Does ISKCON brainwash people?
So when people accuse God that means brainwashing people and making them into devotees how should we respond to that? One of the basic characteristics of cults the brainwash is that they they try to take away the intelligence of people that means you you are basically people are just reduced to robots who are supposed to do just what you are doing like we see what does Krishna do in the Bhagavad Gita? Krishna is the exact opposite Krishna gives the knowledge to Arjuna and then he says so it is now deliberate deeply on this and then you decide what you want to do so so in general cult this is in the anti-cult theory also they say that cults basically treat members as objects for indoctrination as objects for indoctrination indoctrination the doctrine to put doctrine into people to basically the indoctrination means to make people believe some things like say the Muslims take a young Muslim children and they make them to walk jihadis indoctrinated that you die for Allah and you will go to you will go to Jannat and you get 73 virgins in Jannat or whatever that is indoctrination so people are taught not to think for themselves but just to swallow dogma that is given to them now if we see the Krishna conscious philosophy there is systematic education there are answers to questions the Bhagavad Gita in itself is filled with question answers the Vedic tradition is filled with question answers in fact if you see no other religion has this much level of question answers as much as the Vedic tradition has so the very fact that there is systematic philosophical education there is encouraging of questions there is facility to get question answer that itself is a resonant evidence that this is not spring washing so people have certain conceptions which they may acquire from various ways but if they actually interact with devotees properly and we we shouldn't be at every opportunity trying to foist our beliefs on them now we should also act like normal people when we are dealing with them and yes we are devotees and that is the important part of our life because it is the purpose of our life but it shouldn't be the only basis for our interacting with others especially if we are having a working relationship we are working with colleagues as colleagues as professionals working in a company we perform in a competent way we work properly and then people see this is also a part of their life they will go ahead and we tell them about it so that means if this is a devotee's life then out of that a devotion is a big part of the devotee's life but when people see that devotion is the only part of their life and they don't appreciate the other part of life other part means we may say what other part of the devotee but we are professionals we are families and we see that okay you are also living normally like that we will not do all the things that they do but still when people appreciate other human beings if their first impression is that you are a brainwashed cult member then it is a negative impression but if they talk with us they say okay you talk politely you are a good person then gradually the impression changes then if they ask questions and we are able to give answers then they understand how we are also and we should also give proper answers sometimes we need to come very judgmental and give answers that alienates people also our answer should be reasonable and understandable not judgmental where we condemn other people you know this is a mayavadi this is bad this is that no we have to properly answer people in a way that they can understand at their level so if you give proper answers and if you behave properly with them if you are competent in our profession we are responsible our family life we are courteous in our behavior then gradually this perception gets revised and actually speaking at least in India the Krishna consciousness movement does have overall positive perception there is negative in certain quarters but overall we do have people do appreciate what our contributions were doing we find out when we are dealing with such people those sceptical what aspect of Krishna consciousness can be present which they will appreciate so they also have a circle of what they appreciate so they may ask okay if you they may have concern you people are spending so much money on the temples what are you doing for poor people then we tell them about Bindemi we tell them about football they may appreciate that or somebody in the nationalistic sort of tendency we may tell them so many people in the all over Indian culture that even Indian principles Indian practices they are adopting or somebody else whatever the within their framework should find out something that can they can appreciate so it's not easy but it's not impossible so for example if we talk about Bakhtiyanth Hospital when you go to doctors are working together providing a service to the community through that hospital so we have to that is the sensitivity of a creature where how we can penetrate the world view and present our message in a way that they can appreciate okay so thank you very much.