[PADA: This was the tape I distributed around the Los Angeles ISKCON Watseka Ave. temple in 1997. There are some updates that were made in 2003. This is what got the ball rolling on the "poison complaint" from Srila Prahbupada. Various people have tried to say this tape was "all craziness" at the time, however more and more people are realizing this is a serious and VALID issue. ys pd]
POISON TAPE TRANSCRIPT AND ANALYSIS BY PURANJANA DASA
[This tape was originally narrated in 1997, some additional "updates" will be made at the present time, 2003. Thanks Puranjana dasa]
Note: Srila Prabhupada’s swollen hands and sun glasses, the effects of arsenic poisoning. The eyes become sensitive to light due to arsenic’s chemically reactive effect on the tissues and nerves of the eyes. The victim therefore may prefer a nearly darkened room because of Sensitivity of the eyes to sunlight or bright artificial light
Hello, Hare Krishna, my name is Puranjana dasa. I’m going to be narrating a tape which was originally made on November 8, 1977, and it contains the words of His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Srila Prabhupada, the founder of the Hare Krishna Movement. The tape where Prabhupada complains about being poisoned has in recent times become quite a controversy mainly because he made this complaint 20 years ago. It is now 1997, and for 20 years the tape where he complained about his being poisoned has not been available to the devotees of his movement and has not been available for sure to the general public.
So it has been, you could say, a hidden piece of information. In fact, at this point in time, I myself am the only person who is publicly distributing copies of this tape in the whole world. No one else is distributing this tape, especially not the official ISKCON organization, which is supposed to be Srila Prabhupada’s official organization. So this in itself has led many people to think something very suspicious happened in November of 1977 just from the simple fact this information has been hidden and suppressed as much as it has been. But it should be noted herein that some people did know that Prabhupada had complained he was being poisoned in 1977 - and that was a small group of devotees in Vrndavana (India) at the time who had heard his poison complaint, or some of them heard about the complaint.
For different reasons, some of these people did not come forward with the story. There was a lot of mood of suppressing this information, and some of the leaders who it was revealed to by persons in the vicinity, that Prabhupada had complained he was being poisoned, they just said, “Well, it’s not important because he doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” or “He’s an old man,” and so on and so forth. There was this mood that Prabhupada was not in a clear state of mind to make an analysis of his own condition. We do not think that that is the case, though, because he was translating a very complicated Vedic literature, the Srimad-Bhagavatam, a Sanskrit literature, and he was narrating the story of the brahma-vimohana-lila, which is a very actually intricate, complicated, philosophically complex story; he was narrating this story in November just very shortly before he departed. So how could he be narrating this very complicated literature and not be aware of his faculties? So we think he was very aware and that there was just some attempt to make it sound like Prabhupada was making some extreme off-the-wall comment which was not realistic and, therefore, it was covered up.
* [2003 Update: At this point it has been discovered that one of the main reasons "the innocent" people who were aware of the poison complaint in 1977 did not speak up was, they were afraid of retaliation by some of the ISKCON leaders who were apparently connected to the complaint. Fear. Others were in the room when the poison complaint was made, "the less innocent" so to speak, like Adridharana, Hansadutta and similar folks. They were aware of "the poison complaint" and they simply ignored it as meaningless and of no real consequence. They were in sum compromised with the hijacking conspirators.
They more or less tried to say that Srila Prabhupada was confused when he complained of being poisoned, to protect the poison sabha of hijackers. They certainly took no steps to investigate the complaint or help Srila Prabhupada get away from the situation. This made "the innocent" even more hesitant and fearful since they saw that others, like Adridharana, Hansadutta and similar other leaders, they were compromised with the persons generating the poison complaint, the core cadre conspirators who were feared.
These compromised leaders like Adridharana and Hansadutta and similar others have held this deviant view to the present day, that the poison complaint is not a very important matter. The crucifixion of Jesus is of no real consequence, it is a minor detail best to be ignored. They simply do not think that when a pure devotee or a guru says, "I have only one request, do not torture me and put me to death," as Srila Prabhupada said in November of 1977, that this is something they should show any meaningful concern over. These severe statements have no meaning to these types of leaders but many "innocent" devotees told me subsequently, that when they later on heard these statements as presented by us pada folks, after we began circulating these tapes in 1997, "it cracked their hearts." The innocent are mortified by such statements and the hijackers and their getaway car drivers don't seem to care.
Similarly, self - advertisied "Srila Prabhupada's successor," Narayana Maharaja vociferously fought against us and opposed our exposing the poison case, and he defended the hijackers as his idea of "gurus," although he has been worn down subsequently into submitting that we are correct. So many local people in Vrindavana agreed with us and he was looking rather foolish to be still defending the GBC. More telling is that when we launched the case, Adridharana and Hansadutta types said, let pada struggle with this alone, we will not help. So there is suppression, sometimes with violence added, and when the truth starts to come out, some of the people who know some of the facts prevaricate, drag their feet, make obstacles, do not cooperate, obfuscate, deny, outright lie, and so on. And this has helped the hijackers. This is also how the same Adridharana and Hansadutta types indirectly helped the mass molesting of children in ISKCON, the same policy was there, of assisting the policy of prevarication, obfuscation, harassing the exposers, and so on.
Thus, some of the other leaders who knew of the complaint in 1977 were already compromised with the GBC hijacker cadre. And thus they accepted the idea that the apparent poison conspirators were not wrong or evil, but they were pure and holy "Srila Prabhupada's trusted appointed successors." In short, some people trusted the words of the ISKCON hijacking conspirators, people like Tamal Krishna, a big GBC leader. And as a result they did not trust the words of Srila Prabhupada.
And after 1977 folks who were in the room when the poison complaint was uttered, like Adridharana and Hansadutta, they then supported the GBC's "homosexual guru regime" which has violently suppressed any expose of the truth whether it is over the molestation issue, or the poison issue, or any other crimes. So, there was fear by the innocent class, and suppression by the GBC class, and that suppression included violence and murders. This is how these issues were and are covered up. For example, the first thing that Adridharana and Hansadutta should have said in November of 1977 is, Srila Prabhupada said he is being poisoned, let us get a legal forensic investigation of his food remnants, his clothing, his utensils, all the items in his room, his medicines and so on, let them be studied for forensic evidence of poison. They simply did not believe Srila Prabhupada and they instead believed -- the hijackers.
For that matter, Adridharana still says that Srila Prabhuada's poison complaint is not important and he is still compromised with the poison party and he is still trying to suppress the poison case as he has all along. And he still harasses, insults and attacks people who try to expose the poison complaint. In fact, the GBC has said all along that us exposers are "demons," in order to get us beaten and killed, and Adridharana's spokesman has recently said that pada is a heinous "barking gargoyle," so in this way they try to paint anyone who sympathizes with the molested children, or Srila Prabhupada's poison complaint, as essentially "a demon." That way, they can get us banned, beaten, and in sum suppressed, or even killed -- as has occured. So this mood was already there in 1977, and the issue was suppressed despite that some innocent people knew about it and they wanted to speak, but they were afraid. And they had good reason to be afraid.
Actually in my own case I have been shunned, kicked out of ISKCON, banned, have received numerous death threats, have been chased down the street with aluminum baseball bats, have been assaulted, glared at, sweared at, cursed by hired voodoo witch doctors, have seen my friends beaten and killed, and so on and so forth. So we can speak from first hand experience of how the GBC suppresses people by fear. Of course it now appears that the poison plot was specifically done to get rid of the master, and make some of the "servant" leaders appear to be the "appointed" successors, since there is evidence that the 1978 "guru appointment" project was a total fraud. There never was any appointment of gurus, and so now it seems like the butler poisoned the master to take over the estate. And thus, some people did not speak up because they were already compromised with the poisoning butler's party. Even Judas had some advocates and supporters it seems. Meanwhile, some who suspected the butler, they were afraid he would kill them too if they spoke up.
Several important locals in Vrindavana later on said that they were suspicious of some malefic intent on the part of the ISKCON leaders towards Srila Prabhupada in 1977, but they too were afraid to speak up or demand any further investigation. As one of the local Vrindavana residents said, "if they would dare to poison someone like Srila Prabhupada, they would not hesitate to kill us." In short, "fear" was perhaps the main reason some of the people who knew of the complaint did not speak up early on. It is for this same reason that people are often afraid to "speak up" against other criminals and fearful political tyrants, and so on.
One of the Western devotee eyewitnesses in Vrindavana at the time told me he too was fearful, and this caused him to be silent. Yet at the present time, the year 2003, many people have subsequently come forward with testimony regarding the poison complaint since "the mood of fear" created by the deviant leaders has subsided dramatically. And more and more people are coming forward with helpful testimony all the time. Sincethe most "fear inducing leader" of the ISKCON GBC has died in a car crash, namely Tamal Krishna, this has encouraged more people to come forward with testimony regarding the poison case and other deviations of the ISKCON GBC including their orchestrating mass child molesting.]
- The other interesting thing is that Prabhupada narrated the main portion of the poison complaint in the Hindi language, although most of his followers at the time were Americans who only spoke English. So the message was sort of hidden, so to speak, within a different language; and I think it’s for this reason that this tape is still existing and it was not destroyed, because there are many other tapes that we are trying to gather together at this point in time and we’re finding that some of these important tapes, important conversations that were made, are now missing, they are not available from the official Archives and so on. So we believe that some of these tapes were hidden, lost, or destroyed by some of the so-called leaders of the Movement who had a motive to chop and change some of the information that Prabhupada had given.
* [2003 Update: As of this writing, confirming testimony has emerged that some of the (especially 1977) audio tape recordings were in fact intentionally hidden, permanently lost or destroyed. There are, for example, mysterious "gaps" in the audio tape archives.]
