It is quiet now but goes up until about last week.

There is a huge trolling element around the middle and you will get to the warning from RR to disregard zeligs posts around 20 pages back (?)

Initiate is zelig btw - you will get up to him coming in a few pages ahead.

There is a lot of great info here but the forum format is a bit tricky.

Lots of people still read here too so there is still some interest. I guess they may post if you start asking questions.

I can't stand it any more.
Is Butler even alive?
Is there anyone here who has seen him face to face recently, or even spoken to him on the phone, or seen a video starring the aged guru?
Is this whole thing about people pretending to worship a dead guru because they don't want to let go for some bizarre or twisted reason?
Show us the guru!

I have friends who still follow JG and I believe that he is still in HI. I don't maintain regular contact with these people but I have spoken to one person about 6 weeks ago and everything seemed the same with JG's "group".

I perceive his silence as "deafening". It would seem to me that any legitimate guru would gladly answer valid questions in an attempt to serve the Lord. After all, he holds himself out to be the confidential, loving servant of God.

To "yournamedas": keep reading the forum and check out the Rick Ross list of the characteristics of a cult. I don't have a link for this, perhaps someone else can provide one.

I have found that reading and participating in this forum has helped me to "move on" and come to terms with my experience. Good luck!

I know that I have said so many times in no uncertain terms that I would not have any website if Chris Butler personally instructed me not to have it. His silence is just plain foolish in this respect. I came here to be a devotee, nothing else and if that is not good enough for a guru then I guess nothing can be.

I know there is no shortage of people that think I am a fool for saying things like that (although quite a few of them were a cartel of posters uncertain of how many they were although I suspect just one) but that is pretty much the truth. There are worse qualities that a person can have than believing in God I think.

It was questioned how anyone could come into SoI without the prescence of Chris Butler, without knowing him or even having ever met him and the simple truth about that is that there are lots of people that want to learn about Krishna, lots of people that are attracted to him. If there was openness and people were enjoying the things that are occassionally raised as being good points then ASM/SoI would be huge. No one wants self flagellation and bean soup. People dont like to be lied to. The chants are monotonous and boring and mantra rocks dont. Put some kula shakar on ffs. Even back in ACB's day as recorded in The Science of Self Realization it was pointed out that devotees spend too much time chanting to develop a philosophy.

If Jagad Guru had been around then there is no way that so much dirt would have come together in one place and so many resentful (with very good reasons) people came together and communicated with each other. He or his devotees at least might even figure out how to make things better. Might I just remind them that ISKCON didnt listen either and now all their temples are just middle aged back in the day devotees and disenfranchised Shivite immigrants. I havent seen a person my age in any gurukula or kirtan for the past 12 months with the exception of those who were born there. No matter what is done or how much dirt is kicked up SoI will prolly always exist but it should at least evolve.

Well, cultrepo, I am definitely getting the impression that the SOI people DON"T wasn anyone new coming around, but that doesn't really make sense, because why else would they have opened so many avenues of recruitment?
Maybe what they really want is to make a lot of money off the stupid Karmis without having to bother with initiating them or letting them get involved in the secretive and exclusive SOI "society", if it's anything more than a bunch of every man for himself scammers..
Except they do seem to want rich people, kids, and people in power.
The only thing this could possibly be is a total scam. Nothing else makes the least bit of sense. It's like skull and bones.

Hey Jo :D

Well my honest reckoning is if they were sincere about following Chaitanya's Mission and had genuine claim to feign outrage against the principles of Gaudiya Vaishnavism being violated that they would not be turning people away as they do. I have heard no shortage of stories from former followers talking about the same thing happening all over.

The situation reminds me of stories I have heard about those who have been abused by some member of the clergy (or ISKCON) who went from believing that it was just one bad person and that those at the top surely would not condone it to finding out that if they pursued the ideal that the organisation did infact stand for good that they ended up bitterly disappointed. I honestly thought from the first blog that someone would come along and say hey ok maybe that is the case but we dont all stand for that and it wont happen again.

Noone knows what to do with Siddha and he has nothing to say - why should he? He has his money by now, has his wife and can live out the twilight of his years doing the occassional lecture.

If you look at their "official" site scienceofidentity.org then you will see who is Siddha states that he is the founder of the Identity Institute which has not functionally existed since 2000 and was delinquent on filing their taxes and involuntarily dissolved by the government.
[hbe.ehawaii.gov]

This piece of information alone if anyone bothers to look based on SoIs own site puts doubt over credibility.

I have absolutely no clue why they want to recruit new people. I havent seen anything to sugguest that the success rate is very good though. Even from stories that go back to about 10 years ago here recruitment efforts were not doing well and those who were trying to organise them became discouraged. I am doubtful as to whether there would even be a website for ASM, new classes etc if they had not been centre of the controversy. The root cause as I am pretty sure Siddha would say :wink:

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jograves
Maybe what they really want is to make a lot of money off the stupid Karmis without having to bother with initiating them or letting them get involved in the secretive and exclusive SOI "society",

I think it could possibly be something as simple as followers trying to do what they think is the right thing without any guidance. It is usually the poor people that are running kirtans that dont have any money and then the higher ups that are actually disciples running the businesses. As soon as they start shifting standards then everything starts to go to s**t. For example I have heard the lectures that a disciple should be leading the chanting and Sid is emphatic on this point, yet there are often chants that there is no disciple to lead, not through shortage just because they are not there or burnt out or have something else to do at the same time. I have seen a disciple make a very simple error in teaching others about gurupuja which one would think every disciple would know.

I dont think that anyone actually CAN be initiated because that would require Siddha to actually have some contact with them. This initiating by proxy did not even exist until ACB had to make as many disciples as possible as quickly as possible. Poor people and those that were not useful or had not been around for a very long time would not even register to him.

Thanks, cultrepo;
That's probably about right, no one is very organized because there's no real game plan, except,
Somebody is running the show, on some level. JG may have his nest egg, but there are still a few people at the top who are interested in keeping the whole thing alive and guarded. They must be getting something out of it, right?
No one would be so concerned in shutting you up if they didn't have a vested interest in guarding the cult secrets.
At least that's how it seems to me.
I agree with what someone (was it you?) wrote earlier, too. No one likes being lied to. It pisses people off.

[www.linkedin.com]

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Current
Jagad Guru Siddhaswarupananda at Science of Identity Foundation
Industry
Primary/Secondary Education

Chris Butler’s Experience

Jagad Guru Siddhaswarupananda
Science of Identity Foundation
(Primary/Secondary Education industry)
October 2006 — Present (10 months)

Maybe the old scammer is still at it.
I have no idea how valid the site is, though. I've never heard of linkedin before.

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jograves
I agree with what someone (was it you?) wrote earlier, too. No one likes being lied to. It pisses people off.

I think that anyone that has ever been there has seen this - people getting upset because they didn't know this was some sort of religious thing. People are actually fascinated by re-incarnation, prana, karma, spirituality of yoga, but noone really teaches these. If an organisation like ASM was teaching classes about the science of karma and reincarnation they would attract the people that are genuinely interested. As far as I know there is nothing at all wrong with teaching karma yoga in Krishna Consciousness, in the Gita Karma Yoga is the beginning of devotional practice because it softens the heart to develop to the state of performing Bhakti. Of course there is not a huge lot to teach about karma yoga it is basically doing good - (Ghandi was a karma yogi) but it would be a good purpose for bringing people together.

As far as the people at the top go there is no way to know what their belief is or how sincere they are but it certainly doesnt hurt that they call working in their businesses devotional service.