Jamadagni and Kanupriya (ACBSP) - Anyone knows how to get in touch with them?

I wonder if anyone here has any contact info (or any clue where to obtain such) about Jamadagni (I've seen his name spelled Jamadogni as well) and Kanupriya?

These are two disciples of ACSB who probably drifted off from ISKCON already during ACBS' times. They were involved with Siddhasvarupananda's movement, I believe. One reference to Jamadagni is in Srutakirti's memories of his time as ACBS' personal servant. Srutakirti's wife had just given birth and he thought that maybe he should quit traveling with ACBS as his personal servant, become a TP and stay with his family instead. He remembers Jamadagni supported that idea while all the other devotees considered it maya to renounce ACBS' association.

There is a conversation with ACBS where two unnamed devotees question him about the (apparently exaggerated) number of Ugrasena's bodyguards given in the Bhagavatam. I've heard these two were Jamadagni and Kanupriya, but it is unconfirmed.

I would be grateful for any tips. Also for any further info about these two persons and what happened to them.

-- Dhyana

Suhotra Swami writes briefly about them in his diary (http://www.in2-mec.com/J-Pages04/J040707.htm), also in relation with that particular conversation with Prabhupada:

I'll give an example from my own experience. Back in 1971, as a new devotee, I got to know Jamadagni dasa, an intelligent, well-spoken young man with a strong independent streak that kept him in trouble with ISKCON temple leaders. Because he couldn't get along with the authorities, Jamadagni was for years on the move between the different ISKCON centers of North America. By 1975 he was settled in Los Angeles, working in an outside-the-temple business with a Godbrother named Kanupriya dasa. Their professed aim was to preach from within the karmi society and develop varnasrama-dharma. The general opinion of the devotees living in the Los Angeles temple was that Jamadagni and Kanupriya were "off."

And some paragraphs later:

Soon after that my old friend Jamadagni changed his name to Indra Armstrong. (Before initiation he had been Jeffrey Armstrong.) As he explained, "Srila Prabhupada said if you want to have lots of sex life, you should worship Indra."

I googled "Jeffrey Armstrong" and found www.jeffreyarmstrong.com, presenting the host as "a charismatic international speaker, author and expert guest on TV and talk radio. He is a scholar of the Eastern teachings including Vedanta, Raja Yoga, Tantra, Mantra, and Martial arts. He has practiced Ayurvedic Astrology for 25 years. He has degrees in Psychology, History and Comparative Religions, and Literature." I have the feeling that this is your man, check out his press kit.

Wow! Thank you, Indranila, for your research. He really sounds like the man. I will check out his site.

Dhyana

You should thank Suhotra Swami for his good memory I was browsing his website a few days ago.

I became quite intrigued by Jeffrey Armstrong, and I am not surprised that such a -talented and successful person (he is also a poet, author of New Age book of the year for 2002, and a businessman) felt stifled in ISKCON early on.

Back in the 70's I used to live next door to Kanupriya in L.A for a while.
He was severely hatred by Iskcon leaders there. He did my astrological chart, I always liked Kanupriya, he had I remember Demigod pic all over his apt at that time..

I know he advertizes his Astrogical Services in various New Age publications around the country now..
I know he had an ad in 'Nexus' Boulder Co's New Age Mag..
not sure if it's still there.



bangli

I had my chart done by both Kanupriya and Duryodhana Guru back then, both excellent astrologers, however Kanupriyas presentation of reading the chart was a bit more entertaining I must say..

I did meet Jamadogni in Santa Cruz back in the late 70's...he wrote some cool poetry for sure!

Thank you. If I locate him I will let you know.

My interest in finding Jamadagni and Kanupriya has to do with the conversation where they both figure. It is an unusual dialog. I haven't seen any instance in the VedaBase where ACBS would be confronted with more focus and insistence regarding a central philosophical issue (approach to shabda). ACBS had a very dominant personality. He steered his conversations. It appeared practically impossible to tell him: "Sorry, your answer doesn't address my point" and make him answer to the point. Or to take an answer he has given and confront him with its logical consequence. Jamadagni and Kanupriya have come closer to succeeding in this that anyone I have ever read about.

It seems that both sides are experiencing strong emotions. ACBS especially seems very distraught. I want to understand this dialog better. I want to know HOW he said what he said. I tried to locate the tape but haven't found any collection of ACBS' recordings where it would be included. This in itself is interesting, as tapes are available of a lecture and a morning walk from the same day.

I hope Jamadagni and Kanupriya will remember this conversation and tell me more about ACBS' part in it.

Apart from this, from what several of you have written about these two persons, they must be very interesting people to meet!

Dhyana

I for one know exactly this conversation you are talking about because when I came across it many years ago it also struck me as quite notable. It is long, but I can post it here if nobody minds. It could make for some good analysis. Jagat I'm sure would find it interesting as these devotees are challenging Prabhupada about things like Ugrasena's millions of bodygaurds and such. Controversy, I just love it ... Does that make me weird? Perhaps controversial?

This conversation is certainly fascinating matter for discussion. But I think such a discussion thread is likely to focus on ACBS, and that wouldn't fit well in Miscellaneous Discussions... since it does smoothly fit elsewhere -- i.e. at ISKCON/GM threads. Or...? Madhava?

Dhyana

The ISKCON/GM subforum should do just fine. If you want, you can just post the discussion here and we can move this thread there.

okay, sorry. I've been out of touch for a couple days. Here is the conversation.


Room Conversation

Los Angeles, June 26, 1975


Prabhupada: So you have given up the Vaisnava-sadacara for business selling. So you can be dangerous for that.
Devotee (1): But we have also maintained the Vaisnava-sadacara. They didn't tell us...
Prabhupada: That's all right. You do that. But they do not see whether you are maintaining.
Devotee (1): But at the same time, when we were maintaining that, we had the same problems, is that, when we presented sociological applications of the philosophy, for instance, to arrange marriages in a reasonable way, that the women not be sent out on sankirtana to prostitute themselves to sell books, but be trained up to be wives, or that the brahmacaris in the temple, someone would sit and talk with them and see how many of them want to be married and try and arrange some type of training for them, knowing that most of them are going to become married, rather than just have no training and one day find oneself married, out on the street with no occupation or training.
Prabhupada: First of all, you are not trained up. You are sometimes becoming astrologer, sometimes this, sometimes that.
Devotee (1): It's true, because of my birth in this...
Prabhupada: So how they can follow you?
Devotee (2): We're not asking them to follow us. We're asking you Prabhupada, that these are some problems.
Prabhupada: My request is that first of all you adopt yourself the Vaisnava acara. Then you try to teach others. Otherwise you have no right.
Devotee (2): But we have done that for five years, and no one here listened to us at all.
Prabhupada: So why you are anxious to listen... You... Let them not listen. You do your own duty.
Devotee (2): We had no duty. They gave us nothing to do. They would not recognize our qualities, as we understand, even of, say Krsna consciousness.
Prabhupada: So what can I do?
Devotee (2): Well, you can make statements on certain of these things so that when they hear them, their ignorance will be dispelled.
Prabhupada: Then we have to hear both of you. We have to hear both you... There will be regular court, and we shall see.
Devotee (1): Not court, simply...
Prabhupada: No, no.
Devotee (2): That would be fine.
Devotee (1): Okay.
Prabhupada: Before me. You are saying something. They may say something else. So brothers together, we sit down together, and bring this...
Devotee (2): All right. But we have some, also, questions that don't require that. These are philosophical questions. For instance, in Krsna Book there is a statement that King Ugrasena had four billion personal servants. Now you have asked that we go and spread Krsna consciousness to the scientific community.
Prabhupada: So everyone is servant. What is the question of four billion? Krsna's servant...
Devotee (2): No, Ugrasena, King Ugrasena, that when he was on the planet, he had four billion personal servants.
Prabhupada: That's all right. He is always the master. He... The Krsna is the only master.
Devotee (2): Not Krsna. No. King Ugrasena, Prabhupada. Not Krsna. King Ugrasena. The statement is that King Ugrasena had four billion personal servants. Now, we have gone and tried to spread to the scientific community. And if we say to them, "There was a king whose name was Ugrasena. He had four billion personal servants," they laugh and say, "What did they do for toilets? What did they do for food? Where did they live?"
Prabhupada: So you want to preach this particular portion and no other portion?
Devotee (1): No. We want to... We want to know if the story has an allegorical meaning rather than a literal translation, or that King Ugrasena who was a man who lived five thousand years ago and had four billion bodyguards, or whether the stories within the Bhagavatam, apart from some of them being actual, are allegorical stories. Such as the story of Krsna and Balarama chopping off the the eighty-eight...
Prabhupada: All right. You can give up that portion. You can take other portion.
Devotee (2): We don't mean to give it up.
Devotee (1): We don't mean to give it up.
Devotee (2): We're saying how can we say to them...
Prabhupada: Anyone, anyone... Why you are going to preach that portion to a professor?
Devotee (1): No. When they read your books, they pose that question to us.
Devotee (2): They read it. They say to us.
Devotee (1): And unless we can answer that question...
Prabhupada: They ask to only you, but they never ask to us.
Revatinandana: They have. Sometimes they ask me.
Prabhupada: That's all right. Let them ask. But you can tell away that(?) but you don't repeat this thing. You can give up that portion. You read other portion.
Devotee (1): But then because so many things they have to accept on faith without knowing, it then weakens their faith as to what they should accept and why should they accept Krsna, who they can't see any more than King Ugrasena's four billion bodyguards.
Prabhupada: Don't accept. Don't accept.
Devotee (2): But we want them to accept. The point is, if we say to a scientific man, "There was four billion," and if our statement is wrong...
/Prabhupada: But our position is that if some portion we cannot understand, it is our incapability.
Devotee (2): That is all right. But since we are...
Prabhupada: That's all. Unless we have got this faith we cannot use these Puranas. In the Puranas there are many such statements.
Devotee (2): Yes, but we just want to understand.
Prabhupada: Therefore many people, they do not accept Puranas. So what can be done?
Devotee (2): We're just trying to understand it because we've never dealt with Puranas before. We have been your disciples. But when we present this to the scientific community, because you have said that if one word is wrong, the whole philosophy is wrong, so they will say to us...
Prabhupada: So let them take it and throw out, don't read it. That's all.
Devotee (2): But then they discredit the Bhagavad-gita. We don't like that when they discredit the Bhagavad-gita.
Prabhupada: Why? They don't believe. What is the use?
Devotee (2): Well, because we also want to know how did they have four billion personal servants just so that we'll be able to convince them and also...
Prabhupada: If a king has four billion servants, so it is not very astonishing. Why do you think that a king shall have only four servants?
Devotee (2): Well, there's only two billion people on the planet right now.
Prabhupada: That's all right.
Devotee (2): So where did they all go?
Prabhupada: I say you don't believe, you don't take it. Why you are insisting on that point? If you don't believe, you don't take it. If you don't believe the whole book or the whole society, then who forbids you?
Devotee (2): We were hoping that there are some things which can be improved, because they have not been set up by you.
Prabhupada: No. You cannot improve. Whatever we are, we are.
Devotee (2): Why can we not improve it?
Prabhupada: No. There is no possibility.
Devotee (2): Then what is the use of action?
Prabhupada: Action, whatever action we can do by chanting Hare Krsna, that's all.
Devotee (2): But we also have to make varnasrama society or farms or businesses.
Prabhupada: That, when we shall do, we shall see to it.
Devotee (2): But we are doing it. We are.
Devotee (1): We are doing it now, and that's the question...
Prabhupada: So do it in your own way.
Devotee (2): We don't want to. We want to do everything Krsna's way.
Prabhupada: Stop it. Stop it. I say stop it. You have come to me for my advice. I say you stop it.
Devotee (2): Then, we say, what should we do?
Prabhupada: You should do your business. That's all. Earn money and enjoy.
Devotee (2): No, I mean what should we do Krsna consciously?
Prabhupada: You give up Krsna consciousness, I say. That is my advice.
Devotee (2): Why should we do that?
Prabhupada: Then that I cannot say.
Devotee (1): Isn't there a middle of the road?
Prabhupada: If you are finding so many faults, you give it up.
Devotee (1): No. We're not finding fault.
Prabhupada: Then there is no other advance, alternative. No alternative. Either you accept or reject it.
Devotee (1): We accept, but we would like some instruction on...
Prabhupada: No. I have no such knowledge to convince you.
Devotee (1): No, we accept Krsna consciousness philosophy...
Prabhupada: That's all right. Accept, or if you reject, reject.
Devotee (1): We accept.
Devotee (2): We want to apply it.
Devotee (1): We want to apply it to the world as it is now.
Prabhupada: No no. You cannot. You are not authorized.
Devotee (1): Well, who is authorized?
Prabhupada: The authorized... You are not authorized. Who is authorized, that is not your business.
Devotee (2): Then what does it mean to become disciple?
Prabhupada: Disciple, if you don't like, give it up.
Devotee (2): We do like it.
Prabhupada: You have already given up.
Devotee (2): If we didn't like it, we would not come here.
Prabhupada: No, no. You have already given up. My disciples do not keep so many hair.
Devotee (2): Many of your disciples do.
Prabhupada: No. I don't accept that. You just this one circle, little. But those who are keeping big hairs, they are rejected from my disciples.
Devotee (2): All right. That is clearing some things up.
Prabhupada: Yes.
Devotee (2): This is what we want to know.
Prabhupada: Yes.
Devotee (2): Because then that is an unequivocal statement.
Prabhupada: No. This is, that you can, that anyone who is keeping hairs and not following the rules and regulations, they are rejected from second initiation.
Devotee (2): What if they are keeping hair but they are following the rules and regulations.
Prabhupada: Then let them follow. That's a good life. But from external features he must be a Vaisnava.
Devotee (2): To get second initiation.
Devotee (1): Does that mean shaved head?
Prabhupada: Caitanya Mahaprabhu, when His students used to come without tilaka, so He refused to see his face. He refused to see his face. He said it is a crematory ground.
Devotee (2): Why is that?
Prabhupada: There is no "why." If you accept it, accept. If you don't accept, leave us, leave us. There is no "why."
Devotee (2): Then that is...
Prabhupada: You are not following strictly. You cannot ask why.
Devotee (2): We could not ask why when we were following strictly either, Prabhupada. So I'm sorry that it has to be this way.
Prabhupada: No, our thing is that we have got some principles. If anyone cannot follow, then we don't accept him.
Devotee (1): Then what do you do with the rest of the world, except for the few people who...
rabhupada: So what I can do I am doing. Therefore you have no right to ask me. What is possible by me I am doing. And those who are able to follow, they are following. That's all.
Devotee (2): But they cannot engage anyone else. How can you reach the intelligent class?
Prabhupada: So that is their business. That is not your business.
Devotee (2): We are trying to be disciples, so we considered it our business because we are sincerely trying.
Prabhupada: So why you are bothering me? You do your business.
Devotee (2): Because from you only...
Prabhupada: I do not accept you because you are keeping hairs.
Devotee (2): I did not know that.
Prabhupada: Yes.
Devotee (2): You never told me that in Hawaii.
Prabhupada: Now I say, I'll repeat that anyone who is keeping long hairs, he is no more my disciple.
Devotee (2): All right.
Prabhupada: This is the first condition.
Devotee (1): Does that apply also for householder dharma, or is that simply for brahmacari dharma? Even you... I have pictures of you on the Bhagavatam when you did not have shaved head, with a mustache when you were doing your business as a householder. So does that apply to householders, or only to brahmacaris, that a householder must also keep a shaved head or is that...?
Prabhupada: At that time I was not initiated. You were seeing my picture, mustaches, at that time I was not initiated. Since I became initiated, I have shaven.
Devotee (1): Well, in India where one can do business...
Prabhupada: I can... Why you are bringing this question? You ask, "Why you had mustaches?" I say when I had mustaches, at that time, I was not initiated. That answer is given. That's all.
Devotee (2): Can I ask one more question, Prabhupada? What I would like to understand is why it is wrong to ask why? If I can just understand this, why it is wrong for us to ask you in a submissive way. We were humbly asking you these "whys," not because we are trying to be intimidating or we were trying to rebel, but because we have sincerely tried to understand as your disciples.
Prabhupada: So you better ask my so many other disciples?
Devotee (1): They don't have any answers.
Prabhupada: Then there is no answer. I cannot attend so many things.
Devotee (2): We are not so many.
Devotee (1): But these are the same questions which we have talked over with Revatinandana Swami and Jayatirtha. A great many...
Prabhupada: If my disciples, advanced students, cannot answer, then I am sorry. I cannot answer. I cannot answer.
Devotee (2): That we did not know. That we did not know.
Prabhupada: Yes. Now you know it. I have appointed so many GBCs because to help me. It is not possible to see everyone, individual. This is not...
Devotee (1): But these are the same questions which they themselves are posing to you.
Revatinandana: I have never met any other people who asked questions on the level that they are asking questions. I cannot answer many of their questions. I have studied all your books.
Prabhupada: I cannot. If you cannot, I cannot also. Because you have been taught by me, if you cannot, then it is...
Devotee (2): We have also been taught.
Revatinandana: I have read your books, and I have heard you lecture. And so many things they are asking, I am, have no capacity to answer them. But you must have the capacity because you know Krsna. Therefore they want to ask you personally.
Devotee (1): So that is the...
Prabhupada: So far I am not so able to answer. I admit my fault.
Devotee (1): Oh, so then that is...
Prabhupada: I cannot answer.
Devotee (1): I understand. Okay? But they are saying, the general conception of you is that because you know Krsna...
Prabhupada: You can... You...
Devotee (1): (interrupting) Excuse me. Because you know Krsna, therefore you know everything about the material world and can answer all questions.
Prabhupada: So whatever I know I have explained in my books. Beyond that I have no knowledge.
Devotee (2): If that is the case, Srila Prabhupada, that does not diminish our respect for you in the least because we have always held...
Prabhupada: So what can I do? I say that whatever I have got experience, I am explaining in my books. I have explained. So it is not possible for me to answer every individual person. It is not possible.
Devotee (2): We respect that. We understand. It is just that because they are saying these things...
Prabhupada: I have got my advanced students. They can answer. If they are unable, answer, if you do not find answer from my books, then it is hopeless.
Devotee (1): Ah! But your advanced students are saying if they give an answer that because they have been appointed by you, therefore their answer is perfectly correct, because, absolutely correct on all things in the relative world because, they have been appointed by you, and because you know...
Prabhupada: You may... That's all right. If you don't believe them, you can finish business.
Devotee (2): But are they correct? That's what we want to know.
Prabhupada: Yes. They are correct.
Devotee (2): That everything they say is the absolute truth?
Prabhupada: So what can I say? But I have no time to meet everyone.
Devotee (2): Is that correct, Srila Prabhupada? I want to know very clearly that every word that anyone whom you have appointed says is completely correct on all things?
Prabhupada: Yes. If they are authorized, it is correct.
Devotee (2): If they are authorized by you to be temple president...
Prabhupada: There is no reply.
Devotee (2): Then when (name witheld) said to me that he wanted to have homosexual affair with me, I should have said, "Okay. Whatever you say." Is that correct?
Prabhupada: So how to answer these questions?
Devotee (2): That is what he said to me. And he was a sannyasa. He is sannyasa and he said to me, "I want to have sex with you." Does that mean that Krsna was saying I should have sex with him?
Jayatirtha: So you have to see whether it is according to our principles.
Devotee (2): I'm asking you on a very practical... No. That is not what he said. He didn't say that. He said absolutely, and this is...
Upendra: Then you should listen to everything he said.
Devotee (2): I am. Because if I can judge then, if I can say, "Oh, at this point he is wrong," then that is what we are talking about, Srila Prabhupada. That is the issue. If they are absolutely right all the time and they can make no error, they wield absolute power over our lives.
Prabhupada: Where is (name witheld)? Where is (he)?
Satsvarupa: He is across the street.
Prabhupada: Has he said like that?
Devotee (2): Yes. I have witnesses.
Upendra: But he's admitted his error.
Devotee (2): That's beside the point.
Revatinandana: That's all right. But that's not the point here.
Upendra: The point is that Prabhupada, that if you come before Prabhupada for your own spiritual advancement, then it doesn't matter what other people are thinking...
Devotee (2): That's not the...
Devotee (1): That's not the crux of the matter at all.
Revatinandana: The point here is not to criticize (him).
Devotee (1): No. We did not come for that at all.
Revatinandana: That wasn't the reason. The point is that anyone, (name witheld) or anybody else, he may be a sannyasi, but if he's doing all kinds of nonsense, how can we say that he has absolute authority? Because he was in charge of the place, etc., and he is also in an authoritative position, yet he breaks the principles.
Devotee (2): His personal servant, when he came... His name is (name witheld). (He) instigated a homosexual affair with him. This boy came to surrender to Krsna and surrendered to (him). But (he) told him to do that.
Upendra: But Prabhupada...
Devotee (2): Wait. I am not speaking with you. He said he did that and he did it in the name of his authority as a sannyasa. So if you say, Prabhupada, that everything that they say is absolutely true, then they will have absolute power and can do anything that they want, and anything that they say and any opinion they express is taken to be the same as yours, then it becomes implied that you agree with and condone such things, because they do them with absolute license. And we don't believe that to be true. So we think it is some kind of mistake.
Prabhupada: They say like that?
Devotee (1): Everyone says like that.
Devotee (2): They do, Prabhupada.
Satsvarupa: No, they don't. Srila Prabhupada has said these things don't apply to you. Don't worry about them because you are not following the principles.
Devotee (1): But they do say, and we are following and you don't know what we're doing, Satsvarupa, because you haven't known me for two years. So you really don't know what I'm doing. You're not around.
Satsvarupa: But our society is going nicely. It's not...
Devotee (2): In some respects it's going fine. But these are problems which can be dealt with amongst us, and they are affecting all of us. And for some people these are problems though they may not be for you. I think, as far as I know, your conduct has always been very honorable. But for some people who it's not and where these misconceptions apply, it's a real problem and we're trying to deal with it because it affects our lives.
Upendra: The strength to deal with those problems comes from following sadhanacara.
Devotee (2): We are also attempting to follow sadhanacara. And if we are imperfect...
Prabhupada: Anyway, if he has said so, that is wrong.
Devotee (1): But is that then applying to everyone. Does someone who is in the adminis... (end)


