Fraud, Bigamy, Murder, Embezzlement, Prostitution,
and Pedophilia, as well as Grand Theft, Drug Smuggling, Arson and Copyright Infringement. The list goes on. The criminal activity within Iskcon was astounding! As a naive Christian girl from the South, I actually didn’t know much about what was happening with the ‘Heads’ of the religion. I only knew what was going on in my immediate vicinity, if that. Only in the early nineties did I read about the crime within our movement in a book called “Monkey on a Stick” by John Hubner and Lindsey Gruson. They claimed to have researched all their data extensively. As I looked back, I could understand their information was probably correct.
Religious institutions, be they Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Muslim or whatever, capitalize on the innocents. It’s really sad when good-hearted people are taken advantage of in the name of God due to their genuine faith. Some would call us stupid and I wondered myself if that were true. What went on behind closed doors in many churches during the age of Kali was often horrible. It was enough to make you want to turn away from all religion forever.
The longer I stayed in the association of the Krishnas, the more I began to see that our religion was no different. Rumors flew like wildfire when some nefarious event happened. The temples bulged with hundred dollar bills as devotees sold thousands of books daily and collected money all over America and the world. Illegal things were happening in the name of God causing many devotees to lose faith and leave the movement. You know why I stayed! And, I saw no criminal activity on the part of my guru, although he did authorize bigamy and the use of firearms to protect ourselves, if necessary.
Kirtananda, a man living in the Bronx, NY, was one of Srila Prabhupada’s first devotees and Prabhupada had great hopes for him. He was devoted and intelligent, having graduated from Columbia University, and was already challenging many scholars to debate within the intellectual and metaphysical communities in New York. But he would soon disappoint our guru with trying to start his own path of Krishna Consciousness instead of following the traditional path brought by Prabhupada.
He and his life partner acquired some land for a commune and wanted to do their own thing but were not successful. He therefore, turned the community around for Srila Prabhupada with himself installed as its leader. But in the years he ran that community, there was more crime done than in all the temples put together. The community was called New Vrindavan in West Virginia where I ventured to first meet Srila Prabhupada.
Devotees in his community were required to eat ‘oat water’ for breakfast. That’s oatmeal water, for those of you who don’t know. And they drank ‘mung water’ for lunch while their leader ate opulently with fresh fruit, basmati rice and fresh veggies. He required both women and men fraudulently collect money from outsiders by telling them all sorts of lies (all temples were doing that) and he even condoned the beating of women, prostitution, arson and he authorized murders. On top of that, rumors spread he was molesting young men with the young boys’ headmaster. Many years later he was sent to prison for fraud and conspiracy to murder. Evidently, that was all that could be proved. He was fined $250,000 and sentenced to 12 years in prison. He served eight. He paid 2.5 million to an attorney for an appeal, but the appeal was lost.
I happened to become acquainted with one of Kirtananda’s ‘yes men’ in 1974. In those days the different temples organized what they called ‘traveling sankirtan parties’, later known as ‘scamkirtan’. The term sankirtan actually meant congregational chanting, but what was going on was far from that. In the name of selling books and collecting income for the temples, all sorts of criminal activities took place. This one man I am speaking about, Dharmatma, was thought to be a pimp of sorts, although nobody really knew for sure, but he said he knew how to get his women making money and he knew how to keep them happy. He was a real sociopath, in my opinion! I first met him when he brought his traveling party through Atlanta and made an effort to get my husband involved in his scheme. He would get a woman alone, have sex with her and convince her she would be much happier if she was getting sex on a regular basis. He would give them, one by one, undivided attention until they were thin, beautiful and happy and they would collect hundreds of thousands of dollars for him and the New Vrindavan community. His affect on these women was amazing as they all dropped 20-30 pounds, glowed from pride and no one really knew what was going on. He ate opulently while they rarely ate at all in order to keep thin. At the same time, he yelled at them and created a Stockholm Syndrome amongst his patriots. He married three of the women and I’m not sure how many children he fathered, but sex with all his women was known by everyone. Most men would have loved to have known his secrets, but if he could fuck that many women, my guess would be that his secret was stamina! I knew something was different when he visited Atlanta, but couldn’t figure it out. That is, until my husband told me this man tried to get him to do the same thing. Then, one of his women, whom I knew from Atlanta, told me they were making money from occasionally selling sex. Occasionally? I could make a lot of money in a day, but they could make a lot of money in less than an hour. She told me they would go into bars in the evenings to ‘collect’ and come home with lots of cash, way more than we made on a daily basis selling books. They were encouraged to dress in very short skirts and unbuttoned blouses to expose their breasts and easily attract any man within reach.