- Of course, we’ve written many different papers about how “the letters” and “the conversations” and many personal testimonies of devotees were hidden and suppressed by the deviant leaders, and in fact there were some murders of people who were trying to bring forward some information about what Prabhupada had wanted and intended. But we’re not going to get into that too much at this point. We’re going to just deal primarily now with the November 8th tape itself, some of the statements that are made there. Some of them are in Hindi, some of them are in Bengali, and some are in English. So we’re going to do our best. We’re not native speakers of Hindi or Bengali, or we’re not even speakers of these languages. However, we have had people listen to these tapes and give us what seems to be an approximation of what Prabhupada is saying in these languages. Plus we have played these tapes on the radio to thousands of people who have heard them and they have not challenged the assessment that we have made, which is that Prabhupada is saying that he is being poisoned. So it seems to be the consensus of people, especially Hindi native speakers, that Prabhupada is in fact complaining that he is being poisoned by someone, not poisoned because his kidneys are bad or something like that. He’s making a direct statement that an individual is responsible for his being poisoned. So without further ado, we’ll start with the first statement from November 8th, the first complaint about the poisoning.
Srila Prabhupada: Keu bole je poison kore diyeche…..hoy to tai. [Someone says that someone has poisoned me. Maybe it's true.]
Balaram Mishra(?): Hmm?
Kaviraja: Kya farma rahe hain? [What, may I ask, is your holiness saying?]
Srila Prabhupada: Koi bolta hai je mujhko koi poison diya hai. [Someone says that someone has given poison.]
Kaviraja: Kisko? [To whom?]
Srila Prabhupada: Mujhko. [To me.]
So this has been translated as “Someone is being given poison here,” and the man asks “To whom?” and Prabhupada says “mujhko,” which means “to me.”
Kaviraja: Kaun bolta hai? [Who is saying this?]
Srila Prabhupada: Ye sab friends. [All these friends.]
So the next little section is “Who says that you are being poisoned?”, and Prabhupada answers that “they are friends.” So “who” is this friend or friends who informed him that he is being poisoned? It could be anyone, of course. It could be Krishna Himself because Prabhupada is, according to our philosophy, in direct communion with the Supreme Lord. So why couldn’t his friend, his best friend, Krishna, have told him that “someone is poisoning you”? This is a possibility. The other thing is that we do not find any other discussion prior to this on record where Prabhupada was talking to anyone about someone poisoning him. So all of a sudden out of the blue Prabhupada says, “A friend or some friends has said that I am being poisoned.”
[2003 Update: Subsequent digital forensic audio analysis of "the poison tapes" shows that there were in fact "friends" (some GBC leaders) speaking "background conversations" (some of the leaders were whispering) at least on some of these tapes. Professional forensic analysis confirms that some of these leaders were in fact discussing how they were poisoning Srila Prabhupada. So the "friends" whom Srila Prabhupada refers to above, discussing his being poisoned, they are apparently his own leaders. Indeed these leaders were in fact discussing poisoning him as audio forensics confirms, and he was apparently aware of their talking about poisoning him.
Some folks like GBC members or for example Yaduraja dasa of the "ISKCON Reform Movement" (IRM) have criticized Srila Prabhupada for his not speaking "more directly" about his poisoning.They are now very upset and angry that Srila Prabhupada's complaint has been confirmed by audio forensics experts, arsenic forensics experts, more and more testimony and so on. They complain that he was making "indirect" comments about his poisoning, so they can be discounted. Yet we think that there are good reasons for this. Perhaps his statements were intentionally "indirect" to see how some of his leaders would respond to the word "poison"; or so that the poisoners would not become too suspicious and simply kill him faster. This is what could easily have been the outcome. If there was a conspiracy of "friends" who were giving him poison, and if they thought he might expose them, then they might "finish off the job sooner." In other words, the GBC and Yaduraja types think that Srila Prabhupada should be forbidden from using: common sense? Even in ordinary criminal activity, when for example a person is hijacked or kidnapped, he may not always reveal his mind to the kidnappers? Yet some of the GBC and IRM leaders say that unless Srila Prabhupada reveals his mind to the people who may be poisoning him, he is guilty of the crime of speaking poorly, in their estimation? "Unless Jesus says, right now I am being crucified, he was not crucified"? This is how they attack the poison complaint of the pure devotee.
Some say that Srila Prabhupada's being "killed sooner" is what actually happened anyway for his exposing the poison issue. As soon as he complained he was being given poison, the poison was apparently increased, and so he departed from his body shortly thereafter. In other words, some of the critics of the method Srila Prabhupada handled this poison crisis are not to aware of how people who are being poisoned might respond to that situation. They may not come out and say directly, "I am being poisoned, by my leaders, the "yeh sab friends," and they want to kill me." If the victim is physically weakened, and isolated, and surrounded by apparent conspirators, the victim may speak in a more oblique manner. So we would argue that the fact that "the poison complaints" are a little oblique, and this fits with the idea that he could not trust the people around him, so he was being a little discrete and indirect. The GBC and IRM assume that Srila Prabhupada trusted Tamal and his coterie so he could speak "directly" to them -- and we do not.
Also, perhaps this complaint was "indirect" since there are other indications that he was trying to get out of the leader's grips and he did not want to alert them so they would halt his plan to escape. Srila Prabhupada kept saying over and over and over, get me out of this room, take me to Mayapura, take me on parikrama, get me out of here. So he wanted to escape, and yet the leaders were holding him back and keeping him in a small room. So he may have wanted to be more careful how he complained about his apparent poison since he was in a confined space and he was surrounded by a cadre of the conspirator "friends." Perhaps he was "indirect" since he knew he was going to leave his body soon anyway and so he wanted this conversation to be a little covered so that it would not cause too much alarm within his circle of attackers. If he had been "more direct" the conspirators may have destroyed these tapes and killed a few eye witnesses. Instead, by Srila Prabhupada's "indirect" method, the audio tape, and the story of his poison complaint, would eventually emerge, as has apparently occurred in fact.]
- Tamal Krishna: Who said that, Srila Prabhupada? (15-second pause)
[2003 Update: This shows that Tamal Krishna swami, one of the main suspects in the poison case, was aware that Srila Prabhupada was complaining of his being poisoned and Tamal later confirmed this in his diary, that Srila Prabhupada had complained he was being poisoned. Yet at the time, notice, all that Tamal really wanted to know was, "who" was telling him that he was being poisoned? Was one of the inner circle of poisoners betraying the others and telling Srila Prabhupada of their plot? Notice that Tamal is not very alarmed at the idea that Srila Prabhupada was in fact being poisoned and maybe killed by his saying, "Oh, Srila Prabhupada is thinking someone is giving him poison, so we have to analyze all of his food and medicines immediately. He should be tested for poison content in his body." There is just this rather casual comment, "Who is saying that"?
No such alarm was thus raised, no such alarm apparently even existed amongst the other leaders. Thus no suggestion was made by anyone to see if the complaint had merit. And if the complaint was valid, then it perhaps could be corrected, and perhaps the poison effect could be reversed. Notice that no such alarm bells were being rung by those who heard the complaint. Rather, all that Tamal wanted to know was: how did you come to understand that you were being poisoned? Thus the "alarm bells" seemed to be, not that Srila Prabhupada is being poisoned but: Is there a leak in our conspiracy? "Who" is saying that you are being poisoned? The crisis seems to be: How can we contain the leak that you are being poisoned? Adridharana dasa of Calcutta also originally told me (in 1997) he too was alarmed at the poison complaint in 1977, but he too did nothing to correct it or investigate it either. Later on Adridharana even tried to oppose Srila Prabhupada's statements by de facto saying: there never even was any poison complaint? So, there has been a mood of suppressing Srila Prabhupada and his complaint by those in posts of leadership, and in sum protecting the poison conspirators, but this is rapidly changing as the evidence piles up that there is a poison complaint and it is valid.]
- Srila Prabhupada: I do not know, but it is said. Mmmmm. (?) jyoti jnana. [The astrologer knows.]
So this little section is interesting because Prabhupada is being asked “who said that” and he says, “I do not know, but it is said.” So in other words, it’s a fact, it’s a fact. So “who” has said it, Prabhupada is somewhat reluctant to say perhaps here, but “It is said, it’s a fact, I am being poisoned.”
[2003 Update: If Tamal was one of those suspected by Srila Prabhupada in the poison plot, Prabhupada is not going to say, "I do know there is a conspiracy to poison me, and you Mr. Tamal, are part of it." So he rather diverts the issue by saying, "I do not know who is saying that 'I am being poisoned,' but it is being said by someone." He is being intentionally vague apparently to throw off the persons whom he suspects. Srila Prabhupada is just mildly pushing out the issue indirectly to see if there is some way to either get out of the situation or at least, to expose it. So "I do not know who says I am being poisoned, but it is said." This is also going to put Tamal on the defensive, "who" is saying this? He does not know? So that means Tamal has to maybe be careful, the story is perhaps getting out. So this was also a means for Srila Prabhupada to perhaps protect himself, "watch out, someone is talking about my being poisoned, maybe your party will be found out." This also could have been a defensive tactic on Srila Prabhupada's part.
Again this is also perhaps to test how Tamal and others will respond. Another thing is that the critics of Srila Prabhupada's poison case, such as the GBC, Adridharana, Yaduraja of the IRM et al., they have failed to identify who these "friends" are, those who are speaking of his poisoning, in all these years? Nor have they even tried to get their own forensics done, nor have they studied the whispers we have had analyzed according to their spokesman? They seem to want to make the impression that Srila Prabhupada was getting old, maybe his mind was slipping, maybe he was hearing voices? They simply say more or less that "no one" was talking about his poisoning, he was making it up, maybe he was mentally unsound, that is their sort of complaint against Srila Prabhupada. No, there are solid forensic evidences that the people in the room in Srila Prabhupada's presence were in fact discussing poisoning him, his so-called "friends." Again, as of this point, no counter audio forensics has been forwarded by the GBC or their IRM counterparts. Meanwhile several more audio labs have confirmed that the whispers of the conspirator "friends" do in fact exist. "It is said that I am being poisoned," and this was in fact being said. And this has been verified by audio forensics labs: it is being said that he is being poisoned by his leaders, his "friends."
Worse, the GBC and the IRM forwarded a false audio forensics "expert" to counteract us, but their "expert" has subsequently admitted in public that he has no audio forensic credentials. In sum the GBC and the IRM tried to bluff their way out of the poison complaint and they tried to paint Srila Prabhupada as incoherent, incompetent, and they tried make a huge joke and circus out of the poison complaint of Srila Prabhupada with their bogus counter forensics and other falsity. This has backfired on them badly. Worse, the GBC tried to start a web site to counteract the poison complaint and this was also subsequently endorsed by the IRM, and now that web site has disappeared, being discredited, and in addition the main leaders of that site's GBC are being sued for starting a mass homosexual pedophile molesting regime.]
