ISKCON HISTORY - detailed
account
part 2
1985 SULOCHANA: David attacks Goliath (ref: 1985 Sulocana, 04. Apr. 2000)
Sulochana (Steve Bryant) called me in Berkeley from Texas to tell me had made his final break with "New Vrindavana," the ISKCON West Virginia community that was being run by Kirtanananda swami (Keith Ham). Sulochana explained that Kirtanananda swami had taken away his wife (Jane Bryant) by "initiating" her as his disciple and then ordering her to leave. Sulochana said that this had happened because he had started to disagree with the swami --but the swami wanted absolute allegience.
Sulochana also noted that Kirtanananda had a pattern. He would "break up the marriage" of a dissenter using the ploy that the dissenter was "not surrendered to Krishna." This was a tool he used discourage others from dissenting. Indeed, Jane Wallace of CBS news said later that she could not help but notice that many of the women at New Vridnavana looked like they had children from several different fathers. In short, it looked like Kirtanananda had de facto encouraged some of the women there to have sex with one man and then another by various means. Sulochana summarized this tactic, "Take away a man's nookie (sex) to control him. And later this man would crawl back to surrender to Kirtanananda, knowing that Kirtanananda would give this man yet another woman as a reward for cooperation." Apparently, this tactic has been successfully used in other fanatical cults like Jim Jones, David Koresh and others.
The "temple managers" at New Vrindavana had helped Sulochana's wife file for a divorce and she was simultaneously provided with "a new husband" who was loyal to Kirtanananda. Sulochana further explained that when he had tried to leave the compound with his children the New Vrindavana "enforcers" caught up with him in their vehicles and they forced him to give back his children --at gun point. Unfortunately, the temple had also hired a lawyer and helped Jane obtain temporary legal custody of the children, so Sulochana could not get help from the police. And just before Sulochana phoned me he had phoned Kirtanananda swami, only to be told "we will fight (for the children)" by the swami.
Sulochana was calling me from the highway and he was heading to Los Angeles. I told him to keep in touch since his "falling out" with Kirtanananda incident might be useful to expose, overall, the whole "eleven bogus gurus" project. A few months later Sulochana called to tell me that he was now on the highway again and he was heading towards San Francisco from Los Angeles, and he planned to meet with me. He rented a tiny room in a motel on University Avenue in Berkeley, and we started to discuss possible ideas of how he could recover his children.
Sulochana was also very excited because just before he had left Los Angeles he had purchased a "pirated microfiche copy" of all of Srila Prabhupada's letters. He said, "We are going to bring the GBC's gurus down with these letters." That is because the letters offer a stark view of how Srila Prabhupada had wanted the GBC to manage; How he distrusted some key GBC members who were now allegedly gurus; How he did not want the GBC to consult with the Gaudiya Matha's homosexual guru project, and so on and so forth. When we read some of the letters it was very much evident why the GBC had wanted them to be suppressed and hidden.
A few days later Sulochana informed me, "Ramesvara found out where I am staying and he called me to threaten me. He wants me to return the letter's microfiche and not publish any of these letters --or else." "Or else what"?, I asked. "Or else I will be dead meat on the hook," Sulochana replied. We looked at each other and started to laugh hysterically for five minutes. We knew immediately that these letters must therefore be very, very important and they must contain information that the GBC is trying to hide.
And we also knew that we were going to publish the letters anyway. We just could not stop laughing for quite awhile either. We both agreed, the GBCs must have lost their minds if they thought that they "owned" Srila Prabhupada, and that they could hide his light under their dark cloud. In short, the GBC was making it a law, "It is forbidden to quote from Srila Prabhupada --or else you will be dead meat." Of course, if you want to quote from the GBC's homosexual pedophile gurus, that is fine! And the GBC says further that these homosexuals are gurus who are as pure as God. And they have some violent ex-convicts who will beat your head in with an aluminum baseball bat if you disagree with their homosexual worship project. That is what we were going up against and we joked about it.
