New Vrindaban's Cataclysmic History
by Rocana dasa, - Sun Editorial -


New Vrindaban's Cataclysmic History
BY: ROCANA DASA

Jan 2, USA (SUN) — [Revised] It goes without saying that for the last few weeks, the big 'breaking news' at the Sun has been the New Vrindaban murders. As I've mentioned in previous articles, I had known little about the actual circumstances behind the murders, beyond what was made public over the years. Because I'd never been a resident of New Vrindaban, I wasn't privy to the real inside story. The entire devotee community is now being re-educated on this issue, however, thanks to the recent spate of confessions and disclosures by a few brave (or unwitting) souls, who have apparently concluded that it's now best to tell the truth.

I have experienced some very negative ramifications in my own personal life as a result of exploring and talking publicly about this issue. Much of this background story has already been told, in my article entitled "Harivilasa 'Names Names'". The drama unfolded because I had previously written an article questioning Radhanatha Swami's association with Kirtanananda at his New York 'Sanctuary', which broke the GBC's own rules. A local Radhanatha disciple saw fit to complain to Harivilasa, our GBC, that I'd written something critical about Radhanatha. Without his even bothering to read the article in question, Harivilasa summarily banned me from giving lectures at the ISKCON Vancouver temple.

In a meeting with Harivilasa to discuss the issue, he summed up his position by saying that frankly he could care less, personally, and he let me know that he didn't disagree with the conclusions I'd expressed. But because I'd broken the cardinal rule of engaging in critical public discourse about the leaders, and the local grand-disciple took offense at what I'd written about her Guru Maharaja, it had created a small problem for him. His solution was to ban me from preaching, after my wife and I had just relocated to the city, anxious to serve here. It was easier for Harivilasa to solve his problems by excluding me than for him to deal with the local devotee and her husband, who had complained to him many times in the past about other issues.

The end result of this 'path of least resistance' decision was that a neophyte, sentimental, untrained disciple of Radhanatha's was able to put enough pressure on the GBC (and it didn't take much) to exclude someone from preaching who's been in the movement for 30 odd years, and used to be the Temple President at this temple, during much better days than they're experiencing now. So this Radhanatha circumstance has really hit home for me. And given the current focus on Radhanatha Swami in the Sun, I suspect this issue has hit home for the local grand-disciple and Harivilasa, as well.

For the time being, I'm not going to comment further on the legal fine points of the New Vrindaban murder mystery. I'll leave that to persons who are much greater authorities on the subject than I. I greatly appreciate these devotees coming forward, particularly Janmastami dasa, Navadvipchandra dasa, Malati devi dasi, and most recently Krsnananda and Maha Mantra prabhus. And I'm sure there are many more individuals who are privy to important detailed information on this situation, and I encourage them to fill-in the blanks and verify or challenge the facts these others individuals have revealed.

Worshipping Bhaktipada as Jagat Guru

One thing that hasn't yet been emphasized in these discussions is on the philosophical level, and it runs along the theme that I've been presenting in terms of Srila Prabhupada being a Sampradaya Acarya. In my mind, the most glaring philosophical fact is that those persons who were serving under Kirtanananda were actually disciples of Kirtanananda, not of Srila Prabhupada. And that goes for the leaders as well - even more so them than for those underneath them in the community hierarchy. It doesn't take much studying of Srila Prabhupada's books, what to speak of the leaders having personal contact with Srila Prabhupada, to conclude that all these things going on at New Vrindaban would have immediately been put to a stop by Srila Prabhupada if he'd known they were going on. I'm not talking simply about the murders… that's crystal clear. I'm referring to the whole mood at New Vrindaban, which was not Srila Prabhupada's mood. It was Kirtanananda's.

Whether it was the sophistry of Kirtanananda or his ability as a cult leader, he was so expert that he could deceive everyone into thinking that Srila Prabhupada approved of everything. We need to address the fact that if people believed him, that means they weren't reading Srila Prabhupada's books and weren't really trying to get to know Srila Prabhupada. Maybe Kirtanananda overworked them and never gave them time to study, which I do believe is the case. But the fact is that just a little bit of honest contemplation would have led any sincere soul with intelligence to conclude that what was going on at New Vrindaban was not what Srila Prabhupada would like.

