MA: Puri Maharaja left sannyas to get married. He was a sannyasi for a brief period of time. From an objective viewpoint SBSST was a revolutionary innovator in Gaudiya Vaisnavism. Ultimately we accept Srila B V Swami Prabhupada based on faith or Sraddha. If we accept him then how can we not accept our Param guru? If you are in another line, each to his own. The cessation of siddha and guru pranali took place in other parallel lines as early as the 18th century.
TD: Ouch!! That's extreme! You love extreme!!
MA: The cessation? who's saying that? There are still pranalis about ... tho not in our faces so much.
TA: Shit happens ... all over town actually ... if Daddy hadn't kicked him out he wouldn't have gone rogue and started the GM, and then where would we be eh??
Gauranga's non-sectarian sankirtan movement casts a wide net!!!
GG: I thought that sanga was so much more advanced! Don't really sound any different than the other Vaishnava groups.
[PADA: GG worships Satsvarupa, another rogue guru who likes to have affairs with followers.]
TD Don't let old envy creep in there GG ...
GG: Its just a practical comparison. We were told by recruiters that with initiation by sad guru and with higher education we were making the only reasonable choice given the substandard gurus existing in other groups
[PADA: Yes, how can ISKCON attack substandard gurus in other groups, when they are spawning their own substandard gurus?]
TD: Every institution has institutional problems.. I don't have many illusions about that ... it's the words of guru that are important ... and that's a personal thing.
[PADA: Yes, the actual guru says we should never worship substandard people as gurus, and yet Sridhara Maharaja / Narayan Maharaja endorsed the substandard as gurus anyway.]
MA: >>>Every institution has institutional problems<<<
All of us, all conditioned jiva souls, have turned away from Krishna, towards Maha Maya for almost unlimited births.
[PADA: But you just said we did not fall from being with Krishna? And yes, the problem of institutional gurus is, the whole idea is bogus from square one. We have to worship the bona fide guru and not the rubber stamped conditioned soul institutional and ecclesiastic gurus.]
TA: The problem isn't so much that we have attraction for non Krishna, but that we have little attraction for Krsna. That attraction is the key and if you find a drop somewhere, then sell your assets and buy buy buy!!!
KP: Sannyas in Kali yuga is mostly an abomination.
PA: Well stated. Every father, every mother, every single person in society should be concerned about such a sexual predator and certainly not glorify such a hypocrite as a saint, despite what wonderful service he may have done.
Those young women he raped will still be traumatised and their devotional development no doubt disturbed.
It is shocking that some devotees can overlook the immense suffering of the victims of abuse and prop up the myth that an unrepentant molester is worthy of ongoing glorification. My heart goes out to the victims and their families. They have a long path ahead of them for healing.
[PADA: Yes, allowing deviants to pose as gurus victimizes others, and often causes the victims to lose faith in the whole process. As this problem was unfolding, some of the other Narayan Maharaja leaders were complaining that they could not confront Tirtha Maharaja -- because his followers would get violent. So that means they are spawning bogus guru cults, which are victimizing others, including evidently minors and / or young adults. So the other leaders were powerless to fix this, because they had already empowered this deviant to the post of guru. They created their own Frankenstein monsters, and could not later on reign them in.]
JH: Tirtha Maharaja never raped anyone.
[PADA: OK here we go, its not really a big problem, its just a little problem.]
PA: The evidence from victims is that he digitally raped them . You may choose not to believe the testimony of the victims. That is your choice. By so doing you invalidate their traumatic experience and cause them more suffering. I am the victim of rape myself and I can tell you that those who chose not to believe me and instead sided with the perpetrator, caused me untold emotional damage.
I have also worked extensively with victims of sexual assault who were disbelieved, called liars and dismissed by those who couldn't face the TRUTH about the true nature of someone they had been regarding as a pure devotee / guru / Acarya. It's painful to face the truth. But it needs to be done if we are on the path of spiritual realisation.