- Then he says jyoti jnana. “The jyoti knows,” this is I think the way this would be translated. So in Prabhupada’s chart, his astrological chart or jyotish, it says “you will live for six more years.” This was read in August of 1977, his jyotish, just a few months before he left his body. In his chart it said, “You will live for six more years if you can live for the next six months. But watch out over the next six months, you will have some danger from juniors and subordinates, meaning the leaders, the people around you, they could be very dangerous.” So Prabhupada makes a reference here to the jyotish, and in the jyotish there’s a warning about his leaders being a potential cause of his death over the next six months.
[2003 Update: The Astrology chart of Srila Prabhupada indeed confirms that there is a warning about his life being cut short due to some dangerous activities from some of his "juniors and subordinates," his leaders. The chart says that he will live, but only essentially if "the subordinates" do not kill him. Many people have studied this statement in his chart, by today, and the consensus is that Srila Prabhupada is making a reference above to his astrology chart predicting "danger from juniors and subordinates," i.e. that he could essentially be murdered by his "juniors and subordinates." And so he says, "the chart knows" -- who is talking about poisoning me, since the chart says there will be danger -- of being murdered -- from your juniors and subordinates. So now we have the idea that some "friends" are talking about poisoning him, and his chart has a warning about a plot to end his life, something like poison being used by his juniors against him, by the same party of "friends."]
- Kaviraja: Yeh maharaj ji, ye kotha ap kaise bola aap ki… koi bola hai ki poison diya hai. Ye ap ko kuch abhas hua hai kya? [So, Maharaj, what is this that you said about someone telling you that you had been poisoned? Did you feel something?]
[2003 Update: The kaviraja was aware that Srila Prabhupada was saying that "someone" was saying he was being poisoned, so this means that the eyewitnesses understood that he was saying "someone says I am being poisoned." Again the GBC and IRM types have tried to say that he was complaining about his liver or something like that, but no, there was the idea that by malefic intent poison was being given.]
Srila Prabhupada: Nahin, aise koi bola je…debe-sa hi ja hota hai. Shayad koi kitab men likha hai. [No, some people say like this, that ...it is like that when it (poison) is given. Perhaps it is written in some book.]
[2003 Update: Srila Prabhupada says, (a) Some friends say I am being poisoned, (b) My chart say beware that my juniors may use something to kill me, and now he says (c) That he has the symptoms of a person who is being given poison. A number of Indian doctors (kavirajas) confirm that he appeared like a person who had the symptoms of being poisoned. So this is further confirmation, someone says I am being poisoned, my chart says beware of juniors may be plotting to kill me, and now, moreover, I have the symptoms of poisoning. Many experts subsequently agreed, he did have the symptoms of a person who was being given poison.]
- Kaviraja: Kai karanon se ho jata hai, kacce mercury se ho jata hai, ya aur koi bhi ciz aisha hai vaisha ho jata, lekin apke liye kaun karega ham to yahi samajhata hai. Aise devpurush ke liye koi manasi vicar karega, vo bhi rakshas hai.
[It could be for a number of reasons, because of raw mercury and there are other things which can have a similar effect. Who would do such a thing to you, I cannot understand. Anyone who could even consider doing such a thing to a divine personality like yourself is a rakshasa (demon).]
So this section is very significant. The word mercury is introduced. It is a poison, severe poison that is used or could be used to kill somebody. So mercury and also the word rakshasa, which means a demoniac individual. So if we connect these ideas together, the speaker, who I think is the kaviraja, the doctor, is saying that someone is giving him some poison like mercury and whoever is doing that is a demon, a rakshasa. So some people have said that this tape or this conversation means that Prabhupada was saying “my liver is bad” and “my liver is poisoning me” and so on. That is not at all what’s being said here. What is being said is that there are some demoniac forces here, some evil force at work. It is not some physiological thing, it is not an accidental thing. It is the work of a rakshasa or an individual who has made a design to try to eliminate the pure devotee of the Lord, Srila Prabhupada. And this demoniac person is maybe administering some metallic poison like mercury.
[2003 Update: So now we have, (a) Some friends say I am being poisoned (b) My astrology chart says beware that my juniors may use something to kill me (c) I have the symptoms of a person who is being given poison (d) The doctor says some "demon" may be giving him mercury. The metallic poison has turned out to be arsenic, which was found in excessive amounts in Srila Prabhupada's hair sample.]
- Tamal Krishna: Srila Prabhupada? You said before that you …that it is said that you were poisoned?
Srila Prabhupada: No. These kind of symptoms are seen when a man is poisoned, he said like that. Not that I am poisoned.
[2003 Update: This phrase, "not that I am poisoned," has been used by the GBC and their defenders like Adridharana, Yaduraja and the IRM to make it seem like this is all a contradiction: (1) He is saying he is being poisoned -- but (2) He is -- not -- saying that? They try to establish that Srila Prabhupada is crazy or confused? No, he is saying that he is being poisoned, and the doctor understands this and says a (rakshasa) demon is giving the poison, but again while speaking to Tamal, Srila Prabhupada back pedals because he does not want Tamal to know that he is aware that their party is giving him poison. The GBC and IRM cannot understand that one may not always talk openly to one's kidnapper or hijackers, so they rather try to say that Srila Prabhupada is speaking gibberish -- apparently to defend the poison plotters. They also say that you have to reveal your mind to your kidnappers or hijackers, so you will not be able to escape and you will be killed faster? They are the ones not making sense?
Notice that Srila Prabhupada already totally deflected Tamal's first question, "who is saying this," and now he is again deflecting Tamal's next question. Of course this begs the bigger question, if he has "the symptoms of a person being poisoned," why didn't Tamal try to have the situation analyzed and try to identify where the source of the poison was? Why does Srila Prabhupada have "the symptoms" of a person who is being poisoned anyway? Why was this not investigated? And since the doctor said that a demon was maybe administering the poison, this shows that "a person or persons" were being blamed for the poisoning. This was not investigated either? Notice that Srila Prabhupada did not correct the doctor and say, "no, you are wrong, no one is giving me poison," rather he lets that statement stand, and maybe there is a demon who is giving me poison, and maybe it is something like mercury. Only when the conversation flips back to Tamal does Srila Prabhupada try to downplay it, and that is because we think: he suspects Tamal.]
- Tamal Krishna: Did anyone tell you that, or you just know it from before?
Srila Prabhupada: I read something.
Tamal Krishna: Ah.
So this conversation is very significant. Srila Prabhupada is saying that he had the physiological characteristics of a person who is being given poison, and we have had an 82-year-old doctor, an expert in Ayurvedic physician medicine, a practicing doctor, who has given an analysis by looking at Prabhupada’s videos, seeing how he looked physiologically, and he said that Prabhupada had the physiological characteristics of a person who is being given poison from this doctor’s viewpoint. This doctor also pointed out that in India poison is a little more commonly used than in the West. In the West, of course, we use guns and knives and dispatch people as quickly as possible; but poison is also used in the West sometimes, especially when you’re trying to kill someone by subtle background means or you don’t want to make it conspicuous that you’re trying to get rid of someone. So poison is a more insidious form of trying to eliminate someone. So anyway, Prabhupada said, “I look like someone who is being poisoned.” And he says, “I read it somewhere also. Someone said that.” He doesn’t say who that someone is, but also he read it. In other words, Prabhupada was an expert in medicine and pharmaceutical products, he was a salesman for pharmaceutical products. So he read somewhere perhaps that if a person is being poisoned, this is how he would look or this is how his body would react. So either way, he read it himself or someone told him or he had an intuition or Krishna told him. Somehow or other he had the understanding that he looks like at least a person who had been given poison, and he had the physiological characteristics of a person who had been given poison.
- Tamal Krishna: I see. That’s why actually we cannot allow anyone else to cook for you.
Srila Prabhupada: That is good.
[2003 Update: So it is clear, "someone" may be giving him poison, and therefore they have to make sure no one suspicious is allowed to cook for him. It was thus clearly understood that "someone" was near or in his presence who could be giving him poison, and therefore precautions had to be made to try to halt that person or persons from having access to his food and medicine. The problem here is that the people who had access to his food and medicine are: the leaders. Notice also that Srila Prabhupada agrees, yes someone may be giving me poison, so we have to make sure no one else has access to the food that I am ingesting. Of interest, recent testimony is that one of Tamal's associates was seen pouring a liquid over Srila Prabhupada's food just before giving it to him.]
- Tamal Krishna: Jayapataka Maharaj was telling that one acharya, Sankaracharya, of the Sankaracharya line – this is a while ago – he was poisoned to death. Since that time, none of the acharyas or the gurus of the Sankaracharya line will ever take any food cooked except by their own men.
Srila Prabhupada: My Guru Maharaj (Srila Saraswati) also.
[2003 Update: Notice that some of the GBC leaders were in fact discussing the issue of poisoning of gurus?]
- So in this section we find that it is known that sometimes great saintly persons are attacked by someone trying to put poison into their food. Tamal Krishna points out that “We’ve been very liberal letting people cook for you, Srila Prabhupada,” and Prabhupada says this should be stopped. Of course, the mystery here is that no outside person was in fact cooking for Prabhupada at this time. His cooking was very tightly controlled by Tamal Krishna and Bhakticharu and a very small circle of people. So there were no outside people at this time cooking for Srila Prabhupada. A testimony we have recently from a devotee who now lives in the Bay area is that Prabhupada’s sister, Pisima – he called her Pisima, which I think means sister – he had requested her to cook for him because he told her that “I’m being poisoned, and I want you to buy the (uncooked food) bhoga at the market and cook for me.”
So in other words, the process of potentially poisoning someone through food is well known; and Tamal Krishna points out herein that this was used, this process of poisoning a guru was used in the Sankara Sampradaya, and then Prabhupada says, “My Guru Maharaj also.” So his Guru Maharaj, Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thakur, was said to have been poisoned. Srila Prabhupada mentions this in other conversations that his Guru Maharaj was being given injections. One of his disciples had made this arrangement with a doctor from Calcutta, and his Guru Maharaja objected to that. Prabhupada says, “My Guru Maharaj would have lived for many more years, but he was very disgusted with the way he was being treated.” So in 1936 his guru Srila Saraswati had repeatedly said, “I do not want doctors and I don’t want injections,” and this man, a so-called follower, arranged for these injections. So Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati left the planet untimely.