I had personal experience of the degree to which Kirtanananda himself knew Srila Prabhupada wouldn't accept what was going on. I went to Srila Prabhupada personally and presented a whole expose of the women's program. Kirtanananda personally sabotaged that presentation, along with Satsvarupa, who was my GBC at the time, and was himself running the second most notorious women's party, out of Berkeley. Kirtanananda and Satsvarupa knew that Srila Prabhupada would put a stop to these women's parties, which were completely unbonafide. But they were attached to their "vision", which required the work of a whole bunch of slaves -- not devotee servants of Krsna, but their own personal slaves, who were working under horrendous circumstances. Poorly fed, over-worked, and deprived of the time to really practice Krsna consciousness and understand Srila Prabhupada and his philosophy, these individuals chose to submit to the charismatic leader who drove them to prostitution, drug smuggling, and even murder. Perhaps this could have been covered up by an elite few, but the daily participate of the many community members could not be covered up.

Let's not forget that many of those who surrendered to Kirtanananda's rule already had experience outside of New Vrindaban, at other ISKCON temples, so they knew that Kirtanananda's program was not what was going on in other places. Yet they decided they wanted to participate with Kirtanananda and subject themselves to his speculative interpretation of "Krsna consciousness". Those who didn't actually live and serve at New Vrindaban under Kirtanananda may have a tendency to imagine that it was only a small number of devotees who were privy to the adulterated practices he had instituted there. In fact, the entire community was exposed, for a long period of time, to all sorts of nonsense and contamination.

In his book entitled "New Vrindaban: The Black Sheep of ISKCON", Hrishikesh dasa (Henry Doktorski) provides a great deal of background information on the Christian-crossover practices instituted at New Vrindaban. You can listen to an MP3 of some of the music being sung by New Vrindaban's Krishna Chorale, founded in 1986. Can anyone honestly imagine Srila Prabhupada listening to that music, and finding it acceptable?

Every individual that was in the community at that time has to do some soul-searching. I'm sure everyone has a unique perspective on this phenomenon, and I think these individuals have a responsibility to Srila Prabhupada and the entire movement to publicly explain what they were thinking and feeling, and how they justified participating in the New Vrindaban 'experiment'. And it's not enough to simply explain how one 'felt' about surrendering to Bhaktipada - as a devotee, one must philosophically explain their justification and subsequent realizations of the experience.

Some individuals have the idea that devotees who were inclined to want to work in the way Kirtanananda engaged them, i.e., in physical labor, construction, or doing arts and crafts work, because they couldn't find that type of service elsewhere in the movement. But that's a foolish justification. New Vrindaban wasn't the only country facility available to devotees at the time, and many new temples needed artists and laborers. But Kirtanananda provided an atmosphere where you just had to obey him, and many people succumbed to that mood. You had to have a completely subservient attitude, and people were mistakenly made to believe that this is what surrender was all about - what Srila Prabhupada meant by surrender. But that is bogus philosophy and total nonsense.

So really, in the end, was Kirtanananda even part of the Sampradaya? At any point, even during Srila Prabhupada's lila period, was he actually connected to the Sampradaya while engaging in all these activities that were not in line with the instructions of the Sampradaya Acarya? And I'm not just talking about the time he started telling people to change their dress and do all sorts of other weird things -- I'm talking about even prior to that period. Kirtanananda's New Vrindaban was a different Sampradaya.

So how much did people spiritually benefit as a result of their service at New Vrindaban? Of course, Krsna's in everyone's heart and he determines to what degree one is sincerely serving Srila Prabhupada and Krsna, and to what degree they were just serving Kirtanananda. It's easy to conclude from what's been written in the Sun over the last little while that the leaders of New Vrindaban (who are now prominent ISKCON leaders elsewhere in the world) were part of the Kirtanananda Sampradaya, not part of our Brahma Madhva Gaudiya Sampradaya as handed down by Srila Prabhupada. And given the fact that so many current ISKCON leaders participated in this apa-sampradaya, how is it that the GBC justifies empowering these individuals to be in the institutional leadership positions they enjoy today? Where is the GBC's philosophical justification for this state of affairs?