Since Srila Prabhupada condoned bigamy as part of an effort to keep women protected and happy, all was accepted as being ‘authorized’. Bigamy worked for the men, but not for the women. Men, being men, all began to consider having more than one wife, especially if the current wife was not interested in sex. The new wife was ecstatic, the old one horrified, but for some odd and insane reason, these women put up with this system introduced by our beloved spiritual master. Of course it was only about sex and everyone knew it, yet the process was allowed to go on.
One afternoon in Atlanta, my temple president asked me to deliver a message to one of those men with a new second wife and believe me, I was naturally curious. I ran up the stairs to the back of the house where I knocked on the door and someone asked who I was. After saying I had a message from the temple president, the new wife came to the door completely naked with a sheet wrapped around her that I could see straight through. This is a spiritual ashram? I thought. Here I am trying to be celibate while I was married and I got a good look at lust at its best. I was angry and even jealous but most of all I just didn’t buy it! I’ve got to get out of this place! I thought, What the hell is going on here in the name of God - Bigamy? But I stayed. And there was no shame from the participants. After all, the spiritual master said it was a good idea. And it was true. Would I lose respect for my guru? India was known for it’s barbaric treatment of women, and he seemed to agree with the status quo. He said many times that women were less intelligent and needed to be ‘protected’. I sadly overlooked his lack of understanding of western society, his mis-information about women and their brains and his cultural differences, just as I overlooked the crooks and thieves among our group in order to keep practicing Bhakti yoga.
FRAUD was becoming incredibly popular amongst devotees. They were becoming perfect con artists. It started with telling lies in order to collect donations and led to something they called ‘the pick’. After around 4 months of my being in the ‘movement,’ as we called it, a meeting was called to teach devotees how to sell books and make a lot of money. Two followers, Tripurari and Gopa Vrindapal came to Atlanta and began to share their techniques. They were completely vague in the meeting but required that we go out with them individually and watch them work. So I did as I was told, as I seemed to be a good money maker and was obedient, but I knew something was a little fishy since they refused to reveal their techniques at the meeting.
We loaded into the vans and headed out to the airport with cases and cases of newly printed Srimad Bhagavatams. I was assigned to Gopa and shadowed him as he started his process of book sales. At first, he was working so fast, I didn’t really catch on to what he was doing, then I caught on. The system was, give them a book, pull out a wad of ones and ask them if they have a twenty so that you can get rid of some of your ones. Then you would take their twenty and ask them if they could give the whole thing. If they said no, you would give them back one dollar only. If they complained, you would give them back another, but basically you tried to keep their whole twenty. Some willingly gave it, saying, “Oh what the hell, just keep it.” Others were extremely upset. But it was all done for the benefit of Krishna, so it was considered ok, so they said.
The day I went out with Gopa he approached a young serviceman who was going home for the holidays. And when I say young, you know what I mean, probably around 19 years old with pimples on his face and the attitude he recently learned in the service, to give respect. When this young man gave Gopa a twenty, he said he could only give five. Gopa refused to give this young man the proper change. The poor man said it was Christmas and he still needed to buy his sister a present. This was Christmas time, for God’s sake! Gopa still refused to give the man the proper change. I watched as the man teared up, slammed the book back into Gopa’s hand and left (without his money). I confronted Gopa saying, “What are you doing? Why would you hurt someone to distribute one of Srila Prabhupada’s books? This method is not Krishna Conscious!” He responded by saying the person would benefit from giving money to Krishna. He explained that even by his holding this sacred book, the poor young man would achieve liberation. I was appalled and horrified! I walked out of his company never to respect him again, and this, my friends was called the ‘change-up.’ It was basically short-changing people, a part of what became known as ‘the pick.’ ‘The pick’ was also about knowing how to charismatically pick a twenty from a man’s wallet or simply to help someone ‘give it up,' especially foreigners at airports who were not familiar with our dollar. One woman became expert at pointing at twenties in a wallet with a great big smile on her face and saying, “Yes, give that one” in Japanese. These devotees became perfect con-artists for Krishna.
I called it FRAUD and the people who were doing it were no better than thieves! It is no wonder 40 something years later, this organization is still filled with crooks, because all the temple presidents, Governing Body Commission members and so-called renunciates who called themselves Sannyasa, condoned it. I recalled everything that happened and the criminal activity within this religion later in life and was extremely sad and embarrassed to have been a part of the organization. And as I recalled these incidents, I remembered the hieroglyphs on the temple walls in Egypt.