So you could say perhaps he was also murdered, and that’s what Prabhupada says here: “My Guru Maharaja also” was poisoned and/or given something that he should not have been given, and this caused him to leave his body untimely. Now, many devotees have at this point, inside the institution, they have questioned our analysis that the guru of the 1930′s, Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thakur, who was Prabhupada’s guru, that he had been poisoned; but here we have it very clearly. Prabhupada is saying, “My Guru Maharaja also” was given something just like these Sankaracharya guru lineage people. So it’s very clear, his Guru Maharaj was given injections which he objected to, he was poisoned. What’s very interesting here is that the person that Prabhupada says was responsible for giving these injections to Bhaktisiddhanta in the 1930′s was actually glorified by Tamal Krishna, their advisor Narayana Maharaja, and the rest of the GBC later on as an example of one of their gurus.
They said in 1990 that this man who Prabhupada credited with giving these injections to Bhaktisiddhanta, causing him to leave his body, was an example of Tamal Krishna’s idea of what a guru is. So this is very interesting. Why would Tamal Krishna glorify a person that Prabhupada had specifically said had caused the untimely death of his own guru, and why would the entire GBC print that statement? And why would Narayana Maharaja make this statement? Notice that Narayana Maharaja and Tamal were close friends just after Srila Prabhupada departed.
This was all printed in their 1990 ISKCON Journal. They said that this guru who Prabhupada credited with the untimely departure of Bhaktisiddhanta, “he’s an example of one of our gurus.” So it’s kind of a Freudian slip here, in my opinion. They glorify a person who actually, from all points of view, seems to have poisoned and killed his own Guru Maharaj. Why would they glorify this individual? So many questions are coming up here. Why would Tamal Krishna say “we shouldn’t give you outside food” when no outside food is being given here? The food is being very carefully dealt with by a very small crew of hand-selected people that Tamal Krishna had control over that were not outside people. So this was another perhaps Freudian slip, “Yes, we shouldn’t let outside people cook.” So who is the outsider? Who is that person who is outside of the confidence of Srila Prabhupada?
Hamsaduta: So we should meet and make a program for going around Vrndavana.
Srila Prabhupada: Yes.
Hamsaduta: You’d like to begin tomorrow morning?
Srila Prabhupada: Yes.
Jayapataka: In this part of India it’s very cold now for Your Divine Grace.
Srila Prabhupada: Underneath the tree it is not cold.
So this portion of the tape indicates that Srila Prabhupada was trying to get out of the room that he was in. He was not also happy being confined in a small room, which he said there was no air in there and he said, “Don’t keep me locked up in here.” So this was one of the indications, which was given many, many times by Srila Prabhupada, “Please take me out of this room,” and he wanted to go on a tour around Vrndavana on a parikrama. He wanted to go to Mayapur, he wanted to go to Calcutta, he wanted to go different places, basically indicating he wanted to get out of this room. And so one of the devotees is saying, “Well, it’s very cold outside right now for you, Srila Prabhupada.” And he said, “Well, underneath a tree it’s not cold.” So in other words, “Just get me out of here, please, and I’ll live under a tree and that will be better for me than staying here in this situation of being confined.” And also perhaps if he had gotten out and was living under a tree, he could have said, “Hey, I want someone else to be in charge of my food and medicine” and so on.
Tamal Krishna: You sound like you are very determined to go, Srila Prabhupada.
So this is the voice of Tamal Krishna Goswami kind of indicating in a supposedly questioning manner, “You sound like you’re very determined to go, Srila Prabhupada.” So in other words, yes, Prabhupada was very determined to go. So who was determined to stop him from going? That’s the question here, and why is Tamal saying, in other words, “You seem to be determined what you want to do, and we want to do something else.” There’s a sort of conflict here.
Jagadish: Can you tell us why you want to go on the parikrama?
Srila Prabhupada: (?)
Tamal Krishna: This seems like suicide, Srila Prabhupada, this program. It seems to some of us like it’s suicidal.
Srila Prabhupada: And this is also suicidal.
Tamal Krishna: Hmm. Prabhupada said, “And this is also suicide.” Now you have to choose which suicide.
Srila Prabhupada: The Ravana will kill and Rama will kill. Better to be killed by Rama. Eh? That Marichi, if he does not go to be misled Sita, he’ll be killed by Ravana. And if he goes to be killed by Rama, then it is better.
Tamal Krishna: So who is this Prabhupada’s talking about?
Devotees: Marichi.
So Marichi was a servant of Ravana, who is a famous demon, and Prabhupada is comparing himself herein to the position of Marichi. Marichi was requested to go and fool Sita so that Rama, who is an incarnation of God, would kill him. Marichi would be chased by Rama and be killed. So Marichi understood, “I’m going to be killed by Ravana if I stay here, and if I don’t follow his order I’ll be killed. If I go to Rama I’ll be killed also, but better to be killed by Rama, who is an incarnation of God.” So Prabhupada says, “Take me out on parikrama because then this will be Rama killing me instead of staying here and having Ravana kill me.” So who is the Ravana Prabhupada is referring to? He’s saying, “If I stay here, Ravana will kill me. It’s very clear that a demoniac type of force is at work here if I stay here.” That’s the implication. From another point of view, we could say let’s just forget totally about the poison issue here for one second. Let’s just say that Prabhupada was like Grandfather Bhisma, who wanted to go out and die gloriously in a battle. Bhisma wanted to die in a battle because he was a warrior and that was his nature. So Prabhupada wanted to die preaching because he was a preacher. So he said, “Please take me out on a parikrama and let me die in the mode of preaching.” So he should have been allowed to go on parikrama simply on that basis. Never mind who would kill him or not, that’s not the question here. The question is he is requesting, this is his final request, this is his last request: “Take me out, let me die in the battle. Let me die doing what I am doing, preaching. Don’t let me die locked up in this little room here, please.” So this is another major, you could say, misunderstanding that the leaders had at this time. They did not understand that Prabhupada was a great preacher and he wanted to die preaching. So even if there was no poisoning issue here (although there is), a separate issue is that his wishes were not being fulfilled. So if he is their master, their duty is to follow his wishes and they did not do so.
Kaviraja: (Hindi)
Bhakticharu: He said pathological point of view there is nothing wrong.
Kaviraja: General condition is now good.
Bhakticharu: His condition, the heartbeat is perfect…
Tamal Krishna: So what is wrong?
Bhakticharu: Blood pressure is perfect.
Tamal Krishna: It is a spiritual…
So this is an interesting section. The kaviraja is saying that the heartbeat is good, pulse is good, physiological condition is good. So what is wrong? What is possibly wrong with Srila Prabhupada? In other words, from ordinary circumstances he should be healthy, but he’s not. He’s very ill. What could possibly be the problem here? So Tamal Krishna comes up with this very strange explanation at this point: “It’s a spiritual thing.” Prabhupada, the spiritual master of the Hare Krishna Movement, Tamal’s master, has a spiritual problem. Yes, how can this be? How can a person who is fully Krishna conscious, 100 percent Krishna conscious, who wrote 70 books about Krishna consciousness, has put himself in the World Book of Records for writing more books than anybody in a short period of time in the history of writing, he’s the world’s most prolific author on spiritual topics and yet he’s having “a spiritual problem”? No. Tamal is having a problem. He’s having a problem understanding what’s going on here, the dynamic that’s going on here – either that, or perhaps he’s covering something up. “Oh, yeah, it’s a spiritual problem.” No, he’s being poisoned. This is not a spiritual problem. He doesn’t have a general health problem. So we’ll see later that Prabhupada says, “Even ten medicines couldn’t save me.” In other words, it’s not a medical problem, it’s not a spiritual problem. The problem is: someone is giving him poison.
Bhakticharu: …when the Saturn looks away from him and he…
Tamal Krishna: But what did Prabhupada just say?
Kaviraja: (Hindi)
Bhakticharu: No, when he said that pathological…
Kaviraja: (Hindi)
Bhakticharu: He said how can you define it, how can you explain it?
Tamal Krishna: What did Srila Prabhupada say?
Bhakticharu: Like the condition couldn’t have improved by ten medicines also, but with one medicine it become perfect.
Tamal Krishna: What did Prabhupada just say?
Bhakticharu: Prabhupada just said that, I mean, this morning his condition was bad, not now.
Bhavananda: But Prabhupada was complaining of mental distress this morning also.
Bhakticharu: Srila Prabhupada?
Srila Prabhupada: Hm?
Bhakticharu: Ota ki byapar hoyechilo, mental distress? [What was that all about, mental distress?]
Srila Prabhupada: Hm, hm.
Kaviraja: Boliye, boliye. [Go ahead, say it.]
Srila Prabhupada: Vohi baat hai, koi hamko poison diya. [Same thing, someone administered me poison.]
Bhakticharu: Oh, accha.
So it almost seems like the kaviraja, the doctor, is trying to pry out of Prabhupada, “What’s really wrong with you? Bole, bole, please tell us. You’re experiencing mental distress. We can’t really figure out what’s wrong with you from a physiological point of view, pathological point of view. But you’re mentally distressed, so you must know something about your condition that we don’t know. So what is that? Please tell us.”
So Prabhupada finally just says, “OK, I’m being poisoned. That’s the problem. That’s the cause of my mental distress.”
Srila Prabhupada: Vohi baat hai, koi hamko poison diya. [Same thing, someone administered me poison.]
Bhakticharu: Oh, accha. (?)
Bhavananda: Hm?
Kaviraja: Dekhiya bat ye hai, ki, ho sakta hai kisi rakshash ne diya ho. [Look, this is the thing, that maybe some rakshasa gave him poison.]
Bhakticharu: He’s saying that someone gave him poison.
[2003 Update: Rather oddly the GBC and their IRM advocates says that there is no reason for Srila Prabhupada to be experiencing mental distress, rather he is complaining about, nothing? Apart from everything else, most devotees say they are heartless for saying this. We think it is because they are likely in sympathy with the poisoner clique. "Our guru is experiencing mental distress from being poisoned, who cares" says the GBC and the IRM? We do not want our dear pals on the GBC to have any mental distress from being exposed in this plot? Jesus was crucified, who cares, we do not want Judas and Pontius Pilate to be implicated?]