Catalysts

Like many things in history, the situation at New Vrindaban unfolded along a path strewn with major traumatic experiences. These milestone events were the catalyst for all sorts of twists and turns in the unfolding of New Vrindaban's history. Each major event vibrated out, causing all sorts of circumstances to occur, including those we're now focusing on -- the murders that took place at New Vrindaban. When considering the history of New Vrindaban, it's best to keep a long-range, wide angle lens on what was happening throughout the entire ISKCON history. Of course, the most monumental circumstance was Srila Prabhupada's departure in 1977, which heralded in the introduction of the Zonal Acarya era. And it was during this era, or near the end of it, that the major events now under discussion took place at New Vrindaban. In Black Sheep, Hrishikesh dasa has provided an interesting outline of New Vrindaban events that proved to be catalysts along the timeline.

I think it's important to emphasize for our readers that the environment Kirtanananda created at New Vrindaban was present long before Srila Prabhupada departed. Kirtanananda had absolute control over the members of his community, and to be in any kind of position of prominence, one had to treat him in the same way that the rest of the movement was treating Srila Prabhupada. At New Vrindaban, that meant treating Kirtanananda as being equal to Srila Prabhupada. In the case of Kirtanananda, who rarely traveled outside of the West Virginia community, his constant presence made him even more prominent than Srila Prabhupada in the minds of those present. That was the price one had to pay to be there.

It has not yet been pointed out in the current discussion that the other leaders in ISKCON, and in particular those who appointed themselves Zonal Acaryas, were in a mood of envy regarding Kirtanananda's position. In other words, they hankered to have the same kind of adoration and distinction, power and control over the devotees as Kirtanananda did. In fact, Kirtanananda was something of a template for the Zonal Acarya system. They all knew that Kirtanananda would never change his mood or position after Srila Prabhupada's departure, and therefore they had one of two choices: to become like him, or to take a humble position and be distinctly different from him, and have to deal with the fact that he wasn't ever going to do that. As we know, they chose to be like Kirtanananda.

Personally, I'm of the opinion that Kirtanananda had very little to actually do or say with establishing the Zonal Acarya system. Of course, he did try to get as much of a piece of the pie as was practical in his case, and that included Eastern Canada, his own little slice of Bombay (outside of Srila Prabhupada's Bombay Temple at Juhu), and Western Africa, primarily Nigeria.

Soon after the Zonal Acarya system was in place, Kirtanananda led his followers to believe that he should have been appointed as Srila Prabhupada's successor, and he made it clear that he didn't approve of the Zonal Acarya system because he felt there should be just one Acarya -- and it should be him. All his people preached openly that New Vrindaban should be the center of ISKCON North America, and that all the other temples should simply be satellites of New Vrindaban, contributing financially to the further development of New Vrindaban. On the basis of that mentality, they set-up their collecting program, euphemistically called "sankirtana", wherein they felt they were justified to go anywhere and everywhere harvesting money to fulfill Bhakipada's dream. In doing so, they let the rest of the movement know that they'd made a big mistake in not appointing Kirtanananda to be the successor Acarya.

This mood went on until the next big crisis took place at New Vrindaban, when Triyogi bashed in Kirtanananda's head with a steel pipe. This incident shook the inhabitants, and of course Bhaktipada himself, to the core. You had one of two choices, philosophically, in looking at this event: either it was a reaction for Kirtanananda's offenses (which we all know now is undoubtedly the case), or, as all Kirtanananda's followers concluded at the time and openly preached, a demon had attacked the pure devotee and it was their responsibility to get revenge, fight for him, and protect him in the future from any further attack.

On the basis of this conclusion, they had to passively accept the fact that Kirtanananda started living with dogs, and that he became far more paranoid. All sorts of "safety measures" were put into place in order to protect him. As the story has already been told by other writers, the blame had to be put on someone, and of course Sulocana prabhu happened to be the wrong person at the wrong time. For him to be doing and saying the things that he was in the context of this other set of circumstances, was his undoing. I personally believe had nothing to do with Triyogi's attack on Kirtanananda. No one so far has given us any information as to what happened to Triyogi after the attack, but it seems they completely shifted the blame over to Sulocana.

