it is a good thing that you got out but don't thank god or any false myth as the reason you were saved was because you used your rational mind and thought for yourself. Myths and phony gods can't help us only our rational informed critical thinking can.

Orwell wrote that "gurus should be presumed guilty until proven innocent" and my experiences with the Krishnas have made me believe that Orwell could have been speaking of Prabhupada or any of the other "gurus" who inhabit the bankrupt world of ISKCON.

Just the other day a friend of mine was at a grocery store when she was approached by a well kept young man soliciting donations for a soup kitchen run by ISKCON.

Unfortunatly for this young devotee my comrade was well aware that our neigborhood devotees do not run a soup kitchen and got this fraud booted out off the property.

It is nice to see that the Krishna's still have no integrity. By "hook or crook" as Prabhupad used to say right? Pathetic and disgusting.

Ciao,
EB

this is part of their set up for mind control! They get you into their temple or Soup Kitchen and feed you and then you are brainwashed.

A lot of cults do this. The Tony and Susan Alamo Christian Foundation used to do this in all their so called churches. They would feed you cheap boxed Kraft macaroni and cheese and kool aid from a mix. Really good food and save you. In Brooklyn their store front church was a total brainwashing center they had a lot of poor latinos eating it up that tony was the chosen and he was a total evil man. This was back in 1985 when they were distributing their anti catholic tracts THE POPES SECRETS all over the country. I hung out with them and infilerated them after they trusted me.

The Haris have better food but it is DRUGGED with their brainwashing drugs this has not been proven but a source close to the cult claims that in the new york and california temples this is what they would do at their meetings. it would not surprise me if they still are serving drugged food to con people into joining. if anyone else has any info about this or if they are still practicing this I would want to know as they need to be banned and shut downn along with all the other cult zombies

I had always thought it would be a cold day in hell before I take up for the Krishna's but I am of the opinion that the notion of them drugging food is a bit far-fetched.

Having consumed in my day a fair amount of drugs as well as a fair amount of "prasadam" (Krishna-speak for the food they make) I can not recall (somewhat to my dismay I might add) that their food was ever laced with anything aside from some exotic Eastern spices that occasionally gave me the runs. Also I might add that in all the anti-Krishna literature that I have come across has there been any documented case of "food enhancement".

This of course is not to say that it never happened, but to point out that if it does happen or did happen, that it is not something endemic within ISKCON.

Personally I think that as people who are deeply skeptical of deviant or even dangerous sects that we must not just reserve our skepticism for the cultists, but must also guard against repeating fatuous propaganda that diminishes our cause and makes us sound almost as silly as they are.

There is plenty to criticize about Krishna's and ISKCON without making things up.

Ciao,
Tony

I have to second the assertation by Eric Blair. I attended ISKCON programs briefly, and even helped prepare this prasadam, and have never seen any instance where a cook or somebody was drugging any food. Granted, ISKCON has horrible problems with false gurus running around throwing their weight. They also have problems with proliferating very narrow views that they are the only bonefide Gaudiya Vaishnava group, but mass druggings? Prabhupad was against the use of drugs. Their problems comprise mainly of crazy gurus. And yes there was some ex-Guru smuggling drugs or something. Drugging food would be expensive, they just used mundane psych techniques to have people obey the bogus gurus. And that didn't even last very long.

Implicit within Dervish's opinion that ISKCON may be riddled with "false gurus" is the assumption that there may in fact somewhere be an entity that is a "true guru". A scary prospect indeed.

For if there is to be a "guru" than there is to be a "disciple" who is willing to subordinate his/her ironic and critical faculties to that guru, in exchange for esoteric "wisdom" delivered through mind numbing platitudes.

The biggest problem that ISKCON has is not it's "false gurus", the biggest problem with ISCKON is that it promulgates a mythology that is at best silly and at worst occasionally dangerous to it's adherents.

Thanks,
EB

Quote
Eric Blair
Implicit within Dervish's opinion that ISKCON may be riddled with "false gurus" is the assumption that there may in fact somewhere be an entity that is a "true guru". A scary prospect indeed.