JH: You should shut up ... it was one incident and doesn't wipe out his goodness. You raped a girl and people allowed you back in the community with all your mental problems. No wonder why you suffer.
[PADA: OK wait a minute? The guru is a sexual predator, and that is like a rank and file being a sexual predator? Nope. Its like when a criminal artificially becomes a policeman and robs and kills people. He is way worse because he is using his position of authority to exploit others.
These folks never seem to recognize that the guru is supposed to be God's representative, so what he is doing has a huge impact on the victims. There is no comparison between and ordinary rank and file criminal and someone claiming to be God's successor acting as a criminal. And that is ALSO why these false gurus go to the most obnoxious regions, way worse than the rank and file ordinary man, because these false guru's crimes are way worse.]
PA: It was NOT one incident. He admitted to more than one. Maybe you should read all the links before making further comments. And there is a lot more that has not been posted in this particular link.
AS: JH, so you mean to say, raping is fine if you say sorry? I just shudder to think what would you say if YOU were at the receiving end. Even if it is one incident, that does not absolve one from the deserved punishment.
[PADA: Yep, now we are counting victims. Well yep, he is the sum total of the demigods pure devotee, except when he was only deviating just once. Or twice. OK maybe more than that? Its not about counting deviations, a pure devotee is not deviating. Sulochana used to say, "they are arguing about how many dog's stools are in the sweet rice. Well jeepers there is only one dog's stool in the sweet rice. OK that is one too many."]
PA: Yes, what about her daughter, or her sister, or others who are affected?
AS: I just can't think about that. How one can be so insensitive.
[PADA: Same things happened to us in 1997. We said there is a problem of the victims committing suicide and the GBC ilk and / or their staunch allies like Sanat / Mukunda / Prahlad (Paul Coats UK) / Dayalu Nitai's HKC Jaipur types of people said, "well jeepers prabhu only a few of our victims are dying every few months, its nothing to get upset about"?
Yep, they are counting their dead victims as "not too many." Well sure, we can continue to sell our bug killing chemical, its only killing a few children once in awhile. Jeepers, thanks a lot! Its what some police friends told me, it seems there is a policy to save the perps, and destroy the victims.
These GBC clone folks are mainly upset that we are asking them ... where did you guys get all this children's blood on your iron clad jack boots? That is their biggest problem, there is children's blood on their giant child stomping jack boots, and we are exposing them. That is why they wanted to get PADA removed from the internet, so they could stomp all the more children down without any accountability.]
PA: It truly is heartbreaking how many devotees appear to completely lack empathy for the abused and suffering innocent victims of known sexual predators. They close their ears, their eyes and their hearts. May they be illuminated with truth.
[PADA: Yep, so many devotees were aware of the overall policy of banning, beating, molesting, contrived lawsuits, and even assassinations, and almost none of them would ever report any of this to the police. The policy has been to save the perps, and toss the victims under the bus -- or what? An ordinary observer would maybe say this is a heartless and cruel bogus cult, as various observers have told me.]
JH: I don't lack empathy ... I question the stories.
[PADA: What is there to question? Narayan Maharaja was a huge supporter of the GBC's bogus gurus, and he was thus enabling their program of banning, beating, molesting, suing and killing Vaishnavas. Then he appointed his own wave of bogus gurus, and various problems started going on with that wave.]
JH: But nothing surprises me since Srila Gurudeva left.
[PADA: Narayan Maharaja was already supporting the GBC guru program while he was here ...]
PA: That indicates you lack empathy. Sorry if you find my assessment brutal and unpalatable. The 2 teenage girls mentioned by GJ stated they had been digitally raped. At first the Swami denied it. Then he ADMITTED it and wrote apologies to the girls and their families. After all this, you are saying you are questioning their stories??.? I repeat, please read all the links here on this thread at the very least.
JH: Well I'm so sad if this is true ... so many falldowns since gurudeva left.
[PADA: Wrong, your gurudeva was already promoting falling down guru programs while he was here. This is not all of a sudden dropping out of the sky now.]