© 1991 by Bhaktivedanta Book Trust

Reading this conversation made me feel really sad... I would have expected a lot more tolerance, wisdom and understanding from a person like AC Bhaktivedanta Swami. This conversation could be the scheme for the usual Iskcon istha-gosthis: problems should be covered, those who speak out should be considered "deviants" and expelled, and the main focus should be on extremely important topics like "long hair (demon) and short hair (devotee)."

And all shaved up, too, I note.

A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada
Founder-Acarya of the Hare Krishna Movement

His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada appeared in this world in 1896 in Calcutta, India. He first met his spiritual master, Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Gosvami, in Calcutta in 1922. Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati, a prominent religious scholar and the founder of sixty-four Gaudiya Mathas (Vedic institutes), liked this educated young man and convinced him to dedicate his life to teaching Vedic knowledge. Srila Prabhupada became his student, and eleven years later (1933) at Allahabad he became his formally initiated disciple.

from;

www.krsnabook.com/author

A side note: I don't think that's Prabhupada there in the picture. I asked Gopananda Bon Maharaja, a disciple of Bon Maharaja who knew Prabhupada a little bit before he left for the West, and he definately did not think that person was him. He thought it must have been the secretary to the king raja next to him. After all, why would Abhay Babu have been sitting in front when Kunjada and other senior disciples are standing?

Otherwise, I think one would need more background to understanding this conversation. As it stands, it seems utterly incomprehensible. Why does Prabhupada make such a big deal out of the long hair? And does he really reject the two? He seems to, but then the conversation goes on. That the ending is missing does not help much either. Prabhupada seems to have made up his mind that these two are deviants and useless right from the beginning. SS mentions that the "general mood" was that they were "off", and perhaps that is what Prabhupada had been told. Interesting how Revatinandana Swami seems to try to defend the two a bit.

This conversation brings up a lot of issues for me. The funny thing is that when I was a brahmacari my buddy and I came across this conversation. I remember thinking how condemned those two devotees were for disagreeing with Prabhupada. This is why I am so interested in the group experience of religion. I'm ashamed that I felt strongly about these two people I never had any knowledge of other than the fact that the object of my absolute faith (Prabhupada) was harsh with them. This is groupthink in perfection!

Another interesting thing is that this is another one of those "I wonder what Prabhupada would do today" moments for me. Keeping in mind the limited knowledge I have of this interaction I think Prabhupada acted completely irrationally with these two. They addressed some good issues, they were ahead of their time in a lot of ways.

It's evident, as has been pointed out, that there is a history prior to this conversation. However, still statements such as "there is no why" are revealing, as they indeed indicate a pattern I am certain we are all familiar with.

What is clear from this conversation is that the two devotees were looking for a rational way out. They clearly say that they are not looking to undermine the entire edifice. But ACBSP is afraid that taking that one brick out will cause everything to crumble.

This is the "one thing wrong, reject everything" "all-or-nothing" approach that is so harmful. This is why I rejected Iskcon, because I was really angry about the diksha-parampara coverup. Of course, now so many rationalizations have come to substitute for the idea of an "unbroken disciplic succession." If I had heard these rationalizations then, I may have bought them, but I remembered "if there is one thing wrong with your philosophy, it must be completely rejected."

No room for nuance means no room for people with the capacity to think in any other terms but power. Perhaps no other conversation illustrates the profound dissatisfaction that I feel toward Prabhupada and his movement.

Prabhupada (and please note that here we have a clear example of how Advaita's mentality is similar to his, for all his protesting) is saying, "We cannot do better than repeat what we have received."

We can. We can think about these things. We can contextualize them. We can evaluate their importance. We can revise our understanding appropriately to preserve the essential truths of our sambandha, abhidheya and prayojana tattvas.

The Folio is the albatross around Iskcon's neck.

Does anyone have the rest of the conversation? I remember when it was posted years ago on another forum seeing the entire thing.

bangli

Also ..

Were all the householder diciples of BSS shaven at all times?

Or was that just for the Math devotees?

I don't have access to a folio right now, as far as I know this is all of the conversation that is included.

I think if anyone reads between the lines in the conversation in question it is quite clear that ACBS is emphasizing a very important point - submission and service must accompany inquiry. He is very clearly displeased with these two devotees and his overall stance comes through very clearly for anyone who cares to pay attention - complete submission to Guru is required. He points out that these two aren't following his instructions - so what is the point of entertaining their minds when they don't follow him anyway?

I think it is very short sighted and harmful to try to use this conversation to try to 'showcase' what was wrong with Iskcon or ACBS. The valid point being made really is 'how will you convince anyone about Krsna if you are not convinced?' It is not a matter of mental adjustment afterall. The reality is that the philosophy and all the siddhanta are useful to a point, but at the end of the day, no one can know Krsna without faith. It is this divine faith which inspires others to take up Krsna consciousness, not the ability to appease a person's mind. Of course we need to think that it makes sense in order to accept it in the beginning but in reality love knows no reason - it is beyond reason. That's what really draws people to Krsna. Without love it is all very dry and it can't hold our attention.

I agree that nuanced thinking is required, but it can never substitute for faithful practice. It must follow in the wake of faithful practice. I get the very distinct impression from this conversation that ACBS felt that these two sisyas were not faithful followers and that is really the point he is emphasizing in his responses to them.

It is a bad idea to generalize the statements made in this conversation and try to apply them broadly as they were clearly very specific and intended for the individuals involved. Also, the overall message is both spoken and unspoken - first be a faithful follower - try to please your Guru by serving according to his/her desire - then there will be some reciprocation. When my children are disobedient my conversations may sometimes look like this - very one pointed and direct without engaging with them in questions of why. That's the way I see the conversation under discussion.

Your servant,
Audarya-lila dasa

[The reality is that the philosophy and all the siddhanta are useful to a point, but at the end of the day, no one can know Krsna without faith. It is this divine faith which inspires others to take up Krsna consciousness, not the ability to appease a person's mind.]

I agree with what I think is the general consensus of the commentators so far - That this conversation is not a black and white thing. There is a relationship that we are all observing. None of us can speak absolutely about what is going on. However, I think pieces like this are great to add into our minds for aid in critical thought about our teachers.

I disagree with the way your argument seems to lean, that the fault is in the disciple for not having enough faith. It appears to me that these devotees are having reasonable doubts and when Prabhupada gives them the all or nothing, they don't feel that's good enough. Only when he gives them ad-homenim attacks do they start to get rebellious and a little pissed. I can't say I'd blame them.

Another point, no one can know Krsna without faith, but Ugrasena having 4 billion or 4 body guards does not seem an essential item of faith to hinge someones devotion on.

And another one - Isn't it the duty of the guru to remove doubts?

All said, I think we just have to take all the evidence that we are given and come to our own conclusion about a person. I don't take this conversation as a huge part of my perception of Prabhupada, but I won't write it off as nothing just to protect my faith. When I look at this conversation trying to be very balanced, there are some things that I'm impressed with Prabhupada for. For example, at first he's telling the devotees that this detail about the 4 billion bodyguards is not important. I've seen other (unfortunately few) places where he speaks of Bhagavatam stories being allegory and not to be taken literally. Later in the conversation it seems he's become annoyed with them and stresses the point of having faith in order to get them out of his hair. All valid... I can accept Prabhupada's humanity - not wanting to deal with them if they are being obnoxious.... Still, I think it's good to have a critical (meaning objective) view of our teachers and in this case I don't think the fault is all on the disciples at all.

I believe the reason this conversation was initially brought up is because Dhyana thought of it as practically the only instance in which such issues (literalism etc.) were directly brought up to him. If someone can post in other conversations where the mood is less heated and similar issues are discussed, I would be interested to read them.

I have read this conversation before, and when I re-read it a couple of days ago it struck me again and made me feel just as uncomfortable and apprehensive. The discussion so far has been about the right of the disciples to challenge their guru on a philosophical point. But just consider the beginning of the conversation:

Our original source of information has dug up some more details on Jamadagni, here (scroll to the bottom of the page).

When I scroll half way down that page, there's a picture of a guy who is supposed to be Indra. He looks nothing like the Indra I knew. However, the picture of the guy at www.jeffreyarmstrong.com certainly is him.

There is some news. I got a friendly reply from Jeffrey Armstrong (his initiation name is actually Jamadagneya, not Jamadagni, although he noted it is commonly misspelled). I talked to him on the phone yesterday. An interesting person indeed! He believes he may be able to locate Kanupriya.

I hope I will be able to post some of the things he has shared re: the "bodyguards" conversation and its background. It will take a few days though, since I want to check with him what's OK to make public and how. He was quite concerned not to allow this to degenerate into politics and affect devotees negatively.

I gave him the link to our discussion here, as well as the one to Suhotra Swami's website, kindly provided by Indranila. Seems he had a lot of fun reading Suhotra's interpretation of the conversation, for he said he had written him a "sweet little e-mail." I will send him the link to SS's latest "discovery" on Indra Armstrong; guess SS can look forward to another even sweeter little e-mail.

Dhyana

Gaudiya Discussions ! The news as it breaks! You heard it here first!

Ooooooo. (a propos ACBS' letter quoted by Madhava).

So it seems that if the name is misselled, it is misspelled by everyone including the diksha himself. Hmmm. Who spells it correctly then, me wonders.

Dhyana

JAmadagnya is a name of Parashurama, while Jamadagni is his father. ACBSP seems to be pretty consistent with spelling the name as Jamadagni though. Anyway, I'm sure the man knows own his name.

Suhotra Swami responds to Jamadagnya's letter: http://www.in2-mec.com/J-Pages04/J040817.htm

Dhyana, Swami refers to listening to the audio tape, so it does exist, and is out there somewhere.

Be sure to explore the funky intro to his website, click on all those planets to gain access to Swami's inner sanctorum.

http://www.in2-mec.com/DDTB.html

He's got a sense of humor. Definitely a plus.

After second thoughts (and some searching through the VedaBase)... Jamadagnya was quite clear that his name was the name of Jamadagni's son, Parashurama. He remembers ACBS jokingly referring to him as Parashurama (asking where he has his axe, etc.). But there is no Jamadagneya in the VedaBase either. Just one conversation with Mr. Patel where ACS insists on "Jamadagna" (ref. to the son) as opposed to Jamadagni (the father).

Perhaps ACBS gave Jeffrey the name JAmadagni (a patronymic), and this long "a" got hopelessly lost in transcriptions.

I know the tape exists, Jamadagneya has a copy himself. It includes the later part of the conversation that got truncated in the VedaBase version.

--Dhyana

But hey... sannyAsis are a freak of nature after all, not?

When Maharaj was living in his film noir era and doing all sorts of wacky stuff, I was ensured by some that he was an avadUta and this was his lIlA aimed at ridding himself of others' praise and so forth.

Seems like my suspicions were correct.

This is what I wrote last week at another forum. I was asked by a moderator to post this here, but at the time, without confirmation, I didn't want to seem argumentative.

But Prabhupad watched that noir'n'white Chaplin movie in that plane once...

I agree that based on both his present and recent presentations, one would expect him to ride the Jefferson starship and lead a life of live and let live. Make love not war, and all that jazz.

I just found a book Kanupriya wrote and sent me back in 1999 called 'Yoga Truths, Yoga Lies and Yoga Secrets for Attaining Superconsciousness and Mystic Powers."

There is his phone number in it I will try and see if it works or has a forwarding number... of course I will not publicly display it... let me see if it works and we can go from there.

bangli

Hey..

I just spoke to Kanupriya and he is gonna register here on the forum and tell his side of the story with his own words..

this is gonna be a show...

stay tuned!

THIS COMMENT HAS BEEN DELETED. IT HAS BEEN REPRODUCED IN MY RESPONSE IN THE NEXT POST, ALONG WITH THE REASONS FOR IT. (Jagat)

I am not trying to vent my frustrations I am trying to change things. I will go to Isthagosthi.com thanks for the information.

Just visited the site. It looks ecstatic. I will look at it later.

In an ideal free-market system, one specializes. Then one has no qualms about sending a customer to another retailer if that person wishes something specifically suited to his or her tastes. That way, the first retailer builds up good will with a possible future client by putting him or her in contact with what he or she wants.

I never was close to Kanupriya although I did live right next door to him in L.A and he did my chart, that was back in the late 70's. Later I would run into him at parties here and there, always an interesting fellow I thought. I got his book back in 99.
Hope he posts some here..

Greetings. My name is Kanupriya. I have been requested and have agreed to make a posting on this site regarding the topic of the conversation between me and Bhaktivedanta in 1975. I'm working on it, cause it's going to be a long posting, but it'll be done soon.

Dear Kanupriya,

Welcome to the forum
...and we are looking forward to hearing your perspective!

Dhyana

(This letter was apparently too long for one posting, so I'll put it in 4 parts)

My eternal friends.

My name was/is Kanupriya. I was invited to participate in a discussion on this site, which I did not know existed, by a member named bangli, who knew me long ago in LA, and who just happened to have my number, so he called me up and told me a story and I looked up the site and here I am. I am quite amazed that there would be a group of people who are interested in the infamous conversation I had with Bhaktivedanta in June of 1975, or that anyone has even heard of and knows about this conversation, what to speak of that portions of the transcript are on web sites.

I’ve spent a bit of time looking over the site, reading a bunch of postings and looking at the profiles of the most active members, and most of you seem relatively sane, and certainly truth seekers, and I even know a few of you, and I like the site, so I’ll be happy to assist you in any way I can towards your further enlightenment.

I read all the postings regarding the conversation including what’s posted of the conversation itself, and all of your speculations and comments. I have a copy of the transcription of the conversation. What has been posted of the conversation on this site is about 11 pages out of 23, from pages 7 to 18, so there’s more of the conversation than has been posted here. The beginning part is the most important because it sets the tone for the rest, but it is alluded to in a later part of the conversation that is posted regarding the issue of you can’t be a disciple if you have long hair, which is a much larger issue than just long hair, which I’ll tell you all about in due course, cause this is gonna’ to be a long long letter. On the transcript, I am Devotee 1 and Jamadagni is Devotee 2.

In order to understand how this conversation came about, what the significance or importance of it is, and how I happened to be there, it is necessary to know the circumstances that led up to it, which I can only tell you from my personal side, so I’ll begin with telling you who I am and what my experiences were with Bhaktivedanta, ISKCON, Jamadagni and the other players in the play, for I have a perspective in all this that no one else could have, since I knew Bhaktivedanta quite well and spent a considerable amount of personal time with him compared to all but a small hand full of devotees. In fact, at one point in 1972, for several months I spent three hours a day with him, an hour of which each day we were alone together most of the times, and I got to ask him all kinds of questions and get all kinds of answers that as far as I can see he never gave to anyone else, or wrote in any of his books, or told in any of his lectures. All I can tell you is that he always told me the truth in response to my questions, but many of the truths he told me are not the same as he wrote in his books or preached in his lectures, as you shall see.

I have only love in my heart for all beings, not because I necessarily actually like everyone or the things they do, but because it’s my natural state of being to flow the energy of love, and I like being there, so I don’t crimp the energy. I have no resentments, nor animosity toward, nor axes to grind with Bhaktivedanta or ISKCON or anything else I have experienced and created in my life, for after all, I’m an astrologer, and according to my chart, I apparently was willing to go through whatever was necessary to attain the state of enlightenment I desired.

I promise to tell you the truth of all this as I remember it, for this was all over 30 years ago, but I have a pretty good memory. I have never told this full story to anyone before, nor would I have ever written down what I am going to be telling you of my relationship with Bhaktivedanta and my experiences in Hare Krishna Land and post it on a web site, nor am I asking you to believe anything I am telling you, or to accept my particular philosophical take on reality, or my interpretations of the meanings of the various things Bhaktivedanta said to me, or even my interpretations of this conversation, but I was requested to provide this information and I see no reason not to do so, and I can only present it from my own point of view, plus it might be of some benefit to someone, and I like being helpful if I can. I’m certainly finding it interesting to be revealing this entire story to anyone for the first time, and even more interesting that anyone’s actually interested!

I’m going to provide you with quite a bit of information here regarding the early history of ISKCON, at least what I know and experienced of it from Jan 69 till Mar 73 while I was there, as well as a bunch of stories of my experiences and conversations with Bhaktivedanta, presented in a way that might give you some insights into his character as I perceived it, and thus a better understanding of my relationship with him and what this conversation was all about. I hope you find it interesting. I read many of your bio’s, and I’m sure quite a few of you will be able to relate to my adventures in Hare Krishna Land.

