Ex-Gurukuli's Assessment of ISKCON

PADA: An ex-kuli was talking to me the other day and this is some of our conversation and observations:

*** Hare Krishna was supposed to uplift people, but he does not see that hardly happening. Many of the devotees are fried, struggling, depressed, and overall angry at the situation. Many of them cannot get health care and other essential needs -- especially now that they are elderly. A few elite people grabbed the assets and made fancy lives for themselves, while almost no one else gets this "assets and money use" benefits package. 

It looks more like a criminal money and asset grab for a few elites -- and not a bona fide religion, and therefore more people suffered than benefited. People who gave their youth to serve the society ended up older and with no income or material situation. And that situation is currently getting worse and not better as more of the victims become elderly.

*** Some of the devotees tried to address the problems (like PADA) but hardly anyone joined that effort. Most people just went along so they could ride the coat tails of the exploiters and get a few table scraps from the elites. In other words, the majority compromised with the exploiters. 

*** Same reason there was a reported up to 2,000 child abuse cases, with almost zero percent being reported to the police. The MAFIA code of silence pervades the society, even when that places the society's children at risk.

And even the -- going along to get along crowd -- to keep some position and benefits -- did not last long. Most of them had to leave eventually anyway, and then they got -- zero benefits. A lot of them ended up at the mercy of public welfare funds, food stamps, public housing, other government hand outs, or really poor paying jobs at Walmart etc. 

*** One kid was telling me how happy he was to finally get a job at Mc Donalds Hamburgers when I was in Los Angeles. There was no place for this kid in the society. One kid we both knew committed suicide under a freeway overpass here, leaving behind a note "there is no place for me in my religion." Overall this kuli said most other kulis are really burnt out on the Krishna religion and they are struggling because they did not get the support and education they needed to compete in the material world. 

*** And some of the victims, both seniors and ex-kuli children, ended up homeless or worse -- because they were not clever enough or organized enough to plug into the government programs. Many ended up more dependent on the government for social welfare handouts than ISKCON, after complaining for years about "the low class karmis" -- then they had to run to the "karmis" for help. 

And if it was not for the mercy of "the karmis" they would not have been able to even survive. Yet many of them are still proud they are not "the karmis" because they are arrogant. Neither did they really try to expose that this is a exploiting situation, so others kept falling into the same pit. Hence a number of ex-book distributors from the 1980s are now in bad shape, living in poor conditions or on government hand outs etc. because no one warned them the process was in a state of collapse.

*** Meanwhile almost all of his other kuli friends are avoiding ISKCON like the Bubonic plague. They do not want to participate nor do they want their family members to either. That is because they think ISKCON is often full of dangerous goondas who worship idiots as their acharyas, or they are sentimental people with no discrimination, or they are just certified nutty people who are allowed to stay since no one else will.  

*** At the same time we discussed how so many "senior Prabhupada devotees" are currently dying off, and yet almost none of them makes a death bed confession that they were wrong to go along with the bogus gurus process. They take their secret to the grave, except it is not that much a secret to the rest of the world. The rest of the world pretty much knows these gurus are frauds and stinkers. So they won't even try to rectify the mess, the mess their compromising helped along, even when they are checking out of their bodies. 

Anyway, he is an intelligent person who can see all this, and he thinks it is odd indeed that others, especially seniors, elders and leaders, cannot see any of this. He said this is a clear case of -- blind leading the blind. At the same time he believes in the poison complaint from Srila Prabhupada, thus he thinks this is the real root problem, and -- it is.  

ys pd 

angel108b@yahoo.com

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M DASA: Some imagine their spiritual movement as their sole and only path to salvation, hence causing some of its members to hit a brick wall when they eventually realize -- not all is well or what it seems. Some realize that a lot of stuff is pure fantasy and hype. 

When they finally come to terms with so many things that are seemingly contradictory, feelings of guilt and shame arise -- shame that they would never question their own institution which supposedly offers them the road to enlightenment -- and they are so heavily invested in it -- even when the real world sees and even reports their problems in the media. 

Sometimes they experience fear and anxiety and want to shrug this inner condition off. This in turn prevents them from confronting even the basic concerns never mind challenging the more major ones. 

This may lead to a form of cognitive dissonance, believing their holy and wonderful institution represents the absolute reality they are looking for. It may take a person's faith to be broken or damaged before they can comfortably come to terms with the reality. However painful this may seem, it is part of their progressive spiritual growth which could lead them to a much purer and sincere form of spiritual practice and healthier association where there is more openness and less fear to confront.