The Dangers of Fanatical Blind Following

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Hare Krishna !

 

Sri Sri Guru and Gauranga ki jaya !

 

Dear Vaishnavas,

 

Please accept my humble obeisances.

 

I am very concerned about devotees who do not use their ability to

discriminate sufficiently, and who seem to have no moral conscience

of their own. Some of these 'blind followers' can become very

dangerous fanatics, and obsessed with attacking anyone they perceive

as a 'free thinker' or heretic. Thinking themselves to be ultra-

orthodox, fanatics and fundamentalists cannot perceive that they are

also interpreting a tradition. In their delusion of singular

rectitude, they set themselves up as the prosecutors, judges, juries

and sometimes executioners of other devotees. Such persons are

constitutionally incapable of understanding a non-sectarian mission.

In their hands, such a mission will become a winner-take-all jihad.

 

In my interfaith preaching devotional service, I have been threatened

repeatedly by fanatics from all sides. Fundamentalist Christians have

called me The False Prophet of Revelations, and fanatical Muslims and

Hindus have threatened and made attempts on my life. However what is

most painful to me is when such attacks come from my Gaudiya

Vaishnava godbrothers. Admittedly I am not the usual Vaishnava

sannyasi, but I keep my vows, have profound respect for the saints

and devotees of our Gaudiya Vaishnava Tradition, and I am cent-per-

cent Srila Prabhupada's man, and devoted to the service of Sri Sri

Guru and Gauranga in preaching the Non-sectarian Mission of Their

Sankirtan Movement.

 

Thus when I get attacked, as if I were a heretic, it really saddens

me, because faithful service is my life and soul. When someone

challenges me as if I have rejected Srila Prabhupada's vani, and the

siddhanta of our Tradition, I can only reply with the facts of my

life itself.

 

quoting Bhaktatraveler...

 

"Then when the heroes repeat as spoken by Prabhupada we will begin to

instate

Krsna conscious Varnasrama-dharma. You only have to accept the idea,

the vani

as it is. This begins on the individual level, personally. Then like

minds

can come together and do more by cooperation with the instruction To

do

Varnasrama-dharma in your lives as a community goal, begin to

rebuild. Hell

with the failure of the past. Use only as a warning label. Move on.

Guna and

karma not by vote, birth father, family of origin, color of skin.

Guna and

karma can also be changed in this life time."

 

I have personally accepted Srila Prabhupada's vani as it is, and thus

I made solemn vows to Godhead and Guru, which I am keeping. That is

my conclusion and the siddhanta of all of my studies. I have given my

whole life to this Non-sectarian Bhakti Yoga Sankirtan Mission.

Doesn't this fact sufficiently reveal what my conclusion is ? I have

no history of abusing any devotees, or engaging in 'homosex' or

otherwise breaking any of my vows, so why have I been challenged by

Bhaktatraveler (elsewhere on the internet, most recently on the

vediculture egroup) ? I have never insulted Srila Prabhupada or

disrespected his authority in any way, so why is Bhaktatraveler

challenging me on 'siddhanta' when I have never misrepresented Srila

Prabhupada ?

 

Bhaktatraveler and others may consider my historical and theological

research "trivia", which is fine with me, however there is a place

for writing literatures in pursuance of the 'vedic' version.

Furthermore, history also merits study as the record of Sri Krishna's

salvific action in our world. So, while simply and perfectly

repeating Srila Prabhupada's words is essential for us, there is also

a contribution to be made from the study of history. The history of

religion and theology is my specialty, and I have always tried to use

my expertise in these areas in Sri Sri Guru and Gaurangas' service,

for the benefit of all devotees. This is what we are supposed to do,

to 'dovetail' our abilities into the service of the Lord and His

devotees.

 

So, when I come under attack for doing this, or see other devotees

being attacked and depreciated in the Movement, when they are

sincerely trying to do their service by 'dovetailing', it seems

tragic to me, and I am reminded of all the devotees who have left

ISCKON or the Movement altogether because of such depreciation.