I was initiated by mail by Bhaktivedanta in Jan 1969 when I was living in my home town Buffalo NY, at which time I moved into the temple there after going there for about four months. I had just turned 20. For the prior couple of years, I had been studying Western astrology, Hatha Yoga, Indian philosophy, meditation, etc. and was a vegetarian, so it seemed like moving into a happy little yoga ashram was my next logical step. The temple had been started by Rupanuga, who was one of the original 12 initiated disciples in New York, and was one of only a half dozen or so temples at the time. There were only a few of us there as the temple had only been there a year; my friends JD33a and Praladananda who I knew from college, plus Trivikram and Bhorjan, It was a nice little temple. I worked at the Buffalo library. Rupanuga was a social worker. Jag and Pralad went to college. We had a daily arti and kirtan and class from 7 to 8 am, a kirtan in the evening on Weds. and a feast on Sun. There was no Sankirtan and no book distribution.. “Aaah! The good old days! Chant Hare Krishna and your life will be sublime! A happy little universal prayer that anyone can do without having to change anything else in their lives!” Later in that year Bhagavan and his wife Krishna Bhamani, both of whom I knew in High School, joined along with my High School friend Narottamananda. Nityananda too. Gargamuni and Brahmananda were in charge of the NY temple, Tamal in LA, Satsvarup in Boston. The big three of Mukunda, Guru das and Shyamasundar along with their wives had just left LA and gone to start the temple in England.

At the time I joined, only the Gita and the first canto of SB had been published, and then TLC was published that year. I read the books, but from the very beginning, my interpretations of the books and understandings of the philosophy seemed to be vastly different from everyone else’s, and everyone gave me a hard time about it, especially about my understanding of how you could communicate with Krishna and hear Him talking back to you, and since they were my senior god brothers since they’d been there longer, they were supposed to know better than I, so I was in somewhat of a quandary over quite a few philosophical concepts.

I first met Bhaktivedanta when he came to Buffalo for a couple of weeks in the early spring of 69 to visit the temple and do a bunch of college and other presentations that had been arranged. Everyone else but me went to meet him at the airport, but as I was the cook, I stayed at the temple to prepare the feast for later in the day, after the scheduled event at the local university, which I went to. So the first time I saw him, I was sitting on the stage at the university at the harmonium, as I was the harmonium player, and he walked up on the stage and sat down, and someone handed him a drum, and he looked over at me and nodded his head and smiled and said, “Lets go” and began to play the drum and I followed at the harmonium, and we were just a couple of musicians doing the show, and it was like that at a dozen other kirtans and presentations we did while he was there. I also went and saw him several times where he was staying, so I got to know him a bit, and he certainly knew who I was. The second time I met him was at a huge kirtan in an auditorium he did with Allen Ginsberg at Columbus OH university in around April 69, which was so wild with thousands of totally insane college students jumping up and down and pounding on chairs and screaming Hare Krishna that it made the national evening news channels. After that he went and spent a couple of weeks in New Vrindaban, and I went there too. He gave a class every morning so I saw him every day. One day, he came outside in the late afternoon and was sitting on the grass on a little hill and a few of us devotees went and sat with him. I said, “Prabhupada, can I ask you a question?” He said, “yes”, so I said, ”Prabhupada, how do you tell which of the thoughts of the mind are which? Which are the thoughts of the spirit soul, which are the thoughts of the material mind, and which are the thoughts of the Paramatma?” It was kind of a cloudy evening, and he said, “The material mind is like the clouds in the sky. The Sun is on the other side of the clouds, but since we’re on this side we can’t see the Sun. The spirit soul is like the Sun, since it is the source of the energy, so all thoughts originate with the spirit soul. Any thought that comes through that is a ‘Krishna thought’, which is viewing the world from the perception of spirit, is the original thought of the spirit soul. Any thought that comes through not viewing the world from a spiritual point of view, is the original thought of the spirit soul that got clouded by the material mind. And it is very difficult to tell the difference between the thoughts of the spirit soul and those of the Paramatma, since both are made of knowledge and are essentially the same.” I said, “Thank-you very much. That was also my conclusion”, but Kirtanananda and Rupanuga and all the other devotees there all totally freaked out from this answer, “Oh no! Prabhupad’s preaching mayavadi philosophy that there’s no difference between the jiva and the Paramatma! Oh no! This does not compute! This does not compute! System meltdown!” After having Bhaktivedanta confirm my understanding, which was vastly different from all the other devotee’s understandings from reading the same books, and everyone having told me my interpretations were incorrect, from that point on, none of my so-called more advanced older devotees could tell me anything. I just concluded that I had a particular type of intelligence that gave me the ability to pick out the truths and to understand the secret meanings behind everything, and after that I trusted exclusively my own intelligence and intuition. Like I said before, Bhaktivedanta always told me the truth in response to the many questions I asked him, even though what he told me contradicted what he told everyone else and what he wrote in his books, but then I knew the right questions to ask.

Everything was nice for a while until Aug of 69 when the big street Sankirtan and book distribution and money collecting programs began in LA & NY. I was sent to NY in Aug to get my Brahmins’ initiation since Bhaktivedanta was visiting NY at the time, plus I was supposed to learn how to do the Sankirtan stuff so we could do it back in Buffalo. So we began street Sankirtan in Buffalo, and in my opinion, it was at this time that the whole movement began its rapid descent into drama and chaos. The little temple was no longer good enough as there were now many more devotees and people coming to the temple, so of course we had to get a much bigger temple with a much bigger overhead which created a lot of financial pressure. When I found myself in Buffalo NY in the winter standing on street corners wearing a skirt in blinding snow storms trying to sell sticks of incense for a quarter, my thought was, “This is not what I signed up for. I want out of here!” so I asked Rupanuga if I could be transferred to another temple, preferably in a warmer climate, and he said he’d see what he could arrange. A couple of weeks later when I asked him if he’d made any progress in finding another temple I could go to, he said, “Yeah. I called up all the other temple presidents and told them about you and they all said they’d be glad to have you, but that it would take at least three of their devotees in trade to replace you and they didn’t have that much manpower.” I said, “What do ya mean?” He said, “Well, you’re the cook, and a great cook at that, and you’re the only one who knows how to play all the musical instruments and who knows all the bhajans and you lead the kirtans, plus you know all the books backwards and forwards and teach the classes, plus you’re trained as a pujari, plus you’re the temple commander and lead the Sankirtan parties. So everyone said they’d be glad to have you but they had no devotee who even came close to being able to do all those things and they’d have to send at least two or three devotees to replace you. So I guess you’re stuck here for a while.”

The whole stressful situation started to make me quite depressed, and it wasn’t just being on the streets in blinding snow storms, it was a whole lot more, so in Jan 1970, I just took off and a week later ended up in LA where Bhaktivedanta was, and moved into the LA temple. Tamal had gone to England so Gargamuni had come from NY and was the temple president while his brother Brahmananda stayed in charge in NY, and it was from this point that everything really started going to hell, ending up with in Aug 1970, Bhaktivedanta accusing Gargamuni and Brahmananda of keeping him prisoner in LA, trying to take over the movement, fasting for a week because he thought they were trying to poison him, and ending up creating a huge scene wherein Gargamuni and Brahmananda were removed from their positions, forced to become sanyassi’s if they wanted to still participate in the movement, and Bhaktivedanta leaving and going back to India. A member on this site, a good old friend of mine named Subal, can provide you with more detailed information regarding this particular fiasco than I can, if you’re interested, and if he has any inclination to tell you about it, since he was there, whereas I had left LA a week earlier before all this came down and had gone to Detroit temple which was run by my friend Bhagavan. I do have an interesting perspective on this whole episode however, as I was in a unique position in the LA temple from Jan 70 till Aug 70, during which time Bhaktivedanta remained in LA. The original temple in LA was on La Cienega, and it was in the late spring of that year they got the current temple on Watseka. Prior to the move, Bhaktivedanta had a separate apartment but after the move he lived in his quarters in the new temple. I was one of the two pujaris in LA, and since I did the late evening arti, I kept a different schedule than everyone else, and as a consequence, I was given my own private quarters in one of two rooms behind the old temple room just below Bhaktivedanta’s quarters. The room adjoining mine was the room where Bhaktivedanta met with visitors, and during July and early Aug of 70, he had all the GBC guys and temple presidents come to LA and met them in this room, and as the walls were thin, I got to hear all these conversations from my room. I could tell from these conversations that something was definitely rotten in Denmark and Bhaktivedanta was not pleased with a lot of stuff, although I did not know the extent of it. One evening in early July, Bhaktivedanta sent for me to come up to his quarters. We chatted for a while and then he showed me how he wanted the harmonium played for the morning kirtan we did every morning after his class, so from that point on I would play the harmonium and begin the kirtan and then he would take over, so in my personal experiences I was having a pretty good time, but the entire atmosphere was becoming more and more stressful. Towards mid August, I confronted Gargamuni at a temple meeting with all the other devotees there, and accused him of a bunch of the things he had been doing, which is probably where whatever reputation I got as a rebel against the temple authorities began. As a result of this, Gargamuni threw me out of LA temple and that’s why I ended up in Detroit. By the time I got there was when the whole thing came down in LA and Bhagavan and all the GBC and temple presidents were called to LA. I guess my personal vindication in the whole sordid affair was that within two weeks of Gargamuni throwing me out of LA, Bhaktivedanta threw him out of LA too. This whole thing was far too much drama for my taste, I really don’t care for soap operas, and it continued at some huge meeting all the devotees, temple presidents and GBC guys had at New Vrindaban a few weeks later, which I attended as I was by then close by in Detroit. I found it comical to have all the big wigs being hysterical and blaming everyone else for all their own misdoings. Bunch of total lunatics.

It was at the Detroit temple that I first met Jamadagni and we became good friends. We had both studied astrology before becoming devotees so we had a lot in common. I stayed at the Detroit temple from Sept 70 to Dec 70, at which time I was offered the opportunity to go start a temple in Trinidad with another married devotee couple. By this time I was married to the most mismatched to me, true believer rule following devotee girl in existence, who didn’t quite appreciate my unique understandings of the philosophy, so we never got along very well. But I liked the idea of getting away from ISKCON and going to a small island to start a temple, figured everyone would just leave me alone, so off to Trinidad. Quite an experience. In case you don’t know, Trinidad is a little island off the northeast coast of South America. It has about a million people, around half of whom are Hindus whose ancestors were brought to Trinidad from India by the English in the 1800’s. The language is English. It’s a prosperous little country and most people are well educated. The Hindu’s were quite organized and had their little villages all over the island and various Hindu temples and schools. We created quite a sensation to say the least. When we went and did street Sankirtan, we had hundreds of people gather and chant with us and throw us money. The newspaper put our pictures on the front page of the paper and billed us as the American Hindus come to save the lost Hindus of Trinidad. We stayed at a large temple in Port of Spain, and the Hindu organization arranged for us to do a tour of all the various Hindu villages, temples and schools, doing kirtans and lectures and Sunday feasts. Lot’s of fun being a guru. We’d go to various villages and they’d have young girls throw rose petals in our path, and the teenage girls all lined up and put garlands around our necks. Lot’s of fun being a guru, but I did myself in by doing too well. After being there around six months, I had been taking orders from people for books and sets of books, and I called in my rather large order to the book dep’t in NY so they could ship the books. A few days later, the head of the book dep’t. called me back and asked me if I really needed so many books. I said, “Yeah. There’s a half million Hindus who live here who all speak English and these books are already ordered and sold.” And he said, “Your book order represents approximately 25% of all the books ordered for the month by the entire movement! Trinidad is a gold mine! We’re going to immediately send all of our best book distributors there! We’ll make millions!” And they did, and I split.

Back to LA in July 71, but this time as a householder so it wasn’t quite so bad since I was a bit more independent, but as far as I could see, the movement as a whole was not any different than it had been before the whole mess in LA when Bhaktivedanta had gone back to India. I stayed in LA and in early 72 Bhaktivedanta came back and stayed there too. One day, he wanted to do some recordings of some bhajans and he wanted a tampura on the recordings, and as I was the only one at the temple who had a tampura, I was called to go play the tampura at the recording. At the end of the recording, it was time for his daily massage, but his personal servant at the time, my friend Nanda Kumar, was out tripping around in Venice, and when Bhaktivedanta was informed that Nanda Kumar wasn’t back yet, he looked around the room at the few of us and said, “Who will do my massage?” So I of course immediately volunteered as I knew a bit of massage, so I did his massage for the day. At the end, I bowed down and he patted me on the head and said I did a good job, so I asked if I could come back each day while he was in LA and do his massage for him, and he said that would be nice, and this is how I got to spend an hour alone with him each day for several months. Each day for several months, we would do a recording for around an hour, then he had a private class in his quarters for an hour, which I got to attend, where a devotee was reading the philosophies of various philosophers and he would comment on the philosophies, then we’d do the massage. You have to try and understand what a unique relationship it was to be his masseur compared to any other relationship any devotee may have had with him, which was always a rather formal guru to disciple relationship, whereas doing a massage for someone is a comparatively informal relationship, so he didn’t treat me the way he treated everyone else. The first day I did his massage, before hand I was of course somewhat nervous, but I thought to myself that if I wanted to do a good job, which I did, that I had to put aside any fears I might have of this person, so I did and just went in and did the massage. Bhaktivedanta got his massage sitting up on a mat on the floor, just wearing a loincloth. Most of the times we were alone during the massage, but sometimes he would see visiting temple presidents, GBC guys and various devotees, so I got to see how he dealt with everyone, and sometimes when the person left we would talk about it and he would tell me why he had said what he said to the person. The basic jist of how he dealt with everyone, and what he told me of how he dealt with everyone, would be something like this: He knew he was very intimidating to everyone, and devotees were always bringing him various projects and ideas they had, and he really didn’t have the time to evaluate all the different projects, so what he did was to intimidate the hell out of everyone, and most buckled, but if anyone could stand up to him and actually present any rational logic that they had thought about what they were doing, he figured they were capable of doing it, so he let them. It was during this time that I got to ask him all my questions, the answers to which I’m not going to include at this point, except for one. One morning he gave a lecture in which he said that if someone comes and visits the temple even without knowing what it’s all about, they will still have some spiritual benefit. That morning I asked him about that during the massage, and he said, “I know I said that, but actually you should never do anything that your own intelligence does not understand, for how can you even know what to do if you don’t know why you’re doing it.”

I have to admit that at this time, in spite of my daily association with Bhaktivedanta, I was not happy with the Hare Krishna’s, in fact I was downright miserable. My wife did nothing but fight with me, the leaders were all in my opinion quite insane, and the entire atmosphere was as stressful as it had ever been. I had an organic candy business making Bhakti, Shakti and Bliss bars, and was tripping around selling to various health food stores, when I ran into an old devotee I knew from Laguna Beach who had traveled to India with Bhaktivedanta, but had become disillusioned and had left the movement, so I started hanging out with him and smoking hash just to get a bit of relief. Om Shiva. Bhaktivedanta traveled for a few weeks and then returned to LA. It was during his absence that I started hanging with my friend and smoking hash, and of course my straight laced wife finds out about it and go and tells the then GBC and temple president Karandar, who when they return, then goes and tells Nanda Kumar who then goes and tells Bhaktivedanta. I’d gone to a rather strange headspace during this time, and not just from smoking hash. I was chanting over 100 rounds a day, sleeping a few hours each night and was wearing a saffron dhoti tied like a sanyassi dhoti rather than my white house holder dhoti. Bhaktivedanta called me to his room, took one look at me and said, “What are you doing?” I said I was chanting over 100 rounds a day and wanted to be a sanyassi and live in Vrindaban. I don’t get along with my wife, no one here understands me and I don’t get along with the temple authorities. He laughed and said I’ll tell you when its time for you to go to Vrindaban. He then said so I hear you’ve been smoking hash hish? And I said yes. And he said best not to as no one will understand what I am doing, but he didn’t take it at all seriously. Said I should dress normally and be a house holder and set a good example and come back and do his massages while he was there, so I did.

In the fall of 72, he was returning to India, and Nanda Kumar had left being his personal servant, so I asked if I could travel to India with him as his personal servant. It was fine with him but got axed by the then temple president Karandar who said it would not set a good example since I was a householder. As fate would have it, the next day I was visiting my friend Jayatirtha who was at that time running the Spiritual Sky incense business, and on his desk was a letter from the devotee who was the Spiritual Sky guy in India, requesting that a house holder devotee be sent to India to help him with the business. So, that morning during the massage, I told Bhaktivedanta about the letter and asked since I had wanted to go to India anyway and we had just talked about it, would it be all right with him if I was the one who went to India to help with the Spiritual Sky business, and he said that would be fine. Now, with my recent hash hish episode, I was probably not exactly the devotee that Jayatirtha, in spite of us being friends, would have recommended to be the one to go to India, but since Bhaktivedanta had given me his permission there was nothing he could do, so off I went to India with the wife and the two one year old twin daughters. Yes, I’m going to be a good devotee. I’m going to follow the straight and narrow. So I get to India and meet the two devotees who are running Spiritual Sky there, I’ll call them M and K, and the first thing they say to me is, “Kanupriya, are we glad to see you! Jayatirtha wrote us this letter that Prabhupada had given his permission for you to come, but you’d been smoking hash and he wanted to send this really straight laced devotee from New York instead. So we wrote him back and said he should not go outside of the directions of the Spiritual Master, and that the good association of India would fix Kanupriya up.” And the first place they took me to in Calcutta was their black market hash dealer, and K was shooting morphine! Anyway, this whole situation didn’t work out all that well, although I did spend a couple of weeks with Bhaktivedanta in Vrindaban and about six months in India, but the entire ISKCON scene and atmosphere was the same as in the states, so I decided to return to LA. I spent a week in Vrindaban before I left and this is where I decided to leave the Hare Krishna’s. I was shopping at a little outdoor market and nearby me was an American hippy guy dressed in orange robes wearing a mala, so I started up a conversation, but he was very wary of speaking with me. Turned out he was a disciple of Ramana Maharishi, but we had a nice talk and after a few minutes he said to me, “You know, you’re the only nice Hare Krishna I’ve ever met. Every single other Hare Krishna I’ve met, and I’ve met a lot of them here, immediately starts yelling at me and telling me I’m following a false guru and I’ll probably go to hell!” And I said, “Brother, I know where you’re coming from. I’m about one of the only nice Hare Krishna’s I’ve ever met either!” And I returned to LA in Mar of 73, and the true believer wife lived at the temple, and I went and lived with my friend in Topanga and smoked hash and let my hair grow long and began my serious studies of Vedic astrology. There’s only one episode I want to relate from this period that has something to do with the conversation with Bhaktivedanta that’s being discussed on this site, and you’ll see the relevance of it once we get to the actual conversation. One day I was sitting and thinking that since I had now left the organization and was no longer following the principles, that if it was true (which I really didn’t know if it was or not but this was the standard line) that by being initiated I was somehow karmically linked with the guru, who was from then on forever after responsible for me, and that the guru would have to suffer for my karmas if I didn’t follow the principles, that in all integrity I should renounce my formal discipleship, since I certainly did not want Bhaktivedanta to have to suffer on my behalf. And supposedly the karmic link goes both ways, so that if I were a formal disciple, in all integrity I would also be responsible for the guru’s karma, which as far as I could see was ISKCON and everything it involved, which meant that I would have to spend my life trying to straighten out that mess, even more reason to renounce my formal initiation, so I did. As of the Spring of 73 I no longer considered myself to be an initiated disciple of Bhaktivedanta and stopped using the name Kanupriya.