I feel it is only a scary prospect to those who only see eastern religion in terms of ISKCON, TM, Sai Baba, and other talked about cults which found their way in the west. Or athiests who feel any type of submission in the name of religion is wrong. Guru disciple relationship is seen throughout Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and other offshoots. Sure, a plethora of false gurus existed. It's par for the course that unscrupulous people will see submission of the learner and crave that power. The meaning of Guru is "teacher". A student in the old world offered complete submission to the teacher. Even in the west, You saw this level of submission with Jesus and his disciples. Even in the western secular world, you would see this with master/journeymen craftsmen with their apprentices.

Am I here to advocate guru/disciple relationships? Hardly! It's a very dangerous concept. Ever since 1-2 Indian theologians took western disciples, many false guru charletans came westward to take advantage. It's almost impossible to find a teacher with pure intentions. Perhaps it's completely impossible today.

There seems to be an assumption floating around that "eastern" religions are somehow less dogmatic, less orthodox, more contemplative and dare I add, "transcendental".

I could go on ad-nauseum about how weightless platitudes uttered by ascetics in saffron robes has polluted many an impressionable mind, but I think that for this audience, this would be an excercise in tautology.

But when Dervish alludes to the "old world" when gurus were not crooks and their slaves were wide-eyed simpletons lapping up the nectar of knowldege, my skin starts to crawl.

It makes me think of India where the cast system is still having to be beaten back by a coalition of secularists and reform minded theists. And it makes me think of the old hindu practice of widows tossing themselves (or being tossed) into the funeral pyres of their husbands.

Or how in Tibet, the contemplative Buddists, were the cheerleaders for a cruelly enforced feudalism, and how even now the Dali-Lama's supporters circulate wanted posters of apostates and heretics.

Or how in pre-war Japan, Zen Buddhist discipline helped usher in the religiously induced Imperialism that could only be stopped by the Atomic Bomb.

Dervish, you may keep your delusions of a hazy, lazy, past of a narcotic nirvana. But I would mind history before attempting to inject this kind of rubbish into circulation[/i]

Implicit within Eric Blair's missive of all the imperfections of eastern religion is the assumption that western religion completely transcends all of these problems, and has in the past and continues to remain morally dominant.

I get chicken skin when Eric Blair alludes a western utopia of spiritual logic and moral supremacy.

Don't spit on my cupcake and tell me it's frosting

How about when "The Children's Crusade" was in full effect, when the Roman Catholic Church allowed contingents of brainwashed children to go to Jerusalem, where the vast major of them were kidnapped, imprisoned, and sold into slavery along the way.

Or throughout the middle ages of Europe, when Jews were so brutally demonized by the European populance, that many ran to the Middle East, where they were demonized only less so by the Muslims.

Or the extreme backwardness of the dogmatic Christian fueled middle ages, where the medical advances of the muslim world were considered witchery and bloodletting was all the rage.

And when did this dark age even begin to subside? When Europe gradually let go of a single authority and started to branch out in very casual forms of alternate expression during the reformation which in turn fueled mass secularization.

We have to be balanced here. While ISKCON, TM, and Saccidananda, and more are worth keeping one's distance from, there's also Internation Church Of Christ, Body of Christ, and Jews for Jesus running around. All the major religions are bonefide, and I don't think anyone will dispute that, save a small contingent of extremists. But when the masses of people get involved, you'll have bloody crusades, jihad, caste system, and religion fueled feudalism on all sides of the fence.

Actually I alluded to nothing at all.

By pointing out the intellectual laziness of many people who give the Eastern spiritualists a free pass I was by no means carrying the banner for western theists (who for the, record I could summon similar criticisms of).

And also for the record I enthusiastically second Dervish's reccounting of crimes committed in the name of "Our Lord and Savior". And I could probably add a half-dozen more without to much effort.

So Dervish, why the silly assumptions and emotional overreaction?

Shall we not get back to the issue at hand, your less than spirited defense of gurus and all the ignoble platitudes that they have been hurling upon mankind for centuries?