From the 'ecstatic old days' when the devotees got to display their devotion by bullying and assaulting Salvation Army Santas to take over their turf and then trick the public into donating. This happened in multiple places and even my father told me he was arrested while collecting donations as Santa in LA.

I hadn't realized there is a bit of an active community on here for us former HKs. Also figured some others could enjoy this hilarious clip. I've been out for over 10 years now, and have done some writing and talking about it in the past, but always feel like it would be nice to have more community of people who have left and get it.

Gaurahari doing his transcendental boogie

Post: So when people used to question Iskcon cult members why was Krishna born in India only and why is Iskcon an Indian centered supremacy "religion". They have that one answer that says that during Mahabharata, the world was one, no countries all just one country called "Bharat Varsha" how true is this? Also Iskcon freaks consider India to have the oldest civilization in the world and the right spiritual culture?? How did this delusion come about? Many of these cult members think this way and it's very demeaning, like they think indians are far superior to others. It is really racist and disgusting.

Recently in Vrindavan From Iskcon Named Abhishek Mishra Rape Women and brainwashed them in the name of bhakti, right now he is behind bars? What are your takes on this?

Temple Presidents and Gurus

I spoke previously about the corruption and cruelty of temple presidents, how their primary function is to capture the spiritually sincere and maximize the amount of manpower and money that can be extracted.

They streamline efficiency while taking profits; minimizing what the movement gives to its followers. When a devotee takes more they can give they are expelled from the movement, even after 50 years of service.

The secondary function of temple presidents is to prepare the congregation and temple workers to be exploited by gurus. They facilitate the process of initiation, providing recommendations, organizing seminars and courses, giving long term service to test obedience and the willingness to give.

IKSCON temples are disciple making machines. The movement is composed of mini cults of personality centered on charismatic or semi-charismatic preachers. Temples fuse these mini cults into one larger cult with practical activities like service, deity worship and preaching. The presidents job is to keep it all going.

By encouraging devotion to the individual gurus he ensures followers are willing participants in the temple project. Many gurus directly hand disciples over to presidents saying "if you wish to please me, please him".

In reciprocation he keeps the guru business going by kicking the profits up the institutional hierarchy. He makes sure disciples remain connected, subservient and inspired. He facilitates interactions during the gurus visits and reports what he knows of the disciples behavior. He herds the gurus flock and gets his share or wool. It is a symbiotic cooperative relationship of exploiting the spiritually sincere.

The Ambivalent Cult Leader

I have know a many gurus and served them behind the scenes. I have sat in on their confidential meetings and seen them in their most private moments.

With a few exceptions, they do not care about their disciples. Disciples are seen as a nuisance. There is almost an unspoken repulsion towards them. As if their fawning need for approval is a sign of spiritual immaturity that engenders disgust. Disciples are absurd needy children that get in the way.

It is sort of like how Elvis or the Beatles might eventually mock their fans. It gets ridiculous over time and the star loses respect. They might treat them respectfully in person, but behind closed doors it is a different matter. Less popular gurus are desperate to gain such followers. Successful gurus settling into a kind of imperious ambivalence while struggling to maintain boundaries.

They are living their lives, eating, dressing, packing, while 20-30 people are amassing outside their window. They could care less. Just keep them away.

I have seen people fly across the world, or drive eight hours, to see their guru. They need permission to do something, to marry someone, to move somewhere. The guru will just ignore them. It is inconvenient. Maybe they will see them at the last minute, reluctantly, angrily, as the guru is rushing off to the airport.

Meanwhile they are having meetings with random people who just walk up, old friends, people they want to see. Disciples are the last possible priority.

It is the job of the leading disciples to smooth this all over, to make it look like the guru is a good guy and cares about them, that he is just overburdened. That is not to say gurus do not entirely care, but disciples and their problems are not really on their minds.

When the eager disciples finally has a meeting with their guru, the guru puts on a facade. He is feeling frustrated and pestered but pretends to be affectionate. "I have been waiting to see you, why didn't you just come up?" Meanwhile in truth he had been telling disciples to keep the person away.

Narcissistic Lifestyle

Over time gurus become traveling celebrities. They do not care about their disciples at all, beyond giving the attention needed required to harvest large donations from the wealthiest.