I spent the remainder of that year primarily studying astrology, and in early 74 Jamadagni came from Hawaii and we studied together till he went back to Hawaii in the fall of 74. I stayed in LA and he returned to LA in the Spring of 75. It was during his time in Hawaii that the whole episode occurred that led to our conversation with Bhaktivedanta. To tell you the truth, I really don’t know the whole story of what happened in Hawaii, was never really all that interested, so if you want the details you’ll have to get them from Jamadagni. I remember Jamadagni told me a bit of it, something about his helping the then temple president, his friend Sudam, set up the legalities in such a way that the temple was no longer under the authority of ISKCON, which caused quite a ruckus and Jamadagni was labeled as a demon and bore the brunt of the whole thing, which apparently he didn’t appreciate very much, whereas I just said “Wad’ya expect?”, but then he was always a much more sincere crusader rabbit than I ever was, and this is what he wanted to go and talk with Bhaktivedanta about, which finally brings us to June of 75 and our infamous conversation.

The meeting with Bhaktivedanta was arranged at the request of Jamadagni by a mutual devotee friend who at the time was named Rebatinandan Swami. I personally had no particular interest or desire in seeing Bhaktivedanta as I had no particular issues to resolve, and I already had many pleasant memories of the times I spent with him, but I wasn’t opposed to seeing him either, so when I was invited to attend the meeting, I went. I had left the organization two years earlier, and during that time I had let my hair grow back so it was quite long, and I had a beard as well. Jamadagni’s hair had grown a bit long too at that time, but not like mine. At the meeting was only Bhaktivedanta, Jamadagni, me, Jayatirtha and Satsvarupa. Upendra, who was Bhaktivedanta’s personal servant at the time, was around but in another room.

First I’m going to tell you about the conversation at the beginning between me and Bhaktivedanta that’s not posted here that set the scene for the rest of the conversation, and my interpretation of what it meant. Then I’ll go into the rest of it, which is mostly all the stuff that Jamadagni was trying to resolve. Then I’m going to just give you a few quotes from Bhaktivedanta from the conversation, and show you all the truths he ended up telling as a result of my initial question, cause like I said, he always told me the truth. I read a rather long posting here on this site by dirty hari, who did a pretty good analysis of what happened before and during the conversation, suggesting that Bhaktivedanta was probably told beforehand a lot of not so nice things about Jamadagni, and that is probably why he appears to be so hostile to Jamadagni, and to me too I guess. I’d tend to agree with his evaluation as well as most of his interpretation of the events,. I’m sure you’ll probably have a few questions about all of this which I’ll be happy to respond to. And thus we begin with the part of the conversation that is not on the posted transcript.

When Jamadagni and I walked into the room, Jayatirtha said, “Prabhupada, these are your two disciples Jamadagni and Kanupriya.” Bhaktivedanta didn’t know Jamadagni, but as you know he did know me, so he looked at me and said, “You cannot be my disciple if you are keeping such long hairs.” Well, you know me by now, and I knew this was being recorded and would go down to posterity, and I figured there must be some reason I’m here and going through this, and he’d set himself up with an opportunity for me to have him tell the truth about things, and as you know he always told me the truth, so even though I already knew the answer to this question, I said, “Prabhupada, does that mean I can’t be Krishna conscious and return to the Spiritual Sky?” And he said, “Of course not! Krishna doesn’t care if you have long hair! Disciple means one who follows the discipline. I wanted people to be recognized as Hare Krishna people, so to be a disciple means to keep shaved head with sika and tilok.” So I said, “But Prabhupada, the philosophy as all the devotees tell everyone it is that in order to become Krishna conscious and return to the Spiritual Sky you have to be initiated.” And he said, “That is the standard. I have only set up the standard for those who can follow the standard. If you are above the standard or below the standard you do not need to follow the standard. It is not as if the entire world has to become my disciples!” I said, “Thank-you Prabhupada. You never explained it this way before.”

I hope you can see the meaning of all this, especially if you will recall the story I told you about when I renounced my formal initiation, regarding that how initiation is presented is that it means this eternal karmic bond between the guru and the disciple, because what Bhaktivedanta just said is that this entire conception of what initiation really means is a fairy tale! As is the necessity of even being initiated in the first place! As is the necessity of following any of the slavery rules of the Hindu Caste System, also known as Varnashram Dharma or the so-called Vedic Culture. And trying to lead the life of this fairy tale and a whole bunch of other fairy tales was and is the cause of all the complications in Hare Krishna Land.

There is not a single person who ever joined the Hare Krishna’s because they woke up one morning and said to themselves, “You know! I suddenly have this burning desire to devote my life to spreading the Hindu Caste System all over the world in the name of spirituality! I think I’ll join the Hare Krishna’s and pretend I’m a Hindu Brahmin from 5,000 years ago!” Every single person who came to the Hare Krishna’s did so because they were seeking their own spiritual enlightenment, and for no other reason, and were erroneously told that they had to adopt the rules and lifestyle of a particular obscure caste of Hindu Brahmins in order to do so, and they were told there was no other way, and that they had to be initiated, and that in order to be initiated they had to follow all these rules and adopt this lifestyle. And now Bhaktivedanta said none of this was true! It’s not necessary to be initiated. If you are initiated as a disciple it is a fairy tale that there is now some eternal karmic link between the guru and disciple. Disciple means one who follows the discipline, and that’s it! And whatever else you may think it means is a fairy tale! And from this particular bit of “truth” it is now possible to distinguish all of the other fairy tales from all of the other “truths”. The fairy tales are the way the philosophy is presented as part of the Hindu Caste System to the plebian masses, which is called the “standard”, such as you have to have a guru, and be initiated by the guru, and do what the guru says, because without the guru you can’t become spiritually realized and go to heaven when you die. The “truth” is what’s really going on behind all the fairy tales.

I’ll give you a couple examples of the “truths” you can separate from the fairy tales by following this method of understanding, and then I’ll get back to commenting on and explaining the rest of the conversation. I hope I’m not boring you, but this is my take on the meaning of this conversation and on a lot of the other answers Bhaktivedanta gave me to questions I asked him. So here’s an interesting fairy told to five year olds regarding something seemingly as innocuous as worshiping a plant called Tulasi. “This plant named Tulasi is a devotee and is the very favorite plant of the biggest of the big Gods in the sky named Vishnu, and by worshipping this plant we are worshiping Vishnu and making Vishnu happy, and if we make Vishnu happy then we will become free of all our bad karmas, even the baddest of the bad karmas which would be from killing a Brahmin, and therefore all our bad karmas that were going to get us in the future in this life, and would make us take bad future lives too, will all be burnt up and we’ll get to go to heaven when we die. All we have to do is to put a little dress on the plant, and dance around the plant, and sing a song for the plant, and put a little water on the planet, and Vishnu will accept our service and we’ll be freed from the bad prison house of Mannequin Land, because this is a really special plant and Vishnu really loves this plant more than any other plant in the whole wide world!” And what’s the “truth?” The purpose of the ritual of worshiping the Tulasi plant is to attain the experience of Sat Chit Ananda, to experience the spiritual dimension of reality. This is accomplished, as are all other rituals, by following particular techniques that enable you to focus you mind and get it to stop thinking about all the usual junk it thinks about so you can experience the spiritual dimension. Dancing around the plant is known as “asana”, ritualistic bodily movements or positioning, which is meant to bring about a sense of separation between you, the eternal consciousness and the mannequin. Singing is known as Pranayama, which is purposely altering the normal rate of breathing which is something else to do that further helps to focus the mind, looking at the pretty plant and the candles is known as Pratyahara, which is an “eye fascination” that causes the brain to add higher percentages of Alpha and Theta waves to the usual scattered Beta waves of the brain, which will cause your conscious mind to stop thinking about whatever else you were thinking about and focus on what you’re doing at the moment, which is called meditation. Listening to the singing and the music is known as Dharayana, or focus of the hearing, which further focuses the mind and helps you think about what you are doing. If you can ever get your mind to actually totally stop thinking about all the usual things it thinks about, which is mostly stuff in the past and the future, and focus completely on what you’re doing in the present moment, and if you correctly know why you’re doing all this stuff in the first place, which is know as Dhayana, or philosophical understanding, you will be able to experience the spiritual dimension to reality. You will first experience what is known as Sat, which is the experience of your Self as the eternal consciousness completely different from and separate from your mannequin. You will experience your mannequin as nothing more than a big puppet dancing around, and you exist on another dimension and just experience through it from afar. You will also experience your Self as the detached watcher of the usual thoughts of the mind that pertain to the mannequin and its various designations and activities here in Mannequin Land. You will also experience eternity, that you have always existed and will always exist and that there is no time. Chit, or knowledge, is experienced by being able to actually perceive the consciousness in the plant as being something completely different from and separate from the physical form of the plant, and that the consciousness of the plant is of the same spiritual nature as your Self, and being able to make the connection with that consciousness, so you can have a relationship with the plant and can talk to the plant and feel some emotions for the plant, as well as experience that the consciousness of the plant is aware of you as well. You then get to walk out the door, remaining in the experience of your Self as the eternal consciousness, which is called samadhi, and see and connect with the consciousness in all the other plants and trees all other living things. I f you like, you can then make the connection with the consciousness of the being who pervades the Earth, generally referred to as the “Great Spirit”, and to innumerable other eternal beings as well. This is the experience of the spiritual dimension of reality, which is technically known as having attained enlightenment or Yoga. Experiencing the spiritual dimension of reality will make you really happy, which is known as Ananda, or bliss. When you experience Sat Chit Ananda, you will have freed your Self from the illusion that you are bound in the material world, which is know as “nitya bandha”, (eternally conditioned) and experience that you have always been eternally liberated, which is known as “nitya siddha”. At that point you have returned to the eternal infinite dimension, and will live happily ever after.

Here’s just one more, but this is the biggest “standard” fairy tale of them all. “There are two categories of eternal beings. Some are big and infinite and all powerful ‘Gods’ and are known as Vishnu and His various forms, and some are little and not so powerful and are meant to ‘surrender’ to and serve the big ‘Gods’. The little guys are known as ‘jivas’, and we’re sorry to have to tell you this, but you're a jiva. The big ‘Gods’ and the little jivas all originally lived happily together in the eternal infinite realms, until something bad happened and a bunch of the little jivas went bad and decided they wanted to be like the big ‘Gods’, which of course was impossible since they were just inferior little jivas, so the bad little jivas had to go to the bad world of Mannequin Land where they could pretend they are ‘Gods’, which is unfortunately accompanied by the suffering of repeated births and deaths, until they learn their lesson and stop trying to play ‘God’, and surrender to their role of servant of the big ‘Gods’, and thus gain parole for good behavior from the bad prison house of Mannequin Land, and get to go back to the eternal realms and live happily ever after.”

This particular philosophical take on the nature of infinite reality is known as “Salvationism”, and has been presented as this fairy tale for thousands of years by the Brahmins of the Hindu Caste System for the benefit of the plebeian masses as an explanation for what we’re all doing here, as well as a motivational tactic to inspire the masses to make sure they follow all the rules of the caste system as the only method of attaining enlightenment and liberation. This is another one of those things known as the “standard” explanation. And what’s the “truth?” The Truth is called Sat Chit Ananda. Sat is eternal consciousness. Consciousness is comprised of light and colors, sounds, flavors, odors and “touches”, in infinite variety, all at the same “time”. Just as it is impossible to have “older” and “younger” beings in the dimension of Sat Chit Ananda where everyone is eternal and there’s no such thing as older and younger, it is also impossible to have an aspect of Sat Chit Ananda which is “greater” or “lesser” than another aspect, an aspect which is comprised of infinite colors, and another aspect which is comprised of only a finite number of colors, which would thereby make some beings “greater” and some beings “lesser”. So this particular conception of eternally “greater” and “lesser” beings is a fairy tale because it creates an impossible duality in a non-dual realm. There are no categories of greater and lesser eternal beings in the dimension of Sat Chit Ananda. There are no jivas.. There are no “inferior” or “lesser” beings. There are no “superior” beings. There are no “supreme” beings. There is no “original” being. There are no “more powerful” beings. There are no “less powerful” beings. There are no “expansions” of beings. These dualistic concepts simply do not exist in the dimension of Sat Chit Ananda. They only exist in the minds of those who are experiencing within this physical realm of duality. There are an infinite number of equal eternal infinite beings, and you’re one of them! As long as anyone maintains within their mind this illusory conception of eternally greater and lesser beings, that very thought creates the separation that makes it impossible to experience any of those beings, because you can’t experience them until you both correctly understand and experience your own eternal infinite Self, and if you think you’re a being who is in some way eternally different from and lesser than those beings, you can’t experience either the true nature of your infinite Self or theirs. So what’s this physical dimension we’re all experiencing and why are we experiencing it? Well, we’re all eternal infinite beings just being our infinite Selves! As eternal infinite beings, you’d think we could do anything wouldn’t you? But we can’t! There’s two things we can’t do, and this is why we’re all “here” experiencing this particular realm of three-dimensional space and time. First, because we’re eternal, which means we have always existed and will always exist, we cannot eliminate our existence. Therefore we’re stuck! We exist forever and we can’t not exist. Secondly, because we’re infinite, we can’t become finite. We can’t become something less than we are, nor can we not express some aspect of our infiniteness. Therefore we’re stuck again! We’re stuck having to “be all that we can be” forever and ever. As eternal infinite beings, we are capable of dreaming up and creating an infinite variety of things. This particular physical manifestation is one of the infinite possible things we could dream up and create, so we dreamed it up and created it! As the creators of this physical dimension, we are experiencing here out of our own free will and creative self-expression. We are here continuing to create and enjoying our own creation. We cannot become "liberated" because we are not "bound" in the first place! We are not “bad” for being here! We are not separated from some “source” that we have to get back to! We are not here to prove ourselves worthy of going to a better place! We are not here to "clear" our bad karma. We are not on some miserable wheel of samsara karma repeated birth and death until we gain "liberation" by "surrendering" to the will of some superior being. We are all free and independent creators and we can go anywhere we want, be anything we want and do anything we want. Who we all really are as beings of unlimited freedom, creativity and boundless joy is exemplified by Krishna and the life he led. The physical world is not a prison house from which we are supposed to escape, it’s an amusement park for eternal infinite beings killing eternal time trying to dream up something new. When you experience all this, you will cease considering yourself to be the dreamt, and become the dreamer.

So now back to the rest of the conversation, some of which is included in the transcript on this site. Yes, Jamadagni and I were apparently way ahead of our time in being able to see how “absolute power” corrupted those in positions of leadership within the movement, the observation of which apparently turned out to be correct, as these leaders (as far as I’ve heard since I really haven’t been around or involved or paid much attention to it all since 73 when I left) ended up causing quite a bit of difficulties within the movement, especially ante Bhaktivedanta when they became the “gurus”, which the rest of the devotees eventually had to deal with. To me this was all the inevitable result of the philosophy of the “miserable material world” that you have to try and escape from. If you think this is a miserable material world, you will create within your personal life a miserable material world to live in.

And it was definitely true that Bhaktivedanta was not told and therefore did not know about whatever things were going on that he definitely would not have approved of. So Jamadagni, as I said before, a far more sincere devotee and crusader rabbit that I ever was, apparently set out to tell him about it all, since that’s what I can see the conversation is about now that I’m reading it again. I really didn’t know at the time what Jamadagni specifically wanted to talk to Bhaktivedanta about. We didn’t discuss it before hand, and as I said before, I wasn’t really all that interested in whatever fiasco had happened in Hawaii. I personally entered the arena with no agenda whatsoever, not to support Jamadagni, and certainly not to tell Bhaktivedanta about the corruption of the leaders, cause I personally couldn’t have cared less.

You can read the conversation yourself and see all the things Jamadagni said about the various difficulties and problems within the movement, since the majority of the conversation was between him and Bhaktivedanta. I’ll just give you one quote from Jamadagni that’s from the beginning and isn’t on the post on this site, and you’ll see why this whole conversation got the response from the temple authorities that it did, and why the tape was purged from the archives. “So we are trying to speak to you that some of the men who you have appointed to positions of administration are greatly misusing that responsibility, and the general public opinion is that they are acarya in the same sense that you are acarya, and so we accept you as our guru but we do not accept the GBC as our guru so that they can speak on everything because they are not realized like you are realized. So when they misuse that power it causes some of us very great difficulty in pursuing our own Krishna consciousness.” Yup! Well, I guess that just about says it all! Can’t possibly imagine why all the movements leaders got so bent out of shape over that! And I again agree with dirty hari’s evaluation of what Bhaktivedanta had been told about Jamadagni prior to the conversation, which accounted for his attitude, as well as the evaluation of when Bhaktivedanta’s attitude changed when he realized he had not exactly been told the whole truth of the situation; but as far as I’m concerned this is all irrelevant, as is the part about the King guy and the 4 billion body guards, as is all the sociological stuff about the problems of devotees in the movement, as is all the bad things all the bad leaders were doing. To me, all that’s relevant are the various “truths” Bhaktivedanta told which are different from the usual fairy tales, and how you can use those truths to then be able to separate all the other truths from all the other fairy tales.

So here’s the only few other quotes from Bhaktivedanta from the conversation that I consider to be the various “truths”, some of them similar to the first truth already discussed regarding the concept of initiation, and then I’ll give you my interpretation of what I think it all means. Some are from the parts on this site and some are from the other parts.

“They are all neophytes. If you show something which is beyond our jurisdiction then they may be influenced. They are not all very advanced. You may be very advanced but they are not very advanced”

“If you are above the general principle that does not mean you cannot become Krishna conscious, and if you are lower than the general principle that does not mean that you cannot become Krishna conscious. Krishna consciousness is unconditional, but we have got some general principle, to make step by step.”

“Without becoming my disciple you can become Krishna conscious.”

“Disciple means to agree to follow the discipline, to abide by the rules given by the Spiritual Master That’s all!”

“The general rule is that one cannot make any spiritual advancement without taking shelter of a Spiritual Master, but if you are more advanced then your position is different.”

“If you think you are so advanced that you don’t need following discipline that means you are advanced, don’t require it, and can still be Krishna conscious.”

Even though I would not consider myself to be a disciple of Bhaktivedanta, it would be impossible for me to go outside of his instructions to me, for he told me to always trust my own intelligence and never accept anything that my intelligence did not understand. The only way I could possibly go outside of his instructions, would be to totally give up my own intelligence, move into a Hare Krishna temple or find some other guru guy propounding all this same stuff, and start believing all the fairy tale explanations.

My basic interpretation of the quotes I just listed, is that the common people (the neophytes) are basically considered to be too stupid to be able to be told the actual truth about anything, so they are given all the fairy tale explanations so they can take everything step-by-step. If buying into all the fairy tales is what you think you have to do to become Krishna conscious, and you’re not smart enough to be able to figure out the actual truths from the fairy tales, then you get to live a life of fairy tales. If you’re smart enough to be able to figure out the truths, then you don’t. The fairy tales are all the “standard” explanations of the Hindu Caste System, which includes about 90% of all the information presented in all the so-called infallible books. The “truths” are such things as there is actually no such thing as “initiations”, there are no “lineages” of gurus, there are no Brahmins, there are no sanyassi’s, there is no need to follow all the cultural rules of the Hindu Brahmins in order to attain spiritual awareness, and Krishna doesn’t care if you have long hair! The problem with fairy tales is that because they are fairy tales, you have to believe them (which is why you can’t ask why because there is no why), but the word “’belief” has no meaning, nor does the word “faith”. A belief is simply a thought in words that the person has attached a certain amount of emotion to, and they keep thinking the same thought over and over again, so now the feel they have “faith” in their “belief”. Belief is meaningless because it is not based on intelligent perception and understanding, and if you don’t fully understand what you are doing, why you are doing it and how the various processes of attaining the experience of Sat Chit Ananda actually work, you can’t get the experience. This is what Bhaktivedanta taught me for which I shall be forever appreciative, how to trust my own intelligence and how to separate the truths from the fairy tales. Every answer he ever gave me to any of my questions, including in this conversation, was the truth separated from the fairy tale, but then like I said before, I only got these truths from him because I knew the right questions to ask, to everyone else he gave the fairy tale. And in my opinion this is the only importance of this conversation, that perhaps now you can also learn how to trust your own intelligence and be able to figure out the truths from the fairy tales.

