The Monk’s Podcast 46 with Anuttama Prabhu – How we can outgrow our cultish image

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Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI and may contain occasional errors or inaccuracies.

Hare Krishna. Thank you very much for joining once again in the Monks Podcast. Hare Krishna Chaitanya Prabhu.

It's always my pleasure to be here with you. It's wonderful to hear from you and several devotees have talked about how they're finding our conversations very illuminating. So I hope that we can have it in the series in future also.

Wonderful, wonderful. Glad to be of service. Yes, thank you.

So today I thought of discussing on a topic of sectarianism and maybe transcending sectarianism. So I found this in your association itself, how to appreciate the broader traditions and how to see our tradition from also from a broader perspective. So I'll start with, there was an article on ISKCON news about a conversation.

In fact, like a address that you gave with the prominent anti-cult activist and he was appreciating you. So from an Indian perspective, when I first read that ISKCON was accused of being a cult, it seemed bizarre. This is the culture which has been there for so long and so many people practice it.

So can you explain why you were thought of as a cult and then how things have changed so dramatically that you are given as a model? Yeah, well, there's a history of it. And a big part of it was that, as everyone knows, ISKCON appeared, Prabhupada came to the West in the 1960s. 1965 he founded ISKCON, 1966.

So that was a period of a lot of social upheaval. A lot of young people were looking for a different kind of spiritual experience, spiritual paths. A lot of yogis, gurus, different kind of teachers.

So there was a lot of apprehension amongst the leaders. Why are young people getting involved in these different religious traditions? Why don't they stay with ours? So a lot of parents were concerned. How come my, you know, my whatever, 18-year-old, 24-year-old, it was mostly young people, as we know, came forward to join ISKCON.

And at the same time, a lot of young people joined other organizations, some of them scrupulous, some of them very unscrupulous, some of them well founded, some of them not well founded. So one, there was kind of an era of distrust, like a lot of kind of revolutionary spirited young people rejecting their parents, rejecting the culture. So automatically the parents are kind of thinking, you know, what's going on here? Is somebody doing this to my children? So that was one thing.

And then the second, there were a lot of other people. Just hold on. So what we're saying is that they thought that there must be some external influence because of which this is happening.

So in a sense, from what I read, the counterculture arose because of discontent with the mainstream material culture and people were looking for some alternatives. But in general, I think it's a human's tendency to try to maybe scapegoat or find someone to blame for something that is not working. No, that's definitely there.

In fact, I tell a little side story real quick. We went to one anti-cult meeting, a quotation mark anti-cult, you know, And it was a Jewish rabbi speaking to Jewish families about all of their kids joining the Krishna's. And there was a lot of new organizations in that time.

And just directly to your point, at the end of this talk, this rabbi, that particular event, I did not wear dhoti. I always go to anti-cult and dhoti and tilak and the whole thing. But that particular one, we just wanted to, I didn't know this man.

I just wanted to hear what he had to say. At the end of the whole event, he told these parents, he said, so I have a question for you. Every one of you says you're Jewish.

You're all concerned because your children are becoming Christians and they're becoming Hare Krishnas or whatever, this or that. If a photographer, a cameraman followed you around for 24 hours with the camera at the end of that day, would he know that you're Jewish? And if not, why should you expect your children to stay or to be Jewish? So he was challenging them. So, you know, when you get up in the morning, he's a rabbi, he's a Jewish leader.

You know, do you pray like a Jew is supposed to do? Do you read the Bible the way the Jews are supposed to? Do you go to the temple the way the Jews do? Do you eat the way the Jews? Well, why do you expect your kids to be Jewish if you're not Jewish? That was his critique. So there was the America was quite materialistic place. A lot of the people that were religious, you know, not everybody, but a lot of it was pretty superficial, at least in the eyes of the young people.

So you have this whole environment, a lot of young people joining different groups. It's not like we are there alone. So that whole environment was very suspicious.

And then, you know, you add to that that some, you know, young people, they're over the top. You know, like, you know, when I was a bakta leader, we had one devotee. He wrote a 16 page letter to his mother.

Dear mother, you're not my mother. Actually, I'm not this body. You're not that body.

You know, God's blue. He plays a flute, you know, whenever he told him. And I said, write her a letter.

She's your mother. Tell her you got a lot of nice friends and you're eating really good and you're feeling happy and the weather's nice. You know, and you miss your old friends.

And, you know, how's the dog? Just write a letter like the way normal people write letters. And then, you know, he ended up leaving because of a whole huge crisis with his family. Because it was, you know, a little fanatical, a little over the top.

So that was another thing. And then also just look at it. I read one book by some, it was, I don't remember what the exact book was.

So that it was like a question. What is the strangest thing you have heard in your life? There's some survey done. So one of the answers that was given was Hare Krishna coming to us and saying that God is a blue boy.

So now I can understand, you know, that it would be quite shocking for people to hear that from their perspective. For sure. It's like us, you know, what's the shocking thing? There is no God.

There's just zero. I mean, come on. That's crazy.

Because from our cultural present perspective, from our theological convictions, from our tradition, that's absurd. It's the craziest thing we've ever heard. So yeah, so there's a lot of that.

So that was said. So one, the environment was not great. Two, because so many people were joining.

Two, some of the individual devotees were not thoughtful in the way they dealt with their parents. You know, parents are concerned about their kids. And I mean, I got a granddaughter that just turned 16.

You know, I'm thinking like, well, at 18, I left home, you know, actually, for me, it's a little older than 20, moved into a temple. I just like a kid. What do I know at 20 years of age? But when you're 20, you think you're all grown up, you can do whatever you want.

So we didn't really manage the relationships with our parents. Well, that was a big problem. And the third thing, there definitely, there was some, a lot of mistakes were made.

You know, devotees were, you know, some individual leaders, they made mistakes. And we had leaders who got into trouble with the law and leaders that mistreated some of the devotees in the communities. You know, so there was a lot of mistakes were made.

And some of that was where devotees were taking things that they thought were, quote, like the ideal, you know, Vedic culture, trying to transport it a little artificially without a lot of common sense into the West. And that caused a lot of problems, you know, like as an example, I think the principle is for people that are in the marriage ashram, it should be very serious commitment. But sometimes that gets transformed into, oh, they should get married very young.

But in the West, young is like they haven't figured out who they are yet. They haven't figured out what they want to be, what they want to do. So people that get married too young, you know, later on, it becomes a big problem, source of divorce and everything else.

So sometimes it's got in the early days to say, OK, you know, young people, 16, the girls aren't going to be married. Well, they don't know who they are yet. So trying to do the right thing in the wrong cultural situation.

And then meanwhile, the parents think, you know, my daughter or my son, how can they get married so young? Or, you know, and also I think the fourth thing was so culturally different. You know, hi, mom, everything's great. I just I shaved my head and I'm not going to eat any food you cook anymore.

And by the way, I'm not going to come home for Christmas and don't send me money because it's on my. I mean, you know, it's so parents think, oh, culturally, how can my child have changed so quickly? And many times they're not aware of kind of the social, not social, kind of the spiritual turmoil or the spiritual quest that their kids are under until they what they see is this radical external change, which which maybe wasn't so radical at all. I know my own mind, my becoming devotee was a very gradual process.

But in my parents mind, like one day he just decided to move into our Christian temple. They had no idea what was going on inside. So those those things all kind of added up, you know, the culture are being a little fanatical as young people.

The culture of Krishna conscious means so much different. It's like a radical change for a lot of people and mixed in with like a lot of mistakes were made. And then on top of that, whatever these is another fifth factor, whatever these other groups did.

Say there was this guy Guru Maharaj. OK, I don't know if you ever heard of him. You know, he's kind of he's an Indian person and he said he was God.

He said he was Krishna and he go on stage with peacock feathers. And he was kind of a chubby, funny little guy. But all of his devotees were saying he's God.

So, you know, you mix together a little bit from that. So the perception in the world, the largest, all of these gurus, all of these teachers, you know, one of them was stealing money. They all steal money.

One of them said he's God. They all think he's God. One of them had a terrible education for the kids in their ashrams.

Well, they all have terrible. So all got bundled into one, you know, and then and then again and mixed in from our side. You know, there were some some legitimate mistakes made by devotees and by leaders.

So you mix that all into one. It becomes a very volatile kind of a chemical mix. Yeah.

You know, now you're putting it this way. I never thought of it. Actually, even in India, to some extent, when I became a Brahmachari, it was, I don't think we have thought of exactly the cult, but it was radical.

My father is an extremely cultured gentleman, very soft spoken. My mother used to be a little angry. My father was very calm and unflappable.

And yet when I became a Brahmachari, he came to the temple and I was not there at that time. I had gone for a program. So he met the temple commander and he was, I later I was told he was so angry.

He said, you know, I want my son back. He said, how much money do you want? He took out like notes from his pocket and hurled it to the temple commander. I said, take as much money as you want.

Give my son back to me. Yeah. So because, because no one had helped him understand, including us, actually your relationship with your son will be even deeper.

And the way he's being trained and he's being, the culture that he's gaining, he's going to be a better son than he ever could have been becoming an engineer or a doctor or a government official or something like that. They didn't know those things. And I give an example.

My parents initially, when I first moved to the temple, my father sent me a Time magazine, right? It's like India Today, right? It's a big national magazine. He sent me, I opened this envelope, maybe two weeks after I moved in the temple. No letter inside, just a Time magazine.

He had scribbled on the front, come back to the real world. That's all I said. Come back to the real world.

My father sent that to me at the temple. But there's nothing in the Time magazine about anything. Not just the fact that this is reality and you've left reality.

In his mind, Time magazine is what's true and good in the world and all that. At least accurate information. And I'm bewildered.

Now, flash forward six, seven years later, and both my parents told me, they said, you know, of our three children, you're the most, you're the happiest. And at that time, my brother was a real, I had an older brother. He was a real estate developer in America.

Those are people make a lot of money. They build shopping centers and he had a huge house. In fact, he had five houses, five big houses.

And remember, he had seven cars at one point, like a Porsche, a Ferrari, like those types, very, very wealthy. And my parents told me, they said, you know, I'm living in the Sampalwari Krishna Temple. He said, you're happiest of our children.

And that's what really made him happy when they saw I was legitimately happy. So they could just make out, they could make out you are happy because how often were you interacting with them? Oh, in the beginning, not so much. The first couple of years, I don't, I don't remember much at all.

But then I started visiting at least a couple of times a year. And then I would start to, you know, I'd write them letters. They'd come to visit me once a year.

I'd come to visit them. I was living in Colorado, which is a very beautiful part of the country. So they'd drive out and see me.

We'd, you know, we'd spend three, four days, take a little vacation, drive around some natural sites and things like that. Because we'd done that when I was a child. So, you know, and that meant a lot to them.

And, you know, they would not have been happy if I just moved back in the house with them. But, you know, they wanted to see me spend some time. Oh, yes.

I'll add a sixth thing, a sixth point. We're not good at listening. If we taught our devotees at a very early age to be better listeners, so your mother says, you know, or your father says, I want my son back.