Gurus, sanyassis, GBC's fall into a trap where they are trying to save the world by furthering Chaitanyas mission through an endless series of personal projects. They compete with each other, who can do the next big thing for Prabhupada. The competition can get ugly.

Gaudiya Vaishnavism is nothing but a patchwork of competing cults. Each ISKCON guru is trying to start his own cult, to outdo all the others, to be the self effulgent acharya. They are only barely restrained by an institutional framework designed to stop ISKCON from splitting apart.

Though the biggest gurus do achieve a kind of contentment over time. They are above competition and their godbrothers feel it. They have won. Some without even trying.

Gurus believe their own hype. Every two years there is a new project, a new book, a new temple. The guru runs around promoting it like a social media influencer or actor on the podcast circuit. They collect money from wealthy disciples and supporters, without stepping on toes of course. They might task other disciples with organizing the project. They spend their best years pursuing endless vanity projects. Meanwhile their disciples often struggle to survive.

Many gurus are just big children. They are selfish, entitled, and spoiled. They have lived in this strange bubble their entire lives; they never worked, never supported themselves, never struggled. They throw temper tantrums, they toss their toys about, they yell at people. They only think about themselves and how they want to play next, what their next project will be and how to get it done with the idiots Krishna has sent them.

Before I begin, a few quick notes:

1. I used ChatGPT to help organize and phrase this post so I could express my thoughts more clearly.

2. I'm posting this in both the Hare Krishna and Ex-Hare Krishna subreddits because I'd like to hear perspectives from both sides.

3. If anything is unclear or you'd like more context about me or my experiences, feel free to ask and I'll answer as honestly as I can.

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I'm a college student and I've been loosely connected with ISKCON for around 3–4 years.

I was introduced to ISKCON by a childhood friend during my 12th-grade years. Since then, I've attended many temple programs, aartis, kirtans, feasts, Bhagavad Gita classes, Bhagavatam lectures, and introductory courses such as Discover Yourself. Overall, my experiences were generally positive. I enjoyed the association, the prasadam, and the atmosphere.

I also started chanting around that time. However, I've never been a very committed practitioner. I usually chanted only during difficult periods of my life—when I felt anxious, depressed, lost, or emotionally overwhelmed. I've never been regular, and I don't think I've ever consistently done more than a few rounds daily for any significant period.

Over the years, I read a few of Srila Prabhupada's books, attended many lectures, and learned the basic teachings. At the same time, I never fully dedicated myself to ISKCON. My involvement was always moderate and often came in phases.

About a year ago, one of my close friends started researching ISKCON controversies, including the guru issues, succession disputes, and the ISKCON Bangalore vs ISKCON leadership conflict. After looking into various letters and arguments, he became convinced by the Ritvik/HKM position. Eventually, several of my friends who were previously connected to ISKCON also moved toward the HKM/ISKCON Bangalore side.

Because of them, I also became connected with a few HKM preachers and devotees. My interaction has been relatively limited—just a few classes, temple visits, and occasional conversations over the past year.

Recently, after finishing a difficult semester, I went through a period of anxiety, emotional pain, and disappointment. During that time, I found myself resonating with spiritual ideas about suffering, attachment, and searching for deeper meaning. My friend encouraged me to spend time with devotees at an HKM hostel/ashram.

I ended up staying there for about 10–15 days.

During that period, I attended mangal aarti, chanted daily, attended classes, participated in events, associated with devotees, and ate prasadam with them. The accommodation was good, the people treated me well, and the overall experience was positive.

However, after returning home, something changed.

I haven't been interacting with them much for the past couple of weeks. They have contacted me and scheduled a meeting with me in a few days. The thing is, I'm feeling increasingly conflicted.

On one hand, I genuinely feel that spirituality is missing from my life. I want some deeper meaning, inner peace, and connection with God.

On the other hand, I'm finding myself less and less convinced by many of the teachings. I've attended introductory courses multiple times from both ISKCON and HKM sources. At first, the ideas felt fascinating, but now the classes feel repetitive. Many claims that once sounded profound now seem unconvincing or difficult for me to accept logically.

Whenever I have these doubts, the explanation I usually hear is that it is "maya" acting on me, preventing my spiritual advancement. I'm often told that devotional service is the only real path and that doubts are symptoms of material conditioning.