As I said at the beginning, of my own accord I would never have written this story down and posted it on a website. I am a very private person. These are my personal experiences, my personal relationship with Bhaktivedanta, and my personal realizations. I have no concern if anyone likes the story or either agrees or disagrees with anything I have written here. I was asked to make a posting regarding this conversation and I have done so according to who I am. When I was asked to make the posting, at first I was a bit hesitant, but then I thought, “Wouldn’t it be nice if someone actually got some benefit out of whatever it is I write that would help them make a better connection with their own eternal infinite Self!”

Everything I have to say directly regarding this conversation is concluded at this point, but for anyone who might be interested, I’ll give you a couple more fairy tales and the truths behind them.

This is a very scary fairy tale told to five year olds. “We are all bad for being here in the bad world of Mannequin Land. Our very existence is bad and the things we do are bad and will bring us bad karma for which we’ll have to suffer in the future. Since one of the things we do a lot of is to eat, if we don’t know the right magic words to say before we eat the food, we’ll get really bad karma just for eating! Says so in the book! So we have to get the magic words from the magic Brahmin, cause they’re the only ones who know the right magic words to say, and then we have to make sure we always say the magic words before we eat the food. When we say the magic words, the God from the sky comes down and eats the food, and we don’t have to get any of the bad karma we would have gotten if we hadn’t said the magic words, plus, the food now becomes magical food, and just eating the magical food will now free us from all our bad karmas and we’ll all get to go to heaven when we die.” And the truth. Once again, all rituals are the same and are meant to do the same thing, to get your idiotic mind to stop thinking about all the usual idiotic stuff it thinks about and to focus on what you’re doing in the present moment so you can experience your Self as the eternal infinite Sat Chit Ananda consciousness you really are. And just what would that experience be in regards to food that it’s so important to always do this ritual before you eat? The experience to be gained is that you are the flavors of the foods you are eating, which is called experiencing the spiritual dimension to reality. You are the consciousness. Consciousness is comprised of infinite varieties of sensory essences. You are not experiencing an “external world”, you are only experiencing your Self. You are made of infinite flavors. When you are tasting the food, you are bringing to your conscious awareness that one aspect of your Self which is the particular flavor of the food. You are the colors you see, you are the sounds you hear, you are the flavors you taste, you are the odors you smell. Consciousness only experiences it Self. To experience this is to experience Sat Chit Ananda, the spiritual dimension of reality. Since eating is something we do so often, if you can learn how to focus when you are eating and experience your Self as the flavors of the food, then you will be able to maintain that same focus and be able to continually experience your Self as the eternal infinite Sat Chit Ananda consciousness you really are.

This is just one last fairy tale, but it’s a very important fairy tale since it involves the primary technique for experiencing the various aspects of your eternal infinite Self, and if you don’t know how the techniques really work, you can’t get to a deep enough state of meditation to make them work. So here’s the fairy tale. By the reaction you have to this one you’ll be able to know what actual desires you have for you own enlightenment, and what vested interests you have for living in a world of fairy tales and beliefs. “The Sanskrit language is a magical language, and repeating particular Sanskrit words known as ‘mantras’ or ‘Holy Names of God’ in and of themselves will enable you to attain both the experience of your own eternal Self and the experience of the ‘God’, even if you don’t know what any of the words mean. The ‘God’ and the name of the ‘God’ are the same, and by repeating the name of the ‘God’ you are thereby associating with the ‘God’ and will be purified of all your bad karma and you’ll get to go to heaven when you die.”

And the truth. You are an eternal infinite being currently having the experience of the illusion of finiteness in the world of Mannequin Land. If you choose to live in the temporary delusion of your Self as being a mannequin, you have every right to do so, but if you would like to gain, at least to some degree, the experience of your eternal infinite Self while you are still experiencing through your mannequin here in Mannequin Land, there are particular techniques that will enable you to gain that experience. The experience both of your own eternal infinite Self and of any other eternal infinite Beings, is beyond the usual range of the thoughts of what is called the material mind, the thoughts of which basically deal with the mannequin and it’s various designations and activities here in Mannequin Land. The material mind is like the clouds in the sky, and You, the eternal consciousness, are the Sun on the other side of the clouds. The entire purpose of doing all of the techniques is to clear away the clouds in the sky so you can see the Sun. You do not have to do anything to become the Sun, you already are the Sun.

The techniques all enable you to gain control of the thoughts of the mind so you can clear away the clouds and thus experience the Sun, but there’s a real lot of clouds and therefore we need a real lot of techniques to clear them away, cause until they’re all cleared away, you can’t completely see the Sun. The four basic techniques of gaining control of the thoughts of the mind so you can clear away the clouds, are Asana which is ritualistic bodily motion or positioning, Pranayama which is altering the normal rate of breathing, Pratyahara which is staring at something intently, and Dharayana which is focus of the hearing. The fifth step is called Dhayana which is philosophical understanding, which is basically what are you doing all this stuff for and what’s supposed to happen to you by doing it. The chanting or singing of mantras fulfills both Pranayama and Dharayana within the process, but the use of mantras has the possibility to accomplish more than would just chanting meaningless words or words about Mannequin Land, because the mantras have meanings that are the various qualities and attributes of the energies of Sat Chit Ananda, and you know what the meanings are. The four techniques will slow down all the usual thoughts of the material mind and will take you to a light state of meditation which is known as Alpha, which is the beginning of letting a little bit of Sun shine through the clouds, but there’s still a lot of clouds so there’s still a lot of thoughts in the mind pertaining to your life in Mannequin Land, but the little bit of Sun shine feels real good, as you will gain a bit of the experience of Sat Chit Ananda. You will feel a slight sense of separation from your mannequin, have a sense of timelessness, a feeling that you are connected to something other than your usual self, and you will feel a greater amount of positive emotions as the Sunshine of Ananda shines upon you. These are light meditational states and can be gained regardless of what you are chanting or singing, for after all, every single religion and spiritual practice in the entire world uses these same four techniques, and people must be getting something out of it or no one would keep doing it, but this is just a little bit of Sunshine and there’s still a whole lot of clouds. In order to clear away the rest of the clouds, it is necessary to get to a much deeper state of meditation known as Theta, and this is where the use of mantras comes in. If you use a mantra without knowing what the mantra means, or think that you’re just supposed to listen to the sound of the mantra cause the mantra’s going to do all the work and therefore not think anything at all, it will work, but it will only work to take you to light states of Alpha meditation as just described, which is basically Kindergarten compared to the depth of meditation you need to get to in order to get the full experiences of Sat Chit Ananda. Every mantra, every name, is the representation of a particular aspect of the energies of Sat Chit Ananda, and you have to know what the mantra or name means, and which aspects and qualities of spiritual energies it represents if you are going to be able to use the mantra to get you to a deep enough level of meditation to awaken within you the qualities represented by the mantra. You can’t just listen to the mantra or just focus on the mantra with the purpose of quieting the usual thoughts of the conscious mind, or that’s all you’ll get from using the mantra, which is the light states of meditation described. You must know what the mantra means, what are the unique qualities and attributes of Sat Chit Ananda represented my each mantra, and you then have to think of those qualities and attributes as you do the mantra in order for the mantra to take you to a deep enough state of meditation to actually experience the Sat Chit Ananda qualities of the mantra. The fairy tale is that the mantra itself, even if you don’t know what it means, will take you to the full experience of Sat Chit Ananda just because it’s a “magical vibration”. Thinking about the meaning of the mantra while you are doing the mantra is known as Dhayana, or contemplation, and will take you to a deep enough state of meditation to gain the experiences of the attributes of Sat Chit Ananda represented by the mantra, but you have to know what “thinking about the meaning of the mantra means” in order for the process to work. For example, there are four mantras or names of different aspects of spiritual energy that go by the words Vasudeva, Shankarsan, Pradyumna and Anniruddha. You could say these words as many times as you like and you would never gain the full experience of what they mean because just repeating the words would do no more than to help focus your conscious mind and thereby take you to a light state of meditation, which is exactly what the repetition of any word over and over again would do. In order to get any effect from the mantra, you must know not only what the word means, but what the experience would be for each mantra. So, Vasudeva is the infinite all-pervading consciousness. Shankarsan is the creative force of spiritual energy. Pradyumna is Infinite Intelligence, and Anniruddha is infinite joyful emotions. The purpose of doing the mantra is to awaken within you all these aspects of Sat Chit Ananda, or put another way, to bring forth more strongly from within your Self the qualities represented by these beings Why is this? Because any experience you may have of these beings is only bringing forth from within your infinite Self the aspects of your Self which are the experience, in the same way that tasting a peach is only bringing forth from within you that one aspect of your infinite flavorful Self which is the taste of the peach! You experience nothing but your Self! There are an infinite number of eternal infinite beings, and you’re one of them. That’s what it means that there’s no jivas, there’s only an infinite number of Vishnus, and you’re one of them! But from your personal experiential state, since you’re an infinite being, there can’t be anything outside of your Self, greater than your Self or other than your Self, so from your personal perspective, You are the one and only being who exists, and you never experience anything except your Self! You can only gain the experience of any other eternal infinite beings by first gaining the experience of your own eternal infinite Self. So if you think that these are names of beings who are “greater” than you, and that the purpose of doing the mantra is to connect with those beings, just what exactly is it that you’re expecting to get by making the connection, other than some fairy tale story that now they’re going to burn up all your bad karmas so you can go to heaven. Well, whatever it is you’re expecting to get, will only be bringing forth from within your infinite Self the aspects of your Self which are the experience, same as everything else you experience. So what you’re really going for is to experience some aspect of your infinite Self that you’re just not usually used to experiencing, and then hopefully to be able to maintain the experience. So no matter what you do and what you think you’re experiencing, you’re only experiencing your Self, you’re an infinite being, remember?

So, how do you use the mantras to gain all these various experiences. Easy, you just have to know what you’re doing, because to do it you have to be able to get to a deep enough state of meditation known as Theta, wherein you can see vivid imagery with your eyes closed, like you can in dreams, which isn’t all that easy to do unless you know how the process works to do it. You also have to know what “thinking about the meaning of the mantra” means once you’re in the Theta state, which is also easy once you know how to do it. So what are you trying to do if you were to chant our four names of Vasudeva, Shankarsan, Pradyumna and Anniruddha? Well, you’re trying to bring forth from within your Self the qualities and characteristics of the aspects of Sat Chit Ananda which are represented by these names and those beings. So what are those characteristics and qualities, and more importantly, how would you expect to be feeling if you experienced them? What do you expect you’d be experiencing if you experienced Vasudeva, infinite consciousness, or Shankarsan, infinite power, or what do you think the connection to Infinite Intelligence would be like, which is Pradyumna, or the experience of all joyful emotions which is Anniruddha? You first need to put into words, as best you can and in as many words as you possibly can, how you think and expect you would be feeling if you had these experiences, because it is those feelings that you are going for in your meditations. The purpose of all this is to intensify your states of positive emotions, since emotions are the energy of the spirit, and it is the intensity of the emotions that you bring forth that connects you to the dimension of Sat Chit Ananda. The words you come up with that describe those feelings are what you use to think about while you are doing the mantra at the same time. This added dimension of focusing on the attributes and qualities of the mantra is what is necessary to focus the mind to get to a deep enough state of meditation to be able to gain the experiences. You keep repeating the mantra and keep repeating in your mind the words of the emotions of what you want, and ask your Theta Mind to provide you with imaginary images that represent the emotions and state of being you want which are represented by the words. The additional dimension of seeing inner visions will take you into a deep enough state of meditation to actually be able to gain the experiences of the emotions you are going for. The images can be of anything at all that your Theta Mind feels will bring you the state of emotions and the experiences you want, so just go with whatever images just come up, you can always get more. Then all you have to do is to focus on the images, and describe to yourself how the images are making you feel, and the degrees of positive emotional intensity will increase to the point till all the clouds in the sky just float away, and you can experience the beautiful Sunshine, and live happily ever after!

Om Tat Sat

Kenny Rich

8/24/04
8 pm
LA

Good to hear your thoughts on this matter. Interesting perspective. Very iconoclastic, truth revealing. Your concluding statements correspond to what we do in ekadas bhava, visualizing our spiritual identities in relationship to Radha and Krishna.

Hi Kanupriya, your saga is very interesting, especially your dealings with Prabhupada. I visited an astrologer/devotee in L.A a few times in the '80's with friends who knew him. I don't remember his name and I was wondering if that was you ? He had a rock band that he played in, we went to see his band play at a club. Was that you ?

Kanupriya,

Thanks for coming on and taking the time to post. You are most certainly as prolific a writer as I remember you being, with no doubt an interesting prespective!

Hope to see your participation often.

bangli

The guy I met played guitar and sang, he was the frontman.

Kanupriyaji,
nice hearing about the early days, but you lost me after you started interpreting things in the third section. I couldn't finish the rest but that is just me. Hope you don't take any offense by this.
your fallen servant,
whoever

Wow! Thank you, Kanupriya, for this detailed post. It offers an interesting perspective and lots of food for thought. I would like to ask you a few questions.

1. You said that you associated a lot with Prabhupada informally and had the opportunity to observe him and speak with him. What was your impression of him? What was he like as a person?

I am not interested in ISKCON history because, as you say, ISKCON was and remains a big mess, and the mission of the loyal disciples seems, as you again put it very succinctly, to straighten this mess for the rest of their lives. But I am intrigued by the personality of Prabhupada and your perspective will be helpful, since you were close to him but didn't deify him.

2. You said that you had the opportunity to ask him various questions and that he always answered you truthfully. This is interesting, and if anything, presents Prabhupada as a more complex figure than the one-dimensional superhuman pure devotee image one gets in ISKCON. Yet you say that to everyone else he gave fairy tales. What would be his purpose in doing that? My impression is that he very much believed in those fairy tales himself. Do you think he was conscious of the real truths he gave you and were they of the same significance to him as they were to you?

Did you keep any notes from those private conversations with Prabhupada?

3. Was your present philosophical understanding formed mainly under the influence of Prabhupada and his teachings? I guess the answer would be no, but I am curious what you got out of your ISKCON experience and to what extent it was helpful for your spiritual development.

My impression from what you wrote is that you had already had some idea of spirituality before you came in contact with ISKCON, that Prabhupada confirmed directly and indirectly your conceptions and was broad-minded enough for letting you following your own path without demonizing you.

Thank you again for sharing your experience here.

Kanupriya,
I have never heard the disciple shares the guru's bad karma, or the bad karma of the institution. Are you sure about that? Is that what they used to preach? Because as far as I know you are still Prabhupada's disciple having served in his temples during his time whether you know it or not and there is nothing wrong with that, he will take you back home back to Godhead. Don't worry about taking on ISKCON's karma. That part is not true. But I can't claim to speak for Srila Prabhupada I'm not trying to don't take me wrong.

Hi again Kanupriya. If that L.A astrologer wasn't you, did you live in Berkeley in '81-'82 ? I went to a Jerry Garcia concert at a club in Berkeley in the winter of '81-'82 with another devotee. First we stopped off at a house of an ex devotee who was a friend of his, and an astrologer, who was also going to the concert. He was living with or had a friend with him who was a Rajneesh Sanyassin, with the locket and get up. Since your philosophy resembles Rajneeshism, I was wondering if that was you ?

for dirty hari... I think the astrologer you are refering to is named Nalini Kanta.. thin guy, thin face, black hair, wrote a book on astrology.... cause it wasn't me who did your chart.. I never played guitar in a band

For Indranila, thanks for your appreciation of my posting and for your questions. I'll try and answer them as best I can.

Regarding what Bhaktivedanta was like as a person.. I tried as much as possible to show you what he was like in my posting.. he was basically very detached... did what he could do and let the rest just happen. He responded to each person differently

The only reason I presented what I did of the early history of ISKCON was so you could see the context of what I experienced... plus there's a bunch of old devotees on the site who were around at the time and I thought they'd find it interesting

My current philosophical understanding was gained totally from what I read and learned after I joined the movement... none of it from before... no one had ever heard of Rajneesh in 69

In my opinion from the various truths he told me is that he knew all the actual truths behind the fairy tales... but he was a "duty fulfiller" guy and presented the standard fairy tales for the masses as that's the tradition

Regarding the other things he told me.. the various things he told me led me to gain my understanding of how to separate the truths from the fairy tales

Yes, Nalini Kanta rings a bell, he was thin with dark hair. Was that you in Berkeley ?

Hi gopidust, thanks for your response. I have read many of your postings and you certainly seem quite enlightened for a teenager, so I consider it a great honor to correspond with you, for in my particular lineage, only females can be guru's and take you to heaven, males are all useless.

["I have never heard the disciple shares the guru's bad karma, or the bad karma of the institution. Are you sure about that? Is that what they used to preach? Because as far as I know you are still Prabhupada's disciple having served in his temples during his time whether you know it or not and there is nothing wrong with that, he will take you back home back to Godhead. Don't worry about taking on ISKCON's karma. That part is not true. But I can't claim to speak for Srila Prabhupada I'm not trying to don't take me wrong."]

Regarding discipleship.
By my understanding, I am not a disciple as I am not following the discipline. Anyone else is certainly welcome to have any conception they want of what they think initiation means.

Regarding karma.
Since I'm an astrologer, what I deal with in everyone's life is their karma, so you gotta know what karma is. The most explanitory translation of the word "karma" I've been able to figure out is the english word "opportunity". Your karmas bring you your opportunities in your life. Some karmas would be called "good" karmas, which are opportunities for things you want; some would be called "bad" karmas, which are opportunities for things you don't want which will cause suffering in you life; and some are opportunities for mixed karmas, which are opportunities that will bring partially what you want and partially what you don't want, and it's the mixed karmas that are the troublesome ones. Theoretically, we all get to pick and choose which good, bad and mixed karmas we want to cash in on. Re ISKCON, the institution itself and everything they do is the karma, knowing them is the karma, dealing with them is the karma, so for any of us who have had any dealings with them, they are part of our karma. I simply choose which of these karmas I wish to deal with and which I do not, and so have you. For instance, us having this discussion here is our karma, our opportunities for connections to other people based on what has happened in the past, for everyone's past is now part of their karma. So just look to see at all the things that had to come to pass over the last 30 years when this conversation happened to bring us to the current situation of: having computers and the internet, and this site, and someone being interested in this conversation and starting this topic, and another member actually having the transcript and posting it on the site so everyone could read it and know what it's about, and someone on the site knowing me, who just happened to call me up several years ago off an ad I ran, and I just happened to send him my book, and he just happened to still have it, and my phone number is still the same, and he just happened to be interested enough to call me up, and here I am. So, for me this is a "karma", an opportunity that I had to decide if I wanted to cash in on or not. Now, I've been out of all this stuff for over 30 years now and have only superficially kept track of it by looking at a few websites and what I hear about it from my daughters, but you gotta know that the last thing I wanted to do was to do anything that would bring the negative aspects of these particular karmas back into my life, for instance if the official Hare Krishna site had asked me to write my side of the story regarding this conversation so they could post it on their site, I uh.. probably don't think I would have done it. So I looked at this site and read the purpose as being a forum for those who are, as far as I could figure out, following various other lineages of basically the same thing, of which I know nothing about people now following other lineages, or who's propounding those lineages or what they say, but then I read a lot of postings and I really liked, not necessarily what everyone was writing, but what I could feel of the energy of the people who wrote them, which felt good to me, and as I let how I feel about things guide me on which karmas I want to cash in on, I decided to participate on the site, as I thought this might be interesting to have some friends who are actually interested in some of the same things I'm interested in. So all of us even being here is either directly or indirectly part of our karma from the past of our experience of Bhaktivedanta and what he did, like it or lump it, we now just get to pick and choose which of those karmic opporturtunities we want and which we don't want.