 

After recently going through problems with a rudely challenging and

depreciating devotee and a hacker (same person?) on the Hare Krishna

World site, I wonder about this devotee calling himself

Bhaktatraveler. Does anyone know him personally and is he a

physically dangerous person ? I just looked up references to

Bhaktatraveler on the internet, and he denies being a devotee who was

once ejected from an ISKCON project. Since his contentious behavior

and writing is suspiciously like that of the devotee using an alias

who was recently banned from my two Hare Krishna World forums, I

wonder if he is being honest about this ejection.

 

Regardless of who he really is, he seems to imagine himself to be a

better devotee that nearly anyone else, and apparently thinks that he

perfectly understands Srila Prabhupada's vani. However to me he

seems to have little realization, and to be prone to simple 'blind

following'. On another site he blindly accepts and glorifies the most

abominable 'laws' from the 'Laws of Manu', which, like portions of

the Bhavishya Purana, has clearly been redacted by Mohammedan-

influenced corrupter-copyists.

 

The tragedy of Vaishnavas accepting such corrupted scriptural

editions as authentic shastra is why more people, and especially more

of our leaders should study history. Naively some Vaishnavas ignore

the fact that followers of Mohammed militarily and politically

controlled much of India for centuries, which provided them with

ample opportunity to corrupt authentic Vedic Traditions to support

their own laws and pathological social practices. If one compares

Sharia or the fundamentalist 'Islamic' law of the Taliban, for

instance, with the present (redacted) 'Laws of Manu', one will find

numerous similarities in their most brutal, sexist and racist/class-

elitist doctrines. Did these horrible ideas of 'justice'

enter 'Islam' from the peaceful and tolerant, spiritual Vedic

Tradition? Or are these part of the unimaginably cruel and brutal

culture of the Arabs at the time of Mohammed? When the followers of

Mohammed conquered, they forced this brutal Arabic cultural 'law' on

everyone, and corrupted everyone's authentic scriptures to meet their

ends. So they took the Ramayana, the Puranas, The Dharma Shastra and

any other important and influential works they could, to publish them

in redacted editions, which would support their rule, and laws.

Today owning a real Jewish or Christian Bible is punishable by death

in many Muslim lands, because the leaders don't want anyone to know

what these scriptures actually say. In India, the Muslim-corrupted

texts have been circulating for centuries, and most devotees cannot

detect these at all.

 

The Mohammedan leaders have sold their distorted versions of Judaism

and Christianity to the Muslim masses, and in India they attempted to

do the same thing, to appropriate Vedic Tradition to serve their own

ends. However in India, there were already so many versions of so

many 'vedic' texts, that the Mohammedan, and Mohammedan-influenced

scripture-redacters could only succeed in corrupting a few important

texts. I am convinced that the 'Laws of Manu' is one of these.

The "Bhavishya Purana" is another Vaishnava Shastra that has

definitely been redacted for a Muslim-related socio-political effect.

The passages in the Bhavishya Purana regarding Mohammed and Jesus,

and more modern figures, have no history in any verifiably ancient

editions, and are written in a form containing clear connections to

Ishmaelite Shia Muslim and late Biblical Traditions. These insertions

in the text are obvious to properly trained linguistic scholars, and

those who have some understanding of the history of the text, but the

devotees are accepting this late fraudulent edition of their sacred

literature as authentic !

 

Thus, without studying history, devotees are just blindly accepting

these corrupted texts as the original bona fide scriptures mentioned

in real ancient scriptural source-works. The real Bhavishya Purana is

mentioned in source works, but the Victorian Era Edition of it, in

common use now, was corrupted by someone or group for some socio-

political and religious reason. Studying the situation and persons

surrounding this Editions' production raises many questions regarding

its socio-religious and political purposes. Devotees may realize that

many many corrupted versions of the Gita exist, due to the activities

of the mayavadis and other non-Vaishnavas, but they don't consider

that other Vedic works may also have been abused to promote some

other and foreign non-Vaishnava agenda. In the case of the Taliban-

like corrupted 'Laws of Manu', the blind-following of some devotees

can be dangerous. This is why I would not want anyone to live in

a 'vedic' society ruled by the likes of Bhaktatraveler. According to

his post on another forum, in the ideal Varnashram Society, he would

blindly implement the Sharia-related evils of the spurious and

brutal "Laws of Manu" without any qualms.

 

Please dear Prabhupadanugas, do NOT be 'blind followers'. It is

dangerous.

 

your aspiring servant, Bhakti Ananda Goswami