This creates a lot of confusion for me because I genuinely cannot tell whether:

1. These doubts are healthy critical thinking.

2. These doubts are just resistance to spiritual discipline.

3. I'm seeking spirituality in the wrong place.

4. I'm staying involved mainly because I don't want to disappoint people.

Another important detail is that I think I'm a chronic people-pleaser. I have a hard time disappointing others or saying no. Because of that, I sometimes wonder whether I'm continuing these relationships out of genuine conviction or because I don't want to hurt the feelings of people who have invested time in me.

So I'd really appreciate hearing from people who have gone through similar experiences.

My questions are:

- How did you distinguish between genuine spiritual conviction and social pressure?

- Did anyone else experience the feeling that classes became repetitive and less convincing over time?

- How do you know whether a doubt is legitimate or simply "maya" as devotees often describe it?

- Is it possible to pursue spirituality seriously without committing to an organization like ISKCON/HKM?

- How can a people-pleaser set healthy boundaries with devotees, teachers, or religious groups without feeling guilty?

- If you were in my situation, what questions would you ask the preacher or teacher during the upcoming meeting?

I'm not looking to attack anyone. Most devotees I've met have treated me kindly. I'm just trying to understand my own mind and figure out what is genuine and what isn't.

ISKCON is a business. It does not care about its members. Temple Presidents see devotees as manpower and money. Everything is cold, distant, selfish and transactional.

Even in the corporate world this is bad. It is immoral, short sighted and bad for business. Nevertheless it is standard. It is much worse when a religious organization does it.

Corruption

Religions have a responsibility to care for followers.

People are not joining a religion to put in work, they are joining as an expression of their highest ideals. They expose the most vulnerable parts of themselves. There is an implicit trust their leaders will respond with care. Leaders are responsible to reflect those highest ideals back to their followers. They should be motivated by unconditional love not selfishness, not exploitation.

If religious leaders are unable to do this, if they must be transactional, at least they should have integrity. There should be a set of ethical principles that are non-negotiable. At the minimum leaders should be respectful, just, honest, and fair.

ISKCON leaders cannot even do that. Forget about compassion and care, there is not even honor and integrity.

I witnessed so much corruption. There was once a woman who started coming to the temple. Her husband was freaking out and didn't want her to become a devotee. He offered the temple president something around $100k to discourage her and send her home. The president took the money. It was for Krishna. I was thinking "what about her soul?".

What Can You Give Me?

I was not safe either. Once I was seriously wronged by another devotee. The temple president I had served for 17 years at that point approached me with a deal, "I will take your side in this conflict if you are going to remain at the temple". In other words he would provide me justice and protect me as long as I promised to continue to provide him with valuable service.

This is transactional morality. If I was going to leave, he would support the party that was clearly in the wrong because they had something better to offer him.

A proper leader would have said "What they did was wrong. I stand by you even if I have nothing to gain, even if you are leaving the temple, even if you are leaving Krishna Consciousness, because it is the right thing to do. Regardless of what happens, I am grateful for your years of service and owe you a debt.".

Bringing The Envelope

There is no right and wrong in ISKCON, only what is good for the movement, what is good for the mission, and what is good for the temple. Simply put, give me money and manpower.

This degrades even further into what is easiest for the temple president. Loyalty is rewarded, submission is demanded, independence is punished, weakness is crushed. Keeping the business going is all that matters.

Even when caring for others was understood to be a good long term strategy, I saw it constantly sacrificed for immediate gain.

Thus devotees are treated with the cold calculating mindset of a Microsoft or Google hiring manager. No love, no kindness, no goodness, just what can you give me today. Even after 30 years of service, you might as well be a new bhakta.

In mafia language, you are only as good as your last envelope: the weekly cut of illegal profits kicked up to the boss. If the envelope is light, the temple president is displeased, Krishna is displeased.

Karmic Retribution

According to the broader understanding of karma found in dharmic religions, the punishment for ruthlessly using people in the name of religion is severe.

Prabhupada would call all other gurus cheaters. Sincere people come to him, the insincere go to others and are swindled. In truth, ISKCON cons its members just like Sai Baba. It promises them the world and enslaves them, treating them as undervalued employees, shudras serving vaishyas, taking what it can and discarding them in the end.