Regarding "back to Godhead". there's no such thing as "back home back to Godhead" if by that you are exclusively meaning going to the eternal realms after this life. Eternity is only experienced in the present moment. If you think you can't go "back to Godhead" until the mannequin dies, then those thoughs will postpone whatever you may think "back to Godhead" means while you are still here in Mannequin Land, no matter how hard you try to get the experiences. The entire purpose of doing all of these practices is not so you can go somewhere after this life, it's so you can go somewhere now! So you can experience you are already "back to Godhead" and that the illusion is that you're not. Also, no one can "take" you there. They can only provide you with information on how you can get there yourself.

I hope these answers are of some usefulness to you and I wish you well.

Kenny Rich

for dirty hari... no that was not me in Berleley

Though the word "disciple" may etymologically have roots in "accepting the discipline," I think it means far more than that. Accepting discipline may still be part of the meaning, but for us, the relation between sishya and guru is one of grace and gratitude, of connectedness and identity, which some may in their rational world view write off as fairy tales.

There is no relationship that does not entail an exchange of karma. My wife has to suffer or enjoy the results of my karma, past and present. If I become infirm, will she not suffer? If my child goes into the local high school and shoots half a dozen school mates, will I be unaffected? These are obvious examples, but such connections can be much more subtle. Only a real atomist would not recognize this. We live in an interconnected world and the types of connections we make contribute to our pleasure and our pain.



Nevertheless, I will not deny that you have repudiated Vaishnavism as a spiritual path.


Neither do I find persuasive the version of Prabhupada being a closet rationalist who was only promulgating fairy tales for the irrational, childlike Westerners. Nor do I accept that this kind of rationalistic world view is true to the spirit of Gaudiya Vaishnavism.

Religion's roots are and always will be irrational because they deal with the unanswerable questions, and the answers they give are always enveloped in mystery and wonder.

Prabhupada had plenty of opportunity to instill a spirit of rationalism into his interpretation of the Bhagavatam, etc., but he chose to emphasize literalism. This is nowhere more apparent than in his promotion of Fifth Canto cosmology and the so-called Vedic Planetarium. And why would a rationalist have thought fairy tales to more effective in the rationalist West? Why would he have even bothered, especially if it was to preach a superficial moralistic lesson? And why would he have left no trapdoor, no escape hatch for intellectual devotees, so that even today his disciples cannot read Shukavak’s writings without blustering uncomprehendingly?

This does not mean that we cannot approach the Bhagavatam rationally and still be sensitive to its underlying spirit, and thus find that it is filled with the magic of bhakti-rasa. A fairy tale is not the same thing as myth, and I find the inability to distinguish the two a sign of spiritual insensitivity.

And just a quick moderating note: Could those who are trying to establish old connections or identities, etc., please use the Personal Message system? These exchanges are only of the most peripheral interest to the broader readership.

Thank you, Jagat.

Hey Subal. Nice to hear from you, old friend. You're looking pretty good after all these years. The beard suits you well. Glad you liked my posting. It was a trip remembering all that stuff in such detail.

Regarding the method of visualization you described. The difference in the technique I wrote about and the technique you described of "visualizing our spiritual identities in relationship to Radha and Krishna," is basically the way in which you do the visualization and what you are visualizing, which is, just exactly "how" do you visualize your spiritual identity, and exactly "how" do you visualize Radha and Krishna?

For instance, you could imagine you are some particular being looking a particular way and acting a particular way and doing particular things in what you imagine to be the eternal worlds, with the forms of Radha and Krishna and the eternal world as they are described in books and portrayed in pictures, all of which would be called "literal imagery", which means whatever visualization you are doing looks the way you would consciously "expect" it to look, since you're using your conscious imagination to do the imagining, cause the conscious imagination is the one that deals with literal imagery that looks the way it's supposed to.

But what's the purpose in doing this in the first place? The purpose is to be able to develop the state of emotions you would expect to have if you were actually there, isn't it? Bhava and Prema and so on. The problem or limitation with using "literal imagery", which is images that you already know about, is that the visualization is being done by the Beta Mind, the conscious mind, since it is the Beta Mind that deals with literal imagery, and the Beta Mind can only bring forth a small degree of the emotions which the imagery, since emotions do not reside within the conscious Beta Mind, they reside within the unconscious Theta Mind, the mind of dreams, where everything can be as real as real and you can feel the full emotional intensity of the visions. But the Theta Mind does not deal in literal imagery. It only deals in metaphorical imagery, like in dreams. The literal imagination of the Beta Mind has no more ability to make you feel the bliss of your imaginary world than it does to make you feel relaxed if you imagine you’re lying on a beach. You’ll get a small degrees of the actual emotions that would be involved, but not much, cause this is not the job of the Beta Mind.

So, what are you really trying to do? You're just trying to get more of what you already got! Right? You have a certain amount of positive emotions like love and enthusiasm and so on, and you just want more of it in greater degrees and in higher intensity. Great! You know what you want! Now it's just a matter of figuring out just exactly how do you go about communicating to whoever the hell it is who's controlling the degrees of your emotional intensity, (cause it sure ain't you or else you could just make the decision that you wanted it and you'd be there) so you can tell he/she or it to turn up the juice, since we're assuming that it is possible to turn up the juice, as well as clear out whatever crimps are in the line that are blocking the flow of the juice in the first place, cause we're also assuming that You the eternal consciousness already feel all the ways you want to feel, and the flow of that energy to the conscious you is just being crimped in some way, so you want to communicate that you want to both increase your current states of positive emotions as well as remove whatever has been crimping the free flow of the energy.

So what do ya do? Well, the he/she or it that controls your emotions is the Theta Mind, so it is the Theta Mind to whom you the Beta Mind are trying to communicate what it is that you want. What do you want? You want to increase your degrees of positive emotions, and you also want to clear away all the thoughts of the mind that are blocking the flow of the energies, which are thoughts and memories of the past that have negative emotions attached to them, otherwise known as samskara's, what to speak of all the thoughts of mannequin misidentification.

So how do you the Beta Mind communicate to your Theta Mind that this is what you want? You have to communicate with it in the language it understands which is that of emotions, and receive communication from it in the language it speaks ,which is metaphorical imagery, not literal imagery.

The method of making the connection and communication is called meditation, which is when all the usual thoughts of the mind relating to your life’s activities cease, and you are then able to totally focus inwardly on whatever it is you’re trying to focus on.

Since the Theta Mind is the dream mind of archetypal imagery, it already has its own imagery that represents the emotions you want, which are not the literal images of what the conscious mind has, so you just need to get to your own unconscious mind and ask it what its images are for the emotions you want, and it will give them to you.

In my next posting to you I’ll tell you more about how this works and how to do it, assuming you're interested of course.

Your friend,

Kenny Rich

I knew this would be an interesting thread.

Jagat thanks for your response very much:-

Kanupriya welcome to the world of Raganuga, hope to see some cool astrology stuff from ya:-

Hi Kenny,

Thank you for your extensive post. You are way more analytical than I. I have very little knowledge of Beta & Theta mind theory, but I can relate to conscious and unconscious mind and archetypal stuff.

I have pretty much quieted the mind. I am very much in the present moment. I hear the sound of Om and Hare Krishna in my mind. I hear the music playing in the background at the office/shop where I am. I imagine the pastimes of Radha and Krishna and my involvement with them both as I am here and in the next life. What basically propells me on the spiritual path is an extreme longing to be in the eternal Vrindaban. My meditations are based on both literary imagination and my own "fantasies" which I mix in.

When I lived in Vrindaban, India, Gouranga Babaji told me to never leave Vrindaban because everyone there basically shared the same vision of the spiritual world and that would reinforce my meditations. Lalita Prasad Thakur said I should go back to the West because I was more needed here than in India. Here I am.

I still believe that using the traditional model of Vrindaban is helpful since so many do share the common vision which strenthens it and makes it real. I don't limit myself in a rigid manner and am kind of open to seeing how it really is and I also believe everything is in process.

I have stripped away most of the Indian cultural externals and adapted my teachings to the post-modern, U.S. situation we are in. I am also an iconoclast. However, my main impetus is that emotional longing which is the main ingredient needed for raganuga bhakti. While I teach a number of different approaches to life depending on where a person is at, my heart is in raganuga bhakti.

I would be interested in anything you may have to say that would further my progress.

Your friend,
Subal
Steve Bohlert

I also meant to include a comment about the role of the guru. I also renounced ACBS as my guru because I could no longer follow him. He is my diksha guru however and got me started on the path. I now look to Lalita Prasad Thakur as my guru. He is also a manjari in Vrindaban and part of a line of manjaris going back to Jahnava Devi. He taught me what I need to know to get there. I also believe it doesn't hurt to have someone who's connected in the spiritual world on my side, and when I get there, I can say I was invited by him/her. It helps to know the right people to get entry into that intimate circle just like we got to know each other through common friends.

I have many Sannyasin friends from Maui, So I have heard many tapes of Osho speaking(Rajneesh), I have also read a few of his books. Everything that you teach seems to be exactly what Rajneesh taught. Women as tantric gurus, no god other then ourselves, the Brahmins misuse and misunderstand vedanta, and all of the rest of the stuff you wrote. Although Rajneesh borrowed alot of his philosophy from other traditions, he created an eclectic doctrine unique to Himself.

I have no problem with Sannyasins, I participate on Sarlo's forum, if you know who he is. In fact I find many things Rajneesh said to be quite profound. Although I disagree with some aspects of his teachings i.e there is no God other then ourselves, I like much of what else he has written.

I also like many of Osho's teachings, but I always say, "If I'm God, we're really in trouble."

Thank you Subal for responding. I was holding back because I am a little time challenged and shy about getting involved in a deep discussion.

Ken, I find that whatever merit you have given the Beta/Theta mind distinction, it does not do justice to the exercise of the will, nor to the collective archetypes. Once again, it is an overly individualized spiritualism that is more governed by unconscious and collective forces than one is willing to admit.

This, by the way (please excuse me), is a fairly typical American trait (as befits the world's only superpower), in which they confuse their own presuppositions with universals. Not that we don't all do that, but it tends to have that little extra bit of prominence in Americans.

I am not saying that deconstruction of collective myths is not important, nor that accessing one's own personal archetypes is not important, but individuality only grows meaningfully in the company of others. Society is about creating or adopting collective myths. Subal has hit the nail on the head here: We are not only becoming individuals, but are participating in a shared sacred reality.

In general, there is a difference between all these mystical paths and the path of devotion, in which the relationship with God and his devotees is primary. While communing with oneself is a necessary part of this, it is just a part of the story.

My dear Jagat,

As I wrote in my reply to gopidust, anyone is more than welcome to have any conception they want of what they think initiation means or what they think their relationship is to any other other person, guru's included. I simply prefer to not have any of these mental ties to any of these people, so I don't set up any. As far as I'm concerned, to consider myself to be "initiated" by anyone would connect me with them is some way, which I don't want.

The presentation of the philosophy as "fairy tales" is not only the way the philosophy has been presented to the Western world, it is the way the philosophy has been presented to the masses in India for the thousands of years since it was written. In the history of India, only the Brahmins were literate and only the Brahmins were allowed to read the Vedas. The supplements to the Vedas such as the Maha Bharata, etc. were for the massses, but they didn't get to read them themselves since they were in Sanskrit and only the Brahmins could read Sanskrit, so the Brahmins used to read these various books and translate them into whatever languages the people knew.

Regarding your question about karma, please read my reply to gopidust, for yes, everything we experience is our karma, and some karmas do seem unavoidable as you said that if you get sick it will have some effect on your wife, but with other karmas we get to choose which karmas we want and which we don't want, as best we can.

Religions roots are not non rational. They are all based on our observation of the world that everything we experience can be divided into two and only two categories of "things". those which are alive and those which are not alive. All religion is is trying to figure out what the life force within living things is.

Personally I found no difficult in finding wht I consider to be the "truths" in Bhaktivedanta's various translations of the books and his comments. It's just a matter of being able to figure out which information is correct and which is not, which verses in the shastras are true and which are false, whereas if you start out with the premise that these are somehow infallable holy books and therefore every single thing they say is correct, you won't even try and figure out which one's are correct and which one's are not, so then you get to try and resolve what appear to be contradictions. And it's actually rather easy to distinguish which is which based on how anything you are focusing on is making you feel, for how you feel aboout anything is your guidance from your infinite intelligence as to whether or not that information is true for you or not, you just have to be only concerned in finding what is true for you, although it may not be the truth for other people. The difficulty only arises if you first think that everything in the books is completely and absolutely true as it is, and that you therefore have no right pick and choose which information you think is correct and which is incorrect. If you look at the books as if they're not infallible and perfectly correct in every single verse, then it's easy to see which verses are parts of the doctrines of the Hindu Caste System meant to keep everyone in line with the system, and which verses are actually spiritual "truths".

Bhaktivedanta presented what he called the "standard", which is apparently a literal translation and interpretation of everything, and left you to figure out the rest.

I hope this has been of some usefulness to you and has answered your questions and comments. of which which I am appreciative.

Kenny Rich

Dear Kanupriya,

I very much appreciated your posts and your sharing of your belief system here. The only thing that I was a bit turned off by was your comment regarding intelligence. You seem to be a fairly intelligent fellow, but to dismiss others who have a different experience than yourself as unintelligent seems quite myopic and unrealistic. Obviously there are many people who are very intelligent that don't share your experiences or your ideas on life and it's meaning.

For the most part, the members of this board share a common view of reality. Basically from the point of view of the Srimad Bhagavatam - the spiritual realm is experienced differently by different seers. Some will experience it as undifferentiated Brahman, others will experience it as localized and universal Paramatma and still others will experience it as Bhagavan. These are all valid experiences of the same one truth. Our experience (and will be as Jagat put it) is that we are one and different simultaneously. Although in general we emphasize the difference in order to highlight the relationship, without the oneness the difference has no meaning.

For the bhakta spiritual practice isn't just about 'self', rather it is about relationship and experiencing self in relation to Bhagavan.

You may like to think that only less intelligent people will conceive of spirituality this way and that those who do are believers in fairy tales, but what you fail to acknowledge is that many people who live and practice in this fashion are highly intelligent and that they also have some experience that fuels their practice. Is it really so hard to accept that others have different experiences than you do and that those experiences are not just mental constructs or fairy tales but tangible conscious experiences - albeit different from you own?

Audarya-lila dasa

Where can I get a female guru? Is there a website?
If we are conscious then something exists. If we exist then maybe God exists. If God exists then he can have pure lovers of Himself. If the lovers of God are pure then they can give pure instructions. They can manifest in different forms if the Supreme desires. God can speak spiritual instructions that are without fault because he is free from faults, that is the nature of God.
1.Krishna is God.
2.Bhagavad-Gita is his words.
3.Tulsi devi is a pure devotee.
4.Prabhupada is a guru, and we need to approach Krishna through a guru because Krishna says so.
Kanupriya do you disagree with all of these four statements? I am not challenging just wondering because it will tell me where you are at now in regards to Krishna consciousness as I know it.
If you don't mind me asking.
If you do just tell me so, no problem, or just ignore me I'm used to it.

My dear friends,

To respond to a bunch of questions from different people all at once.

In accordance with my perceptions of things, in a way, all of these philosophical considerations of who is presenting which philosophy is basically irrelevant, as is what the philosophy is. I have no guru's or teachers and follow no particular philosophy except my own understandings. If any of my understandings as I present them are in any way similar to anyone else's presentations, it's coincidence only. I did not figure out any of the things I figured out after I left the Hare Krishna's by reading a bunch of other guru guys books and finding some kind of more enlightening information that I got from Bhaktivedanta. I looked at everyone's books and saw what they were doing as guru guys, and in my opioion their books and explanations of the nature and experience of infinite reality weren't nearly as interesting or enlightening as Bhaktivedanta's. They all told you a lot of words that sound very nice about the dimension and experiences of Sat Chit Ananda, for afrer all everyone's talking about the same thing, but withheld the necessary information you need to know to gain any of the actual experiences they talk about, and that's the problem.

I've been an astrologer for over 30 years now, using as you'd expect my own concocted version of what is called Vedic astrology. Over the years, Ive done thousands of chart readings, and as it's Vedic astrology, many thousands of the people who came to me were people who were following or who had followed just about every spiritual path there is. Many had been following or had followed some path or many paths for many many years. And I asked everyone the same question, "Well, are you there yet?" And they'd say, "Where?". So, for instance if the person had been following Yogananda for 20 years, Id say, "Well, have you become Self Realized, of course! Have you merged back into the ocean of infinite bliss? Are you in the permanent experience of your Self as the eternal infinite consciousness totally different from and separate from your mannequin? Do you live in eternity? Are you completely free of all thoughts of unhappiness from the past and worry of the future? Do you live in constant states of at least peace and joy what to speak of bliss?" And everyone laughed and said "no, sometimes I get glimpses of it in my meditations but that's about it." If they were a yogi bhajaner's, (at one point I did charts for around 150 yogi bhanan followers, all of whom had been there for around 10 years), in responce to their "Where", I'd say something similiar to the Yogananda guy but with a bit of difference, something like, "Well, have you opened all your charkas and raised you kundalini, of course! Have you thereby united your Self with all the infinite powers of the Universe? Have you attained Self Realization? The experience of your Self as the eternal infiinte consciousness totally different from and separate from your body... and so on, and they'd all laugh and say "no, a little bit but not much, at least not much to what I imagine it would be like to really experiene all those things". And you could ask all of those same questions to a Hare Krishna who'd been doing it for years, just starting off with a slightly different beginning of something like, "Well, are you living in the eternal realms playing with Radha and Krishna, of course!" ... and the rest was pretty much the same, and the answer would be pretty much the same.

So my question was, doesn't anyone ever get to the end of any of these paths! I mean, if I were a spiritual seeker and I went to all of these guru guys groups and talked to everyone there cause I was looking to see which one I wanted to follow, and one of the questions I asked everyone was, "Uh.. I hope you don't mind my asking, but if I'm going to follow your process, can you give me any idea of just how long it's going to take me to get all the experiences you talk about and get to the end of the process? How long did it take each of you?" And if the answer that everyone gave me was they'd all being doing it for years but they ain't fully got it yet, the only one's got it is fearless guru, I'd probably say the hell with it and go out drinking and dancing. So, I thought, "What's the problem here?" And this is how I concluded that philosophies and technques are all useless unless you know what you're really doing and how the techniques actually work to attain the experiential states of consciousness you want and that are supposedly available to you.