You know, take all the money you want. So, you know, if I understand you correctly, you're really feeling disconnected with my son. Yeah, he never calls.

He never writes. I don't know what he's doing. So, see, he says, I want my son back.

But when you listen to him, he says, well, he never writes. He never calls. I don't know what he's doing.

And maybe if you listen more, it goes deeper even than that. So maybe if you just as an example, if the son writes to him, speaks with him. Of course, these days you can phone text easily.

Then he's happy. He knows what the son's doing. He knows he's healthy.

You know, the son's sick. He knows he's getting medical care, etc. The son decides he wants to come home.

He knows he has that choice. I mean, there was a misperception in those days. If you joined the Christian movement, you couldn't get out.

You mentioned these difficult people. I went to a court case once. I was shocked.

This one so-called expert was asked in a trial. Because they've got some legal issues and this and that. He was asked in a trial, how does one leave the Hare Krishna movement? And he gave this analogy like in the 1930s in Chicago, when he had all these, you know, mobs, you know, these gundas, you know, like Chicago, like Al Capone and those people.

They had this expression called cement boots, which meant when they wanted to kill somebody, they'd put cement like around you. You know, they kill you and then they put your feet in cement and they throw you in a river so your body would never be, you just disappear. They wouldn't know where to find you.

So he said that under oath in a court case. How do you get out of the Hare Krishna movement? With cement shoes on. I mean, that kind of, I mean, it was insane.

And I later met that guy and he turned out to be kind of a nice guy. He wrote a letter in favor of us years later, but I don't know what got into him. But he made that statement.

There's no truth to that whatsoever at all. It was just completely crazy. But there was that kind of animosity built up.

Maybe he thought that, maybe he'd seen that in some other organization and he said that's the same thing that we do. But you know, those types of fears, you know, if a parent hears that, of course the media, they love to hear stuff like that, you know. They make a big deal out of it.

It's like social media today. You can say any crazy thing on social media, the more sensational is everybody likes it and they copy it to all their friends. Whether it's true or not, people don't care.

So it was a very kind of a, you know, difficult period. So if I can flash forward, I think you want to explore how we kind of. Yeah.

You said, you know, not staying connected with the parents and other things. So even I realized that over a period of time, that sometimes I feel that when we classify things as simply spiritual and material, then we miss out on something essential that is human. Absolutely.

Everything material, if we just reduce it to sensual or attachment, but there is something which is, which is like a human connection, which is not necessarily like a mundane or entangling connection. It's just decency. Just decency, kindness.

Sometimes we call that as mundane and we call it mundane and we just neglect that. So sometimes like Prabhu will talk about the natural affection for one's family. Yeah.

He'll talk a million times about how you can't be overly attached. Why did he have to preach like that? Because the whole world is overly attached. So he's trying to bring us some way over here to the middle ground.

But then you see, he writes many, many times, the natural attraction for children or spouse. So he's like assuming that people are going to take responsibility for their children, but don't be overly attached. You know, he's assuming that people are going to be responsible, but don't be overly thinking just making money is going to make you successful.

So, you know, society is here. He's preaching a lot of times way over here to bring us to the middle, but we kind of take this and ignore any kind of middle ground. Yes.

This is very precise. I tried. I sometimes I have a diagram in my classes.

This is like, say, material responsibility. Yes. Spiritual responsibility.

And we could say this is attachment. And this is detachment coming from spiritual responsibility. And this is simply irresponsibility.

So what happens is that like you said Prabhupada and even the Bhagavatam, Bhagavatam is spoken to Parikshit Maharaj. It assumes that he's material responsible. The rise from that material level to spiritual level.

Yes. But what happens is that somebody who's at this level of, you could say material responsibility. So material responsibility and spiritual responsibility can sometimes look very similar.

Oh, they're very different. Like for instance, gold and iron, they're both metals. But they're very different.

Yes. I'd say sometimes like a person in the mode of ignorance and a person in the mode of goodness. Both of them may be sitting.

And a person in the mode of passion may be running. But person in ignorance and goodness are very different. Very different.

Yeah. Very different. And if you're in the mode of passion, at least you're thinking where is the best place to sit.

A person in the mode of ignorance is just sitting asleep. He doesn't know what, he doesn't even know he's asleep. Yeah.

He doesn't even know he's sitting. So passionate, they're running around. Where's the best place? Where's the best place? You can teach them sitting like this man in the mode of goodness is best.

He can learn. For someone too much in the mode of ignorance, you have to at least, they have to have some kind of motivation. They have to be lifted out of that.

That's true. So let me just repeat these factors to just get an overall sense. You said the environment at that time itself, where children were rebelling against the parents, then the presence of many other organizations, then the fanatical behavior of some of our devotees, some mistakes committed by the leaders.

And then the radical difference between our lifestyle, our culture and what they were familiar with. Yes. And then one more, you said six.

I can't remember what the last one was right now. One more. I thought was that maybe the, the cloistered nature of the way we live is disconnected from the world.

And that causes suspicion. Yes. My father said, you don't read newspaper.

You're cutting yourself off from the world. That was something. That's very true.

Because a lot of us, especially in the West, I don't know the Indian experience. We didn't spend that much time in India too many years later, but there was definitely a sense of having to get completely away from the world because there was too much temptation and we had too many bad habits we were trying to change. So it wasn't so much that this is Krishna's Maya.

It was just his Maya. There wasn't a sense like the world is Krishna's energy and I have to use everything in his service. There was much more in the sense, you know, Krishna's in the temple and, you know, everything outside the door is Maya.

And you have to be careful, which is a, which is a reasonable way and in many ways, a good way for newer people to think. But, you know, if it's not done properly, it can lead to a little like, you know, fanaticism and certainly step on a lot of people's toes. This is a wonderful phrase.

You've said this is Krishna's Maya, not just Maya. Beautifully put. I never thought of it that way.

Of course, Krishna says, But still, yeah. To think about it that way. The other day, Prabhupada was on a walk at Dr. Mishra's ashram and they were either watching the sun come up or go down.

And one of the devotees mentioned, Swamiji, isn't the sunset a beautiful thing? And Prabhupada said, we are interested in the beautiful person who made the sunset. It doesn't mean we don't appreciate the sunset. Yes.

You know, it's like someone is attached to the family. You have to connect the family to Krishna. Then it becomes spiritualized.

So if you're in a Krishna conscious mood, you can look at the beautiful sunset and helps you remember Krishna. But if you're in the mood of like, oh, sunsets are so nice. I remember when I was young with my family and my girlfriend or this or that, that has to be smashed.

So you have to kind of cut that connection and put Krishna there. But as one becomes a little more aware, then you see it's Krishna. Yeah.

And of course, we have to be careful. We have to be careful because, you know, it's like Prabhupada said, like the drop of water on the lotus petal. And any minute it can go this way or that way.

We have to be attentive. So I mean, I can look out my windows here. There's nice trees and green leaves.

And, you know, I can think about, isn't it amazing the way the sun that Krishna made millions of miles away and it can glimmer on a tree just the right temperature and how the trees cool everything down and what a mystical process it is. Or I can think, boy, it's beautiful outside. I think I'd rather go take a walk in the woods and talk about Krishna.

Now I'm in trouble. Better I talk about Krishna and I use that as an example with you to help me remember Krishna. Yes.

But I got to be careful because it's, you know, Prabhupada talks about the Royal Roads and there's danger. Even on the Royal Roads, there's danger. Yes.

We have to be cautious, but not condemning, I would say. Okay. Sounds like one of your phrases.

Be cautious, but not condemning. That's very good. I was thinking of some words that rhyme.

Cautious and condemning is already CC is there. It's beautiful. Yeah.

It's like be cautious, but don't condemn. Yes, that's true. And you know, in the Biblical tradition, right? Hate the sin, not the sinner.

I thought of the same thing. Yes. Yes.

You know, we have so many stories of that in our tradition. Yeah, that's true. So then you're going to fast forward, Prabhu.

So this was the. So 1993, I've become the Director of Communications, and I'm understanding this principle that we need to communicate as an organization, particularly with the people that can help us or the people that hurt us. You're trying to kind of smooth the path, right? Like we want to distribute books.

Well, we need to have a relationship with the government because they get permission. If you wanted to have a Ratha Yata parade, you need to have a relationship with the health department because they give you the stamp of approval and you can distribute prasadam. They say no, no prasadam.

Like that. You know, go and teach in a college. If the university officials don't respect you, well, they're going to try to shut you down.

They're going to see you as a bad thing. So we need to have mutually, we use this term, mutually beneficial relationships. If they see that our festival is a nice contribution, then they want to help us with the festival.

If they see that we just make a big mess and everybody complains because we're too noisy and we're impolite and we're proud and arrogant and nonsense, you know, this is the one time here the street matters. The rest of the time it's useless. So what do we care if we leave it in a big mess afterwards? If we think like that, okay, no more parade next year.

But if we think, oh, you're so much appreciated, officer or, you know, minister or, you know, bureaucrat. Thank you so much for allowing us to have our festival. And, you know, what can we do to help you? And I don't know if I mentioned this in our last call, but I read something recently, maybe I did, probably when he was planning to go to Japan with that special cultural event.

Yeah, you mentioned that they asked him to write to the local mayors and others. And Prabhupada said to do that for them. Yes, he did.

He wrote to them. And I read something recently, again, the importance of maintaining good relationships. The man who owned the building in 26 Second Avenue, his name was, I don't know how to pronounce it, is Mr. Chutti.

I think Chutti or Tutti, something like that. Mentioned he was a Polish man who worked hard his whole life and he bought this building. So he's the owner, manages this building.

And he didn't like the young devotees. You know, they're like hippies, this and that, but he liked Prabhupada. And Prabhupada used to tell his disciples, you should treat him, or the young man just coming, you should treat him like your father.

So they would say to him, Mr. Chutti, we're like your sons, right? Like the Indian culture, you treat other people with respect. But then I read, it said, Prabhupada used to regularly help Dr. Chutti with various tasks, including helping take the garbage out from the other tenants. Now think of it.

You know, okay, Prabhupada's the founder, Chari, pure devotee. Just put that aside for a minute. A Brahmin, Vaishnava, coming from Vrindavan, in New York.

And, you know, this is like an American, everybody puts their trash in nice, clean plastic bags. You tie it up, you carry it out, and it's kind of relatively pukka. Carrying trash on metal cans, people threw everything in there.

Most, no Americans were vegetarian in those days. So there's, you know, there's who knows what's in those trash cans. But to build a relationship and to show, you know, a friendship with this man, who was the landlord.

He could make trouble for us if he wanted to, or he could give us permission or allow us to not complain to help Prabhupada. Prophet says in the Leelamrita, Prabhupada would do menial tasks, specifically mentions help him take out the garbage. Of other tenants, not even his own garbage.

His own garbage, at least you know what's in there. What's in that other garbage? Is this in Leelamrita, or you heard it somewhere else? Leelamrita, Volume 2. Volume 2. Of course, Volume 2, but I don't remember reading that. That's stunning.