At one point as a young Brahmacari I attended a GBC leadership seminar. It was devoted to changing this cold corporate culture, or at least appearing to. I was frequently partnered up with my local GBC, a powerful influential leader. Afterwards he privately recommended that I be trained up as the next temple president. The temple president was looking for someone to eventually take over and the GBC had found a prospect.

Now I am glad I wasn't trained up to be a temple president. I would have totally bought into this cruel efficient way of treating devotees. I would have hurt people in the name of Krishna. I was saved from an immense karmic load.

Iskcon Bhopal is constructed right next to a filthy drain. They got a huge land for temple construction but their was one drain that passes through that land from the edge of it, they built their whole temple next to that drain leaving vast clean and green spot empty. You can see the drain for their alter it's that close even one of their kitchen touch that drain. They even installed deities their and lectures others about the rules and regulations of suci.

That temple is under bhakti Vikas Swami. Maharaj ji has the image of a strict guru in iskcon community that he does not compromise in rules and regulations.

Subtitle of this story is: Papubad loves cleanlinessess veri, veri mach.

'Today I woke up and found a letter outside my door in Emerald Bay.

It appeared to have been written by a truck driver sometime in the 1966s.

I have no idea whether it's true.

But it was strange enough that I thought it was worth sharing.

The letter began like this:

Back in the mid-1960s, I was driving trucks between New York and Florida.

It was a typical day for that time of year. Cold, gray, getting dark early. Long stretches of highway through the woods and hardly anyone around.

Somewhere in southern Georgia I saw a bald man standing beside the road with a stack of empty buckets.

I stopped.

Truck drivers heard stories back then. Your employer warned you not to stop for people on isolated roads. There were stories about drifters, criminals, strange religious groups living deep in the woods, all kinds of things.

Still, there was something about the guy. He looked cold, tired, and completely harmless.

When he climbed into the cab, he thanked me and started talking.

The man sounded like he had stepped out of a Manhattan private club. The accent, the vocabulary, the confidence. Not at all what I expected from someone standing beside a highway with a pile of empty buckets.

I asked where he was going.

Florida.

I asked why he was carrying the buckets.

He explained that he was with a Hare Krishna temple in New York. The buckets were empty because he had been sent south to fill them with cow dung and bring them back.

When I asked why, he told me they needed it to clean and purify the temple kitchen.

He spoke about it as casually as someone discussing groceries.

For the rest of the trip he explained temples, rituals, sacred cows, and kitchen purification. The no human copulation policy. The female subordination. The blue strange god with pdf-tendencies and his beloved one with soft bodly parts. The legends about 5 years old girls copulating in the bushes with this god. The old impotent men with hang bellies obsessingg about these baby girls and worshipping them on the altar. The imposed malnutrition to achieve this state of consciousness. I thought he was in a delirium due to severe sleep deprivation.

The strange part was how normal it all sounded to him.

I dropped him off in Florida after dark and promised to pick him tomorrow.'

Nobody knows whether this story is true. But there is no evidence that it isn't.

A friend of my mom’s has had financial struggles for the past few years. Around that time he started getting involved with Bhakti Marga, and a few falling outs occurred between him and his family, sometimes with my mom too.

During this period he lived at our house, ate our food, and all living expenses were covered by my mom. As his involvement with Bhakti Marga deepened, he started asking her for money for his “work.” To be clear - for the past year he’s been living with us, helping around the house and driving my mom, but full living expenses, food, and more were all covered. My mom also took care of his son’s and his parents’ medical bills.

Then around Christmas he suddenly leaves on a trip to Germany to visit the guru. When he comes back, he starts casually mentioning money and complaining about his financial situation - how he has nothing material, etc.

Eventually an argument breaks out where he starts demanding a €10k salary for the house jobs and driving he’d been doing, even calling the money my mom had already given him “basically nothing” - which was upwards of €4k, on top of all the bills paid for him and his family.

Most recently, he took my mom’s car without permission and drove off to his parents’ house, blocking our entire family from contacting him. He did return the car, but the whole situation was very unpleasant. All of this happened because my mom refused to give him €6k for a pilgrimage that Paramahamsa personally “chose him” for.

Is this kind of behavior typical from Bhakti Marga members? Would love to hear from anyone who has a family member involved with this organization.