Sulochana had a cheap little computer that was an odd discontinued style made by Commodore, but it seemed to work fine. In other words he was severely "under funded" to go after a multi-million dollar worldwide bogus guru cult. He said that he had purchased the computer to write his book, which he wanted to call "The Guru Business." Mostly, he intended to use quotes from the letters to make an expose of how Srila Prabhupada doubted the GBC and therefore it is impossible that he would have appointed any of these GBCs as his and Krishna's "pure devotee successors."
At the same time we were both very aware that these GBC and so-called gurus could be very dangerous and that we could be killed at any second by exposing them. I explained to Sulochana that the work I was doing in Berkeley, going after Hansadutta's empire, was very risky. Perhaps the risk was lesser due to the fact that Hansadutta had a reputation as a burnt out, womanizing, beer drinking drug addict. Exposing him was relatively easy at least compared to some of the other GBC's gurus. And besides a lot of his followers already knew he was on his way out. Yet Hansadutta still had some loyal "violent criminal types" who could cause me untold mayhem at any time.
In fact, officer Joe Sanchez had made 73 felony arrests at the Berkeley temple in a few years because Hansadutta had a tendency to attract the violent criminal and felon type of follower. There was a large poster hanging in different places all over the temple "Guru Means Heavy," with a picture of Hansadutta wearing mirrored sun glasses and a hooded sweater. It looked exactly like the mug shot of the uni-bomber that was later found in the post office. This photo had been in the 1980 San Francisco newspapers with the caption "The Machine Gun Swami," after Hansadutta had been arrested with a machine gun in the trunk of his car.
Hansadutta was also selling his musical album in the temple at the time I met with Sulochana: "Guru, guru on the wall, who is the heaviest of them all? Whose disciples are the worst? Who could I give my last shirt? --I once saw a guru, a fantastic dancer, Holy gangster, carefree prankster," and so on. At the start of this song is the unmistakable sound of machine gun fire. In other words "Guru means heavy" really means: he has some heavy gangster or ex-convict followers, and if you disagree with "guru," you can end up being beaten or killed. That was not only the message of 1985, indeed that --still is-- the de facto message even now in the year 2000 from the hard core sector of the GBC's gurus. People are still getting threats of violence and so on, although it has diminished substantially thanks mainly to Sulochana exposing it so widely. Of course, it could be said today, now that it seems evident that members of the GBC party poisoned Srila Prabhupada, we can readily understand why this party hates his followers as well.
Kirtanananda was an even more risky target than Hansadutta. He was highly respected in ISKCON at that time and he was one of the biggest leaders of the GBC. He had a lot more power and no small amount of potentially violent fanatical followers. I told Sulochana that our biggest local problem was that if we attacked Kirtanananda from Berkeley, then Hansadutta might be asked to help suppress us by Kirtanananda. And Hansadutta might be convinced by Kirtanananda to move against both of us since he had not cut his sympathy for the GBC's bogus guru project. That could be a problem. As it turned out, it was a major problem later on.
We noted that both Hansadutta and Kirtanananda had a lot in common. They had both put their pictures on Srila Prabhupada's altars in the mid 1970s and had tried to establish their own worship. This had completely disgusted Srila Prabhupada, making him say that at least in the 1936 Gaudiya Matha they waited until their guru was actually departed before the envious imitator sector rushed in to sit in their guru's seat.
And of course Hansadutta and Kirtanananda had other common traits. They both had reputed homosexuals, violent ex-criminals, and child molesters in their camps. They both had a reputation for orchestrating violence on dissenters. They were both volatile mavericks. They both had farms where people were alleged to have disappeared. They both had followers who had many guns. They were both alleged to be engaged in illicit sex with followers. They were both preaching that an apocolypse or WW III would happen soon. They both had delusions of being as good as Jesus. They both were writing their own books which were displacing Srila Prabhupada's books. They were both making alleged homosexuals into sannyasis. They were both dressing their followers in the same style of hooded sweater tops. They both had their own tape ministries, as if their words were as good as Srila Prabhupada's, and so on and so forth. Thus, me and Sulochana realized we were fighting the same type of characteristics, so why not combine our efforts? Of course, this would probably cause Hansadutta and Kirtanananda to combine their efforts, which could be deadly for us. Oddly, we almost predicted the near future alliance that Hansadutta would make with Kirtanananda to combat us, just by going through their character traits, since they were actually very similar in psychological make-up, modus operandi and so on.
