Danielle Field

Again, Samia, you've missed the point. I have said several times that I don't consider my position to be final or that I am blessed with all the answers required to support my current position. I came here for help understanding my position and all you've given me is consistent torrent of anti-commie bile. Even when I say things like "I've made mistakes in the past and I'm sure I will make mistakes again" or "I don't know what it will take to make the world a better place" you still bite back at me as if I'm a member of the Imperial Guard. I've been lucky enough to find a group of people who are willing to listen and understand and have a more thorough, if critical, understanding of socialism than you, so I won't be approaching you for any assistance any further. I don't know how you could ever hope to help anybody. You certainly haven't helped me because you haven't listened to a word I have said. Your responses are prepackaged and I have certainly heard them all before. No need to hear it from you too. Before you answer, did you actually read any of that? Really? Are you sure you're sure?

Well, at least you two have met each other on here, so thats a nice thing, isn't it? cups always half full, thats what I say. Always look on the bright side. Maybe you could both have a discussion that you're actually interested in instead of hijacking subjects on which you know nothing about. All my love xxx

Its very hard and frustrating to talk to someone who isn't listening is all. Be honest, you haven't read most of the posts I've written, have you? You just think I'm an extremist little banner waver who doesn't deserve to be listened to, so why talk? My point is that you've thought that from the very moment that you saw this discussion posted. You've completely ignored the parts where I have explained how and why I came to these conclusions and why I want help understanding that and, frankly, being rude to me in the hopes that I'd go away hasn't helped at all.

Apology accepted Samia. Although I would prefer it if you apologised for having adopted numerous personalities on this forum in order to sabotage my position. I suspect the reason the people you work with on your welfare projects are more respectful to you because you think more carefully about what you are going to say to them than you do to me. If you weren't one of them would probably have hit you by now. I have to add also, the thought of someone working on community welfare projects harbouring such spiteful predjudices towards some of the most vulnerable groups in society is, frankly, disturbing. As for being a low life scum, no, Vikram, I am not. I have a very long fuse, but when its blows you know about it. A lot of that is due to the abuse i received at the hands of ISKCON and from various other aspects of this life of which I grow tired. Socialism has taught me a lot of important lessons about how to stop hating myself and others and I wanted to discuss this with people who had maybe had similar experiences. I didn't come here on a recruitment drive. Unfortunately I have been treated as though I am and all the scorn people harbour for the word socialism has been poured on me and it has had its effect. Every time I come on this forum I get called stupid, ignorant, thoughtless, heartless, worthless, it seems now most of those insults have been coming from the same person pretending to be a group in order to bolster their position. In truth I don't even know now if the two of you are the same person. Bit creepy in truth. There is only so much of that taunting, teasing, deriding and, frankly, bullying I can take. I wish I had enough self respect to just walk away from it all, and I did for a good length of time. I was hoping after having left it for a while things might be different, especially now BDM has gone. But no, cos you're still there aren't you Samia. Still waiting to pounce every time I speak with your callous one liners.

I'm done. I thought it was about time to come back and address these issues again but it just really upsets me when people are callous and disrespectful and I hate falling down to that level. Internet forums probably aren't the best place to pursue these discussions. They certainly don't bring out the best in people that's for sure.

Ah! The reek of predjudice. Anti semitism, Islamaphobia as well I bet and some choice opinions on people of all creeds that differ from you own sectarian interests I'll warrant. You two really are filled with fear of your fellow humans aren't you? Fear for your own lives, you wretched fools! Prabhupada didn't fear the hippies but everyone told him they were demons and that they deserved to go to hell. You will never know true love like Prabhupada taught until you learn to confront those fears. By the way Samia, where's BDM these days? Good to see you striking out on your own, or has he still got his finger on your controls? How exactly are you going to "wake me up" when you are wedge deep in the myre of predjudice? You really should be ashamed of yourself for harbouring so much hate.

There is a system that has brought about more misery to human culture than any other and that is Capitalism, beginning with the slave trade and the subsequent commodification of human life that has attended all of capitalism's history. It is a murderous and bloody system. It is perpetuated through warfare and yet I hear devotees always defending the principle tenets of capitalism as if they are arcane and divine. it is this I am challenging. Yes attempts to overthrow capitalism have been bloody and yes Stalin's regime was bloody. Stalin was a psycho and the Russian revolution failed to extend internationally largely due to Stalin's successful efforts to subvert the revolution and resume the Russian Imperial project to his own advantage, much as Napoleon did to France after the French revoltuion. Yet again I am not here to convert you to socialism only to open your eyes to the fact that capitalism is an abhorent economic system for all the reasons Marx laid out in his works. The dominant economic order needs to be overthrown in order to allow devotional life to develop (as previously stated) and socialists are more committed to changing the world than self satisfied little "devotees" who are only interested in the development of their own spiritual advancement and don't concern themselves with the project of revolutionising society along the lines of devotional principles. Capitalism is in crisis and the tenure of human beings on earth is under great and real threat. Do you agree, or do you think, as many have suggested in this discussion that capitalism rules OK?

