Quote
Dassi
Why would a pure deevoteeee need security?
Were they armed guards?
Did ACB ever have guards?
It's kinda weird that they turned on the tap water?
I think it is funny that none of the male disciples wanted to take this job!
Wonder if the incentive was initiation since it was probably un-paid labor.
Maybe one of his followers was so hungry they lifted his wallet?
=( Boo hoo he had to call up for money....

Why would a pure devoteee need security indeed...
whatever happened to the theory that not a blade of grass moves without the sanction of the Supreme Lord ... one would think that the Supreme Lord would want to protect his most beloved friend, no?

Just like the pope driving around in his popemobile with bullet-proof glass ...
that's what you call faith in action???

Yes, they were armed. (Not sure about ACB though)

From what I can remember when the fearless leader had the waterfront apartment at Diamond Head, there were a couple of "guards" sleeping in a small Honda Accord vehicle parked on the busy road outside the building... They didn't have a key to the building so their attempts at security were severely hampered, I suppose...

Things probably changed after that, though.

Another point comes to mind, if the fearless leader had a wallet with money in his possession, why did he not go out and buy himself the mangos for breakfast? ... or at least to get the Oriental woman to get them? Surely if they can walk to the beach to go surfing, they can go to the store to pick up a mango?

:?

This is a photo of Chris Butler aka Jagad Guru Siddhaswarupananda Prabhufraud, founder of the Science of Identity cult.
He is seated on what is called a "Vyas Asana" that Indian Gurus preach from. This particular one was made by followers.
It had a plywood base covered with hand woven lauhala, a special weaving to native Hawaiians. This seat was placed on a covered outdoor patio/ chanting deck.
It was CB's attempt at starting a temple on the island of Kauai at a place called Koolau, a beautiful rural setting with very cheap rent. Not far from the hippie commune Taylor Camp or the ocean. There was also a large vegetable garden there. Tulasi plants were in their own special garden and were so abundant that you could make garlands out of their blossoms. They are a relative of the basil family and sacred to the followers of Vaishnava tradition. They were huge bushes with bright purple leaves.

This photo may have been when CB "installed" his idols there or it may have been a special holiday, such as Chaitanya's "Appearance" Day. The diety alter was inside the house behind this picture. There were Sunday feasts and lectures and chanting. No one was teaching yoga or meditation at that time - just chanting on beads and kirtans. The "temple" did not last long. The dieties were later moved to the infamous WAREHOUSE.



Here is a rare picture of a follower washing Chris Butler's feet. I do not know what they did with the foot water at the time.....
I do remember CB being particularly annoyed with this fawning follower. He said about him, "First to cry, first to dry." because he would cry at kirtans.
I do not know if he remained in the cult, but he did leave shortly after this photo was taken. And no, that is not a cup of Starbucks coffee to CB's left!



Passing the garden gate.


Chris Butler's famous dollies. They were about two feet tall. They were carved and painted in the Philippines.
The ladies made sure there were flowers and hand made clothes.
Adults playing dress up......how garish!
Yes, there was a photo of CB on the alter along with the rest of the dis-ciplic succession.

Don't be bashful. If you don't know what they did with the water, the senior disciples drank it, and distributed it amongst the other followers openly or covertly.

It is highly auspicious within ISKCON to drink this water, as Bhaktivedanta wrote:

-----------------------

"The dust of the feet of a devotee, the water that has washed the feet of a devotee, and the remnants of food left by a devotee are three very powerful substances.

By rendering service to these three, one attains the supreme goal of ecstatic love for Krishna. In all the revealed scriptures this is loudly declared again and again.

Therefore, my dear devotees, please hear from me, for I insist again and again: please keep faith in these three and render service to them without hesitation.

Therefore, my dear devotees, please hear from me, for I insist again and again: please keep faith in these three and render service to them without hesitation."

[vedabase.net]

---------------------------

By 'rendering service to' means 'consuming'. Wasn't it Z who said he was fighting over and stealing the food that was covered in Butler's spit. On this note Chris did not deviate from ISKCON.

This is extremely creepy:

"Prabhupada’s feet had been sinking into the sand, and when he held one foot out it was muddy. As he wriggled his toes, a devotee poured water on the foot, washing it clean. Prabhupada then bent over, put ocean water in his mouth, and spat it out. Only Guru-krpa Swami was quick enough to catch some of the water and drink it."

www.sivaramaswami.com/2006/04/?cat=5&paged=5

It is disgusting but common practice. They don't just throw that stuff away. The toenail thing is extremely wierd by anyone's standard.