In short, this was going to be a battle royal in any event and we both knew it. We discussed how it was possible that one or both of us could end up dead. "I just hope they don't slowly tear me into little pieces and put the pieces into a meat grinder and feed me to the New Vrindavana dogs while I'm still alive," Sulochana would say. Then I would say, "I just hope they use a large caliber gun on me like a .44 magnum, I just hate those little .22 bird banger guns." And so we would sort of joke about the prospects of danger, but of course we knew all along that this danger was a very real possibility.
Meanwhile, I was working on my own paper called "Our Living Guru." I had been circulating earlier copies of it in 1984, and was still in the process of refining it. I had tried to make it somewhat subdued in tone, whereas Sulochana's writings were a bit strident, to say the least. He would just blurt out things like: "Kirtanananda is not a guru but a demon who needs to be corrected with violence." I tried to say that this was not going to be effective writing, could we please use "Our Living Guru's" style of commentary?, but he always refused. He wanted his hard copy to be as hard as nails, and it was. We have been pleasantly surprised to discover, later on, that most of the key quotes used in "Our Living Guru" were subsequently used by other Krishna dissidents in their writings, and that the key letters quoted by Sulochana in his "Guru Business" were also used in these later documents.
Meanwhile, Suochana had been in touch with the "ISKCON justices department," devotees like Rupanuga dasa and Mukunda swami. They listened patiently to Sulochana's complaints and they agreed that having his children kidnapped was a serious offense on the part of Kirtanananda. Yet, they were also sypathetic to supporting the worship of Kirtanananda's homosexual guru regime. Therefore the "ISKCON justices" made a very muddled decree, Sulochana had some good points, on the other hand, he is offending a great devotee like Kirtanananda. Of course they mainly sympathized with Kirtanananda, they were just trying to get the persistent Sulochana off their backs. Indeed, a short while later the "ISKCON reformers" officially excommunicated Sulochana for his attacks on Kirtanananda.
1985 Sulochana part two (ref: 1985 part 2, 05. Apr. 2000)
By the middle of 1985 Hansadutta was getting very nervous about my preaching work in the Berkeley temple. It was gaining ground very rapidly, and we were convincing "one person after the next" to become "disciples of Srila Prabhupada." We had convinced maybe 40 people in the temple and maybe another 40 or 50 people from the visiting congregation by this time. As a side note, most of these people have kept the idea intact that they are still disciples of Srila Prabhupada, even to the present day. When some of them see me they give me the "thumbs up sign."
Simultaneously, Sulochana started hanging around Berkeley with me and he could give a very powerful presentation of quotes from Srila Prabhupada's letters to support our view that the GBC's gurus are bogus. Although Hansadutta had retreated to the Hopland farm, he kept hearing reports that we were gathering momentum. We also heard reports that Hansadutta was simultaneously personally deteriorating in various ways. He was alleged to have had problems such as: Getting very upset and shooting at his pile of beer cans in front of his house; Almost starting the farm on fire by driving around in a tractor with burning rags behind it; A male disciple allegedly wanted to kill him when he discovered that Hansadutta was having sex with his wife, and so on and so forth.
That we were making progress while he was slipping had become intolerable for him. So I was not too suprised to hear the big announcement one day that Hansadutta was going to visit New Vrindavana to "take shelter" of Kirtanananda swami. That means that he and Kirtanananda had decided to try to put a halt to our preaching that Srila Prabhupada is the guru for ISKCON and thus: to squash me and Sulochana. Hansadutta started to say that Kirtanananda is the only pure devotee in ISKCON, and the Berkeley followers should join him in taking shelter there.
