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Here is my second installment of the 1977 pre-Internet articles written by Walter Wright of the Honolulu Advertiser (it takes some effort to travel back in time and then transcribe the words).
• Rebel against power trips: Chris Butler, maverick with 1,000 followers, Hawaii’s Other Krishna’s – Part II, The Honolulu Advertiser, August 22, 1977
Rebel against power trips
Chris Butler, maverick with 1,000 followers
Hawaii's ‘Other’ Krishnas
When a small new newspaper on Maui called The Valley Isle published a rumor about an alleged "godfather" of organized crime and was hit with a multimillion-dollar lawsuit as a result, Advertiser staff writer Walter Wright was assigned to find out who started the paper and what their goals were. He concluded that the paper was only a small part of the "real" story: a loose-knit community of religious devotees, taught by a charismatic young guru and quietly making giant strides in business and politics.
TRUE. Walter Wright nailed it. The group was loose-knit and incapable of pulling off IGG without Butler's absolute control and vision.Quote
Second of a-three-part series
By WALTER WRIGHT Advertiser Staff Writer
Who is he? His Grace Siddha Swarup Ananda Goswami, 29, born Chris Butler ("that also means servant of Krishna"), spiritual master of 1,000 Krishna devotees by his own estimate, perhaps 200 of them in Hawaii and others in the Philippines, Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand, California and Colorado. He says A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupad, founder of the International Society of Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), is his own spiritual master. But he broke from Prabhupad's ISKCON organization about four years ago, rebelling against "certain people in ISKCON who are on power trips and really don't want people to chant 'Hare Krishna.' They want it for a little class of men who live in buildings and think they own Krishna." Butler says that envious ISKCON bureaucrats told him to stop preaching after he first joined the organization and that he complied for a while but finally left the temple. “I’m a symbol of decentralization in that I teach people to take Krishna into their own homes" he said. "They (in ISKCON) want everyone to live in the temple in a welfare state where they centralize food and sleeping and have control over them," Butler said, “often a system not based on love, but based on slavery."
And yet Butler has been on the biggest "power trip" of all... created and controls a decentralized, capitalistic organization.... He also enslaves his followers, but not in a "temple-centric" way. He controls them with the false belief that he is g0d's representative along with the ever present fear of becoming spiritually dead if you displease him... How is this love? It is the grossest of manipulations. It is more complex than this of course, so a deep study into how cults operate is necessary to understand. Quote
Butler's first student on Kauai was Michael White, a California-born surf bum who had burned out on drugs and was into impersonalistic yoga. White's old Kauai farmhouse became the starting place not only for Butler's new Krishna teaching but also for a community of Krishna-oriented businesses and, in 1975, a political party called Independents for Godly Government. White now bears the initiate name "Phenop das," works in construction and on the Krishna Farm on Maui and was a major contributor to the IGG cause last year. One who came to chant with Butler and White was Johnny Baldwin Midgett, who five years later would surface as an IGG candidate for the State House of Representatives and a financial backer of Hoshijo and the IGG. Midgett and White, wearing dhotis and the shaven heads of Krishna devotees, were hitchhiking home when they were picked up by a young graphic artist from Honolulu named Bill Penaroza. Penaroza, later to become party chairman of IGG, its candidate for Congress from Kauai and another of its major financial backers, gave the two men a lift to the farmhouse, heard Butler teach, "and that way came to chanting." "Come to the hidden temple," John Moore read on a poster at Hanalei, and did, and found Penaroza, Midgett, White, Butler — and Krishna.