Go back and look in that section, 26. In the early days, we were probably first in New York City. I didn't remember reading it either.

And it's so much connected with what we talk about in communications, that we have to build relationships with people. It doesn't mean Prabhupada approved Mr. Chutti or his lifestyle. He even mentioned sometimes Prabhupada would criticize him to his students about how this man, he worked his whole life and he put all his money in this building.

Now he's just working hard again. But still, on a personal level, he was friendly and he would help him with menial tasks, including sometimes helping to take the trash out for the tenants. Prabhupada would bring himself, in a sense, bring himself all the way down to here to interact with people on that human level.

Amazing. But sometimes we walk around with our nose up in the air. I'm a Brahmin.

I don't want to talk to this person or that person or whatever. So we have to look closely at the life of our founder, and how he put it into practice. The ideals and how we apply the ideal according to time and place and circumstance requires some real intelligence and some compassion.

So I think incidents like you, sorry, incidents like these, are the animating spirit of the communications department, isn't it? Yes. Yes. Yes.

So Prabhu, how did you take up the communications department service? You were the Denver Temple president in 93? Yeah, I was in 93. Well, actually, I was asked to go to Washington, D.C. by Mukunda Miraj to do communications work. In fact, maybe I can just finish with the anti-cult.

How I started doing that. Please, go ahead. I moved to Washington, D.C. and I realized that one of the places that's making trouble for us in America, I mean, there were court cases and they were saying all kinds of nasty things in the media.

You know, these people are brainwashed and it's a cult and it's not authentic and, you know, it's terrible and they're, you know, they're taking, breaking up families. So I tried to contact with one anti-cult leader and the woman in a place in Chicago and she wouldn't even talk to me. But then in 1996 was the 30th anniversary of ISKCON.

So I was trying to get media coverage and a very important paper, the New York Times, they did an article about the 30th anniversary. And I had to work very hard with the reporter and get them interested and share information. So he wrote a story, but then the title of the story was Hare Krishna's at 30, Real Changes or Just PR? You know, as we were talking about how we matured and, you know, we're accepted and we're nice people.

So, you know, it's an intelligent paper. They don't just buy whatever propaganda you put out. They want to know, are there real changes? In that article, they quoted this one woman who was a leader in the anti-cult movement.

And she said, well, we don't get as many complaints as we used to about the Hare Krishnas, but you never know if there's any, if they actually make changes. It was, they had this mindset. They had some real problems in the past and we don't, you know, we don't know if they're better, but they had some real problems in the past.

So there's no point arguing about whether you had real problems in the past. You're not going to win that argument with people like that, at least initially. But what you can talk about is, okay, those problems may have been there.

Here's what's happening today. Let's talk about today. What are we doing? What have we done to correct those issues? What's new? What's better? And if you see us doing something today, let's talk about that because we can fix that.

I can't fix whatever mistakes I made 30 years ago. So I saw this article in the paper. I called up the reporter, big reporter in those days.

And Gus, Gus Niebuhr was his name. I said, Gus, why did you have to quote this anti-cult person? This is our 30th anniversary. Nobody's been kidnapped.

Nobody's in court. Things are kind of quiet. Why did you have to do that? And I remember he told me, he said, it's out there, Anupama.

You need to deal with it. And it was like, this perception is out there in the public mind, and you're the communications guy. You need to deal with it.

So I thought, okay, it's Krishna talking to me through the New York Times. So I called up this woman. Her name was, last name was Rudin.

I can't remember her first name right at this minute. I became friends with her later. And I said, hey, you know, thanks for that.

I read your quote, and Gus gave me your phone number. I hope you don't mind my calling you. I appreciate, you know, you always got to leave with the positives.

I appreciate what you said. You hadn't had any current problems, but also I noted you said, but maybe there's not real changes. I wanted to kind of talk with you about that because I think we are out trying to address whatever problems there were.

And she said, I'm not the one to talk to, talk to this man who's the executive director of this whole organization. So I called him up. We had a couple of nice conversations on the phone, and it turned out they were having a conference in Washington, D.C. where I was living like two months later.

So I went to that conference with a friend of mine, Haridas, who was working on a PhD program in pastoral counseling, like psychology kind of a degree. And then one other person, maybe my wife, because I knew what the misperceptions are. You know, one, they don't have family.

So here's my wife that gets rid of that misperception and they drop out of the world. Well, here's the guy, he's working on his PhD and he's a nice guy. So that all worked out.

So then is this good? Should I tell you more? What happened? Is it interesting? Please go ahead. Yeah. Okay.

So we went to their conference all day long and I noticed some people had this idea. Occult means you're brainwashed and you're bad and you're evil. And the government, we need to crush these people.

And other people were very different opinions. Like, well, what exactly is occult? You know, are the Christians occult because they chant on beats? You know, or is anything that's different? Is it occult because we're not familiar with it? Were the followers of Jesus who gave up everything, were they occult? You know, because their parents didn't know what they did. So I can immediately see, okay, we can talk to some of these people, at least that was very informative.

So then what we did, and this is some of the stuff that I do in my communications work. I have to do these kinds of things. I got to spend time with people.

So we invited three leaders of the anti-cult organization to go to dinner with us. There was a pure vegetarian restaurant not too far from the temple. There's no way these people can go to the temple.

There's no way I'm going to go to their place to eat a meal together. When we met at this restaurant, so we sit down, this was 1996. To put it in context, this was about 10 years after Kirtananda had been kicked out of ISKCON.

He later went to jail and was turned out to be a really bad guy. But he was a leader in ISKCON for, you know, at least from 77 to 86, and then he was expelled. Okay, so we know that story.

So we sit down with these people, and it's a little uncomfortable. We don't know anybody, and they're anti-cult, and we're maybe occult and all this. So the first question was, this one man, David Smith, I know him very well.

He says, so tell us, what ever happened with Kirtanananda? That was their first question. In other words, he's a Hare Krishna, and what's he doing? So I kind of remember like my, I kind of cleared my throat. I can remember feeling a little, like my temperature went up a degree or two.

I'm a little nervous. And I said, well, it's interesting you ask, but actually he's been kicked out of our organization. We expelled him 10 years ago.

And the community that he led, New Vrindavan, similarly expelled him. His own community expelled him a few years after that. They've now been integrated back into ISKCON.

We've fixed a lot of things that he mixed up. And he actually went to jail, and we helped put him in jail. And remember, they looked at me and they said, that's very, this true story.

I'm not exaggerating in iota. They said, that's very interesting. Thank you for sharing that information.

And I was kind of surprised they didn't know that. So then there's a moment of silence and, okay, I'm thinking, what do I ask? So I then asked him, I said, you may know this name or not. I'll explain.

I said, sorry to interrupt you. So how is it that they didn't know this part? Or it's more like the negative news gets publicized and then the subsequent news doesn't. Exactly.

And these people like Hari Krishna is one of a hundred organizations they're concerned about. And when we're in the news, we get a lot of attention. And when we're not, we don't, when things go wrong, everybody hears about it.

When they don't, you know, like the hospital down the street, you don't hear about the hospital down the street. If they're a thousand people a day get cured. But if somebody dies, cause they make a mistake, everybody hears about it.

So a little bit like that. Okay. So they asked my, they asked that question about Kirtananda.

I explained he'd been kicked, he'd been expelled and, you know, he was in jail. Okay. So then like, okay.

So then I ask an innocent question, just like theirs. I say, how's Ted Patrick doing now? Ted Patrick was one of the founding people of the anti-cult movement. Okay.

And he used to literally kidnap people, physically capture people in the street, throw a bag over their head with three big guys, put in the back of a car, drive to some cabin in the middle of nowhere, you know, lock them up and put them in front of bright lights and tell them bad things about whatever their pastor or their guru were like really heavy handed. Cause his idea was people are brainwashed. We got it.

Okay. He was the most well-known anti-cult person of his time. So naturally I ask a question, how's Ted Patrick doing? Okay.

They cleared their throats. The voices kind of, you know, shook a little bit and they said, well, actually Ted Patrick is no longer affiliated with our organization. We don't agree with the things that he's done.

And you may not be aware of this. He ended up going to jail for what he did. Okay.

At that point, everybody around the table realized we can talk to each other. We've had some problems. You've had some problems.

We've fixed. We tried to fix our problems. Have we fixed enough? That's a reasonable question.

Have you guys fixed enough? Are you still on the side of this person who physically kidnaps people? You know, we Hare Krishnas have to live in fear of this guy coming and grabbing somebody in the middle of the night. That's horrible. You people do that.

They said, no, no, we don't do that. When you Hare Krishnas, you had this leader who is, you know, breaking all kinds of laws and, you know, abusing people and breaking up families. No, no, no, we don't do that.

We don't do that. That's not who we are. And.

So in a sense, what happened was both of you sort of admitted the vulnerability. In a sense, that was, that's what brought down the walls. Vulnerable.

We're human beings and we make mistakes, which is why in communication is a really important part of doing good communications. We have to be. First, we have to try to be the best we can, as far as people, you know, we have to be exemplary.

That's there in the Bhagavad Gita. We're supposed to be truthful. It's not just.

A facade. We're supposed to be truthful people. We take vows, you know, clean, merciful, austere.

Sometimes I tell people self-discipline is a similar thing. I disciplined myself. You know, I give up things and maybe centrally gratify myself for a higher purpose.

That's self-discipline. And we have to practice those things. So, and then from that point, I started going to their conventions every year.

They have a big convention, like a hundred people, sometimes 150 people walk in and a Dodi. And sometimes my wife would come with me once or twice. Probably came with me and he made a presentation on a panel.

Sometimes some of the communications devotees from Europe came. We've been on a lot of panels with them. And, you know, some people, they think it's really good.

You're here. Some people are very, very uncomfortable. We're there.

Some people don't like the fact that we're there. Some people come up and, you know, start yelling at me about how they're saying, becoming members, some other group. And I'd say, you know, I don't have anything to do with that group, but you know what, is there something I can do? And then what happened right after that is, you know, I would get phone calls every now and then, like somebody thinks their son joined the Hare Krishna's and they can't find it.

Can you help out? And I would say, sure. All right. You know, we want families to be connected.

Well, you know, where was he? And it was like, well, this was 22 years ago. The last time he was seen in Chicago, for instance. So I call Chicago.

Anybody know this guy? Nobody knows the devotional name. His name was whatever, Phil Smith. Anybody know Philip Smith? Try to help him out as best I could.

I don't know if I ever actually found anybody, but I made a genuine effort to try to do so. And, you know, and I appreciated that. They appreciated that.

And then a couple of years later, I just maybe end with this little piece. We were on a panel very soon after that called, can cultic groups change? And it was a big plenary session, one of their national conventions. So for me, it was uncomfortable to sit on a panel with the name cultic.

It implies we are or were a cult. Okay. For them in their particular philosophical bent of mind in those days, this is around the late nineties to say a cult can change was similarly uncomfortable and perhaps even radical.