POISON TAPE TRANSCRIPT AND ANALYSIS BY PURANJANA DASA
[This tape was originally narrated in 1997, some additional "updates" will be made at the present time, 2003. Thanks Puranjana dasa]
Note: Srila Prabhupada’s swollen hands and sun glasses, the effects of arsenic poisoning. The eyes become sensitive to light due to arsenic’s chemically reactive effect on the tissues and nerves of the eyes. The victim therefore may prefer a nearly darkened room because of Sensitivity of the eyes to sunlight or bright artificial light
Hello, Hare Krishna, my name is Puranjana dasa. I’m going to be narrating a tape which was originally made on November 8, 1977, and it contains the words of His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Srila Prabhupada, the founder of the Hare Krishna Movement. The tape where Prabhupada complains about being poisoned has in recent times become quite a controversy mainly because he made this complaint 20 years ago. It is now 1997, and for 20 years the tape where he complained about his being poisoned has not been available to the devotees of his movement and has not been available for sure to the general public.
So it has been, you could say, a hidden piece of information. In fact, at this point in time, I myself am the only person who is publicly distributing copies of this tape in the whole world. No one else is distributing this tape, especially not the official ISKCON organization, which is supposed to be Srila Prabhupada’s official organization. So this in itself has led many people to think something very suspicious happened in November of 1977 just from the simple fact this information has been hidden and suppressed as much as it has been. But it should be noted herein that some people did know that Prabhupada had complained he was being poisoned in 1977 - and that was a small group of devotees in Vrndavana (India) at the time who had heard his poison complaint, or some of them heard about the complaint.
For different reasons, some of these people did not come forward with the story. There was a lot of mood of suppressing this information, and some of the leaders who it was revealed to by persons in the vicinity, that Prabhupada had complained he was being poisoned, they just said, “Well, it’s not important because he doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” or “He’s an old man,” and so on and so forth. There was this mood that Prabhupada was not in a clear state of mind to make an analysis of his own condition. We do not think that that is the case, though, because he was translating a very complicated Vedic literature, the Srimad-Bhagavatam, a Sanskrit literature, and he was narrating the story of the brahma-vimohana-lila, which is a very actually intricate, complicated, philosophically complex story; he was narrating this story in November just very shortly before he departed. So how could he be narrating this very complicated literature and not be aware of his faculties? So we think he was very aware and that there was just some attempt to make it sound like Prabhupada was making some extreme off-the-wall comment which was not realistic and, therefore, it was covered up.
* [2003 Update: At this point it has been discovered that one of the main reasons "the innocent" people who were aware of the poison complaint in 1977 did not speak up was, they were afraid of retaliation by some of the ISKCON leaders who were apparently connected to the complaint. Fear. Others were in the room when the poison complaint was made, "the less innocent" so to speak, like Adridharana, Hansadutta and similar folks. They were aware of "the poison complaint" and they simply ignored it as meaningless and of no real consequence. They were in sum compromised with the hijacking conspirators.
They more or less tried to say that Srila Prabhupada was confused when he complained of being poisoned, to protect the poison sabha of hijackers. They certainly took no steps to investigate the complaint or help Srila Prabhupada get away from the situation. This made "the innocent" even more hesitant and fearful since they saw that others, like Adridharana, Hansadutta and similar other leaders, they were compromised with the persons generating the poison complaint, the core cadre conspirators who were feared.
These compromised leaders like Adridharana and Hansadutta and similar others have held this deviant view to the present day, that the poison complaint is not a very important matter. The crucifixion of Jesus is of no real consequence, it is a minor detail best to be ignored. They simply do not think that when a pure devotee or a guru says, "I have only one request, do not torture me and put me to death," as Srila Prabhupada said in November of 1977, that this is something they should show any meaningful concern over. These severe statements have no meaning to these types of leaders but many "innocent" devotees told me subsequently, that when they later on heard these statements as presented by us pada folks, after we began circulating these tapes in 1997, "it cracked their hearts." The innocent are mortified by such statements and the hijackers and their getaway car drivers don't seem to care.
Similarly, self - advertisied "Srila Prabhupada's successor," Narayana Maharaja vociferously fought against us and opposed our exposing the poison case, and he defended the hijackers as his idea of "gurus," although he has been worn down subsequently into submitting that we are correct. So many local people in Vrindavana agreed with us and he was looking rather foolish to be still defending the GBC. More telling is that when we launched the case, Adridharana and Hansadutta types said, let pada struggle with this alone, we will not help. So there is suppression, sometimes with violence added, and when the truth starts to come out, some of the people who know some of the facts prevaricate, drag their feet, make obstacles, do not cooperate, obfuscate, deny, outright lie, and so on. And this has helped the hijackers. This is also how the same Adridharana and Hansadutta types indirectly helped the mass molesting of children in ISKCON, the same policy was there, of assisting the policy of prevarication, obfuscation, harassing the exposers, and so on.
Thus, some of the other leaders who knew of the complaint in 1977 were already compromised with the GBC hijacker cadre. And thus they accepted the idea that the apparent poison conspirators were not wrong or evil, but they were pure and holy "Srila Prabhupada's trusted appointed successors." In short, some people trusted the words of the ISKCON hijacking conspirators, people like Tamal Krishna, a big GBC leader. And as a result they did not trust the words of Srila Prabhupada.
And after 1977 folks who were in the room when the poison complaint was uttered, like Adridharana and Hansadutta, they then supported the GBC's "homosexual guru regime" which has violently suppressed any expose of the truth whether it is over the molestation issue, or the poison issue, or any other crimes. So, there was fear by the innocent class, and suppression by the GBC class, and that suppression included violence and murders. This is how these issues were and are covered up. For example, the first thing that Adridharana and Hansadutta should have said in November of 1977 is, Srila Prabhupada said he is being poisoned, let us get a legal forensic investigation of his food remnants, his clothing, his utensils, all the items in his room, his medicines and so on, let them be studied for forensic evidence of poison. They simply did not believe Srila Prabhupada and they instead believed -- the hijackers.
For that matter, Adridharana still says that Srila Prabhuada's poison complaint is not important and he is still compromised with the poison party and he is still trying to suppress the poison case as he has all along. And he still harasses, insults and attacks people who try to expose the poison complaint. In fact, the GBC has said all along that us exposers are "demons," in order to get us beaten and killed, and Adridharana's spokesman has recently said that pada is a heinous "barking gargoyle," so in this way they try to paint anyone who sympathizes with the molested children, or Srila Prabhupada's poison complaint, as essentially "a demon." That way, they can get us banned, beaten, and in sum suppressed, or even killed -- as has occured. So this mood was already there in 1977, and the issue was suppressed despite that some innocent people knew about it and they wanted to speak, but they were afraid. And they had good reason to be afraid.
Actually in my own case I have been shunned, kicked out of ISKCON, banned, have received numerous death threats, have been chased down the street with aluminum baseball bats, have been assaulted, glared at, sweared at, cursed by hired voodoo witch doctors, have seen my friends beaten and killed, and so on and so forth. So we can speak from first hand experience of how the GBC suppresses people by fear. Of course it now appears that the poison plot was specifically done to get rid of the master, and make some of the "servant" leaders appear to be the "appointed" successors, since there is evidence that the 1978 "guru appointment" project was a total fraud. There never was any appointment of gurus, and so now it seems like the butler poisoned the master to take over the estate. And thus, some people did not speak up because they were already compromised with the poisoning butler's party. Even Judas had some advocates and supporters it seems. Meanwhile, some who suspected the butler, they were afraid he would kill them too if they spoke up.
Several important locals in Vrindavana later on said that they were suspicious of some malefic intent on the part of the ISKCON leaders towards Srila Prabhupada in 1977, but they too were afraid to speak up or demand any further investigation. As one of the local Vrindavana residents said, "if they would dare to poison someone like Srila Prabhupada, they would not hesitate to kill us." In short, "fear" was perhaps the main reason some of the people who knew of the complaint did not speak up early on. It is for this same reason that people are often afraid to "speak up" against other criminals and fearful political tyrants, and so on.
One of the Western devotee eyewitnesses in Vrindavana at the time told me he too was fearful, and this caused him to be silent. Yet at the present time, the year 2003, many people have subsequently come forward with testimony regarding the poison complaint since "the mood of fear" created by the deviant leaders has subsided dramatically. And more and more people are coming forward with helpful testimony all the time. Sincethe most "fear inducing leader" of the ISKCON GBC has died in a car crash, namely Tamal Krishna, this has encouraged more people to come forward with testimony regarding the poison case and other deviations of the ISKCON GBC including their orchestrating mass child molesting.]
- The other interesting thing is that Prabhupada narrated the main portion of the poison complaint in the Hindi language, although most of his followers at the time were Americans who only spoke English. So the message was sort of hidden, so to speak, within a different language; and I think it’s for this reason that this tape is still existing and it was not destroyed, because there are many other tapes that we are trying to gather together at this point in time and we’re finding that some of these important tapes, important conversations that were made, are now missing, they are not available from the official Archives and so on. So we believe that some of these tapes were hidden, lost, or destroyed by some of the so-called leaders of the Movement who had a motive to chop and change some of the information that Prabhupada had given.
* [2003 Update: As of this writing, confirming testimony has emerged that some of the (especially 1977) audio tape recordings were in fact intentionally hidden, permanently lost or destroyed. There are, for example, mysterious "gaps" in the audio tape archives.]
- Of course, we’ve written many different papers about how “the letters” and “the conversations” and many personal testimonies of devotees were hidden and suppressed by the deviant leaders, and in fact there were some murders of people who were trying to bring forward some information about what Prabhupada had wanted and intended. But we’re not going to get into that too much at this point. We’re going to just deal primarily now with the November 8th tape itself, some of the statements that are made there. Some of them are in Hindi, some of them are in Bengali, and some are in English. So we’re going to do our best. We’re not native speakers of Hindi or Bengali, or we’re not even speakers of these languages. However, we have had people listen to these tapes and give us what seems to be an approximation of what Prabhupada is saying in these languages. Plus we have played these tapes on the radio to thousands of people who have heard them and they have not challenged the assessment that we have made, which is that Prabhupada is saying that he is being poisoned. So it seems to be the consensus of people, especially Hindi native speakers, that Prabhupada is in fact complaining that he is being poisoned by someone, not poisoned because his kidneys are bad or something like that. He’s making a direct statement that an individual is responsible for his being poisoned. So without further ado, we’ll start with the first statement from November 8th, the first complaint about the poisoning.
