Cute gorgeous young people are great for selling stuff.
Anything.
The girl scene attracts both girls, women -- and males.
Girls and women love the girlpal scene.
Males....whatever age, the males will love the presence of nice cute girls.
And in the West, yoga clothing has taken sexualized forms. Low rider pants.
Crop tops.
Some brands of yoga pants and shorts supposedly make your ass look prettier than
your ass actually is.
Underneath the edifying chat about spiritual lifestyle, it can be very, very
erotic.
Only way to be oblivious to this is if one is dead and rotten in the ground, or
reduced to cremains.
And even the youngsters will not know they are part of a larger strategy.
A strategy that benefits a just a few.
In these groups, only a very few are the brahmins, who profit.
Most members, who think they are oh-so spiritual, oh- so evolved and loving--
they occuppy a quite traditional role mandated by the caste system.
Most of the members are sudras. The peasants, the workers, the producers.
Who generate wealth for the Brahmins.
And the much venerated Bagavad Gita does, among other things, justify the caste
system.
Here is the straight dope according to the Krishna dot com website.
They wiggle by saying the Brahmins are the 'teachers'.
[
www.krishna.com]
Read this folks. You are likely to be a shudra in any Krishna cult, unless you
come in already rich, with valuable social connections.
The Shudras
“For the shudras there is labor and service to others.” (Bg. 18.44) Sudras do work that is of service to the other classes, so they must depend on others for their maintenance. Srila Prabhupada writes, “The shudra class can attain all comforts of life simply by rendering service to the higher classes. … The higher castes should always look after the maintenance of the shudras.… A shudra should not leave his master when the master is old and invalid, and the master should keep the servants satisfied in all respects.” (Srimad-Bhagavatam 1.9.26)
"Although in general shudras may be less intelligent, by faithfully carrying out their occupational duties under the guidance of a spiritual master they can attain the highest platform of spiritual perfection. Srila Prabhupada writes, “The process of devotional service is so strong that the pure devotee of the Supreme Lord can enable people of the lower classes to attain the highest perfection of life.” (Bg. 9.32)
But in practice, once you enter this Krishna cult, which is supposedly bhakti,
one lives in submission to superiors.
This is the idealized rationale.
"The Social Body
"The varnashrama system may be compared to a social body. The brahmanas, with their knowledge to direct society, can be compared to the head, eyes, and brain of the social body; kshatriyas, who offer protection, are the arms; the vaishyas, who support society, are the stomach; and the shudras are the legs.
"Common sense tells us that we need our head even more than we need our arms and legs, because without the head the entire body is useless. So the brahmanas are the most important, because of the guidance they provide. Yet without the labor of the shudras, the legs, society would not get anywhere. Without the support of the vaishyas, the brahmanas would be unable to devote their time to teaching and studying. And without protection and land from the kshatriyas, the vaishyas could not carry out their occupation of providing for society. But when each part of the social body performs its proper function, then the entire society can be peaceful and cooperative and can concentrate on its real goal, Krishna consciousness.
"
Cute gorgeous young people are great for selling stuff
This, Corboy states is a deviation from how bhakti (devotion) developed.
Bhakti originally developed among lower caste groups precisely to give
ways to have a relationship with God without needing to go to to the Brahmins
as intermediaries. Instead of Brahmin controlled ritual, the bhakti
devotees developed their own methods of devotion, making the Brahmins
unnecessary.
Only later, much later, did the Brahmins find ways to co-opt many bhakti
movements and turn them hierharchical.
For this and more, read The Hindus: An Alternative History by Wendy Doninger.
(The froth at the mouth Hindu nationalists hate Doninger, which indicates
she tells us what we need to hear, based on carefully documented evidence.)
All this -- bhakti co-opted by the Brahmins, exactly fits what old man Prab did.
He was from a high class family that was low in its fortunes following
the collapse of the economy in Calcutta/Kolkata, following transfer
of the capital to Delhi, and then the chaos following Partition in 1947, which disrupted many businesses which had enriched the city.
Prab, through his success in America and Britain, was enabled to return
to India in the style of a prince, living like a king, being waited
on hand and foot, complete with gourmet vegetarian meals.
To learn more of this, here is some older posts.
[
forum.culteducation.com] (page 5of this thread --2005)
[
forum.culteducation.com]
Prab was sex negative but no ascetic. He had an entourage, sat on a
THRONE and was pampered.
The old codger wanted money, and yet more money.
And it makes a glory of obeying orders without question.
Note: Spiritual Betrayal, by Nuri Muster, was written by a former ISKON
member who, atypically, was given a high rank from the outset.
She joined ISKON just after Prabhupada died.
She was assigned a secretarial position that, in those pre-Internet days,
gave her access to news clippings filed away.
Just by this job assignment, without her realizing it, Muster already beat the odds.
She should have been relegated to a shudra position, cleaning rooms or cooking.
Instead, she had a junior brahmin position as a secretary/archivist.
And it was there that to her horror she read through news clippings related to
ISKON and found the record of money making by any means necessary.
[
forum.culteducation.com]
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/14/2014 11:12PM by corboy.