This "farm" or "hidden temple" was KOOLAU. White, Midgett, Moore, Penaroza and his wife rented this property. This is where Butler had his own shack way back in the jungle behind the main house. Sunday feasts were held here and hippies from the near by Taylor Camp would come to eat. White and Midgett had a construction demolition business at the time. They had a big truck and would pick up people in Kapaa and give them rides to the feast. Later, more women came to stay and more shacks were built. At one point they were trying to build an ecological and experimental community based on the writings of E.F. Schumacher's "Small is Beautiful". Butler followers from the Philippines came to teach how to use every part of the coconut tree and to build bamboo houses. It was to be a show-case center for "Simple Living and High Thinking". Butler also wanted to start his drug re-hab center here and cure people through vegetarianism and chanting. He spoke to Joanne Yukimura, a politician on Kauai at Koolau and shared his vision with her. She visited him at Koolau on several occasions. She was not a follower, but may have given him political advice. I think he wanted her support as well.
Married couples began moving into the new structures (beautiful houses made of bamboo and renewable materials) and tended the organic farm. Just Googling can tell you a lot about the farm. It was beginning to be a healthy community where people were actually having sex and bringing children into the world. They started their own businesses and while they were still chanting, were becoming independent. This really pissed Butler off because he said people were getting too comfortable, so he forced them to leave. He needed more free labor for his political and business campaigns. Details are sketchy after that. He did try to start a more formal temple at Koolau and his "dieties" of Chaitanya and Nityananda were housed in a special room until the WAREHOUSE in Honolulu opened up to support his Jagad Guru Speaks video series. The dieties were later moved to the WAREHOUSE.
Butler was brains behind the forming of IGG and mandated that Penaroza become the party chairman only because he was a "local boy". No one read E.F. Schumacher until Butler introduced it to everyone. These guys had no money. They tore down houses and did construction for a living. They drove rusty vehicles and scavanged for wild bananas and pineapple and surfed. It was a peaceful and ildylic life. None of these guys had any native interest in politics. It was all the brain child of Butler. Midgett was mostly in charge as he had military training and was a more natural leader. Penaroza's wife had a baby and were getting welfare so Penaroza could do graphic design for Butler. They lived a very meager existence, but Barbara was a good wife and kept their tiny place very clean and neat. It was primitive, but they had indoor plumbing as did the main house. I mention this because the couple sacrificed a lot to be followers. Penaroza had been a successful designer and provider. The political campaign broke up their marriage. It also contrasts heavily with Butler's present lifestyle. Quote
Moore, the IGG's handsome, gaunt-faced candidate for mayor of Honolulu last year and a major financial contributor to the party, had been a musician, then a cook at a Waikiki hotel after quitting the University of Texas at Austin in his freshman year. He had read of yoga practice, and become a vegetarian, but this new teaching seized him, he says, While Butler continued his teaching in rural Kauai and Maui and traveled to India, Brazil, the Philippines, New Zealand and the Mainland with his maverick brand of Krishna Consciousness. The other men who had met on Kauai tried to apply their new spiritualism to the material world. It was the beginning of a business which has involved Moore, Penaroza, Midgett, Butler and a band of other IGG figures and Krishna devotees — a business which Moore hopes will gross $2 million in the next year.
Moore did not have any money. He may have given away a trust fund or inheritance. But the man had no job or business at the time. Not sure what the 2 million dollar business would be????Quote
Tomorrow: Business, not begging for Krishna.
This is certainly the way Butler has built his empire. He got his followers to pursue money making enterprises that would give them subsistence wages and deep profits to support Butler's love of luxury. Gone are the days when he lived simply in a shack without electricity or running water at the back of Koolau! By the time anyone figured out his grand scheme, it was too late. They were entrenched in the cult...and lost all capacity to use their own critical thinking skills....Quote
Laid philosophical basis
Religious leader's role in politics played down
John Moore, principal spokesman for the Independents for Godly Government party, says his spiritual master, Chris Butler, probably didn't contribute much to the political views of IGG candidates.
