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Sama das: Concerning Our Cognitive Dissonance

27. December 2014 by 1 Comment

 

(original unedited article below, Sun posted only edited/censored Version on 01-12-14)

 

Concerning Our Cognitive Dissonance
By Sama das

Cog-ni-tive Dis-so-nance-noun (psychology): The mental stress a devotee experiences by trying to juggle his contradictory belief that the counterfeit trumped up “ISKCON” is authorized, while knowing within his heart that its values are antithetical to everything the Founder-Acharya worked tirelessly to establish and goes against everything that His Divine Grace vigorously taught, wrote, and preached.

Cognitive dissonance was first investigated by Leon Festinger, arising out of a study of a sect which believed that the world was going to be destroyed by a flood in the mid-Fifties. Marian Keech was the leader of this UFO cult. She claimed to get messages from extra-terrestrials (known as “The Guardians”) through automatic writing. Keech and her followers, known as The Seekers, were waiting to be picked up by flying saucers. In Keech’s prophecy, her group of eleven would be saved just before the earth was to be destroyed by a massive flood on December 21, 1954.

When it became evident that there would be no flood and the Guardians weren’t coming to pick anybody up, Keech became elated! She said that she had received a telepathic message from the Guardians, informing her that this small group of believers on earth had spread so much light by their unflagging faith that God had spared the world from cataclysm.

Somewhat amazingly, most of the Seekers didn’t abandon her. Instead, they became more devoted after the failed prophecy. Most of these disciples not only stayed, but, having made that decision, became even more convinced that Keech had been right all along. The fact that she turned out to be completely wrong turned them into true believers!

Prabhus, does this sound eerily familiar?

Our godbrothers in the G.B.C., with premeditated and malicious intent, proclaimed that the Sampradaya Acharya Srila Prabhupada ordained eleven of its members to be as good as God, mahabhagavat spiritual masters, and that they were to be worshiped as such by every devotee in every temple, in effect turning them into eleven tzars of eleven zones.

Most of us swallowed this hook, line, and sinker. We didn’t even blink, because we were already deluded. Having devolved spiritually by offering our allegiance over so many years to these institutional overlords of the governing body, we had allowed ourselves to completely forget the message contained in Srila Prabhupada’s books and teachings.

We failed to develop the personal spiritual power necessary to distinguish reality from illusion, and thus most of us were unable to speak out against the atrocity. Lacking spiritual power, we became psychic slaves to our godbrother-overlords and were thus lead down the path of institutional bondage. No wonder we were ready to swallow the next round of poison, when the monstrous “pastimes” of the zonal tzars could no longer be hidden or easily dismissed.

This stage gave our “divine” godbrothers in the G.B.C. their chance to come to our rescue. We were now to believe that Srila Prabhupada didn’t appoint the eleven tzars, that the so-called appointment was only a simple mistake, part of the movement’s growing pains. What he really wanted was for the impaired, ruined, and corrupt G.B.C. to rubber-stamp them to their positions by vote, but not as mahabhagavats.

The governing body was supposed to vote them in as something a little less grand, because Srila Prabhupada allegedly also empowered this same impaired, ruined, and corrupt G.B.C. with a self-correcting mechanism, a new mystic power. Over and above that, it was declared that His Divine Grace Srila Prabhupada had invested all spiritual authority in the G.B.C., which by this time was comprised of nothing but pseudo-devotees and full-blown sahajiyas.

In order to adjust our cognitive dissonance, we stuck with this kinder, gentler version (or so it superficially seemed) of the institutional delusion. We bit into the poison apple again and again, each time believing we were serving the Supreme Personality of Godhead through Srila Prabhupada. Therefore, we don’t even ask basic questions anymore, questions such as:

*Can we trust any leader in this organization?

*Are there any genuine gurus in this illicit form of “ISKCON”?

*Could it be that, right from the gate, there were never any legitimate gurus authorized by Srila Prabhupada?

Prabhus, don’t you think it’s time to stop accepting the lies? Don’t you think it’s time to stop being taken for a ride, to stop being suckers, to take charge of our own spiritual lives? Don’t you think it’s time to free ourselves from all of these institutional delusions? Prabhus, don’t you think it’s time to reject the central power core, the source of all the problems, viz., the impaired, ruined, and corrupt G.B.C.? Don’t you think it’s time to reject their institutional gurus?

We must return to true spiritual guidance by going back to accepting Srila Prabhupada and the scriptures as our authority. It’s time to stop lamenting that His Divine Grace has been minimized and to stop bitching that the Krishna consciousness movement has been dumbed-down. It’s time to free ourselves from cognitive dissonance by just outright rejecting the idea that this fabricated, so-called form of “ISKCON” is in any way authorized to do what it continues to do.

