ISKCON Guru Tamal's -- Admission of Guilt?

From: Kill Guru Become Guru: The Poisoning of Srila Prabhupada's Body

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CHAPTER 55: TAMAL’S MERCY KILLING (Part One)

LATE NOVEMBER 1977 

TAMAL INTERVIEW FOR BACK TO GODHEAD MAGAZINE

On March 31, 1999, devotee news site VNN.org published an article with audio clips from a 1977 tape recording that Isha das had found in his personal archives. The tape was an interview of Tamal Krishna Goswami by Satsvarupa Goswami for Back to Godhead magazine, recorded immediately after Srila Prabhupada’s disappearance. Isha was Satsvarupa’s personal assistant at the time, and somehow this tape survived for over 20 years through Isha’s many moves and even a house fire. This interview is very shocking.

NOW NO MORE DOUBTS ABOUT TAMAL

Any remaining doubts one may have that perhaps Tamal was simply a loving and faithful disciple will be put to rest permanently after listening to this tape. Anyone who understands even a little about Srila Prabhupada and then listens to this tape will be profoundly disturbed. Tamal’s words on this good-as-lost and then recovered tape recording reveal his true inner character. One gets chills hearing Tamal’s voice evolve to a nervous, squeaky high pitch as he claimed that Srila Prabhupada stated:

“Can you give me a medicine, please give me a medicine that will allow me to disappear now.”

To hear this audio recording is the clincher for many devotees, the one thing that finally dispenses with any remaining favorable or neutral sentiments toward Tamal. This audio reveals Tamal’s true nature, framed in his own voice. He was a mastermind calculator of dark intentions, consumed by his personal ambition, and his claims on this tape are shocking, incriminating, outrageous, evil, and frightening. If any follower of Srila Prabhupada listens to Tamal in this recording carefully, it will bring tremors of horror to the body.

As he speaks, Tamal describes a rationale for euthanasia or a mercy killing of Srila Prabhupada. The creepy, insidious undertones in Tamal’s vile and stuttering statements show him to be laying the groundwork for a defense of Srila Prabhupada’s “untimely departure” as a compliance with His Divine Grace’s supposedly suicidal last wishes. 

Tamal tries to polish the justifications for a poisoning as the dying request of one in great pain and misery, of one most anxious to “now die.” Tamal’s portrayal of Srila Prabhupada’s mood in this interview, and also in his bizarre book "The Final Pastimes," is an atrocious and offensive characterization of the pure devotee of Krishna that leaves one grossly nauseated. See below for yourself.

CAUTION: THE FOLLOWING CONTAINS OBNOXIOUS MATERIAL;

READER’S DISCRETION ADVISED; PROCEED AT OWN SPIRITUAL RISK
ESSENTIAL EXCERPTS FROM TAMAL’S INTERVIEW

Note: our comments are interjected throughout the interview:

TAMAL: “My duties as Srila Prabhupada’s secretary were… This means that there was a necessity on my part to, uhm, discriminate over which letters should be read to him and even which parts of the letters were read to him. Only good news was read to him.

“Apart from his correspondence, the secretary had to handle all of the various accounts which Srila Prabhupada was personally responsible for. Accounts, bank accounts, both in his personal name as well as in the name of the Mayapura Vrindaban Fund and other … of ISKCON.

“But perhaps the most important service or activity, and in fact that which predominated the most towards the end of Srila Prabhupada’s appearance, was to simply give him, ah, some, ah, submissive company, to be with him. He liked to have his senior disciples surrounding him, and naturally he wanted his secretary to be there and to talk with him, to massage his body, and as a regular function, in fact, it was my duty to be to bathe and dress him every morning also.

And he liked that I should have the morning shift at taking care of him, from about five o’clock in the morning till about nine o’clock in the morning, so that when he woke up his secretary would be there. And he would have me him sit him up and rub or scratch his back. He would talk about what he’d been thinking of during the day. 

"Also he wanted his secretary to act more or less as the chief nurse… I wouldn’t say chief nurse, that’s not the right word. In terms of Prabhupada’s medicines he would always have his secretary give his final conclusive opinion over what steps he should take and what treatments he should take…

COMMENT: Tamal has now described at length exactly how intimate and confidential his service to Srila Prabhupada as his personal secretary actually was, how he would do whatever Srila Prabhupada asked of him. Absolutely anything he asked… or supposedly asked, that is.

“I was going to wait for the proper time to say this, but to me the incidents which stick most on my mind are how in the last few months, Srila Prabhupada would constantly ask to be allowed to, um, die peacefully.

COMMENT: What does “allow” mean? Is this a more polite way to say “help him die?”