I would advise that you study Prabhupada's books and become proficient at practising Krishna Consciousness in your own home before you consider joining a temple. I was given that advice before I joined in 1995 and I chose to ignore it. As a consequence of ignoring that advice I ended up getting exploited for 5 years by an ISKCON guru who has recently been denounced by the movement, Balabhadra Das. As a result of that exploitation I never had the time to read and study Prabhupada's books properly as we were constantly told the highest service was to sell the books (ie get lots of money for his divine grace). I was young, naive and impressionable. I never approached him to be my guru but after having lived there for a year I was told I was ready for initiation and before I knew it I was Sita Sundari devi dasi. ISKCON knew of his exploitative practices and benefitted from the money he provided, it was only when he started with holding that money that ISKCON investigated him and finally found out the extent of his abuses. I was kicked out of the temple long before he started sexually abusing his female disciples but from the way things were going, as long ago as 2000, the seeds of his downfall were already evident and he was making crude and unsavoury allusions to what the women got up to behind closed doors. ISKCON has not fully recovered from the problems inherent in its controversial past largely because it keeps promoting people like Balabhadra to the status of Guru when the only skill they have is to exploit people to make money. Balabhadra's attitude to women was always derogatory and offensive even before he was made guru and for the duration of his guru ship he never allowed the women seperate rooms or beds. We slept six to a box bedroom on a lino floor. ISKCON knew this but it needs money because of all the law suits it has had to pay out for people suing them for abuse, so it turns a blind eye to current abuses as is convenient for it. I only say this out of a desire to protect you in a way that others couldn't do for me. Prabhupada certainly didn't want people to practise Krishna Consciousness in isolation but there are dangers inherent in joining temples before your spiritual discretion has fully matured. False guru's prey on naivety and sentimentality and until aspiriant vaishnavas have found their feet by practising the regulative principles (maybe not strictly at first but certainly practising), developing a taste for the holy name and most importantly reading his books then they are prone to abuse. Remember Prabhupada himself didn't take initiation until he was in his 30's. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but you really need to be warned about ISKCON gurus before you end up in a vulnerable situation like I got myself into. Go to the temple, join in the feast and the kirtan, listen to the classes, but be discerning and if you feel you are being manipulated don't do what I did and just ignore that instinct and put it down to being a neophyte.

One of Balabhadra's greatest charms was his role as a father figure to his disciples. He made you feel like he understood you and, unlike so many other ISKCON gurus he thought it was important to know the names of all his disciples, to recognise their faces and to try and lend support when they were experiencing times of emotional difficulty. Balabhadra's greatest fault was his fundamentalism which was the very cause of him being made a guru. He saw things in black and white. He saw his mission as pushing his disciples so hard through a hole so small that only the soul could come out. He truly believed he was doing everything in his power to send us back to Godhead. What he failed to understand was the importance of was giving us time to read and to associate with each other, essential pillars of vaihsnava culture. As far as he saw it the highest service to Prabhupada was to sell his books, that was how Balabhadra had achieved his route to salvation and, in his own simple way, he felt that was the best way to get us home back to Godhead also; very little other than this mattered to him. This fundamentalism meant that he was very good at generating money and it was for this reason, not his vision as a spiritual leader, that the avaricious motion was put forward to make him a guru. He got very ill at the thought of being a guru and passed out frequently. Doubtless he craved the prestige but he did have conscience enough to question his ability. Unfortunatley the GBC didn't have conscience enough to advise him wisely and thus it came to pass that a fundamentalist zealot was given power of attorney over the lives of a group of wide eyed neophytes and do with them as he saw fit. For the greater part Balabhadra's spiritual direction was seemingly faultless according to ISKCON law. Spend every waking moment thinking of Krishna, work diligently in your service. Don't waste a second not serving. We chanted 21 rounds a day and were encouraged to chant constantly even whilst performing our service. Temple life was very strict and controlled but we never questioned it because we were constantly engaged in service and the whole temple compound was devoted to facilitating that service. What we didn't have time for was reading, that was the main problem for me personally. When we complained of this we were chastised and told that knowledge came through service, that Mother Ratnaranjini had attained her salvation through service and a thorough knowledge of but a handful of slokas. Balabhadra surely had some kind of a breakdown after Mother Ratnaranjini's departure which I witnessed but at the time didn't recognise. He needed good direction, instead he was told to take up the renounced order of life. He needed time to be with his family and to think. Good advice at this time would have been maybe to allow him time to be with his family, to think about in time maybe taking another wife, to consider whether guruship without the aid of his beloved confidant and mother would be possible at all. But instead the cash registers clanged and the clock kept ticking. Living at Karuna Bhavan was a very lonely and depressing experience for me but during that time I developed a very strong attachment to the Holy Name which hasn't left me. I sometimes chant in my sleep and whenever I experience distress the Holy Name leaps out. Before I have time to think, I chant. I have Balabhadra to thank for this and, of course, Prabhupada. He didn't let me stop thinkinng of the Holy Name. For this reason I believe, although not a guru, he was a very good influence on my devotional service in many ways. I do not know who he is supposed to have punched or sexually abused. All I can say is that for the five years I lived in his association I never witnessed such things, and certainly never experienced them myself. I know that Balabhadra was in a very lonely place and for this reason I do not fully doubt it. I do not think we have seen the last of Balabhadra and, with proper guidance and association his zeal and sincerity could be put to good use, but in the hands of the GBC they were misdirected and abused. I suggest to you that we are all victims of the GBC, Balabhdra included, and if you want to judge anybody that would be the best place to start. To judge the powerless and the duped is the action of a coward who daren't confront corrupt authority.

