Feedback from "Killing for Krishna"

Henry Doktorski: I received a very nice letter from a fellow in Ireland who read my book.

November 20, 2020

I finished your book, “Killing For Krishna.” I found it good to help me heal from the trauma I experienced while in ISKCON. Many, many ISKCON members were abused by their leaders’ strange ideas of Krishna. Most temples copied Kirtanananda’s mood to push devotees to be unpaid slaves of the invented idea that by making money one pleases Krishna. It’s very cultish. You did well to survive after all that weird stuff at New Vrindaban. It would probably ruin most folks.

I joined in 1978 in Ireland, and I helped buy the Inis Rath temple. I’m still trying to heal from all the cult false patterns. It ain’t easy to unlearn fake spiritual concepts. My bad karma, perhaps? Jayatirtha was my first “spiritual master,” then came Satsvarupa. Later, I took diksha outside of ISKCON and then, of course, I was treated like a criminal. Such a cruel little fundamentalist group. 

Material energy is cruel. Real surrender to God is a very intimate, private thing.
While living in Ireland, we had little trouble, but while reading your book I saw that Prithu (the temple president at ISKCON Inis Rath) and most of ISKCON tried to copy mad Kirtanananda. Of course the Lord allowed it to happen. It is a priceless lesson for you and all of us to really go deep and see how many nasty traps there are if we follow such an unfortunate person. 

It is truly one of the darkest places to go with such a wonderful process. However, I sense ISKCON is now more polished and even more crafty than Kirtanananda was, and it's still is going on. It’s like a phony strange Disneyland version of Krishna.

Reading your book also activated some trauma in me, as I experienced the sense of falseness which cults create. Indeed, I’m lucky to be alive. Four devotees from Ireland committed suicide; such was the damaging effect of their mis-treatment in ISKCON.

I left ISKCON around 2006, but the training—does it ever leave us? Every year in November and December I shut down, cause of old trauma from doing loads of Christmas marathons. Such an artificial, unnatural life style. I feel ISKCON is one the worst cults. It holds real truths, but they use it to cheat folks to make slaves for money for their fake GBC and gurus. I’m healing. I’m learning. I hope the mystical Lord will help you heal fully and a real blossoming of love awakens in your heart.

Clifford Kirk (Keshimardana dasa)

[PADA: Right. A psychotherapist told me that when there is a cult, the people who die from suicide are really only the tip of the iceberg. Many others are suffering terribly, but only a very few more severe cases will actually take the step -- to take their own lives. That means many others, perhaps hundreds or even thousands, are feeling depressed and somewhat suicidal. They are surviving -- meanwhile suffering a lot of mental trauma. They are more in control of their depression, begging the question, what kind of "leaders" make their followers depressed, even suicidal?

I had a friend here who was initiated by a GBC guru, and he just could not live with himself any more -- because he was sort of a violent goonda "enforcer" for the GBC guru. He told me "I have committed many, many dark deeds to defend my guru." And so, after he discovered his guru was bogus, he only lived for about 8 months -- and he took his own life. I really cried over that death, such a waste and for no good reason -- other than his bogus guru had a big ego to feed. 

And there are a number of similar cases. So his guru has all the blood of this suicide victim on his hands, since the bogus guru is 100 percent responsible that this event happened. Wow, it seems to me Yamaraja is going to take these gurus and have his agents take the stuffing out of them, if we are to believe shastra. And the enablers and goody two shoes apologists like Mukunda swami will have their place on Yama's planet fixed up as well.

Sometimes there is also physical trauma, because the victims gave the best years of their lives and now that they are more elderly and worn out, and they are somewhat disabled, they get weeded out and left to fend for themselves. Anyway we have seen some other positive feed back from Henry's books -- because then the victim's lives make more sense, they are simply co-victims along with many others. And so it gives them a little relief that they are not just isolated fools who are offenders who are going crazy. 

Some devotees commit suicide direct -- and others get cancer etc. due to stress and depression -- and they sort of commit suicide through the back door. Needless to say, these leaders are going to have literally hell to pay for making all these Vaishnavas suffer. This devotee is correct, the reason Kirtanananda became the darling of the ISKCON leaders is-- they wanted to be like him. He was the role model for the rest of them, like Prithu etc. 

So it is a cult, and a very nasty one too. The only good news is -- more people are waking up and sharing their experiences and realizations, so it is slowing down future victims from getting exploited. Perhaps Krishna created the internet so people could research all this and figure out what is what.

Right now another professional author has contacted PADA for some help with putting together a book of the history. Again it is odd, so many devotee complain they do not like the books of Henry, and they may -- or may not -- like this author either, meanwhile they are not authoring their own books. Lots of sour grapes out there. Anyway we wish this devotee well, he is right, it is a miracle me, Henry and himself even survived all this. Many did not. ys pd]