“And, um, how he would constantly succumb to the requests of his disciples not to leave us. Our relationship with Srila Prabhupada has always been one of total submissiveness, and complete, um…

“So, our position with Srila Prabhupada was one of complete submissiveness to his orders and instructions, his desires, just like a menial servant. It’s hardly the position of the servant to, in any way, um, strongly request the master for anything. He should simply receive the instruction or order and carry it out. Yet we found in the later months, in the most recent months, that Srila Prabhupada seemed to be demanding from us a different type of attitude and emotion, at least especially from his most personal, you know, servants."

COMMENT: Tamal explains how Srila Prabhupada was demanding from his most personal or confidential servants (himself included) to do something very different, namely to “allow” (helping?) him to die. Next is the shocking finale…

“Um. A number of times he would say “Can you give me a medicine, please give me a medicine that will allow me to disappear now.” Another time he said “I want most now to disappear. I want to die peacefully. Let me die peacefully.” Now on one hand we could take it and give him that medicine or let him stop eating and fast until death. We could have done that.

“And yet it seemed that, of course we could not do that out of our love for him.

COMMENT: Srila Prabhupada asked for medicine to die!? Medicine that causes death is actually poison, not medicine. Tamal says this “different” type of demand, namely assisting Srila Prabhupada to “disappear now,” “seemed” difficult due to their love for him. He says they could not do that, but also, “we could have done that.” But Tamal did not clearly state what“they” actually did. Did he give poison as a “medicine”?

“I think we all had the feeling, at least a few of us who were in his personal attendence, that there wasn’t really a question that he would live for a long time. But even though it was only a short time we wanted him to stay with us. And he would bring us to the point of complete despair, he would stop all doctors, all medicines, and bring us to the point where there was no return, where he would say “Now there’s nothing left but for me to die.”

“I feel that these last months with Prabhupada were the most important months I ever spent with him. And, ah, somehow I feel that by seeing the way he acted and the way he dealt with me personally, that ah, that I'll be, ah… You can take this part off, this last sentence. Somehow, I feel ???… I mean I want to say something, but I’d prefer not to say it.

COMMENT: What else was he going to say?! Why is it that you hesitate to say something that you want to say? Are you afraid we won’t understand how the penultimate act of Tamal’s loyalty to Srila Prabhupada was to assist him to “disappear”? That Srila Prabhupada trusted Tamal in this final test of submission, at the risk of being condemned by others?

Satsvarupa: Now a different kind of question. Right in the beginning without too much explanation you were talking about Prabhupada asking for something to let him disappear, that he wanted to die.

COMMENT: Clearly Satsvarupa understood and accepted the mercy killing scenario, and wanted to explore it further. Within weeks of this private interview, he also became one of the select few initiating ISKCON gurus, assuming command of a piece of ISKCON assets. Was he one of the “at least a few of us” whom Srila Prabhupada called upon to help him “die now”, or was Satsvarupa just a silent consentor? Or was he just an accessory after the fact?

Tamal: Therefore after some time, the pure devotee wants to again go back to Krishna. And Krishna wants His devotee back. Therefore Prabhupada once said, recently he said, “It is becoming unbearable. Becoming unbearable.” We can understand that it wasn’t simply the material pain that was becoming unbearable, but that Prabhupada also wanted to be with Krishna, and not be burdened with this physically incapacitated body. TAPE BREAK

Tamal: Oh yeah, painful. That why should he be burdened or incap… with this physically, you know, burdensome form.

COMMENT: Here Tamal explains why Srila Prabhupada wanted to leave his body prematurely: because Krishna was calling him and he wanted to go back to Krishna, and that the physical pain was becoming unbearable. But this is absolute nonsense philosophy which we will discuss more further on down below!

Satsvarupa: At the end, or in his last months, did Prabhupada manifest any special spiritual symptoms that you’d like to talk about?

Tamal: I think that that would be better discussed in a, at another time.

Satsvarupa: Do you think he left untimely, too soon?

Tamal: (pause) Of course, we would have liked it if Prabhupada could live for hundreds of years and no doubt if he were able, would have done that, the whole world would have become Krishna Conscious… there is, ultimately must be, great meaning for his timely departure. We should not think that he left untimely. He left when Krishna and when he himself wanted to leave.”

COMMENT: Right. Srila Prabhupada repeatedly asked for medicine to die, so there was no crime in poisoning Srila Prabhupada because that was what he wanted. Tamal was not responsible for poisoning Srila Prabhupada because Srila Prabhupada wanted to die and Tamal was just following orders, faithfully serving Srila Prabhupada’s final wishes... He was just following orders!