OK. I'll try and respond to that in due course. I have done already if you want to just look at the rest of the conversation that has gone before though. Maybe I'll just cut and paste it sometime. I've really lost my drive to get into this though. I came here for answers and I'm just not getting any so I'm not really so inclined to keep it up I'm afraid. I haven't got enough time to keep going over the same territory and not get any answers. Believe what you want about socialism. I really don't care. I'm not a zealot, I'm just a lost soul looking for answers and I've got the "my guru was just a fat bloke in a dress" blues. Best wishes xxx

Hello, sorry. How are you?

I don't think Muslim's are any more fundamentalist than Hare Krishna's that refuse to see anything in terms other than black and white.

Prabhupada said that women's brains were half the size of a men's and yet this is scientifically incorrect. We know this. Prabhupada made a mistake because he had been falsely informed by erroneous persons that this was why women were less intelligent than men. Is that a reason to reject the validity of his work? No it isn't. I despise sexism and sexists but I genuinely don't care that Prabhupada made this mistake. Many of the chauvanisms of his time were evident in Prabhupada's initial work but he himself was transcendent to them. They were incidental and didn't interfere with the importance of the spiritual message they contained. When corrected on this issue he didn't demand that the whole of scientific enquiry needed to be reorientated to compensate this mistake. This is because he had humility and was focused on the goal of spreading Krishna Consciousness. I believe that the issue of the moon's distance from the Earth is utterly inconsequential to the value of the Bhagavatam. I believe that the information that was available at the time of its writing determined that that was the way things were and so it did not matter at the time if it was right or wrong. The purport of the Bhagavatam is spotless. Even if some miscreant covered the Bhagavatam in excrement it would still be spotless. Why freak out about whether or not this particular aspect is true or not? I don't care because the Bhagavatam has fundamentally impacted upon my life in a positive manner. I don't care that Prabhupada thinks that men are superior to women even though in my daily life I experience that the least accountable and selfish group of people in the world, and indeed the most destructive are men. If your faith was so unshakeable that you could speak with such vindication on matters of this nature then, paradoxically, matters of this nature really wouldn't bother you so deeply. Are there any discussions on this forum that don't contain insufferable and dull quantities of Vaishnava Aparadha? I'm sure Prabhupada would not be impressed or enlivened by any of the discussions on this forum that I have seen so far because they all end in offences. I wish I wasn't such a fool as to want to keep visiting it. Its proper car crash entertainment. I've realised from experience that anyone who comes on this website, myself included, thinking that they are going to advance their consciousness and the consciousness of others is sadly delusional. Guruvani, your chastisements are not justified because you can see they are not making a difference. Whatever it is you are trying to say, its not being heard, is it? Be honest with yourself about why you are doing it. I'm only saying this because I'm being honest with myself about it. Who cares what we think, really? Who would take the bickering back biting rubbish on this website seriously, other than people like ourselves who obviously take ourselves a bit too seriously?

If they're saying that the Bhagavatam says the Earth is flat then I guess they haven't even looked at the front cover let alone read it. I'm just poking my nose in I suppose. Maybe they're just trying to get a rise out of you. Best to ignore them. Have a look at that book though. Its by Shukavak Dasa. It really reorientated by thinking, anyway. Good luck.

I read a book called Hindu Encounters with Modernity that I bought from the Soho street temple in London which helped me to reconcile the disparity between material science and the Bhagavatam. It is about Bhaktivinode Thakur's successful attempt to bring a rational empiric sense to the more superstitious interpretations of the Bhagavatam. Its about much more than that also and I strongly recommend you read it. This is a thorny issue and not one that devotees should be rowing about. And Guruvani, I strongly recommend that if you are trying to spread the light of the bhagavat in the world that you don't make the gross mistake of telling people not to read it because they are impure. you've gone way off the mark there I'm afraid and I am proof positive Prabhupada wouldn't approve.