Pictures were shown of Horus tipping the scale at the weighing of the heart. If the heart was too heavy, the dead would fall to the ‘underworld.’ It would be evident bad things were done and thus the heart was heavy with guilt. But if the heart was light, the soul could ascend to a higher plane of existence. The priests, therefore, sold ‘shakti’ dolls to innocents to counter the weight of the heart, so at the time of their death, their scales would be balanced. Priests convinced buyers that the scale would be weighed evenly if you bought more shakti dolls. The more they purchased, the better their chance would be to ascend to heaven. Horus would tip the scale in their favor. Fraud!
So what that meant is, the very first criminals in this material world were priests! And I’ll bet you are not surprised! These priests were known as the Amun Priesthood and the hieroglyphs showed the priests wearing sikhas (the pony tail in back of the head) and wearing clothes exactly like Indian dhotis. Sikhas are still worn by today’s Vaishnava devotee men! It made me wonder!
Anyway, I refused to do it. I refused to do ‘the change-up,’ and I refused to collect funds by any method called ‘the pick.’ The process became more about getting people’s money rather than selling books. My associates, temple president and elite members of the organization were trying to get me to do it for Srila Prabhupada. But I would not. My thought was that if I have to lie or steal to sell a book, then that meant, I had no faith in God, so what the hell was I doing there? It was evident these devotees did not have faith or they simply showed no respect for other human beings. And actually, they didn’t have any respect as they always called non-devotees karmis with a disdainful inflection in their voice. But, for some reason, I did have faith and I did have respect for other people. I was able to sell the books by my enthusiasm alone, mostly, although I would manage to avoid the real truth when I needed to. I was no saint!
The most ‘elite’ members of this Iskcon society that I spoke of became very famous for collecting the ‘most’ money and selling the ‘most’ books by this ‘change-up’ method. For years they continued to do this to unsuspecting travelers in airports, vacationers in amusement parks and patrons as they rushed inside the stadium where their favorite football team was about to kick off or a concert where their favorite group was about to play. Fraud came in many forms those days. Devotees printed their own sports paraphernalia to sell at games. They developed techniques like, “Excuse me sir, but I have to arrest you for being intoxicated with football.” Then they would lie about a charity. The person would laugh and then pull out his wallet. These devotees became expert with words and were quickly learning how to con people, never revealing the real reason they were asking for money. I began to realize the men who taught us were professional con-artists and we were learning how to play the game with their lessons. How the hell did these men wind up in a spiritual ashram? I couldn’t figure it out. Had they been picking on the streets long before they found a spiritual master? Well, Krishna said that anyone could be a devotee. Wow! Didn’t realize it went that far! In the end, some devotees were jailed for ‘copyright infringement’ as well as fraud. In Germany, the whole temple was arrested. Not sure how that turned out. When you were making as much money as we did, you could afford an expensive lawyer.
I heard sometimes known felons would hide out in ashrams and religious communities, so the FBI would be fooled into not looking in that direction and I did hear this was a common occurrence in West Virginia. Kirtananda, from the West VA farm hired personal ‘enforcers’ to do his dirty work. One was an ex-marine who spent time in Viet Nam and had no problem killing people when it was deemed necessary to please his leader. He was eventually convicted and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for two murders. He was known to have killed others, but only two were proved.
I couldn’t believe it! God was I naive! Many new devotees came to Krishna in those days, in ecstasy to have found the truth of god, but left as soon as they were told to go out and sell books by crooked methods. I hated to see some of those souls go, but I totally understood!
Again I thought to myself, I’ve got to get out of here! These people, who may have had a sincere desire to know God, were going crazy! What are they thinking? I can’t imagine that a good and kind God would have mercy upon such individuals. But I was wrong. The end justified the means, they believed, and God didn’t seem to care. Srila Prabhupada once commented that Krishna sometimes used maya or illusion to achieve his goal, so it appeared as if that was happening. These cheaters were obviously in illusion and yet, our God allowed the whole process to continue. Was it because God could spread Krishna Consciousness all over the world and at the same time give blessings to people who would normally be doomed? That was the rumor. Even though the thieves and murderers got a chance at liberation, who knows how they would be dealt with in the end. And by the end, you know what I mean. God had mercy on me too, and I was no angel, as you will see later.