THIS IS A TOTAL AND COMPLETE LIE! Butler was the one who designed, wrote, and dictated the whole thing!!!!Quote
Moore says the Democratic Party and E.F. (“Small Is Beautiful") Schumacher probably had more influence than Butler. But Butler at the very least expressed many of the IGG's major positions before the party existed and laid a philosophical basis for political activity by Krishna devotees. "The innocent people of the world . . . are presently suffering from the heavy burden of crooked, inhuman, unrighteous political leaders," Butler declared in a 1975 tract called “Why politicians are stupid”. "It is the responsibility of the individual politicians to develop godly qualities and it is the responsibility of the people . . . to see that nobody is allowed to step into or remain in office unless he is really qualified."
So Butler, to this day is pushing in unqualified, untested, mind-controlled candidates...possible!???.Quote
Butler may have been getting his ideas from the founders of IGG rather than vice versa; he says Kathy Hoshijo is so spiritually advanced that he is not qualified to be her teacher.
Remember, Butler told everyone that Hoshijo was a "pure devotee" to get them to serve her. He is probably doing the same thing with Tulsi...telling them that she is his little plant, his pure devotee to motivate them into long, volunteer hours and service. I doubt Tulsi herself is conscious of the amount of unconscious programming running her life...Quote
But what was clear was Butler's crusading zeal on the political front: "The inept politicians should be removed from their seats and replaced with self-satisfied leaders . . "Sometimes . . saintly persons will take it upon themselves to accept such political posts." IGG candidates repeated Butler's themes, condemning "materialism" in the schools, dependence on tourism, urbanization and growth. Hoshijo and Moore both conferred with Butler before launching their political efforts. - "He said, 'If you do, okay, but don't expect to get me involved in it, because I 'm a Sanyasi and forbidden to associate with women, rich people, or politicians.": Moore recalls. Butler himself said he warned Hoshijo: "If you bring your political business to me, what you should do and how you should vote, our relationship would be broken."
AGAIN, A TOTAL LIE!!! Nothing could be farther than the truth. Butler ran ALL of the IGG campaigns with total control! As I have described previously, at one point they all lived under the same roof. Butler himself scripted what Hoshijo and Moore were to say to the media. They absolutely lied. But they justified it by thinking that they were serving Krishna, g0d himself. They felt that a lie was appropriate to protect their master. They felt that they were "dovetailing" even an evil propensity such as lying in the service of g0d. This is why I compared it to the Islamic idea of taquia. According to muslim tradition, lies are allowed to disguise oneself as a non-muslim in order to survive in a hostile culture. In politics it means to pretend to be someone else. Sound familiar?! It has been reported that Butler admires Islamic orthodoxy. Quote
But Butler apparently influenced the IGG 's recent decision to reorganize. William Penaroza, party chairman, said in an interview with The Valley Isle: "There was an interesting conversation with a friend of mine who I consider to be a "'very spiritually advanced person whose name is Siddha Swarup Swami. "I know that he shuns partisan politics so I didn't really want to ask him any questions about politics per se but I did ask him what he thought about IGG. "He said he thought we were a little too self-righteous and that we seem to have limited ourselves to working with people who were of Eastern spiritual disciplines, neglecting many of the people we could probably work with in the more established Western-oriented churches." — By WALTER WRIGHT
Check the dates. I believe this quote to have come out after Penaroza mentioned that IGG failed to recruit candidates from other religious streams. Regardless of the timing, these quotes were TOTALLY BUTLER SCRIPTED!!! You can see that as Butler learned more about politics that he encouraged Mike Gabbard to align himself with the right wing Christians and declare himself a Catholic. These followers have NO INDEPENDENCE outside of Butler's command.
In my opinion Butler's whole motive is power and wealth. He continues to hide the fact that he has been manipulating the political process in Hawaii for years and exerting undue influence. His followers are duped into believing that he is divinely inspired. He has been covering his tracks for years using lies, secrecy, and deception...so voters have no idea of what lies behind Tulsi's rise to power.
This history is repeating itself... The wise should follow the money to prove or disprove Tulsi's complicity in this cult leader's ambitions and possible illegal medlings in the American political process.... Has his influence been undue and inappropriate? Has it been illegal or just unethical?