So we found some kind of compromise and there was two people on the panel. One, one of their anti-cult people was formerly a member of some, another Vaishnava group, some Eastern tradition. I'm still not sure of some Vaishnava thing.

He knew about Vaishnavism. The other guy, he did his PhD on the deprogramming of a Hare Krishna. And then our side, we had myself, the communications person.

And I asked Radha Dasi, who's a Western born woman, a mixed race. She's like Anglo and Chinese. So she's got this ethnic perspectives.

She's a lawyer trained in Harvard and a law professor. So you're sitting in front of these people thinking you're all brainwashed and it's all male dominated and women are exploited. Maybe some of them think, and you can't think for yourself and this and that.

I'm sitting next to this woman who's a law professor trained in Harvard, just sitting down and then reading her bio. Half the people in the room are like, well, this doesn't make sense. How can there be a cult that they've got educated people? And they start thinking, you know, then they ask some questions.

Well, didn't you people used to this and this and this? Yeah, we did. You know, it was a mistake. It was a very big, we made some very, very big mistakes.

And, you know, we apologize for those. Or sometimes we'll know according to our tradition, it's not a mistake. You know, well, some people say you people, you don't eat healthy.

Well, on that one, we have to disagree because maybe in the 1960s, people didn't understand about a vegetarian diet, but now there's so much research. Vegetarian diet is more healthy. I bet half the people in the room have a friend or a family member who's a vegetarian.

So, you know, you clarify a few things, you acknowledge what you did wrong. And that's one other story related to this. You might appreciate.

I remember they asked Radha Dasi questions about, well, you know, women's roles. And, you know, sometimes we hear in the Christian movement, women aren't given full facility. And Radha kind of explained, well, you know, okay, there's a little bit of a cultural difference.

It doesn't bother me. She said, but I'll tell you what it did bother me. And she said, I've got a daughter who was maybe 12 at that time or something, maybe younger.

She said, one day, my daughter, the daughter asked her like, in those days, all the women stood in the back in most Iskcon temples, even in the West. And her daughter asked her one day, mommy, how come the men are in the front and the women are in the back? And why can't I go to the front? She said, well, they're men, you're a girl, girls aren't supposed to go to the front. So she said, her daughter walked up to like a man, right? She's like five years old, you know, walked up to some man in front of her and slugged him.

And Radha said to this audience, she said, that's when I realized that it's an issue. I got to deal with this issue for me. I don't care.

I'll stand in the back. Hey, if that's what I'm supposed to do to be humble for Krishna, but my daughter, five years old is feeling whatever she was feeling discriminated against. The men are preventing her from seeing the deities.

You know, she's this tall, they're that tall. And so she told that to this audience of people. And then they understood, you know, these are real people with real issues.

And a lot of those people, they're not all atheists. Some are atheists. Some are, some are Jewish.

They struggle with Jewish traditions that maybe they like or don't like. Some of them are Catholic. You know, they don't like the fact women don't have much of a voice in the church.

You know, it's not like we're the only ones that have issues. When you talk to people, they start acknowledging we have some of the same problems. Thanks for admitting you have those problems.

Tell me how you've dealt with those problems. And then I'll flash forward if I can. Can I tell one more funny anthecal story? Yes, please.

So in some ways, we have to, we sometimes have this mentality that because we are devotees, we are special. So in order to connect with others, we have to sort of downplay our specialness and focus on our humanness. Yeah, we are human.

You know, I would adjust what you said a little bit. Sometimes because we're devotees and we think we're representing such a pure and perfect culture, we have to pretend to be pure and pretend to be perfect or project that perfection in order to actually represent the tradition. And I disagree with that completely.

I think we have to be humble people who say, you know, I'm far from perfect. I got a lot of problems, but I'm trying to practice this beautiful culture. And please let me try to share whatever I know of it with you.

I think you'll also find something valuable there. It doesn't mean you have to give up what you're doing, but you know, please, you know, whatever shortcomings I have, don't denigrate the culture based on that. But I'm, I'm far from perfect.

You know, at the same time with devotees, you know, people ask, well, what do you guys do? Well, we don't eat meat. We don't have illicit sex. We don't have intoxication.

We don't gamble. Whoa, right there. It's like, well, you people are serious.

I mean, just so simply positively, not negatively. Positively. Yeah.

Yeah. Positive. Most people, most people see it very positively.

I mean, I had a college friend was kind of like the guru with a little click of friends. And I remember when I started becoming interested in Christian consciousness, I moved to another city, but I came back and I spent all the time visiting him. And I told him, I said, well, what do you think of the Hare Krishna? And I can remember him saying that exact thing.

Whoa, those guys are serious. It's like we dabble in spirituality. We read little books now and then, you know, and maybe take some people take some kind of drug induced thing for spiritual, but those guys, those are, those are, that's serious.

You know, they make a serious commitment and people appreciate that, you know, but if we think we're the only ones that are serious, if we pretend to be perfect, it's like, you know, we make a mistake. You know, you have a leader that has a crisis and goes away or does something bad or ends up in jail and you don't want to tell people you are, you are even worse. You, you don't, you, you say something false about it.

And, you know, people are going to find out and then they think, well, you know, you have no integrity. But if you explain that, yeah, it's very unfortunate. This person in this difficult, they came up and here's what we did about it.

Here's what we've learned from it. When I told these anti-cult people, I said, I don't know any other organization in the whole world that has gurus. Cause there are a lot of these, they're really excited about a guru.

Cause they got this idea of the guru. This is good as God. And he could use this as power.

And there's so many gurus. They have, you know, I've been in these things and you have women talk about, they had a guru and next thing you know, he's getting massaged by the women disciples. That's the kind of garbage they hear.

And then they project that. And anyone that has a guru. Okay.

They are being massaged by his women disciples. By his women disciples. There's a lot of that goes on.

Really? Horrible. Goes on. Yeah, it goes on.

Gurus that steal money or, you know, they hear about those kinds of things. So when I explained to them, you know, ISKCON, we've had difficulties with gurus falling down from their spiritual vows. And therefore we've instituted training for people before they can become a guru.

And we've got training for new disciples. you know, we, and I tell them, we, we, we, we, we even talk about what to do if your guru has a difficulty with it. We're open about these things.

You know, we're all human beings, even, even gurus. You know what I mean? I'm a prophet disciple. Technically I could become a Diksha guru.

I'm not inclined to do so, but technically there's no barrier. I mean, people might come up and say, he's a, he's an idiot. Don't let him do it.

But technically there's no barrier. But so I know myself, if I took off that service, that doesn't mean because I started being a guru tomorrow, I'm, I'm, I'm perfect in this sense. I'm never going to do anything wrong.

You know, I'm a human being. I've got flaws, but we create systems to lift up those people and help them in their service and help them perform that service for their guru. It's, it's very, it's beautiful.

And they, when they, they, they hear that, they go, wow, actually, I've never heard of an organization with gurus that has training for gurus. You know, we say, well, yeah, because, because guru is meant to be as good as God, because they're repeating the message of, of God. So in that sense is, you know, we all know the philosophy.

And at the same time, we need to have checks and balances and we need to have systems in place to protect our, our leaders. Like Brahmacharis, it's a beautiful ashram, you know, it's the backbone of our movement. That doesn't mean we don't have systems in place to make sure the Brahmacharis go to Mangalati, that the Brahmacharis don't stay out at late, that the Brahmacharis aren't, you know, talking to ladies in an inappropriate way.

And to have those systems doesn't mean we have no respect for Brahmacharis. It's the proof we have respect for Brahmacharis, because we want to help them be successful Brahmacharis. So they appreciate those kinds of things.

Not everybody, you know, some of them in their mind's eye, you people are all bad. Okay. That's a minority.

You can't, you can't convince everybody. I like the way you're putting it at this, that having systems for protection are actually a way of showing respect. Because for many Indian devotees, even now the idea of Guru training forums sounds a bit too radical.

Because still the idea is that Guru is an enlightened person, Guru is a perfect person. And what do you mean by training for a Guru? Of course, this is, I think, more Indians who come from a traditional way of looking. Yeah.

If you look in India today, look, you know, you do a little research, how many Gurus of whatever tradition have had serious, serious spiritual crisis. And how many disciples and followers have just had their hearts broken and their spiritual life crushed and they go away faithless. So, you know, it's Kali Yuga.

We have to protect people, protect their faith. And it's like, you know, it's like Bhagavad Gita, right? Duryodhana is there. He's glorifying everybody.

He says, Bhishma is our leader. He's going to lead the whole way. And we can't lose without Bhishma.

And everybody else protect him from the sides. He may be Bhishma, but he still needs help. Isn't it? Someone may be a Sanyasi, but he still needs help.

Yeah. You know, similarly, the traditional restriction for Sanyasis to travel abroad, that was also for this purpose itself. You're a Sanyasi.

And so there are, just because we respect someone, doesn't mean that they are given complete freedom. Rather, because of their respect, there is some system of protection. Yes.

Just like say, if there's American head of state or Indian head of state, they are powerful, but one way of respecting them is their border guards and their security protocols. And even they can't just go anywhere that they want. Exactly.

Yeah. Yeah. It's a very good analogy.

Very good analogy. That's true. So, flash forward 10 years.

Okay. I'm going to this meeting for 10 years. There's a whole long, you know, interaction.

And we're on a lot of panels. And sometimes, you know, people stand up and say how terrible the Hare Krishnas are. It's rare, but happens sometimes.

So you just have to kind of sit there and try to be a gentleman and maybe make a comment or maybe not. You know, you have to get the pulse of the room. Should I, should I, sometimes people say that, and then they would say, Anutama, what's your thoughts on it? And I've had experience sometimes in the smaller group.

I try to respond and people practically like, you know, they yell you down. You know, they interrupt and this, oh, what do you know? They said, like, okay, I can't speak here. You know, other times I've been in groups where people said very nasty things.

And some of the leaders say, wait a minute. You can't say that here. That's not this format.

Anutama, I want to give you time to respond. And I've been in other small groups where people say, well, you know, we've heard about this with the Christians, but my experience was a former Christian member. Someone will say, but that was 20 years ago.

Anutama, you please tell us what's happening today. And I would say, what's very sad, what so-and-so said about their experience, but here's what I can say, what we've done since that time to try to minimize those problems. So you get all kinds of different things.

Okay. But one year I went and, and I become good friends with some of these people. I mean, like, you know, like hug them, like literally, Oh, Anutama is here.

Give you a hug. So good to see. How are you? And I'm Keylock and Dodie and, you know, Sika, the whole thing.

One year I went in, there was this very nice couple, Carol and, and Noel, older people. They were maybe, you know, sixties, late sixties. That was maybe my late forties or maybe a little older.

And I walked in one year and I was kind of talking to them at the registration desk, right? Like you go to convention and the registration desk and they're there. And somebody came out and said, no, no, we get a big problem inside. We need your help right now.

And Carol, we need you too. And they said, well, wait, we're watching the registration with, and they said, don't worry about it. You got to come with us immediately.