The following letter is from Chris Butler’s wife Vaishnava dasi aka Wai Lana (who peddles yoga through public televison and the internet).

It is a shrill echo of her husband’s obsessions and is reminiscent of the poisoning fears in any royal court in history. She is accusing followers of trying to poison Jagad Guru with the fumes of light bulbs! WTF?!





Chris Butler’s paranoia is clearly exhibited in the following letters accusing his disciples of trying to poison him and his consort. His fear and disdain, yet pathological dependency on his followers is evident. He needs them but can’t trust them. He has become his own story of the pathetic guru who, paralyzed in the lotus position, can no longer take care of his own needs.

He resorts to rants. His in-person, verbal rages were even more cruel and personally humiliating than these letters. There are also stories of people being fined great sums of money for "offences".

Again, he is blaming his followers for his ill health. He tells them he is ill because they are breaking the four regulative principles (the Hare Krishna credo of no drugs, sex, meat, or gambling). These are their religious belief's restrictions.

What about Jagad Guru breaking basic universal principles of not stealing, lying, or cheating others! His health is his own, but his lies have ruined many followers financially, emotionally AND spiritually!

Time and again after reading the Rick Ross forums you see the surreal similarities between other cult leaders and CB. They all have the face they show to the public and the face they show to the “true believers” and the third face they show to their closest, senior disciples.

It has been suggested that recruits come from families that have the same “double – faces” (e.g., a gracious mother who throws wonderful parties remembered years later vs. the private abuse and neglect of the children that is never seen publicly. Or the family that has an alcoholic parent that everyone protects and covers up.)

There is also a similarity with other cult leaders in their need for the bouncer, the heavy, the punisher.

These letters show the shadow side of Chris Butler, Jagad Guru Siddhaswarupananda, founder of Science of Identity. They show a man attempting to recruit a loyal peon who will act as his enforcer, his soprano.

The carrot on the stick, the manipulative tactic, is to give the “ADVANCED DISCIPLE” label to a follower willing to do the dirty work for him, someone who can rationalize abuse in the name of protecting and serving the messiah.

He is recruiting a specific personality type. He’s looking for a “sergeant” who can, be his “eyes and ears”, “yell at people”, “act as a policeman”, and not trust 99% of the followers. They are really considered less than dogs, ‘kanistha adhikaris”, whose only concern is their genitals and tongues instead of on serving guru.

This is what is so crazy about the philosophy. For the most part, followers were hard working, trying to support themselves and their families, while giving as much as they could to CB. Eating, sexuality, reproducing, loving, friendship, taking care of your family are seen as BAD things. This was the mind fuck. This was the place where you had to drop off the critical thinking cliff to be a disciple.

Once you have fallen, it can be a long, tough climb back to solid, rational ground again.

Anyone who can truly swallow the contradictions has been completely mind fucked. Service of the pure “deeevoteeeeee” is supposed to be so purifying that even whores and thieves have been turned around, but why not these middle class kids who did nothing really bad, who were just looking for the truth and some kind of spirituality that was missing from their childhoods?!

The truth is that Chris Butler had no feelings for the good and the sincere except for what he could steal from them.

He did have a real need for a dangerous type of person, who he is clearly looking for in these letters.

The real thieves and whores are Chris Butler, Jagad Guru, Siddhaswarupananda and his phony, yogini wife, Wai Lana and their willing accomplices.

Without the cooperators, the sergeants, he would not be the cult leader he is today.









Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/26/2008 06:57AM by Vera City.

Quote
Vera
This is what is so crazy about the philosophy. For the most part, followers were hard working, trying to support themselves and their families, while giving as much as they could to CB. Eating, sexuality, reproducing, loving, friendship, taking care of your family are seen as BAD things. This was the mind fuck. This was the place where you had to drop off the critical thinking cliff to be a disciple.

VERY WELL SAID, Vera.

This paragraph rings true in my mind to a great degree, with special emphasis on the phrase

THIS WAS THE MIND FUCK

IT WAS A MIND FUCK, INDEED... and I personally knew people were totally "mind-fucked" when these letters came out.

I do remember this letter was also quite instrumental for myself in questioning why I was even remotely involved with this craziness...

The poisonous light bulb: I never heard of this one!!! WTF indeed!

PS -= Thanks, Vera, for posting the pictures of Kolau -- brings back the memories, doesn't it?

:)

Vera, this is treading a little close to Zelig's "cult members are to blame for their own predicament" line. You are also giving conflicting messages regarding the 'true believers' ("mind fucked" you say) and those who are willing accomplices or cooperators.

