I found blasphemy of ISKCON leaders online. How should I respond?

From: jagoruk mondal

I have found the blasphemy of our acharyas on Internet, while being online. They are blamed very heavily. I got bewildered, please help. Also it may be a problem who comes to these sites without much knowledge of ISKCON.

Answer: Yes, this is one of the dangers of advanced technology, that anybody can write anything without  substantiation. Make any allegation against anyone and make that allegation available for the whole world to see. Most of these site are motivated by people who feel that they should be in power and not the apparent ISKCON leaders in power. That’s why they try not just find faults, but imagine faults. Imagine faults often in a very grievous and distorted way. So these sort of sites generally has full lies and half truths. Some of them are total distortions and some of the allegations over there have not the least spaces in facts. Some of them are extreme distortions within them, they are half truths. For example, they may say something like: particular women inspire a guru to become a sanyasi. Something like that. If we actually read that, it’s not a women, it’s a small girl who asked this brahmachari, ” when will you take sanyas” ? and he feels inspired and takes sannyas.

The other thing is that guru tells his disciple to take drugs. If we look at the actual details of the article or go into the case history and find that. There was his spiritual master offering counseling and guidance to his disciple who was repeatedly feeling depressed. Both in practice of devotional life as well as his material life. After repeated counseling sessions didn’t work. Then there are some cases of depression which require clinical attention. So this particular spiritual master felt that after talking to some doctors or whatever that this particular devotee needed some medical treatment for that. So what he gave him was pharmaceutical drugs not narcotic drugs. But the way the article was often portrayed was that guru tells the disciple to take drugs. That means Guru is making the disciple to break one of the four regulative principles. Therefore we shouldn’t give much credence to this sort of allegations and ultimately we should know that if we practice Krishna consciousness we will become purified and those who will not practice Krishna consciousness will not become purified. Yes, there have been a few leaders in our movement who has had some difficulties. But if they have done anything that morally and legally wrong, then ISKCON itself takes action against them and some of them have been have been either told to step-down from all position of leadership or some of them have been expelled from ISKCON also. ISKCON has its own internal mediation as well as legislation mechanism which takes action against any individual no matter who that person maybe. ISKCON is filled with conditioned souls who are trying to become devotees and who are  aspiring in the path of pure devotional service. Some of them may have lapses  and these lapses are something which is natural and the scriptures talk about scriptures. Where Vishwamitra muni has a fall, Shobari muni has a fall. Therefore these should not be seen as the signs of failures of the movement per se. The Upanishads says that the ” Suraysa dharanshansaya adhurathaya durgam pathas thou kevoyo vidanti”, that advancing the spiritual path is like walking on a razor’s edge it kills very easily if one is inattentive and slips. So what in one sense told in the scriptures is that this path is dangerous is also sees the lives of some of the devotees who came with the lower confidence and careless in their practice of spiritual life and in the practice of the disciples in the spiritual life. They have to pay the consequences. ISKCON itself took action against them for that.

Most importantly if some new person is coming and he is visiting this sort of sites, then if we contact such a person and such a person contacts us, we can be very straight forward and tell that person that Krishna himself says in Bhagavad-Gita that as people surrender unto me I reward them accordingly – ‘Yatha mam prapadyante tam sativa Bhajamyaham’.  So what is our motive in coming towards Krishna? We are coming into Krishna’s movement, if we are looking for controversies, controversies is what we will find. If are coming towards Krishna’s movement, if we are looking for blasphemies, Krishna will reciprocate and finds us blasphemy. If we are coming into Krishna’s movement and we are looking for good looking members of opposite sex that’s what we will find within the movement also. If are coming into Krishna’s movement, looking for opportunities for career within the movement involving power and money, that’s all we will see in the movement. But if we come into the movement looking for Krishna, we will find Krishna also in the movement. So the process is there and that is going to help us in advance and the institution is meant to help us practice the process. Therefore if we come to the movement to practice the process we will make spiritual advancement. There is absolute guarantee of that because that is the word of scriptures, those who follow the process they will advance. But if we come to the institute for any other motive because the institute is in the material world and the institute is run managed or membered with the conditioned souls trying to become devotees, it will have all the typical problems that have in the mundane institute.  But what makes the members of the moment and seekers of the truth special and transcendental to the problems is their practice of the process of Krishna Consciousness. So if we center ourselves in the on the practice of the Krishna consciousness, firstly we will not go on surfing on the sites for such information and even if we finds such information, we will just put it aside knowing that either it entirely white lies or it is half truth distorted to the point of extreme untruths or even if there are shades of truths they are also indicated that the typical dangers on the spiritual path that are talked about in the scriptures exists even today. Those who don’t follow the process will sequent. That is what we are seeing even today.  That’s why it’s best for us to focus on Krishna, when we come into Krishna’s movement.

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