Srila Prabhupada: Keu bole je poison kore diyeche…..hoy to tai. [Someone says that someone has poisoned me. Maybe it's true.]
Balaram Mishra(?): Hmm?
Kaviraja: Kya farma rahe hain? [What, may I ask, is your holiness saying?]
Srila Prabhupada: Koi bolta hai je mujhko koi poison diya hai. [Someone says that someone has given poison.]
Kaviraja: Kisko? [To whom?]
Srila Prabhupada: Mujhko. [To me.]
So this has been translated as “Someone is being given poison here,” and the man asks “To whom?” and Prabhupada says “mujhko,” which means “to me.”
Kaviraja: Kaun bolta hai? [Who is saying this?]
Srila Prabhupada: Ye sab friends. [All these friends.]
So the next little section is “Who says that you are being poisoned?”, and Prabhupada answers that “they are friends.” So “who” is this friend or friends who informed him that he is being poisoned? It could be anyone, of course. It could be Krishna Himself because Prabhupada is, according to our philosophy, in direct communion with the Supreme Lord. So why couldn’t his friend, his best friend, Krishna, have told him that “someone is poisoning you”? This is a possibility. The other thing is that we do not find any other discussion prior to this on record where Prabhupada was talking to anyone about someone poisoning him. So all of a sudden out of the blue Prabhupada says, “A friend or some friends has said that I am being poisoned.”
[2003 Update: Subsequent digital forensic audio analysis of "the poison tapes" shows that there were in fact "friends" (some GBC leaders) speaking "background conversations" (some of the leaders were whispering) at least on some of these tapes. Professional forensic analysis confirms that some of these leaders were in fact discussing how they were poisoning Srila Prabhupada. So the "friends" whom Srila Prabhupada refers to above, discussing his being poisoned, they are apparently his own leaders. Indeed these leaders were in fact discussing poisoning him as audio forensics confirms, and he was apparently aware of their talking about poisoning him.
Some folks like GBC members or for example Yaduraja dasa of the "ISKCON Reform Movement" (IRM) have criticized Srila Prabhupada for his not speaking "more directly" about his poisoning.They are now very upset and angry that Srila Prabhupada's complaint has been confirmed by audio forensics experts, arsenic forensics experts, more and more testimony and so on. They complain that he was making "indirect" comments about his poisoning, so they can be discounted. Yet we think that there are good reasons for this. Perhaps his statements were intentionally "indirect" to see how some of his leaders would respond to the word "poison"; or so that the poisoners would not become too suspicious and simply kill him faster. This is what could easily have been the outcome. If there was a conspiracy of "friends" who were giving him poison, and if they thought he might expose them, then they might "finish off the job sooner." In other words, the GBC and Yaduraja types think that Srila Prabhupada should be forbidden from using: common sense? Even in ordinary criminal activity, when for example a person is hijacked or kidnapped, he may not always reveal his mind to the kidnappers? Yet some of the GBC and IRM leaders say that unless Srila Prabhupada reveals his mind to the people who may be poisoning him, he is guilty of the crime of speaking poorly, in their estimation? "Unless Jesus says, right now I am being crucified, he was not crucified"? This is how they attack the poison complaint of the pure devotee.
Some say that Srila Prabhupada's being "killed sooner" is what actually happened anyway for his exposing the poison issue. As soon as he complained he was being given poison, the poison was apparently increased, and so he departed from his body shortly thereafter. In other words, some of the critics of the method Srila Prabhupada handled this poison crisis are not to aware of how people who are being poisoned might respond to that situation. They may not come out and say directly, "I am being poisoned, by my leaders, the "yeh sab friends," and they want to kill me." If the victim is physically weakened, and isolated, and surrounded by apparent conspirators, the victim may speak in a more oblique manner. So we would argue that the fact that "the poison complaints" are a little oblique, and this fits with the idea that he could not trust the people around him, so he was being a little discrete and indirect. The GBC and IRM assume that Srila Prabhupada trusted Tamal and his coterie so he could speak "directly" to them -- and we do not.
Also, perhaps this complaint was "indirect" since there are other indications that he was trying to get out of the leader's grips and he did not want to alert them so they would halt his plan to escape. Srila Prabhupada kept saying over and over and over, get me out of this room, take me to Mayapura, take me on parikrama, get me out of here. So he wanted to escape, and yet the leaders were holding him back and keeping him in a small room. So he may have wanted to be more careful how he complained about his apparent poison since he was in a confined space and he was surrounded by a cadre of the conspirator "friends." Perhaps he was "indirect" since he knew he was going to leave his body soon anyway and so he wanted this conversation to be a little covered so that it would not cause too much alarm within his circle of attackers. If he had been "more direct" the conspirators may have destroyed these tapes and killed a few eye witnesses. Instead, by Srila Prabhupada's "indirect" method, the audio tape, and the story of his poison complaint, would eventually emerge, as has apparently occurred in fact.]
- Tamal Krishna: Who said that, Srila Prabhupada? (15-second pause)
[2003 Update: This shows that Tamal Krishna swami, one of the main suspects in the poison case, was aware that Srila Prabhupada was complaining of his being poisoned and Tamal later confirmed this in his diary, that Srila Prabhupada had complained he was being poisoned. Yet at the time, notice, all that Tamal really wanted to know was, "who" was telling him that he was being poisoned? Was one of the inner circle of poisoners betraying the others and telling Srila Prabhupada of their plot? Notice that Tamal is not very alarmed at the idea that Srila Prabhupada was in fact being poisoned and maybe killed by his saying, "Oh, Srila Prabhupada is thinking someone is giving him poison, so we have to analyze all of his food and medicines immediately. He should be tested for poison content in his body." There is just this rather casual comment, "Who is saying that"?
No such alarm was thus raised, no such alarm apparently even existed amongst the other leaders. Thus no suggestion was made by anyone to see if the complaint had merit. And if the complaint was valid, then it perhaps could be corrected, and perhaps the poison effect could be reversed. Notice that no such alarm bells were being rung by those who heard the complaint. Rather, all that Tamal wanted to know was: how did you come to understand that you were being poisoned? Thus the "alarm bells" seemed to be, not that Srila Prabhupada is being poisoned but: Is there a leak in our conspiracy? "Who" is saying that you are being poisoned? The crisis seems to be: How can we contain the leak that you are being poisoned? Adridharana dasa of Calcutta also originally told me (in 1997) he too was alarmed at the poison complaint in 1977, but he too did nothing to correct it or investigate it either. Later on Adridharana even tried to oppose Srila Prabhupada's statements by de facto saying: there never even was any poison complaint? So, there has been a mood of suppressing Srila Prabhupada and his complaint by those in posts of leadership, and in sum protecting the poison conspirators, but this is rapidly changing as the evidence piles up that there is a poison complaint and it is valid.]
- Srila Prabhupada: I do not know, but it is said. Mmmmm. (?) jyoti jnana. [The astrologer knows.]
So this little section is interesting because Prabhupada is being asked “who said that” and he says, “I do not know, but it is said.” So in other words, it’s a fact, it’s a fact. So “who” has said it, Prabhupada is somewhat reluctant to say perhaps here, but “It is said, it’s a fact, I am being poisoned.”
[2003 Update: If Tamal was one of those suspected by Srila Prabhupada in the poison plot, Prabhupada is not going to say, "I do know there is a conspiracy to poison me, and you Mr. Tamal, are part of it." So he rather diverts the issue by saying, "I do not know who is saying that 'I am being poisoned,' but it is being said by someone." He is being intentionally vague apparently to throw off the persons whom he suspects. Srila Prabhupada is just mildly pushing out the issue indirectly to see if there is some way to either get out of the situation or at least, to expose it. So "I do not know who says I am being poisoned, but it is said." This is also going to put Tamal on the defensive, "who" is saying this? He does not know? So that means Tamal has to maybe be careful, the story is perhaps getting out. So this was also a means for Srila Prabhupada to perhaps protect himself, "watch out, someone is talking about my being poisoned, maybe your party will be found out." This also could have been a defensive tactic on Srila Prabhupada's part.
Again this is also perhaps to test how Tamal and others will respond. Another thing is that the critics of Srila Prabhupada's poison case, such as the GBC, Adridharana, Yaduraja of the IRM et al., they have failed to identify who these "friends" are, those who are speaking of his poisoning, in all these years? Nor have they even tried to get their own forensics done, nor have they studied the whispers we have had analyzed according to their spokesman? They seem to want to make the impression that Srila Prabhupada was getting old, maybe his mind was slipping, maybe he was hearing voices? They simply say more or less that "no one" was talking about his poisoning, he was making it up, maybe he was mentally unsound, that is their sort of complaint against Srila Prabhupada. No, there are solid forensic evidences that the people in the room in Srila Prabhupada's presence were in fact discussing poisoning him, his so-called "friends." Again, as of this point, no counter audio forensics has been forwarded by the GBC or their IRM counterparts. Meanwhile several more audio labs have confirmed that the whispers of the conspirator "friends" do in fact exist. "It is said that I am being poisoned," and this was in fact being said. And this has been verified by audio forensics labs: it is being said that he is being poisoned by his leaders, his "friends."
Worse, the GBC and the IRM forwarded a false audio forensics "expert" to counteract us, but their "expert" has subsequently admitted in public that he has no audio forensic credentials. In sum the GBC and the IRM tried to bluff their way out of the poison complaint and they tried to paint Srila Prabhupada as incoherent, incompetent, and they tried make a huge joke and circus out of the poison complaint of Srila Prabhupada with their bogus counter forensics and other falsity. This has backfired on them badly. Worse, the GBC tried to start a web site to counteract the poison complaint and this was also subsequently endorsed by the IRM, and now that web site has disappeared, being discredited, and in addition the main leaders of that site's GBC are being sued for starting a mass homosexual pedophile molesting regime.]