Whether I'm God, you're God, we're all God or Krishna's God and you're not is actually irrelevant. All fantasy conceptions of the mind of various possible philosophical outlooks on the nature of the energies of Sat Chit Ananda. The only thing that matters is whatever experience you are having of the "spiritual dimension" of reality in each moment to moment of your life. The rest of it's just a bunch of words.

So for instance, in response to one of the things that Subal wrote regarding some current sense of longing for some experience you think you want as the necessary motivation to get it, it is the sense of longing that is pushing away what you want, for you are erroneously thinking that at the moment you do not have what you want, so you are therefore in the feeling of the lack of what you want and therefore you will only attract more of the lack of what you want, because that's how thoughts and emotions create whatever it is we all get. Whatever you are focusing on is what you will get more of, cause that's how it works, like it or lump it.

So you're somehow confusing whoever or whatever it is you you think is going to give you these experiences you want, (cause we're assuming first of all that these experiences are available to you and that whoever or whatever it is you think is going to give you these experience wants to give them to you) by sometimes focusing on what you want and how you want to feel, and sometimes on the lack of what you want and how you don't want to feel, for after all, you don't want to or expect to be in this state of longing forever do you? You do eventually expect to get "there" don't you? So you are starting out with the premise that you are currently in the lack of what you want, so you have made the lack of what you want your current vibration, since you think that's where you're at, and you cannt attract what you want when your vibration in the lack of what you want. The solution to all of this is to first appreciate what you've got, ao you're starting out in the feeling of having, and then just want more of it!

One of my most often said sayings is "All the things people think they have to do to become "enlightened" are the very things that are preventing them from becoming enlightened!

YOU, the eternal Self, or whavever else you may like to call it, are already everything you want to be, you just have to be it. The analogy used is that of a cork. A cork will automaticall float on a body of water. If you are holding the cork underwater, you do not have to do anything to get the cork to float except to stop holding the cork under water. The cork will automatically float. So what's holding the cork under water? The mind, of course! What holds the cork under water is all the thoughts of the mind that are in the feeling place of the lack of what you want (otherwise known as thoughts that have negative emotion attached to them i.e. samskara's), what to speak of all the thoughts of mannequin misidentification pertaining to the mannequin and it's activities here in Mannequin Land, for all those who are deluded eneough to think they are the mannequin, for those who are enlightened, the thoughts of the mannequin mind are just the thoughts of the mannequin mind.

So, how do you get the cork to float? How do you clear away the clouds? How do you make the connection and get to the end of the process? This was my one and only interest in studying anything or following any techniques. I'm not particularly interested in various philosophical takes on reality. I'm only interested in my own personal experience of whatever it is that's experiencable, and I'm open to anything that actually gets me there. Everything else is irrelevant, and that's why I was only interested in understanding the "truths" behind everything, hopefully assuming that there actually were "truths" behind everything to be found, because whatever it was that was being presented as truths by everyone did not seem to be working very well for everyone or even anyone to ever be able to get to the end of the path.

This is all I have time for at the moment, but I'll be back later.

I am greatly enjoying and appreciating this opportunity to take thought to places it has never been before, for that's what the Universe is all about and that's what we're all doing here.

Om Tat Sat

Kenny Rich

Oh... and my remark on the female guru thing was only a joke!

We could say that there are two kinds of transcendentalists--individualists and collectivists. Individuals believe in discovering their own way and mining their own unconsciousness for personal meaning. Occasionally, great religions are created when such individuals find a symbol system that has meaning far beyond their own experience. They capture the religious Zeitgeist, you could say.

Others find that collective symbols provide a source of meaning that has the advantage of being culturally rich and easily communicable--a kind of language, as it were.

Now, naturally, no one lives in a vacuum, and the two approaches tend to enrich each other. What self-respecting Jungian or Campbellian does not arm himself with a collection of myths from various cultures to guide him in understanding the symbols that arise from his own subconscious? But these same discoveries can be used to mine the inexhaustible meaning that exists in a symbol of the Divinity like Radha Krishna, or Chaitanya Mahaprabhu.

A living practitioner interacts with these symbols in a vibrant way. They feed his spiritual psyche in ever new and refreshing ways. Because they are special to him, and because they are full of power, they constantly generate feelings of love, gratitude and grace.

There are some disadvantages to the social nature of a shared symbol system, but all societies have to face problems of compromise, responsibility, subservience and power. Not even the most individualistic person of all can entirely escape them. To a certain extent, the two approaches are there in any system, so all religions have their "bhajananandis" and their "gosthyanandis."

Of course, a living tradition has to have interpreters and mediators in order to keep its meanings alive and relevant. It is my feeling that those who breathe life into the old systems are the gifted individualists, like Rupa Goswami. But even they would never deny the importance of the grace that comes through guru.

Basically, there are two levels of faith: laukiki and shastriya. Laukiki is inherited; shastriya is personally meaningful. So when we say "accept on faith" we generally mean laukiki sraddha. When we talk about shastriya sraddha, we mean faith that is based on an interaction with the symbol system that has accessed the personal meaning that is in it.

[The term shastriya sraddha, by the way, is a bit misleading, as it does not necessarily mean that one has memorized a lot of verses by rote, or one simply "believes in scripture." It means accessing the meaningful aliveness of the belief system.]

My eternal comrades, whether we all like it or not! But personally I'm having a pretty good time here!

I will again try and answer many questions and comments all at once, without going back and finding and listing the exact quote of the person it came from. There's too many comments and that's too distracting. I'll just trust that you've read the previous postings.

Regarding all of the postings regarding the value of the social aspects and collective consciousness of the masses and groups of people and the various mythologies, etc. as well as gopidust's list of what she asked if I believe or not, that is all known as the "standard". Now, there's nothing wrong with the standard if you're in harmony with the standard, and if you think and feel that the standard is your path to enlightenment, by all means go for it, all I can do is to wish anyone well and hope they get wherever it is they think they want to go. Now, in the conversation with Bhaktivedanta, which is where we all started and why we're having this particular discussion on the meaning of this conversation, he said that if you are above the standard or below the standard you do not have to follow the standard, and you can still become Krishna conscious. Personally I do not know if I am above the standard or below the standard or even in the same dimension as the standard. Nor do I care cause it has absolutely no meaning to me. All I know for me is that trying to believe and follow the "standard", without knowing the meanings behind them and how the processes actually work, did not and would not work for me to attain the experiential states of consciousness I desired. And to find the meanings behind the standard required that I learned how to separate what I have called the truths from the fairy tales, cause I never had any interest in the fairy tales, I was 100% self interested in my own spiritual realizations. Nor did I or do I have any interest in participating in things or processes that necessitate the involvement of other groups of people, or mental links to any groups of people or individual persons. So, many of the various things you have written of wherein you have the experiences of Sat Chit Ananda divided into nice little categories of atma's, and Brahman, and paramatma, and Bhagavan that you read about in books so you think you know what it means and what these different experiences would be, as well as what is the "standard" and what is not the "standard", are all meaningless as far as I'm concerned. You're either connected to the dimension of spirit... or you're not!


To make this all really really simple, and if you'd like, I'd like to ask you all a few questions. I'd like to start out with perhaps something we can all argee upon and take it from there. As you may have gathered by now, I do not take as correct information every single verse of the various books, but I do think and feel that some of them are the "truth". So, one verse from the Gita that I would accept as truth is the one where Krishna says, "For one who sees Me everywhere and everything in Me, I am never lost to him and he is never lost to Me." I would like a concensus of opioion that if a person had achieved the experience of "seeing" Krishna everywhere, that he would have attained what would be known as "enlightenment" or "yoga" or "back to Godhead" or "the end of the path", for after all, if you could "see" Krishna everywhere couldn't you talk to Krishna and have whatever relationship you want with Krishna? Or, do you think that the state of "seeing Krishna everywhere" that He spoke of in the book is not an ultimate state, that there's some other "better" aspect of Krishna that you're going for, and that this particular aspect of being able to experience Krishna everywhere in this physical world is only some initial state, but not as good or complete an experience until you get to go experience some better Krishna somewhere?

So, my questions to all of you, assuming of course you accept the validity of this particular verse that it is possible to see Krishna everywhere, are. 1. Do you think that experiencing Krishna everywhere would be the end of the path or just a stepping stone on the path to somewhere else? 2. Regardless if it's just an inferior experience or not, what do you think it means to experience Krishna everywhere? What are you experiencing? How are you experiencing it? What is the experience like? How are you perceiving things differently than someone who is not experiencing Krishna everywhere or from before you experienced Krishna everywhere? What does it feel like? and 3. If "experiencing Krishna everywhere" is not the "ultimate" state but an inferior experience of some inferior aspect of Krishna, just exactly what do you think the other experiences are like that you haven't included in what you would call "experiencing Krishna everywhere?"

I am looking forward to your responses.

Om Tat Sat
Kenny Rich

Guess what ? We just had this conversation two days ago. Here, my contribution is at the end.

Just one other topic for your consideration.

The basic "standard" premise of all these varoius philosophical systems is that those of us who are currently experiencing in this physical dimension are somehow "separated" from "something", call it Krishna or call it what you will. And that the "something" we are "separated" from is and would be our "true" state of being and experiential state, whatever that may be. So my questions to you are: 1. Do you think that this so-called "separation" is "real" or is an "illusion"? 2. If you think it is "real", then just exactly what do you think is "separating" you from whatever it is you think you're separated from? For obviously, you then just have to get rid of whatever it is that you think is separating you and you'll be there. 3. If you think it is only an "illusion" of separation, then just exactly what do you think the "illusion" is? For obviously, you then just have to get rid of the "illusion" and you'll be there too!

Your answers to these question will be greatly appreciated if you are so inclined to respond.

You wanna know what the worst thing is of having attained at least to some degree what I originally sought for in my quest for enlightenment? That I am the eternal servant of all my fellow infinite number of eternal infinite beings, whether I like it or not!

I think you are starting from a misconception of the Bhagavat philosophy. It teaches that we are never separate from our source, we only think we are.

Kapila in the Bhagavat



And Krishna in the Bhagavat

My dear dirty harry, you are welcome to "believe" whatever you want, and to state such a thing as a response, but from my personal perspective the word "belief" has no meaning. If you have to "believe" something it simply means that you have not experienced it, for if you had experienced it you would no longer have to "believe" it. A "belief" is nothing more than a particular thought in pictures and words that the person has attached some degree of emotion to and keeps thinking the same thought over and over again and now they think they have "faith" in their "belief". And this is the basic difference between our different approaches to all of this. I do not "believe" anything. I "perceive" whatever it is I perceive. Whatever else there is, I don't know!

So if any of you are experiencing some "being" or "beings" that you think is other than you, or different from you, or the all-pervading infinite consciousness which you're not, I'd like to know just exactly what is your experience of any of these "beings" and how do you know that they are who they are, because it means nothing to me if any of you say you "believe" any of this.

Once again, thank-you for your responses and your considerations of my questions. I am sincere in finding out the "truth" about the true nature of Sat Chit Ananda, and if you got some "truth" that you've actually experienced that I ain't got, not some "belief", I'm open for it.

dirty hari, in response to your immediately posting of various quotes, my question was what is your personal experience of any of this, not what a book has to say about any of this.

Plus, the verses you quoted create a permanent separation between the individual Self and what is described as the Supersoul or some Self that is greater than and other than you. Have you actually experienced any of this and if so just exactly what is your experience, cause the words in the book mean nothing to me.

Dirty Hari has assured us many times that these things are all realized knowledge!

Actually, as I recently said to Gopidust (I paraphrase more boldly that I went before)--Nobody here is not realized!

The link I gave two posts ago, go to the second to last post on that thread. That is what I experience

dirty hari,

I now have more time to respond to your quotes from the SB.

Great! Glad to hear we're not separated. I didn't think we were either.

The one and only philosophical disagreement I would have with any of these quotes is that the way they are phrased still divides infinite reality into two didfferent categories of beings, a being called "The Supersoul" who is "The Ultimate Controller" who is forever somehow or other "greater" than you are, and this is what I don't agree with.

If you agree with these quotes about eternally "greater" and "lesser" beings, I would request that you please explain exactly how there are categories of "greater" and "lesser" beings in the infinite realms, exactly what your personal experience is of these beings that makes you so sure that they are forever greater than you and how is it you know they are forever greater, other than some stupid saying that "if I were God we'd all be in a lot of trouble", and exactly what you think their different experiential states are, other than the way you tell who Vishnu is is that he has a white hair on his chest, because by my interpretation, the white hair is one of my 'truths" of it all, and is simply a joke for all the beings currently experiencing in this dualistic physical realm who just can't get it out of their heads that there are no categories of "greater" and "lesser" beings in the eternal infinite realms.

I would be greatly appreciative if you could enlighten me on your exact personal experiences of any of this other than well I just experienced it, same goes for everyone else, cause if you don't have any experience of this then it's just another possible explanation of reality that you have to "believe" and has no more actual meaning than if you said you "believe" the Moon is made of cream cheese.

From my post at this thread here

Just a simple response here. Chanting Hare Krishna is both the goal and the means to get to the goal. When we are chanting we are praying for service. And when we are serving we are chanting or conscious of Krishna. We all have experienced something blissful in Krishna consciousness so even if we haven't reached the goal of 100% Krishna Consciousness all of the time still we must have had a taste.

The Guru on the highest platform or any other devotee on his level can actually experience serving Radha, Krishna and the gopis all the time. Even though many devotees may achieve this level upon returning back to Godhead it is rare to find someone on this planet who is doing this.

Dear Kenny,

You misunderstood the nature of my longing. The longing is the goal. Longing in separation for the beloved is the goal of raganuga bhakti. It was often exhibited by Sri Chaitanya and the gopis, including Radha. Of course I long for the time we may be together, but that may not be until I am free of this body or it may be sooner. Meanwhile, I amuse myself by reading about the pastimes in Goloka and having occasional glimpses. But, the longing is it. Rumi wrote about this in his poem "Love Dogs":

Love Dogs

One night a man was crying , Allah! Allah!
His lips grew sweet with the praising,
until a cynic said, "So! I have heard you
calling out, but have you ever
gotten any response?"

The man had no answers to that.
He quit praying and fell into a confused sleep.

He dreamed he saw Khidr, the guide of souls,
in a thick green foliage.
"Why did you stop praising?"
"Because I've never heard anything back."
"This longing you express is the return message."

The grief you cry out from
draws you toward union.

Your sadness
that wants help
is the secret cup.

Listen to the moan of a dog for its master.
That whining is the connection.

There are love~dogs
no one knows the names of.

Give your life
to be one of them.

~rumi/barks

Dear Kanupriya,

I think one of the basic differences between us is that we have entirely different goals. In the path of Bhakti there really is no end - it is eternal. As you have said - and I agree - we are all servants eternally.

You say you only want to hear about peoples experiences and that you don't want to hear what it says in some book, but have you stopped to think that what it says in that book is someones experience? Why would you have any more faith in anyone's words here in terms of their personal experience than you would in the words of a book written by an author not present on this board? Indeed, you seem to be only really convinced by your own consious experiences - so why would the conscious experience of anyone else convince you of anything since it is not an experience that you personally share?

Seeing Krsna everywhere can mean different things. It could mean actually seeing or, if you think of this verse in relation to others - such as 'I can only be seen as I am standing before you by those whose eyes are smeared with the salve of love' - it may certainly mean that the devotee sees everything as connected to Krsna and sees only service opportunities wherever he/she looks.

My experience in bhakti is that as I engage in hearing about, chanting about and remembering Krsna and his pastimes my feeling for him deepens and I am more enthusiastic to hear more. As I chant Krsna's name and pray to him with my fullest heart I find that my heart is expanding and that my feeling is deepening.

There is a verse (I know you're not interested in books) in the Caitanya Charitamrta that explains that separation in bhakti looks like poison on the outside but it is pure nectar on the inside. What does that mean? It means that externally seeing someone weeping and maddened by intense feelings of separation one will conclude that they are miserable. This was the conclusion of Ramachandra Puri when he witnessed the separation of his spiritual master, Isvara Puri. What he missed was the fact that he was experiencing the highest stages of ecstatic love. I have some glimpse of this in my practice which fuels it and keeps me going.

As far as experience of a higher being goes, I would think it obvious by just making general observations of your environment. You can't control the weather, you didn't create the earth or the incredible variety of life exhibited therein. There are so many examples you can take from your own environment that speak to your own infinitestimal nature. Even if you don't think that there are any higher beings who are controlling nature or who create the world and living diversity and that it all happens by chance and is governed by physical principles alone - still you have experience of those who are more powerful than you. Can you move troops into and out of wars? Can you make decisions that affect millions of people? What ever you have you will find that there are others who have more - be it intelligence, strength, beauty - whatever. So this is common sense and readily verifiable. It doesn't take mystic insight.

One characteristic of pure bhakti is that it is very rare - in other words one wouldn't expect to find it sprouting everywhere in every heart of those who seek it. Bhakti devi is very generous and you will find her manifest to varying degrees in Krsna's devotees - but pure unalloyed bhakti is indeed very rare. Of course, it is fairly obvious that anything worth having doesn't come cheaply. How much a person is willing to give to get this highest treasure will dictate how far they progress. Krsna says that everyone follows his path in all respects and that he rewards everyone according to their endeavor. In order to get fully a person will have to give fully - complete surrender, unconditionally.

So, given that, it should be fairly obvious why most people aren't experiencing the highest states of ecstasy in relation to God.

Your servant,
Audarya-lila dasa

"The grief you cry out from
draws you toward union."

Krsna knows what you have and what your holding back

i think stevie wonder is more relevant to kenny's argument than bob dylan

"When you believe in things that you don’t understand,
Then you suffer,
Superstition ain’t the way"

Dear Kenny,

Thank you for sharing with us your memories of your time in and around the movement, and your reflections on the conversation with ACBS from which this thread started. It agrees quite well with what Jamadagneya remembers. He is thinking of writing it down and maybe posting it here or elsewhere, but it seems it will take him some time.

I must say you two have really shifted my paradigm

I was aware ACBS considered you to be unorthodox disciples and treated you accordingly, but I did not quite realize the degree to which his responses were dictated by concerns that had nothing to do with your questions!

I believed his repeated attempts to get rid of you two ("just drop this part"; "forget the Puranas"; "just leave"; "go and enjoy life in the material world" etc. in paraphrase) were his way to avoid an open, aggressive confrontation when you had pressed him into a corner by your rational inquiries and argumentation. But you are right, he wasn't known to shy away from verbal aggression. So when he tried to push you away, it seems it wasn't himself he wanted to protect but the movement, the leaders -- who had convinced him you were a threat.

You tell somewhere in your memories how ACBS could come down heavy on disciples who presented to him their ideas, and how he would then actually give sanction and support to those who appeared unfazed by his treatment. It's hard for me to think about it without judging, conditioned as I am by the moral rules of my culture that tell me it's wrong. But it does seem to fit within the "individualist versus holistic cultures" framework that I have tried to apply to ACBS and ISKCON in an earlier post in another thread (on sin, repentance, forgiveness and reconciliation). In the holistic cultures, limits of acceptable behavior lie not within the individual's conscience, as a reflection of abstract moral principles; the limits lie where external authorities (patriarchs and others) put them, and the way to find them is to challenge them. Thus the limits are negotiated and renegotiated. If the senior person yields, everything is OK. Therefore boys are encouraged to be challenging and aggressive -- but also to take the consequences.

By a little stretch of imagination one could view ACBS' yielding to those who could stand up to him as a way to renegotiate the limits. And since he could be provocative and verbally aggressive himself, and certainly accepted and enjoyed this trait in himself, I suppose he would have a soft spot for disciples who were like him.