EMBEZZLEMENT was huge amongst leaders. The ‘worker bee book sellers’ were working day and night collecting funds for the temple. We sold sandalwood incense, Tootsie Roll pops and smelly carnations, getting at least a couple of bucks for something we paid a few cents for. Making a profit was not the problem. It was lying about the donation that was fraudulent. We sold Football stickers, pretending we actually cared about the teams that were playing, and you know it was easy to identify these guys as they all were wearing their colors of orange and blue, red and black or gold and green. We sold incense to concert goers, all in the name of George Harrison and Bangladesh. We learned, from our ‘trainers’ that the women should approach the men and the men should approach the women. It worked, of course. We were also trained that the men were actually more soft-hearted than the women and we found that to be true, as well. When we approached couples, we were taught to approach the woman first and win her over because she was in control of her man, then get the money from the man. We sold whatever we could to keep the temple afloat and to help our spiritual master with his goal to spread Krishna Consciousness throughout the world. The money was flowing in by the hundreds of thousands and we were sending money to India to build temples as well as expand our own real estate.
In the meantime, temple presidents, sannyasis and others were pocketing money for themselves. When asked where they got new sweaters or expensive shoes, a Rolex watch, a Mercedes Benz, etc., they would credit their parents for their good fortune or as time went on and some of these guys acquired disciples of their own, they would credit their disciples for the expensive gifts, and that might have actually been true as some of those people were extremely stupid, I am sorry to say. One devotee who was a temple president in France and later became a guru after Srila Prabhupada died, was known as the Sun King because he would only eat off of plates made of gold. He bought new cars and had plenty of women. He even kept a BMW waiting on him when he would visit London. What he kept in his pockets, no one really knew. Many devotees left the movement with cash in their pockets, new cars and new a business. The whole thing made you think twice, yet you could not let their pathetic lifestyle dissuade you from trying to practice your service as purely as possible. So, again, I stayed but I was beginning to think, Exactly who was stupid here, them or me?
MURDERS were documented in New Vrindavan (again in West Virginia) and were described in a book called “Monkey on a Stick”. It was all about money, as you would guess, but it was also about keeping Kirtananda in power. One devotee was shot 12 times, stabbed numerous times and still wasn’t dead when the killers finally covered his head with plastic to smother him. He was buried on the land and was found when one killer confessed to the murder. Murder was necessary to make an example of devotees who kept money from the farm’s leader. The victim’s wife inherited $50,000 and they jointly decided to go in the nursery business, supplying stores in Pittsburg with flowers, near to the farm. That one devotee became New Vrindavan’s ‘Monkey on a Stick’. The name came from plantation owners in India who would kill monkeys when they invaded their banana trees. They would impale them on a stick and keep the stick on the property to scare the other monkeys away. One was sacrificed to keep the others at bay! There were approximately six murders in New Vrindavan, thus bodies were found everywhere on the property. When everything finally came to an end, it was found that all the funds collected by fraud added up to $5-6 million a year. That did not count what was embezzled and hidden in Kirtananda’s buried treasure.
Moving on from New Vrindavan, there was more. One sannyas was extremely popular with all the devotees. He was tall, very good looking and radiated the most charming smile. He loved to sing the beautiful mantra songs and had a beautiful voice. He would invite devotees to his traveling bus to sing with him late into the evening. When he told stories, he spoke in a way that captured the hearts of everyone who listened. He was adored by both men and women. Then one day he simply disappeared.
A rumor was quickly spread that he desired to give up his sannyasa status to be with women again and Prabhupada said that for a sannyasa, that was worse than death. It was told that such a man should commit suicide. Other devotees said the young sannyasa, Vishnu Jana Maharaja, went to Prabhupada and asked if he should kill himself and Prabhupada said emphatically “NO,” but he should continue trying to keep his vow. Then Prabhupada explained, “No one in this Hare Krishna movement is actually a qualified renunciate. Therefore, suicide would be useless.” He could not fall down because his status was never elevated in the first place.
Everyone, at the time, knew that one of his associates named Tamal Krishna took over the traveling party of Vishnu Jana Maharaja and took control of the bus as well as added many other traveling buses. He was the business man. Things began to change. There were no more late night kirtans and the joy seemed to be waning like the moon. I was in Miami, Florida shortly after the shift in power happened. Being extremely intuitive, I watched the two interact and I could see a definite sadness in Vishnu Jana Maharaja and a proudness in Tamal Krishna. I did not know if it was because Vishnu Jana wanted to be with women or if it was because this other devotee took over his traveling bus, but my guess was that it was probably both. I personally saw Tamal Krishna walking shortly after Visnu Jana disappeared with his head held high, his nose in the air, completely pacified as though he were given the position of Pope, as young devotees fell at his feet.
After Vishnu Jana disappeared, the rumor spread quickly that, ‘he committed suicide because he fell down to sex desire. So his god-brothers gently helped him to his death by holding him down in the Ganges until he was drowned.’ The incident was never investigated. No charges were filed against these men and they all protected each other by not divulging the people involved! I wondered if there was a statute of limitations on murder in India, but I knew government officials would never investigate because Iskcon was such a well-thought of community responsible for a huge amount of tourism and money. Besides, what could they prove? The men, if that was how the event actually happened, agreed to protect each other. We would never know. Later we would find out many so-called renunciates and supposedly celibate brahmacharis and sannyasis were regularly fucking their young women devotees also. So, cast the first stone?