So they turned to me and they said, Anutama, can you do us a favor? I said, sure. What's that? He said, can you come around on this side of the desk and register the people coming? I said, no, I can't do that. No, I'm a Hare Krishna.

He said, no, no, it's easy. You just sit here. You ask them what their name is.

You find their name and you give them this little book and you check it off. So I said, okay, you sure you want me to do this? Yeah, yeah, it's fine. So I'm there, my doting, my D lock, the whole thing.

And I'm standing behind the desk. Hi, welcome to the anti-cult conference. I'm so glad you came.

Uh, what, what, what's your name? No. Okay. Your name is Mary, Mary Jones.

Okay, Mary, let me find you. Okay, Mary, here you are. Here's your name tag.

Here's your book. Here's your information. And as we started at 20 minutes inside, thanks for coming.

Yes, sir. What's your name? Okay. Your name is Bill Smith.

Okay. Mr. Smith. I was like, ridiculous.

It's an anti-cult conference. You know, and then Christians are definitely on the list of people. They're not so comfortable with, you know, in the years past, we were like one of the top three or four organizations.

And what, because of the personal relationship, it had gotten to that point. There was that level of, of, of respect and trust. It doesn't mean that everything that maybe happened in the past was great.

It doesn't mean we'll forget that. It doesn't mean that I necessarily agree with everything. Maybe they did, or maybe they've said in the past, they might've said some really nasty things about our Krishna.

I may know some, I may not, but today we're people. And we've learned that we can move forward. And they asked me to do them a favor.

And I, I did help them out. And in their eyes, I was just a new tomorrow. I was a friend who was helping them out.

And the fact that I was a Hare Krishna, wasn't a problem. At the, at the, at the antipode conference. That's the power of the human connection, isn't it? So that means there are times when we just need to put our, our particular faith or our particular beliefs aside and connect with people at a human level.

Yeah. But what, but I, I agree. And I disagree.

What is our particular faith? Our faith is, this person's a devotee of Krishna. We have an eternal relationship with this person. You know, who knows, you know, they're a tree or they're a Gopi or they're, you know, they're, they're in Vaikuntha someplace.

So, you know, they drive a Krishna's chariot or they're a flower. They have an eternal relationship with Krishna. And then frankly, they might get back to God before me.

I mean, maybe I'm practicing now, but who knows what might come between me and going back to God. They might, maybe they're inimical this lifetime. Maybe the next lifetime, they turn around and they, you know, they become a period of only one birth.

I don't know. I can't judge people like that. Yeah.

So what you're saying is that actually it's our own faith tradition that can inspire us to connect with them in a, in a proper devotional human service attitude way. So what I was saying is that, I mean, I agree with you fully. What I was saying is that sometimes in over-emphasizing our identity, that can become a blockage in connecting with people at a human level.

But instead of say externally over-emphasizing our identity, we actually internally act out according to what our identity is or what our philosophy is. Yes. Yes.

Because the internal, I mean, isn't that our whole philosophy? The internal identity is what matters. That's true. Like, I think I mentioned to you before, a quote from Rabindranath Saruprabhu, sometimes he will say that if we're very sincere, if we chant Hare Krishna, eventually we become an advanced devotee.

And if we keep chanting Hare Krishna, eventually we will become a human being. Wow. You know, meaning that we kind of become real, you know, and it's interesting getting, you know, rereading Leela Rita, so many people comment how Prabhupada was so transcendental, and yet he could relate to people on a very human level, you know, helping with the trash with the guy next door, standing in a line for the shower with these young guys.

You know, meeting the parents of devotees and being very gentle with them. You know, he went to an Indian dance. He said, I haven't done these things in, you know, decades, but, you know, going to some Indian dance just to see how people appreciated Indian culture.

Sanyasi's not supposed to do that, but he did it because he had a mission. He had a higher purpose. You know, he goes to some event when, before he really had any followers at all.

And he sits down, there's some Indian man, Indian origin man sits down to him, next to him, and they start talking. He says, are you Hindu? He says, no, I'm Muslim. He says, oh, I've heard in India of so many of the children, they chant the Quran.

It's very nice. And then later in case that Muslim man is selling his books. And this man's talking about, he said, people just thought it was his follower.

I just, some guy he met, you know, I came to hear him speak. Next thing he says, I'm excuse me, sir, I'm talking to people. You mind minding my books and you can sell the books when I, here's the price.

So he had this man selling books for him. And that was a Muslim man. Muslim man.

Where was this? It was in New York city. I can't remember the particular location. I'm rereading that section.

He didn't have any followers yet. It was just, he had his books and he went to some place and he was, I know, I think it was the Tagore society. He was invited to speak at, if I remember correctly, the Tagore society, you know, so there's some auditorium, there's whatever, I don't remember, 30, 30 people, 50 people, maybe.

So probably it's there early. So this man, right. Somehow sat through Roger's team.

They found this man. He mentions, I came to this event. I saw a man dressed in saffron to the side.

I said, sat next to him. He said, the man smiled at me. He was very cordial.

And then somehow they started talking. And then, then he said, then, then, then a woman came up on stage. I remember it was a woman who said, okay, now we're going to begin.

Let's have a nice hand for Swamiji. And this man wrote, when he was surprised, this man he's talking to stands up and goes up on stage. And this was Swami Bhaktivedanta.

He was very surprised. So we listened to his talk and he appreciated it. And then at the end, people were crowding around the Swami and he, he motioned this man.

I said, would you do me one other favor? Because when he went on stage, he said, would you please watch my book? He said, of course. Then when he said, can you one other favor? Could you, could you people wanted to buy the books? I can't do two things at one time. Can you please manage? And he, and he comments, he says, people coming over to him, asking him all these questions about how long have you known the Swamiji? How long has he been in America? And he said, he didn't, he practically didn't know him.

He just met him 10 minutes before. And then they, they were thinking he's a disciple or a student. He hadn't explained.

I'm very sorry. I don't know him. He just asked me to sell the books.

So cordial, so friendly, so human, so able to connect with people. Beautiful. Then, Drew, maybe you want to conclude by talking about how you are at the conference that you were at the conference where you were invited to speak now.

Yeah, actually the one we talked about, the world parliament, this one. No. Yeah.

Not the, was it the world parliament that made that? They recommended you as a example of how cultic groups have changed. Oh, okay. Oh yeah.

Well, there was that panel. Can cultic groups change? No, not that one, but the one which you came on is called news where you and the other person were speaking. Yes.

Over time, there was a lot of panels. Okay. And to a large extent, we became the organization that they talked about, proved cults can change because they had a philosophical construct that once you were a cult, you had an abusive leader and you were brainwashed or there was mind control.

You were stuck. And the only way to get out was to have like a physical intervention, like kidnap you. That was the, you know, like with COVID, right? They're trying different models.

Is it airborne? Is it passed by the skin? And they're trying to explain it with different scientific models. So that was the scientific model. You can't get out of these groups.

So we changed their whole paradigm because we came forward and said, look, okay, we've had cultic influences. Cult like, you know, in fact, I gave a talk about this at an ILS one time. I said, you know, you know, I can't remember the title, but it was something about, you know, is this kind of cult? And the basic conclusion was, well, we are if we act like a cult because they say cult, they're closed.

There's no transparency. There's too much. There's a big, huge power differential.

You know, little guy has no protections. You know, women are mistreated. They break up families.

You know, they have all these different qualities. So it's like, is this kind of cult? Well, if we do these things, if we mistreat people, if we're not transparent, if we break up families, if we, you know, people come and join, they can't leave. You know, people are not cared for physically, emotionally, psychologically.

You know, it's like abusive groups basically kind of boils down that cult's kind of like an abusive group. Some are political. Some are religious.

Some are philosophical. They're not all religious. So like, you know, we are if we do those things.

You know, it's like, is someone an abusive parent? Well, do they yell at their child? You know, do they slap their child? Do they demean their child? You know, do they not take care of the physical needs of their child? You know, do they try to force their child to do things they don't want to for the parents' personal benefit? Well, then they're abusive. Any of those, they're abusive. You know, so same thing.

Are we a cult? Well, it's not a question of, we're an ancient tradition. You can be an ancient tradition and still a cult. In fact, a few years ago, there was a whole tract, you know, like different conferences.

There's like, whatever, there's this tract and this tract. There was a whole tract on Catholic cults and some of the leaders, executive director of this organization was Catholic, but they'd gotten to the point they're self-critical enough to say, hey, there's issues in the Catholic church and to the extent that we're self-critical, they say, well, you know, you're not a cult. In fact, one year, the director of this anti-cult organization, and we're talking a lot about this during this conversation.

We'll have to talk about other things next time. But one of these leaders, this executive director, he stood up and he read from the ISKCON communications journal about child abuse. You read about child abuse and there was so many issues and this and this and this.

He said to this audience of 200 people, some parents, some academics, some like therapists, you know, who counsel people and join groups. He said, where am I reading from? He said, am I reading from our own journal? You know, the International Cultic Studies journal? No. Am I reading from the media? No.

Am I reading from some independent social? No. What am I reading from? The ISKCON's internal publicly available communications journal is publishing. So he said, is this the symptoms of a cult organization? He asked everybody there.

You know, you all think an organization that's a cult has, you know, they don't, they don't think on their own. So it's like, so that, this whole thing about, so, so the paradigm started to switch, which is not about are you a cult or are you not a cult? It's, does an organization have these negative behaviors within it? And if it's got a lot of them, it's a cult to group. If it doesn't, it's a more healthy, it became like a paradigm.

Instead of a line, these are healthy, these are dangerous cults. They started to see things. I think we help them see things, not that we take full credit by any means, but I think we help them in this process with their research was telling the same thing.

There's like a, like what's it, like a paradigm. There's really unhealthy groups and there's very, very healthy groups, but the healthy groups, if you're not careful, you can slide over here. It's like America.

Frankly, the leadership today is unhealthy and it's having unhealthy effects on the society. And if you get more healthy leadership, it's going to swing back, hopefully, in more positive ways. So similar thing.

So the, so that last conference you mentioned, there was something called the World Parliament Religions and a few years ago, I proposed something. I proposed a topic about religious leaders and you know, the dangers of, of cultic influences with the religious communities. Now with the World Parliament Religions, Hare Krishnas, we've been going there for years doing different things.

They're going to be open to the Hare Krishnas making a proposal. They don't want somebody from the anti-cult groups coming to their thing. Everybody's walking around.

Some of them are pretty weird religions represented there. It's the wrong word, but let's say exotic and not necessarily so authentic religious community, spiritual communities. So I thought this is a great topic.

So this man came and he talked, the executive director of the International Cultic Studies Association. He made a presentation about the dangers of religious leaders who can abuse their power. And I talked about how as a Hare Krishna devotee, we've had some of these same problems that he just talked about.

Here's what we did to try to weed it out. Here's what we're trying to do to make sure we don't have these problems in a big way in the future. Cause I was thinking, you know, there's whatever, there's, you know, 500 different spiritual religious organizations coming to this conference.