PA: JH -- it is very understandable that you feel sad about all this. The Narayana Maharaja sangham is not my sangham, although I did have his association and found him a very saintly person who was really trying to help shell - shocked ISKCON devotees. This was over 20 years ago. I also have some dear friends who are disciples of Narayana Maharaja.
After my own initiating guru, Srila Prabhupada, disappeared in 1977, we were also distraught at all the fall downs of sanyasis, some of who had taken onl the role of Acarya. It took a long time for things to settle. In fact, although I am no longer associated with ISKCON, I know that things have still not settled.
MK: I have kept out of groups for years so didn't really know. I got to know him years ago and he was my friend and I developed a bond with him and had great memories of him showing love and kindness, so I was saddened to hear of his passing as a personal friend of mine who touched my heart, not vagina nor any of my kids when he came to my house over 10 years ago. Anyway, shame if it's true, hope it's not. As I said, for other reasons I stopped attending group functions and having much to do with groups, so wasn't really aware.
TD: I see he was well liked in the sanga, so my comments are my own experience...
MK: Well as you can see, if you read my whole comment, I haven't had much to do with sanga's, spiritual groups etc etc for a while. I keep out of it, so I hadn't heard. Now I will swear at you, so apologies in advance! That is what these f***ing groups have become to me! A bunch of hypocrites, congregating and being up themselves, thinking they're superior than everyone else on the f***ing planet and then when someone does something wrong, half stand up for them and the other half condemn them and then there's a war on!
Or, there's a member of the group who isn't totally living up to what everyone expects and they're looked down on and gossiped about, or some up themselves person f***s another person's husband or wife. On and on and on and on, give me a f***ing break! Worse than the Bold and the beautiful! Cause they're supposed to be spiritual! Give me a glass of champagne and some nice music to listen to, a lovely day in my garden and some good times with my kids and pets. Much better imo. Sorry. Just being brutally honest! I chant when I feel like it.
[PADA: Yup, the consensus of many. They voted with their feet to leave the whole mess behind.]
MK: I mean, they're not all like that but enough are -- to keep me away.
TD: I got alienated from this Narayan Maharaja sanga years ago ... i didn't quite fit in ... I was all into Gurudevs teachings for sure, but it seems no one much likes to discuss philosophy. Just guru, guru, guru all the time ... I'm just not into that. It gets culty. Guru is in his message ... It's the shiksha that is key ...
MK: Yeah I've been in both groups and saw this stuff. Then you get the, our Guru is better and more bona fide than your Guru stuff.
TD: Not too worry! At one time Bhaktipada was the only bonafide acarya anywhere!
PA: To hear of the ongoing sexual assaults of this man, even after his so-called apology, is understandably distressing for those who felt affection and gratitude towards him. I've seen devotees recovering from this kind of dreadful betrayal for decades. From Bhavananda, to Prabhavisnu and so many others. Recovery is possible. Professional counselling can be of great benefit.
TD: Denial works pretty good too eh!
PA: Denial does not work for long. Those who choose to stay in denial inevitably become that special brand of lunatic - blind to Truth and embracing illusion despite all evidence. Just plain nuts.
LL: This is sooooo sick.
WS: It was a pastime to show us -- although at bhava stage fall down may occur it is exceedingly rare.
BS: Abstinence from sex as a moral virtue / spiritual credential, might not actually make much sense. Never mind that everybody has been thinking it does for a long time ... how many other things can you think of that are clearly total nonsense that also have "a long and venerated" tradition behind them?
[PADA: OK pilgrims, false guru programs just don't work. Its what Srila Prabhupada told us three thousand times every month for years on end. It causes problems, scandals, loss of faith, and a break down of the mission.
Never mind distraught, traumatized victims, who are sometimes suicidal and are often just plain dysfunctional people whose lives have been ruined. We need to get back to the basic process of worship of the bona fide acharya, Srila Prabhupada. Then all of these false guru outcroppings would not have occurred in the first place. ys pd]