But this beautiful sannyasa was definitely not the suicidal type. As devotees got over the shock, his associates appeared to be filled with pride, as they were becoming popular, having lost the Star of all the Renunciates. I knew it was murder! But I could not prove anything and it seemed no one else cared to try. Truth was, most devotees disagreed with me, but my intuition was very strong, so I had no doubt. The whole rumor was accepted as truth and devotees went on with their lives as if nothing ever happened. No one even questioned that devotee men admitted holding the man under water in the Ganges. (Murder or Assisted Suicide?) Those men should be in prison! All of them! Devotees acted as if it were ‘sad, but ok’. The whole thing made me so sick I could have cried! Sounds like lots of things made me sick in those days!
PEDOPHILIA was also attributed to Kirtananda in New Vrindavan and his Headmaster in the boy’s school, as well as devotee men teachers in India. There was something we learned some time later when we began to understand the culture there. India was not like America. Men could not just have sex with women on dates before marriage. Their value system was quite different from ours. Therefore, the men had sex with each other, even if they were not gay. And they had sex with their young students. It must have been easy because young disciples were taught not to question the teachers and to never say anything or Krishna would be very displeased. But in time, just as in the Catholic church, the stories came out. And evidently there were many, I was told. I wasn’t there.
In 1992 the Governing Body Commission of Iskcon, headed by Tamal Krishna, made a resolution to “Never tell the Indian Government of the crimes against these children.” So it all kind of just disappeared. I was told that safeguards were put into place to prevent some of this type of behavior from ever happening again. What these safeguards were, I did not know. Just a note: years later, Tamal Krishna met his fate on the road from Mayapur to Calcutta as his taxi flew head on into another car and he was killed. Sorry, but he finally got Smeared across the road. I had no mercy. This was the fault in my stars. Jupitarians love justice!
CHILD ABUSE was the most mind-boggling thing for me. How could spiritual women and men beat their children and belittle them? Women were told to put their children with a temple daycare and go out to sell books. The women who ran the centers often were mean to the children. Also a school was set up in Dallas, Texas where both devotees and non devotees sent their children thinking they would get an excellent spiritual education as well as learn their abc’s. But teachers there were reputed to be horrible, professing, Srila Prabhupada said, “Spare the rod and spoil the child” giving them justification for hitting. All this was exposed after some time, but unfortunately, it was too late for the kids. I have a few friends now who are in there early 40’s and they have horror stories to tell of how they were mistreated, beaten, shoved into closets for punishment as well as other methods of righting the children’s wrongs. And where were their mothers and fathers?
Regarding theft, a devotee named Guru Kripa, according to “Monkey on a Stick,” developed a plan to steal Rolex watches and diamond bracelets while picking in Japan. He would take them to Calcutta to fence for rupees, then turn the rupees over to Srila Prabhupada, bragging to his friends about his accomplishments. Laguna Beach temple engineered a drug-smuggling racket, bringing in hash and heroin from Pakistan and Afghanistan. So, add Grand Theft and Smuggling to the list of things done to please our beloved gurudev.
I’ve got to get out of this place! I thought. Many of you knew this sort of thing was going on anyway. You were definitely right when you were calling the Hare Krishna movement a ‘dangerous cult.’ It was very dangerous, both psychologically and physically.
My journey was trying to figure out what I promised in the womb and how to keep that promise in this lifetime when all around me was Fraud, Bigamy, Prostitution, Murder, Child Abuse, Grand Theft, Drug Smuggling and Embezzlement. How did I cope with the injustices along the way? How could I deal with the reality that I was a participant in a cult and what would happen to me when I was about to die? Was I going back into the womb once again? Was I really on the right path?
So there I was, concerned that I made a promise in the womb I was not going to be able to fulfill because I was mixed up in this practice which was smack-dab in the middle of a gangster ring and a dangerous cult with murderers and embezzlers as authorities. I wanted to toss the sari in a garbage can and have my memory wiped clean from experience I remembered while on purple haze. I wanted Out!
In the end, however, Srila Prabhupada spread the name of Krishna all over the world. Criminals became liberated by doing their criminal activities for god. The innocents (there were no innocents) learned many lessons. The spiritual master didn’t know everything. Krishna did. And we still loved devotional (Bhakti) service. We were feeling ecstasy, each and every one of us, each and every day!