Some of them, no doubt, have these cultic slash potentially abusive dynamics. So let's, let's talk about it. So it was me inviting him to come.

It was my conference. It was my topic. And it was the two of us together.

We shared it. But I'm the one that got, his organization would not gotten in there. But I thought these people need to hear this stuff.

We didn't have a big audience. I don't know, 40 people, 50 people. Maybe it's video.

It's there online so you can look it up. But it was win-win, you know, in part, it's helping him get this message out. Be careful.

We also want to get the message out. Be careful. And it also, it's helpful for us to like one more step of saying, Hey, we're open.

We're willing to go. We don't have to go in some kind of venue with the world parliament religions to say we've had cultic problems. Why would we want to do that? It's like throwing mud on ourselves because mature people will say the fact that they can talk about this and acknowledge that everybody's at risk and here's what they've done to protect themselves.

I think that's real spiritual leadership to say to other organizations, Hey, everybody, be careful. You don't have these problems. It's not a question there's good guys and there's bad guys.

Everyone is vulnerable. Everyone needs to be careful. You know, it's like to say, be careful.

There's snakes in the woods. You know, one of our members got bit. That doesn't mean we're bad because one of our people got bit.

It means there's snakes in the woods and to be able to tell people, Hey, be careful. There's snakes. We got bit.

Don't get bit. Here's how to watch out for it. It's kind of your civic duty to share that information with people even if they might discredit you.

Oh, look at these guys. They're so stupid. They got bit by a snake.

Well, maybe we're stupid but it happened and we don't want to see you get hurt. So that was the story behind that. Well, I have two reactions to it.

First of all, the story is amazing. And it's just shows at one level your dedication by which you are able to change that perception. But on another level, I was thinking that this is a big difference between Indian culture and American culture.

I don't think this kind of say, honest self-criticality is there in India so much. I mean, I'm not saying that in a negative sense but maybe there is also this could be a separate topic for discussion in the future also. But the idea I think that there is to some extent a cultural veneration of anybody anything that is an authoritative position.

And even if they have faults, the idea is that you don't expose those faults. So I remember I read a book on difference between Indian and Western like it's written by software engineer by American software leader. And he says, what is the difference when you work with Indians and when you work with say Americans if they're two working software teams.

So he said that if there is a Indian team leader and then there is a specialist on a particular subject who is actually more competent than the team leader. So he said, if you want that specialist to speak, don't ask him to speak directly inform the team leader first and the team leader will tell him speak and don't ever put the team leader in a position where he has to counter his team leader that specialist. So he says that the idea is that it's the word he uses that Eastern cultures and he talks about India as well as China.

They are very face saving cultures. Yes. So now that word can seem a little derogatory, but it's not exactly like that.

It's just that, you know, the idea is that those who are in a position of authority, they, they should not be disrespected. Like we see in the Bhagavad Gita, Arjuna fights against the Kauravas, but before that he goes and takes the offers obeisances to Bhishma and Drona and others. Yes.

So yeah, that's very good. And that's very good. And at the same time, when Duryodhana was exposed to have some serious problems, even though he was the king, they called the king to task.

And Yudhisthira felt horrified about it. And they tried every possible thing to not break that cultural norm of respect. But what's more disrespectful than declaring war against the king? That's pretty disrespectful.

Or battling against your grandfather. Your grandfather says, look, he may be what he is, but I'm going to support him, and therefore you should support him because I'm the grandfather. Well, no, we're not going to.

Or you could say, well, ultimately because Krishna told him not to, and that's true. But at the same time, I think it shows that, you know, I mean, it's not that Western culture is based on disrespect. In many ways, American culture is very respectful.

I would say that maybe the word is that there is no, that there is, it's not definitely not, I didn't mean disrespect. It's more of, there is not that much fear of open skepticism. Uh-huh.

So, and, and, and, and, and here's what happens, there's, yeah, see, in America, I think these days it's gone way too far. You know, there's this term now fake news. You can't believe anything the media tells you, but see, this is frankly the tendency of, I mean, I went to a conference the other day about dangerous words and, and power abuse of leaders.

If someone starts saying, and undermines the credibility of everyone that says, I'm the source you can trust, that's a warning sign. That's a big warning sign. Don't believe the media, don't believe this, and we've seen that in our movement, frankly.

I, as a GBC member, we've had to deal with some people who were in a position as gurus or something else, and they start telling their disciples, you only listen to me. You come to my temple and you sit and listen to me. You don't go to the temple, you listen to me.

You hear another guru say something different, you only listen to me. There's a group, there's a group called the legionnaires of Christ, and it started in the 50s, 60s, largely in South America, Mexico, and other places, very successful, made a lot of members, inspired a lot of people, but the man in charge was a complete scoundrel, all kinds of sexual violations, and they had an extra vow in their tradition, poverty, chastity, obedience. They had another vow, you cannot criticize your superior, which meant, I see the sannyasi putting on western clothes and going out with a lady, I can't say anything.

I see the temple president, you know, one lakh rupees for the temple, one lakh rupees for me, I can't criticize. I see the temple commander slapping a new devotee around, I can't criticize. The whole thing became completely corrupted.

I've got some books, I've got books, I met some of the people that used to be priests there, and it got so abusive, they just at one point rebelled, and then they went to the Vatican, the Vatican didn't believe it at first, they didn't take it seriously, because externally, this man was so successful, converting people, lots of people, giving money in the community, and inside it was rotten to the core, rotten, like a rotten apple, rotten on the inside out. So I think there has to be a balance between giving respect, but also having checks and balances, and it's not necessarily the responsibility of the brand new person to be the check and balance for the senior most person, but among peers and within the organization, within the systems, we have to have checks and balances, we're all too old to have checks and balances, and we've seen in our movement some very big people have some very serious problems, and we shouldn't think half of the past is never going to happen in the future. That's not disrespectful.

If I'm in the army and I know my general is such a great general, but he can be shot by a bullet, that doesn't mean I'm bigger and more important than the general because I'm understanding how great he is, I've got to help him, I've got to support him. So in a similar way in the institution, we've got senior people, senior men, senior women, senior administrators, senior ashrams, people that become six-year gurus, as a community, we have to protect those people. That's not being disrespectful, that's part of respecting them.

Just to put a real contemporary thing, I'm looking at a book right now, Bitter Chocolate. It's all about child abuse in India. And uncles, you know, and how uncles would abuse their nieces and their nephews, and they would give them chocolate and tell them, okay, come out with me for some ice cream.

And the culture was such that nobody could talk about it. And when people started really talking about it, when the older sister, who's 16, now she's a young adult, she's been sexually abused by her uncle since she was seven, when she sees her little eight-year-old sister starts to be groomed the same way she was, now she's not going to tolerate it. She kept it inside, she didn't complain, she didn't make it public, but now they see another sister, now I'm going to go to my mother, my father, the police, I'm going to do whatever needs to be done.

There's a culture of respect for the uncle, but hey, uncles can cause a lot of problems. Respect political leaders, but they can cause a lot of problems. I should respect my teachers, but if I see my teacher beating another student, or a 50-year-old guy flirting with a 17-year-old student, I have to have an alarm clock on my head, this is a vulnerable girl, I'll give you a better grade, but I her flirting with another 15-year-old student, but I have to have an alarm clock on my this is a vulnerable girl, I'll give you an alarm clock on my head, this is you know, we gave you, you know, we gave you a crore rupees to put in the bag and can you, where's the receipt, Anutama? No, no, I took care of it.

Don't worry about it. No, I'm sorry, Anutama, we need to see the receipt. You know, before we call the police, Anutama, where's the receipt? Okay, and that's not being disrespectful.

That's not being disrespectful. Yeah, makes sense. Perfectly.

Okay, what I was saying is not that having the internal, internal mechanisms for protection and correction, but more of publicly telling about these things, that is something quite radical. I mean, first time when you know what you said, that how they appreciated that in ISKCON communication journal, we had published it, which now, but when I read it, first time I was shocked. Why are we talking about these things in public? You know why? You know why? You know why? Have you ever walked in a room and turn on the light when there's cockroaches? Turned on the light when there are cockroaches? Yes.

The cockroaches come to the light. Is that what you're saying? Well, they all run away, don't they? Maybe a different type of cockroach. I don't know.

Okay. No, say. Usually you turn on the light, the cockroaches go away.

Okay. What I was thinking was different that if the power goes off and I have my laptop on, all the insects come around the laptop. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But generally, if you walk in a room and you turn on the light, the cockroaches want to run and hide. Okay. Anything in the dark, they have a run of the place.

So in other words, if there's one child abuser, to use that example, there may be others. So if you don't talk about it, like in America, they had a big problem with Boy Scouts, you know, which is a very trusted organization, goes back hundreds of years. But they started realizing, you know, someone's abusing boys here, they wouldn't talk about it.

But then someone else is abusing boys here, someone else is abusing boys. If you don't talk about it, then how can you combat it? A very appropriate example today, COVID-19. Okay.

It appeared in China, it went all around the world. Many people are very angry with the Chinese because they feel they didn't share the information they had. Right now, you know, the French are working on research.

I'm sure there's Indian doctors and scientists who are Americans. Everybody's trying to figure it out. And as soon as they figure it out, they're going to share that information because everyone is vulnerable.

So in the same way, you know, if we and there's some countries, we're still trying to say they don't have any problem with COVID-19. And, you know, like in Brazil, the president was saying there's no problem, and he got COVID-19. Yeah, that's true.

So cover is the problem you're saying? Yes, yes, yes. Now, if someone says, okay, you know, like this happened a little bit. In fact, when I was doing some of the media response, this 20 years ago, when the child abuse court case was going on, you know, the media would some of the media would kind of come and they'd call and they, you know, they were very nasty.

And I would say, look, you can be rough with us if you want, we had a problem. It's a serious problem. And it's okay, it is journalists, you're going to talk about this, but please, people need to understand their churches at risk, their temple is at risk, their synagogue is at risk, their mosque is at risk, their school is at risk, their Boy Scouts group, don't be foolish like us and assume, because we're such nice people, we can never have this problem.

You all need to be careful because anybody can have this problem. The Catholics have this problem, we have this problem. It doesn't mean the Catholics are all bad people.

They just had some bad people. We've also had some bad people. And we didn't have systems in place to protect the kids to be careful to be safe.

Because there weren't enough systems in place, because we didn't think it was a problem. And it's a whole nother discussion. But I grew up in that area, you know, in that era, all the movies showed, you know, little boys and girls just playing in the dust of the cows and everything's perfect.

We just assumed everything was perfect. And then you started hearing rumors, you know, did you hear something happen over there? Really? No, that's weird. That's about as far as it went.

Then it was like, you heard a rumor, do you hear something happen over there? So, so, so, no, really? Wow, that's terrible. And then you start to realize there's a pattern going on here. You know, like, let's say you own a car, and you have a, you know, you've only driven like 10,000 kilometers on your car, and the tire blows out, and you almost get in a serious accident.