After a year of studying this cult I have come to the conclusion that there are those who follow because they are stuck in a programmed state, those who cannot leave and those who aren't under any illusion yet derive personal benefit from the cult. But how do you know if someone truly believes or not? It is just as likely that the ones you term 'willing accomplices' are the most brainwashed followers.

Controlling cult members is far more complex than just coersion and manipulation of beliefs. A person is often torn between a life of uncertainty and insecurity weighed against their family, employment and community that are intrinsically intertwined into the cult? Add to that fear of shunning, harrasment and/or violence against to those who give up the programming, along with the paranoia, social phobias, anxiety and depression that are cultivated in members from the time they join. Radha Krishna das admitted to blackmailing a follower with denied access to his own son if he did not comply on this same thread. How would you categorize an individual in these circumstances?

You seperated the cult into "true believers" on one side and his closest disciples on the other. Just as Zelig did. Is that your final analysis?

Let's look at it another way. The followers who didn't become his disciples, those who dropped away or kept to the background had enough critical thinking to not say "Yes Srila Prabhupad, I give my life to you as a slave." These individuals may have been less impulsive and more consciencous about any doubts they had.

Vera: 'It has been suggested that recruits come from families that have the same “double – faces”'

How many families don't have deep skeletons they hide from the public? You are talking about over half the nation. More likely is the fact that cults target much of their recruitment towards youths or individuals who are at low point in their life, particularly vunerable youths. Their situation in life may or may not have anything to do with their upbringing. Recruits can come from anywhere.

Wait, didn't Chris have an alcoholic parent? Ah, I see why you used this example. "The parents of cult members dropped the ball". That was one of Zelig's lines too.

Describing followers cooperators or as purely mind-fucked, who lack critical thinking skills or have a certain personality with abusive parents is over-simplifying the hold on people this cult has.

--------------------------------

On a lighter note:



This is a cast of Bhaktivedanta's feet for sale that a devotee can use to bathe his feet and "catch the water" for an unspecified purpose.

[krishnastore.com]

There is no one formula for becoming a cult member, nor is there only one or two profiles of cult member types. The point of my previous post was to point out similarities with other cults and obviously bring to light the contents of the memos about poisoning by light bulb fumes and other absurdities. Those willing to rationalize their time and money away, those who become enforcers, and those who become complicit by knowingly committing fraud are simply different personas who inhabit cults. How this happens to people is a huge study and was not the subject of my short post. Zelig is not a concern of mine, nor the topic of this forum.

To reference and frame my comments – is a recent post by “corboy”, an excellent commentator on this forum. I recommend searching out his posts to gain more insights into cults. In this post he quotes a follower of the Syda yoga group named Solea. Her experiences seem to be similar to many ex-followers of Chris Butler, Jagad Guru, Siddhaswarupananda Paramahansa, founder of Science of Identity. In fact, it is scarily similar...

Quote
corboy
Solea wrote of her own guru:

'She was very sweet and benevolent to out of town visitors. She was very disciplining and strict with those of us beside her on a daily basis. "

This is classic. Its like families that, in private and behind closed doors, are nasty to their children, but thrill adult visitors with lovely parties, charm, haute cuisine.

My mother was delightful with her adult friends but nasty to me. I could never get her best friend to understand that Mom treated me very differently from the way she treated her friends.

Her pal kept thinking I had an excessively gloomy viewpoint. She couldnt understand that Mom gave me quite a different 'data set' from what she had given her pal.

Later, much later, I discovered my mother's friend had done the same thing--utterly charming to friends and visitors, threw kick ass parties that people remembered years later, did a lot of good in the community.

But at home, her family life was Trauma City. She and my mother were similar--one face to the world, a darker face behind closed doors. No wonder they were best buds.

And both, by default lied and kept things secret, rather than tell the truth. (Its similar to how addicts can find each other almost by radar.)

My hunch is that many abusive bosses (whether they run 'spiritual/human potential' businesses or just secular businesses) often split their personalities in two--a sunny, charming personality that is revealed to the public (and especially to major donors) and the darker, angrier, tantrum tossing cruel child persona that is kept hidden and vented in private upon the entourage/inner circle members.

If you can con the entourage into believing this abuse is a privilige or a means of purification, all the better. The entourage are given the task of enabling/parenting, concealing the abusive bosses shadow persona.

And because the public never get to see the abuse, they have zero frame of reference for it. If any entourage member tried to tell the truth, the public who need the guru's public persona, who have linked their ideals and hopes to idealizing the guru's charming public persona will hate the entourage member who dares to disrupt this projection by revealing that the public persona is just a performance and not the whole truth.