 

 

 

follow-up from 26-12-2014:

Open letter to Solar Smorgasbord
by Sama das

RE: My recent article (and its unauthorized editing)
TO: Rocana das Adhikari, editor
PAMHO. AGTSP. This letter is not merely criticism, since it is also a letter of appreciation, thanking you for liberating me. You have freed me from the illusion that there can be any genuine and open discussion on your website concerning the direction of Srila Prabhupada’s Krishna consciousness movement. Instead, as you have proven, all such root issues that you do not want to see the light of day are subject to being altered, edited, or omitted. If any such points, issues, facts, or truths do not fit either your agenda (which is just beginning to become clear to me), your politics, or your personal bias, they will be be altered or censored.
This is especially the case when such points of views (or truths) are perceived as threatening your agenda. Obviously, at base, your freedom to change anything you deem mistaken must be both your motto and standard operating procedure. I was under the mistaken belief that you engage in brahminical reporting, but you have set me free from that fake veneer of honesty that your website Projects.
As you may have already intuited, this open letter is being sent to you (you are free to post it, of course) relative to my recent article Concerning Our Cognitive Dissonance. The first  change you made to my article: All of the emphases have been removed! These emphases were inserted in many places. Each emphasis was placed for a reason, but you have intentionally deleted them. It thus seems obvious that you wanted the impact of my article emasculated and minimized, i.e., the visual impression was diminished, and this had the effect of de-emphasizing various points and conclusions which had been emphasized. Quite insidious on your part.
Then we come to the second unnecessary change, and this is in connection to my original by-line, which simply read “by Sama das.” However, you have inserted (ACBSP) to the end of my name. This, of course, is done by you to indicate that I am initiated by Srila Prabhupada, but it (ACBSP) represents something more. Some of your other articles contain different initials after their by-lines, initials which stand for different, so-called initiating spiritual masters of “ISKCON.”
Such nonsense recognition exploits the good name of His Divine Grace Srila Prabhupada and (somewhat indirectly, but nevertheless strongly) leads the reader to believe in a co-legitimacy, an authenticity in terms of initiation, between and amongst all the authors. It promotes a belief that each of them has a bona fide diksha-guru, but my article stands completely against this wrong idea.
 
Having read my article, you know that I am against such an affront to common sense: That a diksha-guru can be rubber-stamped by the vitiated GBC or any other band of corrupt conditioned souls posing as Vaishnavas. Why compromise my article with this unauthorized insertion after my by-line? It is bad policy. This insertion weakens the article’s effectiveness, and it infers that you don’t want to even acknowledge that there are devotees who have grasped (who have come to the realization) that none of the initiations since 1977 have been bona fide.
 
If you disagree with this conclusion, why not call for a public debate about it? Shouldn’t that be something that your daily rag could and should undertake? Why not take up this issue, create a forum, and discuss it openly?
Your third edit of my article was the worst: Censorship by omission. You have culled out of it a sentence of importance, and that sentence was this: “Could it be that, right from the gate, there were never any legitimate gurus authorized by Srila Prabhupada?” Removing this question constitutes malicious editing. Apparently, you don’t want your readers to know that there are disciples of Srila Prabhupada who reject all of the “initiating gurus” (as well as the initiations that they have performed) that have been pushed by the GBC since early 1978.
As such, it is not difficult to conclude that you have cleverly changed the meaning of my article so that it will, at least in part, dovetail to your agenda. In the process, you have surreptitiously pegged me as someone who supports that, but it is certain that I do not support it at all! It is your right to choose what to publish and what not to publish, granted. However, if you choose to publish somebody, especially if he is a godbrother, then you cannot change the content of the article that has been submitted to you. You had no right (you have the power, but not the right) to change my by-line by adding something foreign to it. You had no business deleting all of the emphases that I had carefully inserted into my article.
Most importantly, you had no right to cull out the most important point that I made, at least, not without first consulting me. This censorship by omission is particularly odious, and everyone should be made aware that you engage in it. By these unscrupulous actions, you are pushing a form of yellow journalism that is not at all befitting a disciple of His Divine Grace Srila Prabhupada.

Related posts:

  1. Srila Prabhupada’s Poisoning and Devotee’s “Cognitive Dissonance” Over Facts
  2. “Low Vitamin D Level Tied to Cognitive Decline”
  3. Warning about demoniac persons even maybe in our sampradaya
  4. Where is the BBTI’s Money?
  5. Unconstitutional Issues from the Sampradaya Sun
  6. Rochana Das: Obscuring the Sampradaya Sun
  7. Dravida himself is making massive changes to Prabhupada’s books!
  8. BBTi – and the stolen Copyright Record
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Comments

  1. Amar Puri says:
    28. December 2014 at 3:27 am

    Certainly, the Editor, Shriman Rocana das exercises both his power and right to remove from the article as he seems fit because the content of the article does not suit Rocana das agenda at all as pointed out in the open letter.

    So, he exercise his power because he is running his web site for his agenda. Therefore, he thinks that he has the right to censor that which goes against his own agenda of the web site.

    Simply cheating at a very subtle platform in which the common person upon reading at his web site may not know the full facts. Rather, it may appear to the readers that how much Rocana das (ACBSP) is indeed dedicated for the mission of HDG. Srila Prabhupada regardless of his own misleading concocted theory in his ” DOR ” presentation which is totally against the Instructions of HDG. Srila Prabhupada.

    That is another example in the dress of a Vaishnava Shriman Rocana das in a show business like the GBC guru business.

    As we read from the open letter one of the comment ;

    ” By these unscrupulous actions, you are pushing a form of yellow journalism that is not at all befitting a disciple of His Divine Grace Srila Prabhupada.”

    Prabhu, Web Master, your services are truly appreciated.

    All Glories to Srila Prabhupada.

    Reply

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