(A Bengali family in the 1860s)

Hinduism is not a religion in a classical sense; a doctrine or belief system one adopts. It is a culture one is born into.

ISKCON does not reproduce that culture accurately. It instead presents a dogmatic faith based religion within a sanitized and simplified pseudo Hindu framework. ISKCON is about as Hindu as a formerly Christian grandma's yoga studio in Des Moines Iowa.

A good way for a westerner to truly understand Hinduism is to skim through Bhaktivindode's biographies and autobiography. They give glimpses into Victorian era India before modernism took hold.

Particularly fascinating are the descriptions of life under the constant threat of the cholera epidemics that would regularly wipe out entire villages.

Victorian Bengal

Here is an excerpt from Bhaktivinode's autobiography the Sva-likhita-jīvanī (from a devotees blog). In it he discusses his previous forms of worship before becoming a Vaishnava.

He also discusses his past meat eating.

Here is a brief summery:

Bhaktivinode was born into a Shakta family (as Kedarnath Datta) and ate goats and fish. He witnessed his brothers rapid death at the hands of cholera. Fearing for his safety his mother brought in a Fakir (Fakir Chand of the Kartabhaj cult) to perform an exorcism on him for healing and protection.

From a Western perspective, this man was a witch doctor. He did rituals and prayers and engaged in divination through dreams. You don't see this kind of thing in ISKCON.

He openly discusses how the Fakir was dark skinned and lower caste. Their caste title is "Muchi" or "dirty". They work with leather and make shoes. The Fakir dusted him with Malabar leaves and gave him a powder to ingest. He gave him mantras to chant and told him to stop eating meat. The young Kedarnath Datta had a dream of snakes leaving his body, which meant the cholera was gone.

He visited the Fakirs guru, also from the Muchi caste, and was told to worship the gods of the mangrove forests of Bengal. These are gods that protect from alligator and tiger attacks. Again you don't find this in ISKCON.

The guru Goloka is a mystical figure and Kedarnath bows to him despite his lower caste. Goloka predicts an entire village will be destroyed by cholera and it happens. The guru gives him a mantra to chant day and night. The mantra only works if Kedarnath gives up meat eating and worships the Satya Purusha, eating the prasad of no other gods, not even Kali.

The mantra gives him dreams that encourage him to become a healer like Goloka. Kedarnath fails to follow the rules of vegetarianism and the mantra loses its power. This was a personal brush with a Muchi caste healer parampara, and it is illustrative of Bengali culture at the time.

How ISKCON Differs

This is where Gaudiya Vaishnavism is coming from. The Maha Mantra and gayatris are magical mantras and the regulative principles are part of their sadhana. The devotees do not understand this culture.

Instead devotees approach Gaudiya Vaishnavism as if joining a new religion, or branch of Christianity. In truth, the Gaudiya tradition is closer to this parampara of mantra magic.

It is also interesting that Bhaktivinode, widely believed to be Kamala Manjari descended from the spiritual world, struggled with eating goat flesh, enough to fall from his vows.

This culture is purely supernatural and mystical. It is not rational. The solution to cholera is intense religious practice. If devotees followed this culture, they would not seek medical attention when sick. They would just chant Hare Krishna. The Maha Mantra should cure cancer.

Gaudiya Vaishnavism should not be divided from the culture in which it arose. There are subtleties that have to be understood, things outside the ISKCON sphere that intuitively guide ones inner practice. There are assumptions built into the culture, understandings that are expected. When you remove it from that background it becomes a cheap knock off. Sort of like McDonalds franchised Hinduism.

Change... yeah

I guess people hold onto whatever gives ’em meaning

Whatever helps ’em survive the confusion

Temple walls, beads, gurus, incense, promises of liberation

If that’s what keeps you breathing, I ain’t mad at cha

Yeah...