Its all the more complicated because those who only see the public persona may actually get some personal benefit from what the guru teaches in public--never knowing that their bliss is generated off the misery and suffering of the entourage who huddle behind closed doors and conceal their bruises underneath nice make up.

Worst of all, too many members of the public who benefit from the 'sunny side up' persona of a secretly abusive guru refuse to face the moral implications of getting their bliss from the sacrifices and degradation inflicted on the entourage.

They will bleat, 'But that wasnt my experience.'

Of course it was not. You got only part of the picture, just the part the abuser wanted you to see.

What price bliss if its made possible by the misery of a guru's entourage? That bliss will be dirty.

And if someone says the entourage members corrupt the guru--that is baloney. It appears in many cases that abusive bosses and gurus carefully hand pick entourage members from those persons pre-formatted to parent abusive people and in an ashram its easy to find that out---because people in ashrams tend to trust the environment and will freely disclose their upbringing and traumas.

Sometimes you'll be tested to see whether you dislike cruel behavior or if you quickly rationalize it.

I would hazard a guess that those who end up in entourages may well be persons who were pre-formatted by enacting a similar role as young children, before being old enough and conscious enough to be in any way capable of consent or even being able to reflect upon what they are doing.

One can keep secrets without even being told 'Keep this a secret'--if you're well trained enough in a secretive, crazy family, you'll learn to cover up and do your own personal Watergate without anyone even telling you to do it--little kids learn pre-verbally.

Solea, if you want to learn more on how this works, Marta Szabo, who spent 10 years in Syda yoga has a most remarkable blog, entitled The Guru Looked Good.

This generated a remarkable outpouring of comments as people contributed their perspectives and many began to comprehend how this recruitment into the entourage functioned--and the difference between how the entourage was treated and how outside visitors and especially the wealthy were treated...

[www.the-guru-looked-good.blogspot.com]

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/26/2008 11:03PM by Vera City.

How many Haribolers does it take to change a light bulb?

Seven.

One to screw in the light bulb.

Four to try and suck out the poisons from the bulb.

Two to dig the graves for those who committed suicide for being condemned for not getting the correct light bulb.

-----------------
But seriously, though, here again we see the absurdity of "Jagad Guru" and his craziness... Any normal person who knows himself to have a sensitivity to fumes from a regular light bulb (?) would immediately check the bulb before turning on the switch... and if the bulb was seen to be the offensive kind, would immediately phone up his devoted slaves and tell them to procure the right kind of bulb ... and then thank the devoted slaves for going to the trouble of finding the correct light bulb, and also to express gratidue to the people who worked their lives away in a factory to produce the said bulb...

Simple solution, seems like common sense to me .... why all the condemnation, putting people into total anxiety... driving people suicidal??? ... does not make any sense and everybody knows it.

-------------------
What's all this chatter about Z on this forum??? The return of Zorro??? Is somebody hallucinating that the swashbuckling swordsman is leaving his mark (a capital Z) all over the forum with his sabretoothed sabre???

I can just imagine the headlines in the Gotham News:

"Masked marauder returns to terrorize Krishna forum" ???

:)

Thanks, Vera, for the link to Corboy's "Guru looked good" blogspot... eerily similar, yes!

:)

You can't be straight can you? You didn't respond to the question of 'willing accomplices' and yet the three new categorizations become more clearer as to your real point of view:

1. Those who are "willing" to rationalize their time and money away.

2. The enforcers (previously defined as those who can rationalize abuses)

3. And those become complicit by knowingly committing fraud

These all seem like willing characters to me. You can't subtly insert your "cult members are to blame" theories here.

(Reposting as I'm not sure if the last post went thru - still on "flame" alert here)

I'm honestly not that impressed by Corboy's attempt at pathologizing entourage members nor his defining families of anti-social individuals as crazy.

Another angle to look at is that indoctrination is directed at completely altering personalities and promoting certain types of behaviors. At least in the Science of Identity Foundation the rationalization for abusive behaviors has already been defined in Chris' teachings. The austere lifestyle, the non-attachment to relationships (including children), the prohibition against any form of 'doing good for others', the justifiable hatred of others, the complete lack of stimulation and the idea that concern or lamenting for the suffering of others is a sign of ignorance. You can't become a member of this organization without it changing your personality to that of a cruel individual.

So who made these people so cruel the parents or the deceptive brainwashing cult that teaches people that all commonly accepted social morals are wrong?

I could hazard a guess too and it's not the parents.