Of course Hansadutta was well aware that Kirtanananda was not pure at all, but a highly dubious person at best. He had tried to take-over ISKCON in the early days, and he had defied Srila Prabhupada in so many ways. And he was alleged to have defied Srila Prabhupada once to run back to his homosexual friends, which had upset Srila Prabhupada. And Hansadutta must have known this because he too was an early devotee. In short, Hansadutta knew that Kirtanananda held a grudge against Srila Prabhupada and so to him, that was pure? This was what I would sometimes call "The Homosexual Guru Pharisee's Club." And of course Srila Prabhupada refers to the "sinister movement being within our movement," as early as 1970, which refers to these take-over minded fools.
In short, it seems that Hansadutta wanted to make the maverick homosexual guru Kirtanananda into an ally and eventually bring him back to Berkeley, and then fully establish their homosexual pedophile worshipping cult there as a means of driving us out. And as it turned out, that was the plan. Yet we had made enough allies in Berkeley by this time to thwart Hansadutta's plan, including the then GBC for San Francisco, Atreya Rsi. Atreya hired a lawyer to stop Kirtanananda's people from getting their names on the legal papers of the temple. As such, Atreya Rsi saved the building from being a homosexual pedophile cult worshipping project, which it would have been to this day. As a matter of interest, Berkeley is still one of the few temples in the world which allows and encourages Prabhupadanugas to visit at the present time. You could say that we tried to liberate it?
Of course all this occured at the height of child molestation in ISKCON and New Vrindavana as well, and it was also very PUBLICLY evident that Kirtanananda was a homosexual pedophile at that time. He was always driving around with a boy on his lap, he was covered with the hands of maybe fifty boys in his public worship, and there were small boys jumping in and out of his cottage all day long --with the adults ordered to stay away. There were also many other alleged homosexuals living at New Vrindavana at the time. There were also other alleged homosexuals there such as a school teacher named Sri Galim. Sulochana said at the time that New Vrindavana was "crawling with homosexuals." So this was the place Hansadutta wanted people to "take shelter of"?
Worse, Hansadutta knew all about the violent kidnapping of Sulochana's boys and other horrors going on there. Yet, when cult leaders become desperate they will stoop to almost anything, even if it means supporting a homosexual's being worshipped as good as God. Of course, Hansadutta was also made into a Krishna devotee in the later 1960s, so he probably knew all about the "Mott Street Boys" alleged gay house that Kirtanananda had come from. Sulochana used to call Kirtanananda and his allies like Hansadutta, "Faggot-pada and his boot lickers."
So I told this all to Sulochana and we had quite a good laugh over it. Sulochana said, "Well at least Hansadutta now admits he would rather see people worship a homosexual than Srila Prabhupada." I replied, "Well not only that, but most GBC would rather see people worship a bucket of dog stools than worship Srila Prabhupada." Sulochana argued immediately, "What? You kidding me? The GBC would never recommend the worship of a bucket of stools! Can a bucket of stools kill any devotees? Nope! Can it molest followers? Nope. A bucket of stools is WAY too advanced, WAY too high class, for them. It is WAY out of their league prabhu, it is WAY! ...too pure." And then we would slap our knees and laugh for five minutes.
Meanwhile, the GBC was having other troubles with the so-called "50 man committee to reform ISKCON." This was basically a group of lower echelon leaders who wanted to be "voted in as gurus" by the first wave of deviants. For example one of the leaders of the "50 man committee" was Trivrikrama swami. He said, "You guys had your chance (to be the worshipped saints of ISKCON) and now its our turn." This is kind of like seeing that the driver of your bus has had one too many drinks, and then grabbing the wheel from him and taking over the bus. The idea almost sounds good, except that, how could you get certified as a "good driver" by the drunk driver? How could a totally bogus guru, if not a child molester, certify "the next wave" of pure devotees? This has never been explained ever, by the "50 man committee" folks? This idea will not even work for a mundane bus driver's post, and this is certainly not how you "take over" the post of being a pure devotee guru like Jesus?