- Then he says jyoti jnana. “The jyoti knows,” this is I think the way this would be translated. So in Prabhupada’s chart, his astrological chart or jyotish, it says “you will live for six more years.” This was read in August of 1977, his jyotish, just a few months before he left his body. In his chart it said, “You will live for six more years if you can live for the next six months. But watch out over the next six months, you will have some danger from juniors and subordinates, meaning the leaders, the people around you, they could be very dangerous.” So Prabhupada makes a reference here to the jyotish, and in the jyotish there’s a warning about his leaders being a potential cause of his death over the next six months.
[2003 Update: The Astrology chart of Srila Prabhupada indeed confirms that there is a warning about his life being cut short due to some dangerous activities from some of his "juniors and subordinates," his leaders. The chart says that he will live, but only essentially if "the subordinates" do not kill him. Many people have studied this statement in his chart, by today, and the consensus is that Srila Prabhupada is making a reference above to his astrology chart predicting "danger from juniors and subordinates," i.e. that he could essentially be murdered by his "juniors and subordinates." And so he says, "the chart knows" -- who is talking about poisoning me, since the chart says there will be danger -- of being murdered -- from your juniors and subordinates. So now we have the idea that some "friends" are talking about poisoning him, and his chart has a warning about a plot to end his life, something like poison being used by his juniors against him, by the same party of "friends."]
- Kaviraja: Yeh maharaj ji, ye kotha ap kaise bola aap ki… koi bola hai ki poison diya hai. Ye ap ko kuch abhas hua hai kya? [So, Maharaj, what is this that you said about someone telling you that you had been poisoned? Did you feel something?]
[2003 Update: The kaviraja was aware that Srila Prabhupada was saying that "someone" was saying he was being poisoned, so this means that the eyewitnesses understood that he was saying "someone says I am being poisoned." Again the GBC and IRM types have tried to say that he was complaining about his liver or something like that, but no, there was the idea that by malefic intent poison was being given.]
Srila Prabhupada: Nahin, aise koi bola je…debe-sa hi ja hota hai. Shayad koi kitab men likha hai. [No, some people say like this, that ...it is like that when it (poison) is given. Perhaps it is written in some book.]
[2003 Update: Srila Prabhupada says, (a) Some friends say I am being poisoned, (b) My chart say beware that my juniors may use something to kill me, and now he says (c) That he has the symptoms of a person who is being given poison. A number of Indian doctors (kavirajas) confirm that he appeared like a person who had the symptoms of being poisoned. So this is further confirmation, someone says I am being poisoned, my chart says beware of juniors may be plotting to kill me, and now, moreover, I have the symptoms of poisoning. Many experts subsequently agreed, he did have the symptoms of a person who was being given poison.]
- Kaviraja: Kai karanon se ho jata hai, kacce mercury se ho jata hai, ya aur koi bhi ciz aisha hai vaisha ho jata, lekin apke liye kaun karega ham to yahi samajhata hai. Aise devpurush ke liye koi manasi vicar karega, vo bhi rakshas hai.
[It could be for a number of reasons, because of raw mercury and there are other things which can have a similar effect. Who would do such a thing to you, I cannot understand. Anyone who could even consider doing such a thing to a divine personality like yourself is a rakshasa (demon).]
So this section is very significant. The word mercury is introduced. It is a poison, severe poison that is used or could be used to kill somebody. So mercury and also the word rakshasa, which means a demoniac individual. So if we connect these ideas together, the speaker, who I think is the kaviraja, the doctor, is saying that someone is giving him some poison like mercury and whoever is doing that is a demon, a rakshasa. So some people have said that this tape or this conversation means that Prabhupada was saying “my liver is bad” and “my liver is poisoning me” and so on. That is not at all what’s being said here. What is being said is that there are some demoniac forces here, some evil force at work. It is not some physiological thing, it is not an accidental thing. It is the work of a rakshasa or an individual who has made a design to try to eliminate the pure devotee of the Lord, Srila Prabhupada. And this demoniac person is maybe administering some metallic poison like mercury.
[2003 Update: So now we have, (a) Some friends say I am being poisoned (b) My astrology chart says beware that my juniors may use something to kill me (c) I have the symptoms of a person who is being given poison (d) The doctor says some "demon" may be giving him mercury. The metallic poison has turned out to be arsenic, which was found in excessive amounts in Srila Prabhupada's hair sample.]
- Tamal Krishna: Srila Prabhupada? You said before that you …that it is said that you were poisoned?
Srila Prabhupada: No. These kind of symptoms are seen when a man is poisoned, he said like that. Not that I am poisoned.
[2003 Update: This phrase, "not that I am poisoned," has been used by the GBC and their defenders like Adridharana, Yaduraja and the IRM to make it seem like this is all a contradiction: (1) He is saying he is being poisoned -- but (2) He is -- not -- saying that? They try to establish that Srila Prabhupada is crazy or confused? No, he is saying that he is being poisoned, and the doctor understands this and says a (rakshasa) demon is giving the poison, but again while speaking to Tamal, Srila Prabhupada back pedals because he does not want Tamal to know that he is aware that their party is giving him poison. The GBC and IRM cannot understand that one may not always talk openly to one's kidnapper or hijackers, so they rather try to say that Srila Prabhupada is speaking gibberish -- apparently to defend the poison plotters. They also say that you have to reveal your mind to your kidnappers or hijackers, so you will not be able to escape and you will be killed faster? They are the ones not making sense?
Notice that Srila Prabhupada already totally deflected Tamal's first question, "who is saying this," and now he is again deflecting Tamal's next question. Of course this begs the bigger question, if he has "the symptoms of a person being poisoned," why didn't Tamal try to have the situation analyzed and try to identify where the source of the poison was? Why does Srila Prabhupada have "the symptoms" of a person who is being poisoned anyway? Why was this not investigated? And since the doctor said that a demon was maybe administering the poison, this shows that "a person or persons" were being blamed for the poisoning. This was not investigated either? Notice that Srila Prabhupada did not correct the doctor and say, "no, you are wrong, no one is giving me poison," rather he lets that statement stand, and maybe there is a demon who is giving me poison, and maybe it is something like mercury. Only when the conversation flips back to Tamal does Srila Prabhupada try to downplay it, and that is because we think: he suspects Tamal.]
- Tamal Krishna: Did anyone tell you that, or you just know it from before?
Srila Prabhupada: I read something.
Tamal Krishna: Ah.
So this conversation is very significant. Srila Prabhupada is saying that he had the physiological characteristics of a person who is being given poison, and we have had an 82-year-old doctor, an expert in Ayurvedic physician medicine, a practicing doctor, who has given an analysis by looking at Prabhupada’s videos, seeing how he looked physiologically, and he said that Prabhupada had the physiological characteristics of a person who is being given poison from this doctor’s viewpoint. This doctor also pointed out that in India poison is a little more commonly used than in the West. In the West, of course, we use guns and knives and dispatch people as quickly as possible; but poison is also used in the West sometimes, especially when you’re trying to kill someone by subtle background means or you don’t want to make it conspicuous that you’re trying to get rid of someone. So poison is a more insidious form of trying to eliminate someone. So anyway, Prabhupada said, “I look like someone who is being poisoned.” And he says, “I read it somewhere also. Someone said that.” He doesn’t say who that someone is, but also he read it. In other words, Prabhupada was an expert in medicine and pharmaceutical products, he was a salesman for pharmaceutical products. So he read somewhere perhaps that if a person is being poisoned, this is how he would look or this is how his body would react. So either way, he read it himself or someone told him or he had an intuition or Krishna told him. Somehow or other he had the understanding that he looks like at least a person who had been given poison, and he had the physiological characteristics of a person who had been given poison.
- Tamal Krishna: I see. That’s why actually we cannot allow anyone else to cook for you.
Srila Prabhupada: That is good.
[2003 Update: So it is clear, "someone" may be giving him poison, and therefore they have to make sure no one suspicious is allowed to cook for him. It was thus clearly understood that "someone" was near or in his presence who could be giving him poison, and therefore precautions had to be made to try to halt that person or persons from having access to his food and medicine. The problem here is that the people who had access to his food and medicine are: the leaders. Notice also that Srila Prabhupada agrees, yes someone may be giving me poison, so we have to make sure no one else has access to the food that I am ingesting. Of interest, recent testimony is that one of Tamal's associates was seen pouring a liquid over Srila Prabhupada's food just before giving it to him.]
- Tamal Krishna: Jayapataka Maharaj was telling that one acharya, Sankaracharya, of the Sankaracharya line – this is a while ago – he was poisoned to death. Since that time, none of the acharyas or the gurus of the Sankaracharya line will ever take any food cooked except by their own men.
Srila Prabhupada: My Guru Maharaj (Srila Saraswati) also.
[2003 Update: Notice that some of the GBC leaders were in fact discussing the issue of poisoning of gurus?]
- So in this section we find that it is known that sometimes great saintly persons are attacked by someone trying to put poison into their food. Tamal Krishna points out that “We’ve been very liberal letting people cook for you, Srila Prabhupada,” and Prabhupada says this should be stopped. Of course, the mystery here is that no outside person was in fact cooking for Prabhupada at this time. His cooking was very tightly controlled by Tamal Krishna and Bhakticharu and a very small circle of people. So there were no outside people at this time cooking for Srila Prabhupada. A testimony we have recently from a devotee who now lives in the Bay area is that Prabhupada’s sister, Pisima – he called her Pisima, which I think means sister – he had requested her to cook for him because he told her that “I’m being poisoned, and I want you to buy the (uncooked food) bhoga at the market and cook for me.”
So in other words, the process of potentially poisoning someone through food is well known; and Tamal Krishna points out herein that this was used, this process of poisoning a guru was used in the Sankara Sampradaya, and then Prabhupada says, “My Guru Maharaj also.” So his Guru Maharaj, Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thakur, was said to have been poisoned. Srila Prabhupada mentions this in other conversations that his Guru Maharaj was being given injections. One of his disciples had made this arrangement with a doctor from Calcutta, and his Guru Maharaja objected to that. Prabhupada says, “My Guru Maharaj would have lived for many more years, but he was very disgusted with the way he was being treated.” So in 1936 his guru Srila Saraswati had repeatedly said, “I do not want doctors and I don’t want injections,” and this man, a so-called follower, arranged for these injections. So Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati left the planet untimely.