I tend to agree with Indranila's take on ACBS' always telling you the truth while feeding fairy tales to others. What he told you was certainly not nonsense; teachings on Brahman are part of the Hindu legacy that he was acquainted with. Still, I think that in his heart of hearts, he considered the Gaudiya Vaishnava siddhanta to be the highest truth, and everything else only second best. He was broadminded enough to encourage his disciples to follow the path he could see they had already chosen in their heart; but I think he would have preferred if everyone became and remained a Vaishnava.

Without being able or having time to locate any conversations to illustrate this right now, I do remember instances where ACBS encourages a guest in his/her particular religious pursuit, only to remark to his other disciples -- after the door has closed after the guest -- how foolish it is of the guest not to take what's best: pure Krishna Consciousness.

Let me comment briefly on what you wrote about experience versus traditional belief. Do you know "The Ochre Robe" by Bharati Agehananda? I think you would like this book, for both its humor and its reflections on religion. Here's just one quote:

"The only God of value to you is the one you experience. . . . Most of my gurubhais . . . seem to me to be putting the cart before the horse; they first talk to their disciples about God, and then they tell them how to meditate and practice yoga of all sorts, or bhakti, or discrimination. They create an image in their disciple's mind, to which his experience should presumably conform. But the result is that, instead of giving the seeking mind a chance to find what can be found, the old images are perpetuated, firmly lodged in the minds of the aspirants before they even start to experiment themselves." (p. 239)

As for me personally, I believe that the closest I ever was to falling in love with Krishna was at the very beginning of my KC experiment -- before I internalized the idea that I SHOULD love Him.

But -- to balance it off -- I do not think it is desirable, or indeed possible, to jettison all belief and stick only to what we are experiencing here and now. The human mind is so made that it won't leave the experience (be it mystical or ordinary) in its pristine state for long; rather, we try to understand it; we opt for or against it; we express our feelings in regard to it. We communicate it to others. Communication requires interpretation. Even to just REMEMBER an experience involves interpretation. Do this with your spiritual experience and you have all the makings of a religion: doctrine, morality, ritual, and a language of symbols.

You speak of your spiritual experience in terms of Sat, Chit, and Ananda; these terms describe what you are experiencing, but they are not the experience itself, They are philosophical terms. They represent a thought system: you use it because you believe they adequately describe the nature of the reality you experience or intuit behind the material one. It's not possible to live or communicate without beliefs of that sort.

I agree that the original experience is the ground of it all. The farther we go away from the experience, the more layers of exegesis and derived belief upon it, the more we risk becoming alienated from the core. But just because the spiritual experience, at the moment we have it, feels timeless, all-encompassing, and the only thing that matters, doesn't mean we should strive for a permanent state of experiencing the spiritual reality behind names, forms and other mental constructions. It's not possible to jettison it all. To believe we should would be yet another counterproductive belief.


Dhyana

(Onec again, this letteer is too long for one posting, so it will be in two, the second immediately following this oe)

My fellow searchers of Truth.

First I wish to thank you all for your interesting comments and questions.

I spend my life as an astrologer explaining all of these complicated and complex philosophical concepts to people in ways they can understand, but as most people have a relatively low level of understanding since they have not acquired very much knowledge, the level at which I have to explain things is not very advanced. Whereas, with all of you, your level of understanding is already very advanced, so I get to explain things at a level that I generally don't have to, which causes me to have to come up with new thoughts in ways I have never thought them before, and so do you, which for me is the most fun thing in life, as my purpose is to take thought to a place it has never been to before.

(continued from prior posting)

The question that would remain even at this stage of experiencing X would be, is X limited in it's range of sensory essences, as it appears to be in this world wherein our current mannequin apparatus can only experience approx. one one millionth of the known possible spectrum of colors for example. or is X of unlimited or infinite colors and other sensory essences? Well, as this is the world of duality and limitations, and we are assuming that X is of a different nature than is the apparent nature of the limitations of this place, the answer would be that X is therefore comprised of an infinite number of sensory essences such as colors, and not a limited or finite number. Therefore the nature of X is infinite and not finite, and since you're X, so are you! It is completely illogical to assume for no reason that perhaps there's an “aspect” of X which is made of infinite colors, and another “aspect” of X that is only made of a finite or limited number of colors, (which would thereby create the concepts of "big X" and "little X"), since the concept of "finiteness" and therefore "limitation" only exists in our current limited experiences in this realm, and the limitations of this realm cannot apply to X, or else X is the same as this place, which is absurd! The philosophy that it is possible to have “big X” and “little X”, would be exactly the same as the philosophy of some religions of the world, that the consciousness of humans is the “soul” and is not created by the chemicals of the mannequin, whereas all other living things do not have a soul, therefore the consciousness in all other living things is created by the molecules of the mannequin, which is absurd! It’s one way or the other. It can’t be both! All living things are equal to all other living things in the possession of what we can perceive as consciousness, and all non-living things are equal to all other non-living things in not possessing what we can perceive as consciousness. Either the consciousness in living things is a different energy from the mannequin or else it is not and is therefore created by the mannequin. It can’t be both ways! Either X exists as a different type of non-transforming “energy” than is the “energy” of this physical world of duality, and is therefore not dividable into categories such as “older and younger” and “greater and lesser” or else it’s not and there’s therefore no such thing as a non-dualistic realm of X. It can’t be both ways! This physical world we are all experiencing is the “finite” aspect of X and is the world of duality. Once you are beyond this physical realm, there can’t be an “aspect” of X which is non-dualistic and infinite, and another “aspect” which is dualistic and finite like we experience in this world of duality.

So, the advanced stage of just perceiving that You, the Self are the experiences of whatever you are experiencing, and of being able to perceive the consciousness as the Self in all other living things, and of the other experiences of Self Realization such as eternity, etc., is to then see that everything that you have thus far designated as the “physical world”, the stuff which is supposedly a “transformation” of some kind of “energy” that can now be called made of atoms or whatever and appears to be inanimate, is actually X, that there is a consciousness within everything or even that the very energy of what we call “matter” is actually the consciousness of X, so for instance you experience that when you are listening to the babbling brook, you are not just experiencing that you are the “sound” of the babbling, but that X is consciously expressing Itself as that “sound” and is aware that you are “hearing” or experiencing it. Then you get to live in a mystical magical world wherein you can perceive the consciousness of X everywhere all the time, even in so-called inanimate objects. In Sanskrit this experience is technically known as, Vasudeva sarvam iti, everything is Vasudeva, and this is the experience of it.

Now, along with these various experiences and realizations, which would be called the experiences of the Sat and Chit aspects of X, would also automatically be the experience of the Ananda aspect of X, for at each stage you are experiencing greater “amounts” of your eternal Self, which is already comprised of Ananda, and by now you have cleared away all or most of the “samskaras” of the mannequin mind, which are the thoughts of the past with negative emotions attached to them, i.e. lamentation (otherwise known as “tamas”), and the thoughts of the possible future that have negative emotion attached to them, which are thoughts of things you would not want to have happen, i.e. worry (otherwise known as rajas), as well as you no longer identify with any of the thoughts of the mannequin mind that pertain to it’s various designations, (otherwise knows as the “ahamkara” or “false ego”). At this point you’re “free” of the illusion that you are “bound” in the material world.

The next question to ask at this stage of realization wherein you are aware that you are only experiencing your own eternal infinite Self, and know that anything "new" that you may experience would only be bringing to your conscious awareness some other aspect of your Self which is the experience but that you just haven't consciously experienced that particular experience before, just like tasting a new flavor would be, would be something like, "Gee! I wonder if anyone else exists? Sure be nice cause then I'd have someone to talk to rather than having to talk to myself all the time!" Now, this becomes a little difficult to figure out, since it’s trying to understand and experience the nature of X beyond this realm of duality, and I'll do the best I can of it from the first person.

"We'll, If I’m an eternal infinite being, there can’t be anything “greater” than my Self, or “lesser” than my Self, or “outside” of my Self, or “other” than my Self, or else what would “infinite” mean, and everything can’t really be a “part” of my Self, since if the nature of X had things like “wholes” and “parts” it would be finite and limited just like this dimension, so therefore, from my personal perspective as the one and only being who exists, everything isn’t a “part” of my Self, or an “aspect” of my Self, but everything IS my Self! But, it is logical that in order for X to be infinite, it can’t be just “one” being, cause that wouldn’t be infinite. In order for X to be infinite, there must be an infinite number of infinite eternal beings, and I’m one of them! But, since we’re each infinite, from each of our personal perspectives, (since we are the experience of whatever it is we are experiencing), each being must perceive them Self as the one and only being who exists!” Just great! Now what do I do? We’ll, would I like to or do I have any motivation to meet any of these beings? And if so, how come and what would I expect to get out of it, cause after all, I’m already an infinite being, and since I’m made of infinite Ananda I already feel pretty good, so how would it be possible to feel better than I already do? But yet I feel that if I were to make the connection with any of my fellow eternal infinite beings, the connection would somehow increase my Ananda, even just to satisfy my curiosity about the whole thing would increase my Ananda, so why not, let’s go! Where is everyone! Can I send an e-mail?

Now, as far as I can figure out, this stage of realization is where all the practices and techniques and rituals of “Bhakti” would come in, although supposedly all the practices of Bhakti are also supposed to bring you to this stage, which I can see they would if you knew what you are doing and how the techniques work and what the stages of X experiences are along the way. But as far as I can see, this information has not been presented in as clear an understanding as I just presented it, in fact it’s been presented in the form of what I have called “fairy tales”, so aspirants are trying to go directly from a stage of more or less complete illusion and mannequin misidentification, straight to trying to make some connection to some hypothesized eternal infinite beings who are at this time experiencing their infiniteness, (who are still just a hypothetical possibility since you haven’t experienced them yet) while they are still here experiencing finiteness, without having any idea what they’re really doing or how any of the techniques to do it actually work or what the steps of experiencing X along the way are. Lots’a luck!

But I can see what the path of Bhakti does or else at least attempts to do, even through the presentation of everything in “fairy tales” as explanations for what’s really going on and how the techniques and processes actually work to get you there. Apparently, the path of Bhakti is trying to approach X and connect with X and experience X exclusively through the Ananda aspect of X, the aspects of joy and love, and doesn’t seem to have very much direct interest in experiencing the Sat or Chit aspects of X, except as those experiences are supposed to automatically become included by experiencing the Ananda aspect, in the same way that the Ananda aspect is automatically experienced by experiencing the Sat and Chit aspects. So, if all you are attempting to do is to experience bliss and love through the process of “devotion” as your technique, then theoretically it really doesn’t matter if you think or believe all the “fairy tale” explanations of the rituals and techniques. As long as they’re making you “feel good” and you’re having a good time doing the rituals, you might as well believe some of the “fairy tales”.

Sounds good on paper, and if everyone who followed the Bhakti path actually also got the experiences of Sat and Chit, and were consciously aware of what they were and that they had gotten them, and had actually attained the states of Ananda they were going for, I’d say go right ahead, knock yourself out. Personally I can see I’m just not the “devotional” (without knowing what I’m really doing and why I’m doing it and how the process actually works) type, and even now that I understand all of this I’m still not really very much of the emotional devotional type, except to Knowledge, to which I am extremely devoted.

The main problem, (or needless difficulty) as I see it in attaining the actual experiences of the path of Bhakti, as well as the experiences of all the other paths as they have been presented, (aside from not knowing what you’re really doing, and how the techniques really work to get you there, and what’s supposed to happen), is the common to all doctrine of the “fairy tale” of “Salvationism”, that Mannequin Land is a “bad” place to be and we’re somehow “bad” for being here, and therefore the motivation to do any of these various “spiritual” practices is ultimately to free oneself from the cycles of repeated birth and death and achieve “liberation” and return to the eternal infinite realm, or “merge” back into the undifferentiated X, or whatever.

Another needless difficulty is that all these various paths and processes, at least those from India, are also all mixed up with the cultural aspects of the Hindu Caste System, which is being passed off as a good thing really called Varnashram Dharma or the so-called Vedic Culture. When you combine these two together, you end up with the philosophy of renunciation and asceticism, which says that since Mannequin Land is a bad place to be, and since your ultimate purpose is to escape from bad Mannequin Land, that you have to purposely stop participating in flowing the creative energies of the Universe, (except in an attitude of devotion and service, of course, without wanting any “material” benefit in return) or else you will have to return here to bad Mannequin Land. So by this belief system, the path to X is to withdraw the mind and the senses from the objects of the world and any imaginary happy future you may desire to create within it, either in this life or in any future lives; rather than to participate in flowing the creative energies of the Universe and thereby purposely create what you want in this life and in your future lives. Therefore, you end up with “belief systems” that include such things as the “prayers of Queen Kunti” in the first canto of SB, wherein she prays to always be kept in stressful and difficult situations so she will be forced to remember X, whereas when things are going too well she loses interest in X and forgets about It. And the “archetypes” of “perfected spiritual beings” become exclusively homeless penniless celibate guys living under trees, and anything less than that isn’t quite up to “standard”.

The third biggest needless difficulty in experiencing X regards the “fairy tale” of supposed categories of “greater” and “lesser” eternal beings, since holding these categories in the mind makes it almost impossible to experience those beings! I guess this is another “truth” that I dedued from something Bhaktivedanta said, but not to me directly. A devotee once asked him what it’s like to meet X, and he said it’s like meeting an old friend. I therefore concluded that unless you thought of X as your friend, and not as some guy forever bigger than you, you couldn’t experience X, and therefore since you could theoretically experience X as your friend, it must not be true that there is some eternal “quantity” difference between you and X, or else It could never be your friend. And then there’s some idiotic philosophy about something called “yoga maya”, which is some supposed “energy girl” that causes you to have the “illusion” that you’re equal to these beings even though in “reality” they’re forever “greater” than you, so you forget how great they are and you can be friends. This is absurd! If there really were categories of “greater” and “lesser” eternal beings, since I already know and experience that I am the experience of whatever I am experiencing, so that whatever I may experience of those greater beings would only be bringing to my conscious awareness those aspects of my Self which are the experience, same as everything else I experience; if there were beings who were greater than I and had aspects I don’t have, I’d never know about it since I couldn’t experience it! Unless I guess one of the big guys came up to me and said, “Hey! You know we can see more colors than you guys can!” And if there are no really bigger and littler guys, which there aren’t, and if you want to experience X as your friend and therefore equal, to hold this conception of this “fairy tale” yoga maya thing within one’s mind as the real “reality” not only serves no purpose, but the thought will continue to create the separation that makes it impossible to experience X as your friend. And this is where you have to first get to first before you experience X as your friend, and then from here you can go on to experience X as your boyfriend or your girlfriend or whatever you think and feel is going to increase your Ananda, which is the only reason you or me or anyone else is doing any of this stuff in the first place for, to experience Ananda. And as far as I can determine, all the doctrines of the “fairy tales” of the erroneous philosophy of Salvationism, the cultural garbage of the Hindu Caste System with its zillion “fairy tale” explanations of everything, and the “fairy tale” of eternally “greater” and “lesser” beings, are all needless endless difficulties in ever being able to get to the end of the path of experiencing your own eternal infinite Self and thereby being able to experience X as you equal and friend.

My friends, as an astrologer, I have a completely different and very pragmatic and statistical perspective on all of these various philosophical systems and what happens to anyone in their future lives by following any of these systems that no one but an astrologer could or would get to have. What an astrological birth chart is is a record of the generally conflicted “belief” systems” and “paths” that the person followed in their previous lives that brought them to this one. And there are really only two major “paths”. One is the various paths of “Salvationism”, wherein they were trying to escape from bad mannequin Land; and the other is the paths of “powers”, wherein they were participating in flowing the creative energies of the Universe. All I can tell you is that each and every person is 100% solely responsible for creating every single thing that they experience here in Mannequin Land, as a direct result of the thoughts and “belief systems” they hold within their minds. So for instance, if you believe that it is beneficial to suffer and be in constant difficulties in order to not be caught up by the “maya” of bad Mannequin Land, I absolutely positively guarantee those thoughts will create all kinds of suffering in your personal life. If you think you are “bad” for being here, you will create all kinds of experiences that will make you feel “bad” for being here.

It seems to be the intention of many beings who are currently experiencing here in Mannequin Land, to make some conscious connection with the dimension of X, which is fine, if that’s what you’re interested in, which all of us on this site certainly are. I simply don’t see that it needs to be done from an attitude that there’s something wrong with our being here in Mannequin Land and we have to escape. Personally I like it here. I think it’s a really interesting place we’ve all created and I’m intentionally planning my future lives, but then that’s what astrologers do. As far as I’m concerned, we’ve all eternal infinite beings and we’ve created this place out of our own infinite Self expression for our own amusement and pleasure, and no one’s going anywhere, so we might as well have a good time while we’re here enjoying our own creation. And as far as developing greater “Ananda” by imagining that I’m currently “separated” from X, so the sense of being separated increases my desires to attain X, I have no idea how to bring about such a sense of separation, since I don’t experience any such thing, so obviously the path that is called Raganuga Bhakti is not my path, since I’d have no idea how to do it, nor reason, but if it works for anyone else, that’s fine, but that’s the question, does it work? Does anything work? All I can say is that from my personal experience and observation of others, is that all these various processes and techniques do work, but only if you know what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, how the techniques actually work, and have the ability to separate the “truths” from the “fairy tales”.

Om Tat Sat

Kenny Rich
8/30/04
9:42 am
LA

Kanupriya-I want to ask you the same thing I ask advaitins and other philosophers with doctrines that exclude a supreme being.

1. Where do we come from ? Where does the earth and all of the natural world come from ? i.e trees, flowers, fruits, animals, humans etc.

2. What about reincarnation ? How can there be reincarnation without a mechanism to make it happen, and its attendant need for an overseer to make it work correctly ?

Separation topic split to The misery of separation.

Mr. Hairy,

I'm not gonna defend Buddhism to you, as that is not my personal path, however, I am not intolerant of it ! and I think your response shows some fundamentalistic attitude in you to 'smash the demons'...

where oh where did that come from?

bangli

Dear Bangli,

I know you don't mean any harm, but "fundamentalist" is something of a provocative term in these parts. Let's try to avoid waving red flags at anyone. We don't want things to escalate.

I know that Dirty Hari does not believe in anger, and so I am sure he will control any urges to engage in quarreling. But just to keep the general level of dignity and decorum, please be a little less outspoken.

Thanks for your understanding,

Jai Radhe,

Jagat.

Jagat,

Sorry for any disruption on my part, thanks for steppin in.

Jai Radhe

I did not see this thread until yesterday, having been up to my neck in work. I recall our regular meetings of the Hindu astrology club in LA back in 1979 at Duryodhana's apartment (sometimes at Nalini Kanta's place, too). Did you ever make it to any of those, Kanupriya? I remember going through John Lennon's chart and discussing the effects of his transits of Saturn of his natal Moon. I don't remember who all of the members were at this point in time, but they included yours truly, Gopavrndesh, Srikara, Satangati and maybe even Kesava from time to time. At any rate, we were all pretty much disappointed with the temple authorities and the GBC & infamous Gang of Eleven by then.

What is interesting to see from Ken's account of events in those early days of the movement is that it always was fairly corrupt at all times. Those of use who had this notion in our heads that everything was all hunky dory when we joined up were essentially deluded. So much for ancient history.

Finally, last but not least, welcome to the discussions, Kanupriya Ji! Happy Janmashtami to one and all.