So there was a very vicious fight going on between the "old guard," mainly the eleven original "appointed gurus," and the upstart "50 man committee of reformers" who wanted to be certified as gurus --by the old guard. A devotee named Sri Kanta said at the time, "The guru disease has now become an epidemic." There was a meeting held in New Vrindavana in October, 1985, to try to sort out a compromise between the gurus and the guru wanna-be sector. Sulochana went to nearby Wheeling, West Virginia, with hopes to make some impact for his case, but instead he got temporarily arrested when New Vrindavana inmates reported that "a violent man" was in town. He was released, but the whole episode was a let down for him because he could see that many of his God brothers, especially those who had attended that meeting, did not care much that a homosexual was sitting in Srila Prabhupada's seat. Indeed all that most of them wanted was for themselves to sit in Srila Prabhupada's seat in another location, and to get a guru rubber stamp from the deviants if not homosexuals. Of course, meanwhile none of them seem to be worried about the position of the women, children, cows and other citizens who were being victimized by the whole program?
One of the supporters of the idea that many more gurus should be certified was named Triyogi dasa: Michael Shockman. He wanted to become the next guru for the state of Ohio, sort of replacing Kirtanananda. Yet Kirtanananda was very much opposed to the whole reform program, and he wanted no new gurus in his "zone." Oddly, Kirtanananda was also quoting some of the same arguments we gave; The guru is not made by rubber stamps, votes, temple president's consensus, a show of hands of GBC quorum, and so on. The guru is "self-effulgent." And so Kirtanananda was seen as a major obstacle to "the reform of ISKCON," i.e. rubber stamping another fifty people as the next wave of imitations of Srila Prabhupada.
Of course once again this was fodder for me and Sulochana to make countless jokes. "Oh, have you got your GBC guru certificate in the mail yet Puranjana? You have to mail in three boxtops from a pack of condoms to get one. I just got mine and it has some sticky goo on it? Do you think I need to handle it with rubber gloves"?
Around this time, Ravindra Swarupa and Radhanatha swami came to visit Berkeley to try to deal with the crisis there. I thought, "Here is an odd couple? Radhanatha is Kirtanananda's right hand man, and he thinks that his swami is as pure as Jesus? Whereas Ravindra Swarupa does not like Kirtanananda at all because he is trying to impeded the vote to make some of the 50 man committee into more mini-Prabhupadas"? We then had a meeting and Ravindra started by saying, "In this room are the most moderate and intelligent devotees in the movement." Huh? We all knew that I was considered as a total "Prabhupada fanatic" and not a so-called moderate. Radhanatha was also considered to be a Kirtanananda fanatic. So right away I got the impression that Ravindra was a liar and a politician, in sum, just the kind of guy whom the GBC would vote in as a guru. And later on they did, when they simultaneously recoronated another one of their homosexual pedophile gurus, Bhavananada, in March of 1986.
As the meeting progressed Ravindra hinted about his plan to save ISKCON be having another wave of leaders certified as Srila Prabhupada's next wave of gurus. He called this his "guru reform." I thought, "Oh good, he is going to have gurus who are coming from reform schools and jails, really good plan." Ravindra said that these newer gurus were going to be the "better gurus" because their worship was not going to be so elaborate. Right away I thought, "Why should we have gurus that we cannot worship? The whole Vedic process is to worship the guru as good as God? Does this mean that sometimes God is reduced, and so we have reduced 'as good as God' worship? So why not worship an old shoe then? And old shoe is a 'reduced' part of God? I still don't get their idea? Something is as good as God, therefore it has to be --reduced in stature? Are we not supposed to --emphasize-- something that is as good as God? Why reduce? This one hundred dollar bill will only purchase one dollar of goods. All right, so it is counterfeit?
"This man is making no sense at all? They are going to be gurus, but they are not going to be worshipped as gurus? They are really janitors, and they will be performing brain surgery, but yet they are not really brain surgeons either? Who will accept this? Srila Prabhupada says you always have to worship the guru as good as God, but we GBC say we sometimes have to worship him as good as --Fred the trash collector. Huh"?
