity worship programs, bhakta training programs, book printing programs, farms, etc. without some sort of structure. The people who do not want any structure will never be able to build any of these things, and they are not building these things.
To sum then, we saved some children at least by getting them pulled from the schools after the institution went off the rails in 1977. We got at least a few people to worship Srila Prabhupada and not the bogus post-1977 acharyas as well. So we did what we could with the resources we had at the time. We'd like to thank all of the people over the years who have helped us. The Krishna religion will revive, but only after it is thoroughly reformed. That is going to take some time, but it is happening gradually. ys pd
===================================
This form of "worship of corporatism" corruption happens sometimes in other large institutions -- for example in the Catholic Church and similar organizations -- people wanted to save the corporate church entity -- and the corporate sympathizers may even allow children to suffer to "save the mother church." There was also recently a big expose of some Christian "homes for children" in Ireland -- that were set up in the early 1900s -- where hundreds of babies and children died from apparent neglect, and the bodies were tossed into a large sewage tank. In other words, the institution was collecting money to "help the poor children," but the money was siphoned off and going elsewhere. Obviously, a lot of people knew something was amiss all along, but they just could not gather enough support to oppose the institution.
So it sometimes happens that large institutions create bad conditions for some of their more vulnerable and helpless members such as women, children, or the elderly, and its hard to make the institution accountable. We also read an account where fetal skeletons were uncovered within the mortar walls of a large ancient church during a recent renovation. Apparently, some of the "celibate nuns" were being made pregnant (probably by church authorities?) and then the nun's babies were aborted.
And then -- the bodies of the babies had to be hidden to suppress the scandal, so the babies bodies were sealed into the mortar walls. And in India there seems to be a big problem now with Dalit girls being attacked and so forth, and this is being covered up by a sort of "save the higher class or corporate entity" mentality. So there is a sort of pattern of these events from time to time.
Anyway, our attack on New Vrndavana in 1986 resulted in many of the children being liberated from that program after it was raided by the FBI. Many families simply left New Vrndavana and their children were taken out of that environment. And yes, many of these children would have remained in that bad situation for years longer had we not got them liberated. And when we launched another attack against the abuse culture starting in 1997, the same thing happened, many children were pulled out of the schools and they too were liberated. Of course we had some critics who were infuriated with that, because they still have sympathy for the oppressors.
Yes, needless to say, this has caused no small about of anger, resentment, and backlash against us from people who wanted to defend the post-1977 corrupt corporation and the culture of abuse that was going on. You are further correct when you say, when people get into this "lock-step" mode of thinking -- they might sacrifice themselves, their families, their children, and everything else, to save "the corporation" at the expense of the victims. And this is very dangerous for the victims. So we did the right thing by getting children removed from these situations, however messy it may have been in the process.
We know a story of a little old lady Catholic nun who was opposing the Church for its abuses. She was shipped off to "tend to the rose gardens" in a small town, to silence her. She kept working at it, and later on she helped some big powerful lawyers put together a case against some of the priests. Later on, the Church was forced to reinstate her back into her job at her big city Church. So this type of thing is going on in many shapes and forms all over.
In any case, we warned Sulochan das in the early 1980s not to send his family to New Vrndavana -- because we were starting to see patterns of "personality cults" developing already by this time. Even after Sulochana went there -- we sometimes talked on the phone -- and he said it was getting "more weird" over there, but he was going to try to "stick it out" because his wife was so sentimental about being there. There were major cracks in the regime early on. However, being very kind - hearted generally, ok and a bit too sentimental, many devotees tried to -- stick it out, wait, hope, tolerate -- thinking it would get better, but it just got worse.
The hippies in Haight Ashbury were also being overwhelmed by criminals in the 1970s. Crooks were even getting out of jail and heading straight over to the Haight -- to go back to their criminal program. So the crooks were gradually taking over the Haight area, and the acquiescing hippies were being robbed, beaten, raped and victimized. There was a sharp increase in robbery, mugging, cocaine drug dealing, rapes and so forth, and the hippies were part of the problem -- because they were reluctant to call in the police or take any measures to counteract the crooks.
Pretty much similar thing happened in post-1977 ISKCON: as the crimes increased, the devotees (mostly former hippies) were reluctant to push back, and so the crooks took over. Eventually, the city of San Francisco had to buy 20 brand new cop cars, all designated to patrol and police the Haight area, but its still a scary place because there are still a lot of crooks there. So this was almost inevitable, after Srila Prabhupada was poisoned and / or removed, then the pressure cooker of people who wanted to sit in his seat exploded.
Anyway, we think that now people are going to start to pick up the pieces and move ahead, and many folks are moving ahead. Some people are saying that we are in favor of ISKCON Bangalore because we want some sort of structured institution. Right, and that is also what Srila Prabhupada wanted. We simply cannot make big temples with big deity worship programs, bhakta training programs, book printing programs, farms, etc. without some sort of structure. The people who do not want any structure will never be able to build any of these things, and they are not building these things.
To sum then, we saved some children at least by getting them pulled from the schools after the institution went off the rails in 1977. We got at least a few people to worship Srila Prabhupada and not the bogus post-1977 acharyas as well. So we did what we could with the resources we had at the time. We'd like to thank all of the people over the years who have helped us. The Krishna religion will revive, but only after it is thoroughly reformed. That is going to take some time, but it is happening gradually. ys pd
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