So you could say perhaps he was also murdered, and that’s what Prabhupada says here: “My Guru Maharaja also” was poisoned and/or given something that he should not have been given, and this caused him to leave his body untimely. Now, many devotees have at this point, inside the institution, they have questioned our analysis that the guru of the 1930′s, Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thakur, who was Prabhupada’s guru, that he had been poisoned; but here we have it very clearly. Prabhupada is saying, “My Guru Maharaja also” was given something just like these Sankaracharya guru lineage people. So it’s very clear, his Guru Maharaj was given injections which he objected to, he was poisoned. What’s very interesting here is that the person that Prabhupada says was responsible for giving these injections to Bhaktisiddhanta in the 1930′s was actually glorified by Tamal Krishna, their advisor Narayana Maharaja, and the rest of the GBC later on as an example of one of their gurus.
They said in 1990 that this man who Prabhupada credited with giving these injections to Bhaktisiddhanta, causing him to leave his body, was an example of Tamal Krishna’s idea of what a guru is. So this is very interesting. Why would Tamal Krishna glorify a person that Prabhupada had specifically said had caused the untimely death of his own guru, and why would the entire GBC print that statement? And why would Narayana Maharaja make this statement? Notice that Narayana Maharaja and Tamal were close friends just after Srila Prabhupada departed.
This was all printed in their 1990 ISKCON Journal. They said that this guru who Prabhupada credited with the untimely departure of Bhaktisiddhanta, “he’s an example of one of our gurus.” So it’s kind of a Freudian slip here, in my opinion. They glorify a person who actually, from all points of view, seems to have poisoned and killed his own Guru Maharaj. Why would they glorify this individual? So many questions are coming up here. Why would Tamal Krishna say “we shouldn’t give you outside food” when no outside food is being given here? The food is being very carefully dealt with by a very small crew of hand-selected people that Tamal Krishna had control over that were not outside people. So this was another perhaps Freudian slip, “Yes, we shouldn’t let outside people cook.” So who is the outsider? Who is that person who is outside of the confidence of Srila Prabhupada?
Hamsaduta: So we should meet and make a program for going around Vrndavana.
Srila Prabhupada: Yes.
Hamsaduta: You’d like to begin tomorrow morning?
Srila Prabhupada: Yes.
Jayapataka: In this part of India it’s very cold now for Your Divine Grace.
Srila Prabhupada: Underneath the tree it is not cold.
So this portion of the tape indicates that Srila Prabhupada was trying to get out of the room that he was in. He was not also happy being confined in a small room, which he said there was no air in there and he said, “Don’t keep me locked up in here.” So this was one of the indications, which was given many, many times by Srila Prabhupada, “Please take me out of this room,” and he wanted to go on a tour around Vrndavana on a parikrama. He wanted to go to Mayapur, he wanted to go to Calcutta, he wanted to go different places, basically indicating he wanted to get out of this room. And so one of the devotees is saying, “Well, it’s very cold outside right now for you, Srila Prabhupada.” And he said, “Well, underneath a tree it’s not cold.” So in other words, “Just get me out of here, please, and I’ll live under a tree and that will be better for me than staying here in this situation of being confined.” And also perhaps if he had gotten out and was living under a tree, he could have said, “Hey, I want someone else to be in charge of my food and medicine” and so on.
Tamal Krishna: You sound like you are very determined to go, Srila Prabhupada.
So this is the voice of Tamal Krishna Goswami kind of indicating in a supposedly questioning manner, “You sound like you’re very determined to go, Srila Prabhupada.” So in other words, yes, Prabhupada was very determined to go. So who was determined to stop him from going? That’s the question here, and why is Tamal saying, in other words, “You seem to be determined what you want to do, and we want to do something else.” There’s a sort of conflict here.
Jagadish: Can you tell us why you want to go on the parikrama?
Srila Prabhupada: (?)
Tamal Krishna: This seems like suicide, Srila Prabhupada, this program. It seems to some of us like it’s suicidal.
Srila Prabhupada: And this is also suicidal.
Tamal Krishna: Hmm. Prabhupada said, “And this is also suicide.” Now you have to choose which suicide.
Srila Prabhupada: The Ravana will kill and Rama will kill. Better to be killed by Rama. Eh? That Marichi, if he does not go to be misled Sita, he’ll be killed by Ravana. And if he goes to be killed by Rama, then it is better.
Tamal Krishna: So who is this Prabhupada’s talking about?
Devotees: Marichi.
So Marichi was a servant of Ravana, who is a famous demon, and Prabhupada is comparing himself herein to the position of Marichi. Marichi was requested to go and fool Sita so that Rama, who is an incarnation of God, would kill him. Marichi would be chased by Rama and be killed. So Marichi understood, “I’m going to be killed by Ravana if I stay here, and if I don’t follow his order I’ll be killed. If I go to Rama I’ll be killed also, but better to be killed by Rama, who is an incarnation of God.” So Prabhupada says, “Take me out on parikrama because then this will be Rama killing me instead of staying here and having Ravana kill me.” So who is the Ravana Prabhupada is referring to? He’s saying, “If I stay here, Ravana will kill me. It’s very clear that a demoniac type of force is at work here if I stay here.” That’s the implication. From another point of view, we could say let’s just forget totally about the poison issue here for one second. Let’s just say that Prabhupada was like Grandfather Bhisma, who wanted to go out and die gloriously in a battle. Bhisma wanted to die in a battle because he was a warrior and that was his nature. So Prabhupada wanted to die preaching because he was a preacher. So he said, “Please take me out on a parikrama and let me die in the mode of preaching.” So he should have been allowed to go on parikrama simply on that basis. Never mind who would kill him or not, that’s not the question here. The question is he is requesting, this is his final request, this is his last request: “Take me out, let me die in the battle. Let me die doing what I am doing, preaching. Don’t let me die locked up in this little room here, please.” So this is another major, you could say, misunderstanding that the leaders had at this time. They did not understand that Prabhupada was a great preacher and he wanted to die preaching. So even if there was no poisoning issue here (although there is), a separate issue is that his wishes were not being fulfilled. So if he is their master, their duty is to follow his wishes and they did not do so.
Kaviraja: (Hindi)
Bhakticharu: He said pathological point of view there is nothing wrong.
Kaviraja: General condition is now good.
Bhakticharu: His condition, the heartbeat is perfect…
Tamal Krishna: So what is wrong?
Bhakticharu: Blood pressure is perfect.
Tamal Krishna: It is a spiritual…
So this is an interesting section. The kaviraja is saying that the heartbeat is good, pulse is good, physiological condition is good. So what is wrong? What is possibly wrong with Srila Prabhupada? In other words, from ordinary circumstances he should be healthy, but he’s not. He’s very ill. What could possibly be the problem here? So Tamal Krishna comes up with this very strange explanation at this point: “It’s a spiritual thing.” Prabhupada, the spiritual master of the Hare Krishna Movement, Tamal’s master, has a spiritual problem. Yes, how can this be? How can a person who is fully Krishna conscious, 100 percent Krishna conscious, who wrote 70 books about Krishna consciousness, has put himself in the World Book of Records for writing more books than anybody in a short period of time in the history of writing, he’s the world’s most prolific author on spiritual topics and yet he’s having “a spiritual problem”? No. Tamal is having a problem. He’s having a problem understanding what’s going on here, the dynamic that’s going on here – either that, or perhaps he’s covering something up. “Oh, yeah, it’s a spiritual problem.” No, he’s being poisoned. This is not a spiritual problem. He doesn’t have a general health problem. So we’ll see later that Prabhupada says, “Even ten medicines couldn’t save me.” In other words, it’s not a medical problem, it’s not a spiritual problem. The problem is: someone is giving him poison.
Bhakticharu: …when the Saturn looks away from him and he…
Tamal Krishna: But what did Prabhupada just say?
Kaviraja: (Hindi)
Bhakticharu: No, when he said that pathological…
Kaviraja: (Hindi)
Bhakticharu: He said how can you define it, how can you explain it?
Tamal Krishna: What did Srila Prabhupada say?
Bhakticharu: Like the condition couldn’t have improved by ten medicines also, but with one medicine it become perfect.
Tamal Krishna: What did Prabhupada just say?
Bhakticharu: Prabhupada just said that, I mean, this morning his condition was bad, not now.
Bhavananda: But Prabhupada was complaining of mental distress this morning also.
Bhakticharu: Srila Prabhupada?
Srila Prabhupada: Hm?
Bhakticharu: Ota ki byapar hoyechilo, mental distress? [What was that all about, mental distress?]
Srila Prabhupada: Hm, hm.
Kaviraja: Boliye, boliye. [Go ahead, say it.]
Srila Prabhupada: Vohi baat hai, koi hamko poison diya. [Same thing, someone administered me poison.]
Bhakticharu: Oh, accha.
So it almost seems like the kaviraja, the doctor, is trying to pry out of Prabhupada, “What’s really wrong with you? Bole, bole, please tell us. You’re experiencing mental distress. We can’t really figure out what’s wrong with you from a physiological point of view, pathological point of view. But you’re mentally distressed, so you must know something about your condition that we don’t know. So what is that? Please tell us.”
So Prabhupada finally just says, “OK, I’m being poisoned. That’s the problem. That’s the cause of my mental distress.”
Srila Prabhupada: Vohi baat hai, koi hamko poison diya. [Same thing, someone administered me poison.]
Bhakticharu: Oh, accha. (?)
Bhavananda: Hm?
Kaviraja: Dekhiya bat ye hai, ki, ho sakta hai kisi rakshash ne diya ho. [Look, this is the thing, that maybe some rakshasa gave him poison.]
Bhakticharu: He’s saying that someone gave him poison.
[2003 Update: Rather oddly the GBC and their IRM advocates says that there is no reason for Srila Prabhupada to be experiencing mental distress, rather he is complaining about, nothing? Apart from everything else, most devotees say they are heartless for saying this. We think it is because they are likely in sympathy with the poisoner clique. "Our guru is experiencing mental distress from being poisoned, who cares" says the GBC and the IRM? We do not want our dear pals on the GBC to have any mental distress from being exposed in this plot? Jesus was crucified, who cares, we do not want Judas and Pontius Pilate to be implicated?]
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