Ravindra has never made any sense to me since then either, except he did write a paper later saying that since most of the devotees were taking drugs and having illicit sex in the 1970s, they would continue these activities when they became gurus. Yes, the reason we have to burn people at the stake is that the Pope is now Jesus' living spokesman, but he still has not given up his old habits from before he became Jesus' spokesman? Of course I would then ask, "How is he Jesus' spokesman if he has still not given up his old habits"? No one has ever answered these types of questions for a simple reason, there is no good answer. Ravindra kept flashing his Cheshire cat grin during the meeting while deflecting various questions and in sum he appeared to be a cheezy politician.
Radhanatha on the other hand was a lot more subdued and serious. He knew that this Sulochana problem could blow up in their faces and so he kept asking me what he could do to pacify Sulochana. I told him that he had to move the children to a neutral location and give Sulochana access, bare minimum, and without that there would be no basis for further talks. He promised he would try to do that, while simultaneously he gave me a sort of warning at the end, "I do consider Kirtanananda to be a great devotee and I think it is a mistake for Sulochana to challenge him like this."
Meanwhile, Triyogi was getting very angry at Kirtanananda for "holding up his guru certification." Apparently word got around that the GBC was going to "cave in" to the "50 man committee" and give anywhere from 20 to 40 new guru certificates at the 1986 Mayapura meeting, but one had to get permission and recommendation from the local guru first. Kirtanananda just was not going to give in. So Triyogi and Kirtanananda got into a big argument one day. Triyogi demanded that Kirtanananda give him his guru recommendation. When Kirtanananda refused once again, Triyogi picked up a large, heavy piece of pipe and bashed Kirtanananda over the head, almost killing him.
After Kirtanananda was assaulted, the GBC tried to make it appear that a great saint had been attacked just like Jesus was crucified. Leaders from all over poured into New Vrindavana to offer support and condolences. Of course, this was a good opportunity for them to blame Sulochana for the attack and perhaps spawn an attack on him. So the rumor was started that Sulochana was good friends with Triyogi and that they had planned the attack. This made no sense to the intelligent observer however. Triyogi wanted to get "voted in as a guru" and Sulochana, well, he hated the idea that a guru could be rubber stamped. Sulochana also said that if a person got a guru rubber stamp from Kirtanananda he would be, "A certified faggot, not just a regular faggot."
And Sulochana also thought that Triyogi was "a jerk" and not a person who was qualified to be voted in as a guru. Similarly, Triyogi disagreed with our idea that guru voting is foolish and bogus. Also, if the attack had been "planned," why did Triyogi attack in the open in front of eye-witnesses, and especially when there were a number of Kirtanananda's followers nearby --who could have killed him in retaliation? This was not a planned attack, this was a spontaneous outburst of extreme anger. If Triyogi was so attached to our idea, why did he not contact us then or since?
Anyway, by December 1985, Hansadutta officially backed Kirtanananda and moved to New Vrindavana. Then he made an effort to totally black-ball and scuttle the Berkeley temple by telling everyone there that they should move to New Vrindavana, and essentially abandon the Berkeley temple. Sink the ship after we pirates have pillaged and raped it --that was the policy. And if the temple was totally incapacitated, then Hansadutta and Kirtanananda could come back later and attack it more easily, as they actually tried to do later on.
This is of course very typical of some of the GBC management thinking. Will there be anyone left to care for the deities? Who cares, we only care that there will be enough people around to care for the "guru." The people in the temple are not Krishna's servants, they are Hansadutta's servants. And worse, Hansaduutta de facto said that all of you should quit serving Krishna and start serving --a homosexual pedophile posing as Krishna's successor? That is the superior method of service? Quit serving Krishna so you can start serving a violent pedophile worshipping cult's leader --who thinks he is as pure as Krishna? This was the type of insanity that we faced in the year of 1985 with the "pure as Jesus leaders" of the Krishna movement.