Posted by Ray Lanthier, Feb 28 2009, Los Angeles, California — Unfortunately the history of ISKCON can be accurately traced along the path of its victims. This isn’t just history, but history in the making since the abuse continues, if the articles published in the Sun are any indication. Also, my own experience and the reports of devotee friends of mine at Los Angeles temple confirm the quotidian fact of institutional abuse.
Bhaktas are particularly vulnerable, but being a child and/or female will raise the statistics. The way ISKCON is managed now is to demand ‘surrender’, which is nothing more than reducing the disciple to a state of complete abject servitude and dependency on the Temple President’s every command, regardless of how un-Vaisnava his policies might be. Without such prostration one will be asked to leave.
Srila Prabhupada disciples who haven’t surrendered in this way and have not taken up the lifestyle of the workaday materialist must give up association of other devotees and/or be forced to live in semi-homelessness in a car or van, clinging to the borders of a temple. I can name names, but for obvious reasons will not. The situation is especially tragic if the devotee is of senior age.
This aberration is an object lesson in how the ‘the philosophy’ can be used to manipulate and control. The mantra ‘trnad api sunicena…’ is the absolution intoned over the offensiveness of those in positions of authority. Any objection or ‘pushing back’ at being sworn at in four-letter epithets or unfairly criticized and driven into the ground by exploitative managers is met with the predictable cover of “you need to be very humble”.
Just being initiated by a bogus GBC-sanctioned guru is a glaring instance of abuse, however blindly accepted.
But in this karmically ordained universe, can there be such a thing as an innocent victim? And should one tolerate one’s role as victim if freely chosen?
From reading both the doctrines of the Bhagavad Gita and the Bible, the answer is an unflinching NO. As soon as one realizes one’s own victimization, as I did many years ago, one should make a conscious decision moved by ‘buddhi’, intelligence, to remove one’s self from the abusive clutches. Moreover, one should do whatever is necessary to enlighten the voluntary, though ignorant victims and disempower their abusers.
This is what I have done, in every possible way. For instance, I attend Bhagavatam classes occasionally and question their deviant interpretations of Vedanta, I must admit with success, because my questions keep being addressed uncomfortably in later classes. This is a philosophical war and must be fought at that level, as indeed Caitanya Mahaprabhu fought it. It is philosophical distortion, whose only cure is philosophical and intelligent redress.
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