Well, that's true, boy, Krishna's protecting me, and you get a new tire. But then you hear from a friend who had a similar car, same thing, 8,000 kilometers, the tire blew out, he was driving on a hill, and his car rolled over, and he was almost killed. Wow, that's, isn't that amazing to happen to two of us? Then you hear like somebody in, you know, Bangalore, same thing, said, whoa, there's something wrong with these tires.

We need to tell the whole world, hey, if you bought a tire between 2019 and 2021, from whatever Dunlop or, you know, India tire company, this particular model is dangerous, be careful. That's true. This makes perfect sense.

To, if I may play devil's advocate slightly, you told earlier about that organization where they had a vow that you cannot criticize your superior, that was what, what is it? It was called Legionnaires of Christ. It was a Christian organization. Like French Legionnaires? Legionnaires, okay.

Legionnaires of Christ. So, Prabhu, how is our provision that we shouldn't commit Vaishnav aparad, and we certainly shouldn't commit Guru aparad, how is that different? Because I have seen some critics of say, some say, people say that even the idea of Brahman aparad, that is just a way by which the powerful elite are protecting themselves. So, if you criticize the Brahmana, you'll go to hell.

If you criticize the Vaishnava, you'll go to hell. So, how is that not different? I think, one, there's a big difference between critical and critique. If you critique me, or if you are critical of me, okay, critique means maybe at the end of this conversation, we say goodbye, you turn off the recording, you say, you know, you need to sit up more straight, you look like you're slouching, or the light's not good, or this was a nice story, but people didn't really understand that story.

That's a critique. You're helping me analyze it, both the positives, and then where there's room for improvement, how I can do better. That's critique.

Criticism is, or being critical, is you get off the phone, you say goodbye to me, and you call up a couple friends, you say, that guy, I don't know how we ever became the communications director. I mean, he uses so much American talk, and so much, you know, jargon, nobody even knows what he's saying. On top of that, he just told the same, he talks about himself all the time, or, you know, he never, he didn't quote a single verse, entire one-hour conversation, he's such a rascal.

That's being critical. The only purpose is, is to hurt me, to bring me down, to make me look bad in other people's eyes, to lift yourself up, your own false ego, by pushing the other person down. There's no Krishna conscious benefit of that, whatsoever.

It's a product and a mode of ignorance and passion. Whereas critique, if you tell me, here's what you did well, here's what could be improved, that's out of the mode of goodness. It's knowledge, it's done in a mood of respect, and it's done in the mood of trying to help me.

I need that kind of feedback. How else am I going to improve? You know, I, we all have blind spots. I don't know how things went.

So, and some of these people say, like, you know, someone's an anti-cult person, even sometimes if it's critical and borders on offensiveness, if they point out things that should be improved, I also have to take them on board, I have to give serious consideration to it. But within ourselves, I know I used to go to events sometimes with Dr. Chittimraj, and at the end of the event, he was a sannyasi, he'd sit down with his own disciples and say, okay, critique that. What did I do good? What didn't I do well? And they weren't being offensive, they were helping, they were serving their guru.

I say, well, you know, Guru Maharaj, maybe a 20-year-old says, Guru Maharaj, this is good. I don't know if this particular story worked with the 20-year-olds. We don't see things like that.

And he was 50. It helps them see things a little bit differently. Or, I mean, I remember saying to him, you know, Bhakti Chittimraj, when you walk in the room with a big guy that looks like a bodyguard, maybe when you preach in Africa, it's cool, because they all have bodyguards, and you look like a big leader.

I said, you walk into a room with a journalist like that, they think, whoa, what is it that these people think they need a bodyguard? As I remember giving him that feedback, and he said, oh, yeah, maybe it's not so good. He always had a bodyguard with him. Papa would ask his disciples, you know, how did that go? What did you think about that? Shamasundara, should I go to whatever, Indonesia, should I go to Africa? And he was saying, well, Prabhupada was saying, maybe we should go to Africa, because of this, that, you know, that's a little different than in critical, he's asking advice, but, okay.

You know, yeah, so I like this difference between critique. I think one way of critical would be when there is, or what Vaisnavapradha is meant to protect against is being envious of those who are superior to us and trying to pull them down from their position because of envy. But if somebody is going on a wrong track, humbly pointing that out, I think in our tradition also we have examples of that.

We have examples of, say, Bali Maharaj going against Shukracharya's advice and telling that what you're saying is wrong. And that's not exactly, he's not condemned for being an apradha, he's actually glorified. Yes.

So, yeah, let's do it. I think even these kind of injunctions have to be seen in how they are lived. So, I think within our movement, we do have a culture of devotees seeking feedback and getting feedback.

And that's how we grow. And also we have systems now. It doesn't mean, let's say, I'm a new devotee and I see something I'm not comfortable with, I walk up to the, senior person and start telling them, well, I don't think this was good or that was good.

That's not the point. There's systems in place now. You can go through the chain of command and we have like ISKCON Resolve and devotees that are trained to do mediation, things like that.

So, you've ombud systems. So, let's say I'm a temple devotee. I have some question or concern about something that's going on with the temple president, as an example.

I can talk to the ombudsperson and say, I'm concerned that I don't know why this works like that. And they may explain to me, well, here's how it works. And actually, you're wrong.

And here's how it works. Oh, thank you. I didn't know that.

Or they may say, well, actually, I'm not sure. Let me find out. Maybe then they anonymously, as a peer, that ombudsperson can approach the temple president and say, there's a perception.

When you make jokes the way you did from the Assassin, it sounds, whatever, racist, sexist, unnecessarily critical of all the traditions, derogatory, sounds like caste, whatever it is. Oh, he's like, oh, I didn't realize it sounded like that. Thank you very much.

And maybe he or she can't hear that from a junior person, but there needs to be channels in place. Yeah. I'm a GBC member.

I'm not such a great person some brand new person comes up to me and points out some problem. Now, Chanika said you should take good instruction even from a fool. But maybe I'm not as advanced as that.

Maybe there's some false ego. Why is this new person critiquing me? We shouldn't have that. But if we do, well, the new person talks to some peer or someone senior to me who can come and say, hey, Nuttama, this needs some work.

You didn't do so well. So I think a lot of it is attitude, as you said, what's the mood behind it? But we do have to be careful as an institution. This is Kali Yuga.

We all are subject to the influences of Maya. And we've seen in our movement some people in that the highest positions have had some real serious problems. And a big reason some of those people had a serious problem is there's nobody protecting them.

You know, they talk about when you get higher and higher and higher, the air gets thin. It's hard to breathe. And another thing, this is an example that we teach this in this seminar on spiritual leadership, Guru Seminar.

If you can imagine, there's like a hierarchy and here's the bottom and here's the top. At the bottom, there's so many people watching you, isn't it? You know, whatever, you're the brand new person and the pot washer's watching you and the assistant head of the kitchen's watching you and the person in charge of the kitchen and the vice president. You got all these people keeping an eye on you.

Now, as you move up the rung of the hierarchy, there's less and less people above you to check you. And if you were not careful, maybe become a G.B.C. or guru or temple president in some places or zonal supervisor. If there's no one above you to check you, it's dangerous.

It's very dangerous, which is why you need to have a lot of peer, you know, gurus and sannyasis and temple presidents and senior people, senior brahmacharis. You know, the younger brahmacharis can't say anything. You need friends, you need peers, people of the same age group, spiritual stature, who can come up to you and say, hey, Chaitanya, turn around and move.

You know, I noticed you seem this is bothering a little bit, can I help you? Or you gave a class today, it didn't seem like you, is there something bothering you? Or, you know, you quoted this verse, I'm not convinced that's the right way to understand it. But if everybody's afraid, oh, we can't say anything, where's the protection? That's true. Sometimes, I don't know, maybe this is going to be a separate discussion, but this leads to there are people who feel that there are things wrong with the leadership, and then they start putting it on websites and sharing it publicly.

They say, this is how we are creating awareness. And this is the only way things will change. Yeah, I think those people, I can't say, but I think there's a pattern there, which is not so.

Generally, I find my experiences, people that do that, they're not so much concerned with change. They're just, there is some sensual gratification from the mode of ignorance or passion or something of pulling people down. There is some pleasure in that.

I remember when I was in junior high school, and I was 13 years old. And, you know, to be able to say kind of mean things to your friends, I was really good at it. And they were really good at saying mean things to me, you know, but it's there's some pleasure there.

You know, you see that with people, they criticize each other, they get some fun out of putting each other down, there's some weird material pleasure. So I think that's oftentimes a part of it. I think sometimes people have an overinflated position of who they think they are.

You know, I can go on and say all kinds of nasty things, just to show, you know, I'm going to say this gun, I've seen that with some people in the past, in my personal experience, like, you know, there's so many things wrong, but I'm going to, I'm going to say this gun, I'm going to point out to everybody. So their, their false ego gets in the way in that. I think there's channels that people need to, and I've also seen, you know, you say that there's a fly in the soup.

And I say there's a fly in all the bowls of soup, and then he says there's an alligator in the soup. And then he says the soup was made out of alligators. And it just, social media just goes crazy, completely exaggerates things sometimes.

There are sometimes issues and problems that we have to go through the channels and make sure we address those things properly. And my experience is I've never seen, I've never seen a situation in this gun where there wasn't a channel that I could go through or others could go through to get things resolved. My personal experience, I've never, I've never seen that there weren't channels that do, we couldn't go through to get things resolved.

That's quite a strong, broadcasting stuff on social media. You know, that's, I mean, that's social media. I've observed, there's a tendency within our society to do this or that.

We need to be aware of it. Here's the things Prabhupada said about it. I think we should become more self-critical and maybe we should look, you know, in that tone, that's wonderful.

But to go online and say, you know, so-and-so in such a temple is doing blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. A lot of times they don't even check their facts. And a lot of times the mood is to tear down rather than improve.

So there's a balance there. There's an important balance. Yeah.

I mean, I deal with a lot of problems. I deal with a lot of problems. I mean, everybody does, but I also do.

But you know, I have to be very careful. My mood is I want to try to make it better. Yeah.

You know, it's reassuring for you to say this because some devotees feel that, I have talked with some of those devotees who like to publicize these things. They feel that through internal channels, nothing happens. It's only when we create a splash externally.

That's only when internally people take it seriously. Otherwise it's not taken. But I think there are channels, if you think there are channels and if they are utilized, then that's very helpful because sometimes you have to use the energy to build the channels.

Yeah. Okay. So, okay.

There's no channels. So one, I can, I can, I can go. I mean, if something's a real crisis, you know, if the child's being abused, you know, and the local police won't respond.

Okay. You gotta, you gotta go up the chain, you know? Those are real crisis situations. But I think, you know, if you're in a situation where there aren't systems, you know, help build the systems.

I mean, domestic abuse. Okay. And I just, you know, I did, I'm only aware of certain things within ISKCON and we're almost aware of some of the things that we help with.

So just in my own experience, domestic abuse is something that we become aware of in recent years is a problem in ISKCON. So with a small group of people, I tried to help develop a policy for North America. And because His Holiness Bhaktivinoda Vyavaswamy was the chairman of the GBC last year, and he wrote and said, this is great.

