PADA and Henry Doktorski

Dear PADA: Several devotees are complaining about your association with Henry Doktorski.

[PADA: First of all Henry Doktorski is a by-product of post 1978 ISKCON. He says that the reason he (and others) went along with Kirtanananda being an acharya is because he was told -- by most of the ISKCON devotees at the time -- that Srila Prabhupada had appointed KS as one of the 11 acharyas.

And in 1980 many hundreds of Srila Prabhupada devotees were flocking to New Vrndavana to "take shelter of Kirtanananda swami Bhaktipada." Even Sulochana went there, despite me telling him -- that would be a huge mistake. It was.

This "Srila Bhaktipada is the rising moon acharya of ISKCON" was going on so much so, New Vrndavana was being advertised as "the biggest community of Srila Prabhupada devotees in the world." OK that means that many / most of my God brothers were preaching to Henry, and to the whole world, that Kirtanananda is a pure devotee. And he is in fact, "God's living successor on earth."

Yet a number of these God brothers also knew that Kirtanananda has been part of a homosexual household in the 1960s. And some people were telling me he is "Queer-tan-ananda" in 1971. That means many God brothers were covering up for Kirtanananda's weakness and they were artificially making Kirtanananda an acharya, despite knowing all the time, he is not. So they were selling Henry a rotten apple that they knew was rotten in the first place, but had only been spray painted to look fresh.

Then Henry -- and many thousands of others -- got sucked into this mess, due almost entirely to the fact that many / most of the God brothers were allowing, encouraging, enabling if not vociferously defending the policy that Kirtanananda is a pure devotee. Many / most of my God brothers were chastising me for challenging the 11, and thus they were selling a false product.

Can we blame folks like Henry for going along with this band wagon?

Well maybe yes and maybe no, but the root issue is -- the leaders combined with these many God brothers were creating this "misleading of others" situation wholesale. People like Satsvarupa were writing "Kirtanananda is everywhere," ummm -- like the Supersoul? And Rupanuga, Mukunda swami and many others were going to bat to defend Kirtanananda even later when Sulochana was asking them to rectify things.

So Henry was mis-informed, and therefore we feel he is mainly a victim. Sulochana is another type of victim. He was a somewhat junior devotee compared to some of the more elder seniors who knew more about Kirtanananda's dubious past. But yes, both of them were also voluntary participants. So that means, the victims are also in part to blame, but more blame goes to the leaders and seniors who sold the victims a bad product knowingly.

Now later on many folks, perhaps hundreds of thousands, believed Srila Prabhupada was wrong to have annointed these people as gurus.

What if he did not annoint them as gurus? So we would contend that many of the senior God brothers are to blame for participating in making the illusion that Kirtanananda is God's successor. Then many others were sucked into that vortex, and they got mistreated, misinformed, cheated, some got beaten, molested, killed and so forth.

Sulochana sent me a tape of Kirtanananda saying the real Jayatirtha is serving Krishna purely, whereas the sex and drugs Jayatirtha is like the false Sita. And Sulochana thought that was correct. Nope, mixing mother Sita with sex and drugs bogus acharyas is -- an offense. So I immediately told Sulochana, you are in a deep hole, get out of there! But he refused to leave, like many others who were staying there.

Now later on Henry writes a book from his point of view, i.e. he had been told Kirtanananda is a pure devotee. And people are saying Henry is bogus to be blaming Srila Prabhupada for apparently making this situation. Srila Prabhupada did not make this situation, the God brothers did, but it is very hard for people to sort all this out due to constant propaganda that the 11 were appointed as gurus. Even Sivarama recently lectured the 11 were appointed as gurus.

Now we know a whole lot of crimes and horrendous things were going on at New Vrndavana, and Henry has made a detailed account of all this. Why is his book even prominent? At all? Because no one else bothered to write a detailed account of what was going on at New Vrndavana, or anywhere else.

Why haven't some of the God brothers wrote a detailed account of say for example Los Angeles under Ramesvara? OK they don't give a care about saving others from being sucked into these types of things, evidently. No accounts or accountability is going on just about anywhere.

We think people should know what was going on there, because it is lesson number one why we cannot allow bogus acharyas. The things he writes about will be the result. And Henry encouraged a number of other ex-New Vrndavana folks to come out of the wood work and detail their experiences, which helps us understand the criminal nature of that program all the more. No one else could have or would have dragged out these accounts, which are important for us to realize to see the full scope of the result of false gurus.

OK no one else is bothering to do that.

It it like people are just saying, oh well crap happens, who cares? No, we need to know how and why crap happens, or it will happen again. At the same time I have been criticized for helping Monkey On A Stick, articles for the New York Times, participating in TV shows etc. Well guess what, these medias, books, TV shows etc. would be written anyway with or without my participating. I am just trying to put in my two cents, and sometimes I get to put in my .0005 of a cent.

At the same time Henry openly admits that he enjoys attending whisky tasting events at the San Diego Scotch Club and also smoking Cuban cigars. He is not pretending to be a big shot devotee. He has done what -- oh no -- my esteemed and senior God brothers should have done all along, write a detailed account of what happened. My God brothers are for the most part never going to do that, ever, let us face it. They might write a few pages of essays once in a blue moon, but not really explaining much for the most part. Most of their writings focus on "the glory days" of the 1970s and have little to do with the post-1978 apocalypse.

So essentially everyone else hands off the job to Henry, and then they complain "he did not do a good job." It is not his job to write ISKCON's history accurately, it is yours -- the ISKCON seniors.

Meanwhile, the seniors and church elders are basically doing no job at all. It is the same thing that happened to me in Berkeley, "well Puranjan likes the Berkeley police. He is a rat snitch." Ummm, well they are protecting me, you big shot senior devotees -- are not?

So we have then the persons who are willing to write historical accounts, like "Monkey on a Stick," "Dial Om for Murder," "Tempest in a Temple," and so on and so on and so on. They will add their dimension to it because they saw it the way they saw it. These people are not going to write as accurately as the senior devotees would. Nor should we expect them to. The senior insiders should be writing the senior insider view, not those who were not part of the core situation.

Yet if the senior devotees write essentially no books or almost nothing else of value, then these "junior" or media accounts will be seen -- as at least some account. So I have helped along various media and so-called "outside" writers because, they are going to write anyway -- with or without me. I'd rather at least try to help in some small way if possible.

Meanwhile no one seems to know, why the seniors themselves have not wrote the history? OK we basically know why, a lot of these seniors are implicated in the whole criminal guru enterprise. If they would write something, it would be like admitting they are a criminal accomplice, so they have to remain silent. Anyway, it is always the same thing. PADA is a terrible writer. Great, are you going to write a newsletter? Well nope. Sour grapes?

So Henry's book is not perfect, he and no one else ever said it is. Neither is Monkey on a Stick and so on and so on. So if the devotees fail to write their own history, it will be written by others. And that is another lesson we should learn from all this as well. If we do not shovel out our own stopped up toilet, the landlord will call someone else to do it instead.

Better that the seniors do it, but if they don't, someone else will. That is how history works, full time and all the time. I for one am glad we now know more details of the goings on there, and who is implicated in what, which never would have been exposed any other way.

Henry's story should be a case study of why -- we cannot ever allow false acharyas into ISKCON ever again. And we need to remove the Kirtanananda groupies who remain.

ys pd