Dropping this here: [
www.gurumag.com]
And this:
[
www.nationalheraldindia.com]
This is where we are in 2024. This is happening today: Idiots argue over a fictional gods belated celebration...
And... [
washingtonmonthly.com]
Meanwhile...
Every day, Butler wakes up, gets fed, clothed, massaged, and otherwise tended to while he berates and rambles to followers who are in his personal service out of no more a driving factor than fear and naivety.
Followers worldwide delude each other into thinking that some chanting and vegetable diet is the great "gift" that Butler gave them and that they are not their bodies and should spend their days working and giving money to Butler. How much does the guy need? Did his million-dollar air filtration system break down again? Or does he need organic tin foil wallpaper installed in his luxury ocean-front mansion?
Bhaktivedanta swami was a fanatical religious leader. He spent his days translating mythology books and giving long-winded purposes and lectures on otherwise self-explanatory myths. They are myths: Symbolism by ancient peoples who were trying to create social order, achieve happiness, establish morals/ethics and otherwise rewrite history to suit their specific religious ideals. If you ever read most Upanishads/puranas/Samhitas and original Vedas, they are endlessly redundant, contradictory, and arduous to make any sense of. By today's standards of books on religions, culture, philosophy and psychology they amount to relics of the past to reveal mostly how little man knew and how time sent telling stories was as much a part of human life as it is today with books, TV, movies, theatre, art etc. Even most of rasa theory has its fundamental origins in poetry and art.
"The rasa theory itself originates in Bharata Muni’s Natyashastra, a Sanskrit treatise on drama and aesthetics dated around the 2nd century BCE. Natyashastra outlines rasa as the emotional flavor or essence experienced by an audience in response to a work of art, primarily theater. Bharata identified eight original rasas, like shringara (love), karuna (compassion), and hasya (humor), which he saw as essential emotions evoked by dramatic performances."Prior to getting a hare and coming to America, Bhantivednata was interested in making friends with Gandhi and hoping to give the world "Krishna consciousness." This cult, which was started by an epileptic "saint" who left zero commentaries on any scriptures and was otherwise simply known for exaggerated fanatical behavior, is otherwise 400 years old.
Just as quickly as Chaitanya's cult started upon his death, and arguably before his death, the cult started to fall apart. (But since Chaitanya left no actual doctrine, no one really knew what to do.)
Some 300 years later, Bhaktivinode and his son tried to "revamp" the cult and made up a bunch of ideology,, rules,, and dogma that they then attracted a few men to follow them and start the Gauduya Math. A cult that, even in their time, was not taken seriously and has very little to no actual effect on anything in India.
Fast forward, an LSD-melted-brain surfer dude in Hawaii is looking for a way to attract followers and piggyback on the new cult in town: The Hare Krishnas.
Airport scams, child abuse, and drug/money laundering years later, the hare Krishnas have come out the other end as a new 500-year-old cult that can barely go a day without some scandal, either within their walls or outside.
We have a Hare Krishna vying for political power by rubbing shoulders with one of the most crooked minds in political history: Tulsi Gabbard.
Chris Butler started his guru career as a deluded surfer, and if his disciples all left him today, he would amount to nothing more than where he began—literally.
His political Puppet, disciple Tulsi Gabbard, has about as much clout as her guru. She attracts the bottom-barrel cult mentality to whom she appeals. The support base she attracts are bigots and religiously fanatical conspiracy theorists, just like her Gurudev. The few intelligent folks she attracts know nothing about her, her guru, or the hare Krishna ideology.
The Hindu base she attracts are RSS/BJP Hindu nationalists. Well, that and Hare Krishnas. They are not Hindus interested in societal progress and real change for themselves or India, but simply rhetoric of religious ideology that has done fuck-all for the country they profess to love. That we live in 2024, and people believe in elephant-headed gods and blue-4-armed gods and mythology that predates Zeus and some pagan worship that was tossed away eons ago as useless and demented is an outstanding testament to the power of "mantras" to dissolve the brain (literally all they are good for). It's a testament to a scriptural dogma that labels questioning and calling out BS as "aparadha" and "offensive,"... so essentially no different than any other fear-based religious system, masquerading as "love" and "devotion."
Growing up in this cult, I cannot describe it as anything short of being a fear-based religious system. From the onset of the Cult's ideology, you are told that your spiritual master is not to be questioned. That if you offend the spiritual master in any way, you are, in essence, offending God and crippling your possibility for Spiritual progress, not just in this lifetime but for many lifetimes after that. And the entire scripture is full of fear-based stories. Very few stories in their scriptures are resolved with amicability and peacefulness rather than simply forceful dogma, abnegation, or downright killing and maiming to get your point across. And even in recent times Bhaktivedanta Swami also wished his cult to grow into a movement that allowed people to walk up to anybody who doesn't chant the Hare Krishna mahamantra and shoot them in a head. He thought that that was a funny thing. And he also taught that his words were the words for the next 10,000 years. His followers gobbled that up, and so, with enough emboldening. Because they are such literalists in their interpretation of these words, it's just a matter of time before they move forward with that type of dictator mentality.
The Gita and Bhagavatam that we were given as kids were full of pictures of "demoniac" planets and "hellish" punishment in yamaraj. We were constantly told to fear "maya", "Kali yuga" and anything outside the cult structures.
When we got fed up with all the fear and wanted to know more about the "love" part of the cult, i.e., Radha and Krishna, and the actual goal we all heard about, like Manjari Bhava, we were again told to be fearful of "knowing" more.
When we left Buller to follow or hear other gurus speak and read other scriptures, we were told we were offensive, we were told not to trust other krishna groups...
Now, fast forward again to a time where social media is king, devotees post endless AI-generated images of their Radha Krishna gods and other naive imagery and edited videos of chanting and dancing and young people doing "yoga" and singing hare Krishna happily to pop-tunes... But alas, on the same note, Reddit and many other places expose the dark underbelly of the cult, and its inability actually to solve any real social issues, and an inability to make people "happy" beyond the "promise" that if you keep chanting and keep believing you will one day be happy...
Meanwhile, people suspend living their own lives and trap their minds in an artificial framework of pretending they are "Hindus" or support their political puppet, Tusli Gabbard, or play dress-up with their Krishna statues and naively think they are making some sort of spiritual advancement...
And finally, another Hare Krishna scum bag:
https://www.business2community.com/statistics-pages/jay-shetty-controversy"...The reason for his public aversion to Krishna isn’t clear, but news outlets suspected the cause to be the negative portrayal of the Hare Krishna movement a few decades ago. These have included drug dealing, sex trafficking, and more. Despite these claims subsiding with time, the rising guru likely wanted to distance himself from Krishna to protect his reputation."RUN