We need this internationally. So he kind of gave us encouragement. So it became an international policy.

Now that doesn't mean the problem is completely solved, but you know, much, much more needs to be done. But, you know, if you see something, you know, do something. America, they have the thing though, because they're kind of worried about terrorists and all that.

If you see something, say something. But saying something doesn't mean you walk into a movie theater and you yell fire. And, you know, 20 people get stampeded and killed trying to get out of the movie theater.

Say something means, you know, you go over to the guy in charge of the movie theater. You say, look, I noticed that, you know, whatever. Somebody spilled some butter, looks slippery, might be dangerous for people.

I think you need to clean it up. If he says, no, I'm not doing it, but then you go to his boss, you go to his boss, or go to the bathroom, get a rag, get on your hands and knees, use your dhoti, wipe up the dirt. Right.

Okay. So we could say, say something that solves the problem, not versus the problem. Yeah.

Okay. That makes sense. Say something to the appropriate person who can do something about the problem.

Yeah. I read somewhere a definition of gossip. It is to speak about problems to people who, for whom they are not relevant and who can't do anything about it.

That's a wonderful definition. I don't know. I sometimes in the communications course, I tell people something similar that, you know, someone comes to you and says, you know, Vishnu Das is just, he has so many problems.

If you notice, he's not chanting very nicely. And, you know, I saw him, you know, talking to some Mataji in an inappropriate way, or, you know, he was supposed to go on a book distribution. I saw him, he was just sitting in the park all day long.

And you're like, no, really? Oh, you know, I saw the other day, you know, he took prasadam. He had three sweet balls. What kind of Brahmacharya is that? Yada, yada, yada.

Right. Again, it's just negative, enjoying putting people down. Or I can say to you, I'm concerned about him.

You can say to me, have you talked to Vishnu? Well, no. Well, sounds like you've noticed he's got some problems. He's a Vaishnava.

We should try to help him, shouldn't we? Maybe we need to talk to him. Why don't you and I go talk to him? We're his friends. Or that sounds pretty serious.

Maybe you should talk to the Bhakta leader or the Sankirtan leader and share your concerns to make sure we help him. See, I think there's a you know, people go up and start talking. The question is, is the result of this conversation going to be to help that person? And if it's not, let's stop having this conversation.

That's up front. That makes sense. So if you talk to me and say, I'm concerned about the temple president, the last few times he gave class, he said this and this and this.

And I noticed some of the congregation members are really disturbed. What do we do about it? It's not appropriate for me. I'm a brahmachari under his authority.

And I say, well, you know, I'm the communications minister. It's not really my authority either. But let me talk to the local GBC, explain to him, you know, and then he can look into see what's their problem.

Well, it was misunderstood. He didn't hear the whole class. Oh, OK.

I'm sorry. Or, well, you know, he had to speak like that because he's trying to weed out a particular problem. OK.

Or you're right. I listened to the lecture was wrong. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.

I'll talk to him the next time I can. Versus, you know, online out of temple presence, a rascal. He said this and this and this and this and this.

What does that help? Yeah, I remember when I read the Daksha Pujapati pastime, you know, that at that time, when Shiva is insulted, Shiva is there and he's not offered proper respect by Daksha. So it is that the followers of Shiva, they had it for them. It's their Guru being offended.

But what they do at that time is cursing and counter cursing, and then everything becomes a disaster. So then my understanding is that, you know, that actually asked this question to my Radhanath Maharaj. So Maharaj said that, yes, there is the principle we should not tolerate the offense to our spiritual master.

But he said that we should respond in a way that improves the situation, not worsens the situation. Beautiful. That's a wonderful answer.

So we can't just take literally, you know, Guru has been offended, go and attack that person or cut off the tongue of that person. So those are indications of how serious the issue is. But if we have a service attitude, we work to solve the issue.

And then we do what it takes. That's wonderful. That's an excellent response.

I'm going to remember that. That's a very, very good answer. Yes.

This was a very wide ranging discussion. I'm not sure if I can summarize it. Usually I try to summarize.

I think you're the best summarizer in all of ISKCON. So I think you should give it a try. OK, let's try.

So I started we started by discussing about, you know, maybe if I wanted to title this talk, it would be something like how ISKCON outgrew cultish perceptions or perceptions of being a cult. So we started by talking to you, why we were thought of as a cult, because because at that time there was a youth rebellion and parents were suspicious. Then there were all kinds of spiritual teachers coming and exploiting the situation.

Then we ourselves were insensitive and fanatical as devotees. Some of our leaders made mistakes and there was also the big difference between our culture and the mainstream culture. And also we were quite cloistered.

So then we started by talking about how we need to, or you mentioned that we need to connect with people at a human level, which say devotees did not do while talking, say while talking to their parents, something like that. Then the material spiritual difference is there, spiritual material, but we can't forget the human connection. And then I think the whole story, I mean, one underlying thread of the story was that how you develop a human connection with the people who are against us.

And so so you give several examples of how Prabhupada is doing that. So Prabhupada helped the landowner carry the trash of other neighbors also. And Prabhupada said, treat him like a father.

And so the idea that when these culture people came, there was a certain amount of vulnerability on both sides, which is admitted. And that's how slowly the discussion started happening. And also you mentioned the New York Times article.

So the person said that the issue is out there and you have to address it. And then rather than blaming them for giving us a bad name, you took it that you have to fix it. And it is amazing how just by connecting at a human level, eventually you became like the person so authorized in the anti-culture group that they wanted you to stamp and guide people to come inside.

And then you talked about some of the legionaries of Christianity. So there could be so many deviations because they had no facility for self-criticism. It was prohibited.

It is prohibited. And in our movement, we have created now systems for teaching or training the Gurus also. And that was a beautiful discussion that creating systems for, say, training and protecting Gurus, that is not disrespecting them, that is actually respecting them.

So just like sannyasis are respected by having certain regulations, the head of state of a country is respected. And then later you give example that the general might be a very powerful general, but then the assistant soldiers have to protect them. And that doesn't make them greater than the general.

Like Krishna also, like Duryodhana says, Bhishma is our greatest, but we have to protect him. So the very good examples of how respect means protecting. And then we had a discussion also about self-criticality that I mentioned that in Indian culture, this idea of talking about our problems in public is more of a face-saving culture.

But then we also have mechanisms for protecting ourselves internally. And in our tradition, we have that. So the idea is that there is danger on the spiritual path.

And rather than being afraid to admit that we were burnt, it is more important that we help others not get burnt. So we do, whether it is within our organization, the other devotees or with other organizations. So there is a bigger purpose of protecting each other rather than simply protecting our face.

And in some circles, that candor that we made mistakes and now we are coming forward to say what we learnt, that will actually attract thoughtful people. And then toward the end, I think when you talk about the Chicago conference where you got entry and then you got the anti-culture bodhisattvas to come in. So we discussed about our provision of Vaishnav, our caution against Vaishnavapurad.

It is not like a self-protection to prevent criticism. Rather it is, we also have a culture where we seek feedback. And there's a difference between say, giving a critique and having a critical mentality where we find out false.

So it was reassuring to hear you say that whenever there is a problem, there has been a mechanism internally by which the problem could be addressed. Or we create that mechanism. But if we just go out and publicly talk about it, then we, it's more of wanting to pull down a person somewhere up rather than fix the issue.

And also there might be ego that say, how much I know or how brave I am or whatever it is. So, gossip means to speak about problems to someone who can't do anything about it and to whom it's not relevant. But we find the relevant people and we can address issues that way.

And I think the concluding point was, so you also mentioned about how now we have created systems for domestic violence and other things like we create a system for child abuse. Now we create a system for domestic violence also. So where if you see something, say something, say something to the right person so that issues can be fixed.

And this way we all can actually protect ourselves because Maya is very much there and we protect ourselves and we move forward toward Krishna. And as we go higher up, just then the criticism at a lower level, there are a lot of people watching us, but as we go higher up, the number of people watching us are far lesser. And that's why there has to be some kind of pure mechanism for mutual protection.

So this is sobering, but at the same time it is encouraging. Did I miss out anything Prabhu or anything you wanted to add as concluding words? I pray in my next life I can summarize the way you do. You speak so many wonderful things.

I amazing may not be the best word, but as I said, it's, it's, it's soberingly inspiring. Something is like energetically inspiring. Some things are soberingly inspiring.

So I felt it was like this. Thank you. Images come into my mind.

I know you like images a lot. I'm imagining a tree that's growing in so many different directions, like just growing like anything, but the gardener, sometimes there's a branch that's not so good. He trims it here.

He trims it there. He makes sure that the tree grows very good and strong. Now some may say, well, why are you stopping trimming this branch and cutting this and adjusting this? Just let it grow, grow, grow.

But if you just let it grow without trimming accordingly, without adjusting, whether it's a shortcoming or a problem or this or stopping to think about, okay, the way this tree is growing is going to be a problem because it's getting too close to the water or there's going to be this. So to make the tree stronger, sometimes you have to stop and stand back and adjust things. So when we stop and look back at our organization and our relationships and our community, and we adjust things and we make sure that we're being very true to our principles and not just assuming that we're true to our principles.

You can assume, well, any way the tree grows is good. Well, that's not a good assumption because the tree's growing, but it may not all be healthy growth. So we have to make sure it's growing in a healthy way.

So we're growing like crazy. And of course, Prophet said like this, right? It was very early on. He said, I think there's enough new people.

We have to boil the milk now. So just unfocused growth is not such a good thing. We have to make sure we make sure it's strong growth.

Let the roots get strong, right? So I think in a similar way, you know, to stop and say, are our roots getting strong? Are we staying aligned with all of our different values? Let's say like book distribution. Okay. Sell books like anything.

Yes, that's critical, but also don't offend people in the process. So to stop and say, let's slow down on the quantity and make sure the quality is there. That's not offensive.

It's making sure we're dedicated to our mission. When Prophet says, you know, to systematically propagate spiritual knowledge to society at large, and we stop and say, are we actually reaching to society at large? But we become a little narrow in our focus. And how are we not reaching out to society at large? That's not offensive.

That's making sure we're lined up. That's having a critical analysis, critique in a positive way, a critical analysis to make sure we're lined up with our mission. It's a very good example.

The streaming. See, often we talk about the Bhakti Lata creeper, and we talk about the initial stages where it needs a fence and it needs to be protected from say a mad elephant coming. So, but if you extend that metaphor further, it becomes a tree.

So all growth is not necessarily desirable growth. And yes, sometimes when some tree is clipped, somebody's tree is trimmed, somebody might feel as if my wings are being clipped. But actually, it's not like that.

It's for your protection. Beautiful metaphor. So when somebody enthusiastically, we appreciate the service enthusiasm.

But at the same time, in the enthusiasm, there might be some collateral damage which needs to be avoided. So that's a wonderful metaphor. Thank you very much for your time and sharing your wisdom and your experiences.

Hare Krishna. Thank you.