There's no question in my mind, and I think now in many of the reader's minds, that Radhanatha and the other senior members of New Vrindaban were 100% in the mood of protection and revenge, in a kshatriya-like mentality in regards to this particular incident. Regardless of what they have to say now, all evidence leads to this conclusion. They believe that the pure devotee had been attacked by a demon, and we must assume that their subsequent actions were shaped by that belief. We do know that not long after the lead-pipe attack and the murders, Kirtanananda started going even weirder than he was before. Perhaps he had brain damage as a result of the injury. What has not yet been done is a careful review of the movements and activities of the other leaders at New Vrindaban following these events. We assume that a great deal of interesting information will present itself once such a study has been conducted.

It's also interesting to note that it wasn't until after the Zonal Acarya system was dismantled due to the reform movement that Kirtanananda was ex-communicated from ISKCON. This marked the introduction of the major interfaith transformation at New Vrindaban. New Vrindaban then faded from the ISKCON landscape until approximately 1993. We're lead to believe that this had something to do with the FBI and other legal authorities coming down on Kirtanananda, but that was a long, drawn out process and really wasn't a catalyst to the next big crisis at New Vrindaban. In reality, the next traumatic milestone event was what those in the know call the "Winnebago Crisis".

While I had heard bits and pieces of this story in years past, I was recently given a detailed explanation of the Winnebago Crisis, and how important this particular situation was in the whole unfolding of events at New Vrindaban. The story goes like this:

Tirtha das - Thomas Drescher, notorious Iskcon devotee murderer
Homo Sex in Kirtanananda's Winnebago
Motor-Home van
Kirtanananda was traveling around to different interfaith conferences, where his people had arranged for him to attend various meetings with Christian congregations. In doing so, he traveled in his Winnebago. Just prior to his Vyasa-puja ceremony, he had attended a conference in Chicago. While returning from the conference they were traveling at night, when the driver of the Winnebago saw something that shocked him. On account of the curtains parting, truck lights passing by, and so on, he happened to get a clear view of Kirtanananda having homosex with one of his Malaysian disciples. Upon returning to New Vrindaban, the driver began telling the devotees what he had seen.

The local leaders, of course, immediately corralled the driver and cautioned him not to go around spreading these "rumours" until they had approached Kirtanananda themselves and discussed it with him. At the time, Kirtanananda was staying in an isolated cabin somewhere around New Vrindaban. When Radhanatha, who I believe was accompanied by Devamrta, approached Kirtanananda about this, to their surprise he admitted it. Kirtanananda begged for their forgiveness and gave them the explanation that it was like Arjuna after Krsna left. He had lost his potency and he needed to reform - not that he had been doing this year after year and had finally be caught, but that it was a one-off incident.

Kirtanananda with his male boy friend Locanath
Kirtanananda with one of
his male boy friends Locanath.
The leaders went away shocked and had another meeting, which I'm told was attended by as many as 40 people. They were informed as to what Kirtanananda had confessed, and this sent shock waves around the room. Kirtanananda told them that they should try to keep it quiet until after his Vyasa-puja ceremony, because all these disciples had come from around the world, and particularly from Malaysia. However, the simple, innocent Malaysian disciples broke rank when they heard about it, and went directly to Kirtanananda. When confronted by them, Kirtanananda told them that it was all untrue, and that Radhanatha and Devamrita had made the whole story up. Naturally they got totally angry, rebellious and confrontive towards those who had informed them of this situation, primarily Radhanatha. On account of this, Radhanatha virtually had to leave New Vrindaban, with his proverbial tail between his legs. His life was now in danger for having supposedly spread viscous, untrue rumours about Kirtanananda. So the sanitized versions of the story about Radhanatha's departure from New Vrindaban are totally fictitious, regardless of what he has to say now, or has said in recent years. I'm sure many of our readers can fill-in the blanks with more detail on this whole episode, which will provide to our readers as they become available.

One has to contemplate that life, for the most part, is a succession of calm periods punctuated by trauma. Just like the weather, what causes the greatest damage is when hurricanes, tornados, draughts and so on occur. It's the disasters that make the biggest impacts, not just the gradual changes. There are big, sudden events that determine how history and life unfolds, and this is also the case with ISKCON, and New Vrindaban in particular. Perhaps what's presently unfolding here in the Sampradaya Sun, as devotees tell the true story of what went on, will serve as another catalyst for big change. Let's hope so.

On a lighter note, I leave you with this seasonal memento from New Vrindaban, circa 1986.