Devotee's "Cognitive Dissonance" Over Facts. (Anuttama Devi Dasi)

Anuttama Devi Dasi

The psychological reason that many devotees are unable to believe that Srila Prabhupada was poisoned:

It is impossible to have two contradictory beliefs without experiencing extreme emotional discomfort. When a person is confronted with facts that contradict a firmly held belief, he / she experience what psychologists call "cognitive dissonance." That term describes the dissonance that occurs in a person's subconsciousness that makes him uneasy until he is able to resolve the matter by either: changing his beliefs, changing the value of the contradictory belief, getting new information that enables him to disallow the contradictory information or actually forgetting the contradictory information.

Here is an hypothetical example of cognitive dissonance: Sally, a mother of three, who works at REI has a Labrador Retriever who she considers to be a member of the family. Sally sees herself to be kind, generous, merciful and loving and that self-concept is reinforced by her friends and family who all agree that Sally would risk her life to save a kitten. She volunteers and the local animal shelter and helps with fund-raisers. At a fund-raiser, another volunteer showed a video with graphic pictures and film footage of the industry standard for chickens who are raised for meat. 

Four birds occupy a twelve inch square cage and their beaks are cut off so that they won't peck each other to death because of the stress of their crowded conditions. Sally was horrified after seeing the footage and vowed never to eat meat again. 

Sally was unprepared for the resistance she encountered with her lifestyle change of being a vegetarian. Her husband, a doctor, expressed doubt that she'd get enough protein and the kids complained about the new menu so much that Sally agreed to fix the regular meals for the family, while maintaining a meat-free diet herself. At work, her co-workers made snarky comments about her new diet and even at the animal shelter, one co-volunteer, Lisa, a well-respected lawyer, explained that meat animals are raised for that purpose, so it is alright to eat them.

About a week after becoming a vegetarian, after making her family's favorite meal of fried chicken, she was unable to resist the temptation of having just a small portion. She decided that for her, it made sense to only eat meat sparingly, as she didn't see herself as a fanatical animal-rights advocate. After her week long stint of being a vegetarian, Sally rarely thought about the conditions that the animals she consumed had to endure.

The hypothetical story above is an example of someone dealing with the cognitive dissonance that comes from getting information that contradicts a belief. Many devotees experience a similar psychological phenomenon when they are presented with the irrefutable facts that Srila Prabhupada was poisoned. Even hearing an audio tape of Srila Prabhupada saying he believes he is being poisoned along with rock solid forensic evidence proving this to be the case is insufficient for many devotees to even consider the possibility that poisoning could have occurred.

For many devotees, the belief that their senior godbrothers are advanced devotees who only desire to serve their spiritual master and Krsna is a stronger belief than even Srila Prabhupada's words to the contrary. Of course it is easy for them to maintain that belief because the belief is shared by the other devotees. It is human nature to want to "fit in" by sharing beliefs that are common to others in their society. People do not want to be outcasts and will go to bizarre lengths to fit in with the group.

Solomon Asch did a conformity study in 1958 in which a volunteer was shown a vertical line and asked which line, out of 3 possibilities was of the same length
Unknown to the volunteer, the seven other participants, who he thinks are also volunteers, are actually actors who all have been told to pick the same incorrect answer. The actors all give the same incorrect answer, but although the correct answer is obvious, invariably the volunteer will give the same incorrect answer as the actors.

Similarly when a devotee is presented with rock solid facts proving that Srila Prabhupada was poisoned, he will invariably claim to believe what the other devotees believe. And then he will convince himself either that: the truth is false or that the truth is unimportant. Then he will make every effort to forget this subject and avoid getting into situations where the facts are presented in order to dispel the cognitive dissonance he is feeling. 

Or he may even search out new information that supports the majority opinion that the poisoning could not have occurred, even if that new information is flimsy and unable to bear scrutiny, such as Mayesvara's Poison Antidote presentation.

As devotees we should not fall prey to this mechanism of the Illusory Energy that allows us to minimize, disbelieve or forget important spiritual information. Maya's job is to cover the soul's ability to see the truth, that we are pure spirit souls who are eternally Krsna's servants. Allowing Maya to cover the truth that Krsna's pure servant was attacked by demons in the guise of devotees will not help anyone advance in Krsna consciousness. 

Believing that the poisoning is irrelevant because it happened 40 years ago is just another of Maya's ploys to keep us in illusion.

Devotees are attacked by demons throughout the books given to us by Srila Prabhupada. And devotees apparently are inconvenienced and suffer from those attacks. Haridas Thakur was beaten almost to death, Prahlada was trampled by elephants and thrown off cliffs, and the Pandavas endured so many difficulties. And all of these devotees also eventually, because they had taken birth, also died. Srila Prabhupada had taken birth, so it was inevitable that he would also leave his material body at some point. 

The fact that the poisoning coincided with his magnificent passing gives us valuable lessons on many different levels. An important lesson is that we need to be able to see the truth through the illusion.

[PADA: Mayesvara and ilk are still saying "PADA is a liar." And that is what these same ilk people said when we were raising the alarm over the child molesting issue. So they called us alarm bell ringers "liars," and the result is -- then the ISKCON society had to be sued for $400,000,000 to expose and blow the lid off the molesting webs and nests infrastructure. In other words, the regime's folks have been the liars and not us alarm bell ringers. 

In other words, calling us liars costs ISKCON a $400M lawsuit. And now instead of saying, "wow it was a big mistake for our team to call the alarm bell ringers liars," causing our society to be sued, they seem to be proud they called us liars and caused the society to be sued and declared bankrupted? 

And then Mayesvara makes a video with Amarendra, the star legal defender of the molester guru regime when it was sued for the molesting. And that upsets some of the victims asking us, "why is Mayesvara STILL working with the legal team that defended the molester guru regime"? So it is all cognitive dissonance, or really flat out denial of facts. And the same thing applies to the poison issue and so many other issues in and around ISKCON. 

Anyway, this is a good analysis. Cognitive dissonance, denial, and in sum, support for illusion and ignorance. "Ignorance" means in part to "ignore" and / or to ignore the truth, and that has been going on in spades here on a wide spectrum of issues. ys pd]