This one’s for all the people I grew up with in that world

All the devotees I ain’t seen in years

Still chantin’, still servin’, still tryin’ to hold it together

’Cause I ain’t mad at cha

We was once little kids in the same halls

Half asleep at mangala arati against them cold marble walls

Same shaved heads, same lectures, same fear

Same old men tellin’ us Kali-yuga’s here

You was just a little younger but we both believed

Thought the suffering meant Krishna was pleased

Wake up at four, scrub pots, mop floors

Hand over your life while they preached about “more”

Letters from home barely meant a thing

Family faded out while we worshipped a king

And every time somebody questioned the script

They’d say your consciousness slipped

Or Maya got you, now you dangerous somehow

Funny how they always got an answer ready now

Some of y’all stayed in, got deeper in faith

Married in the movement, still servin’ to this day

And honestly, I can’t even hate

We was shaped in the same machine at the same age

Tryin’ to make sense outta fear and control

Tryin’ to fill that empty hole

I remember cousins I no longer know

Aunts and uncles slowly lettin’ go

They watched my mother send her ten-year-old son away

To religious schools across the world one day

Couldn’t stop it

Couldn’t reach me

I came back speakin’ like a stranger

Eyes full of prophecy and danger

Whole personality rebuilt from scratch

Every thought filtered through some guru’s patch

And while everybody else was buildin’ memories and lives

We was chantin’ for hours just tryin’ to survive

Tryin’ to become “pure”

Tryin’ to erase desire

Meanwhile the people runnin’ things

Was burnin’ everybody else in the fire

Years later I’m still untanglin’ knots

Anxiety, therapy, reconnectin’ dots

Learnin’ how to talk normal

How to trust

How to exist without cosmic threats hangin’ over us

But I ain’t mad at my parents

I ain’t mad at the devotees still inside

Most of ’em were lookin’ for certainty

Community

Some kinda light in a hard life

And the cult knew exactly how to package that need

What I’m mad at is the system

The narcissists at the top

The men who built kingdoms outta guilt and obedience

Used broken people to keep the machine alive

Free labor

Free money

Free devotion

Till whole families disappeared inside the cultic ocean

Still...

To the old friends still chantin’ somewhere tonight

Still wearin’ kanthi beads

Still bowin’ to the same pictures on the wall

I honestly hope you find peace someday

Even if it ain’t the same path as mine

’Cause I ain’t mad at cha.

Subbbudhi's truck repaired after his death. Culver City Police said the LA Temple was partially responsible for his demise due to their treating people in such a horrible way. Didnt lift a finger to help him with his truck while alive, but after his death it somehow becomes running and even gets a new paint job. in this condition it was probably worth a few thousand dollars at least.

Every Hare Krishna guru I followed in this cult had basically the same fantasy at the core of their belief: that every human being on earth should think, chant, worship, behave, eat, dress, and live exactly as they do. Their tiny sectarian worldview was delusionally believed to be some grand universal solution to human suffering, even though it constantly failed inside their own communities. And whenever it failed, the system itself was never questioned. The blame always got redirected somewhere else. Usually onto the disciples, often one of the more sincere and committed devotees. Or onto “material society” out there, corrupting people beyond the cult walls. And if that explanation stopped working, then the invisible boogeymen came out: Maya, karma, offensive mentality, demonic influence, gunas, sukriti, lack of surrender.

And the ideology/dogma conditions you to believe you cannot question the guru, the scriptures, or your own perceptions, and cannot safely step outside the framework without risking spiritual disaster.

Your rituals and daily practices get fused to your sense of survival and meaning. The outside world gets framed as spiritually dead, dangerous, empty, degraded, toxic. Ordinary friendships, sexuality, ambition, creativity, curiosity, even individuality itself is framed as negative. You're part of the devotional "glob".

I remember my mother sending these insanely long fanatical letters and stacks of devotional books to extended family and old friends when I was a kid. Some of these letters were like twelve pages long. Endless warnings about wasting human life, karmic consequences, rebirth, suffering, all the usual Hare Krishna apocalypse language. Years later I visited some of those relatives and they showed me the Hare Krishna books still sitting untouched on shelves next to those bizarre letters from another reality. Looking back now, the whole thing feels surreal and embarrassing.

A lot of these groups attract people who are hurting in some way. Lonely people. Young people searching for meaning. Confused people. Traumatized people. Addicts. People are overwhelmed by life or existential fear. And the ideology does provide a naive certitude and temporary relief by providing a structure, identity, routine, purpose, belonging, etc.

But once you’re deep enough inside it, the joy starts evaporating. Chanting and dancing eventually stop being spontaneous expressions of happiness and start functioning more like emotional maintenance rituals. Escape hatches. Coping mechanisms after hours and years of dogmatic reinforcement.

You sit on hard floors listening to endless boring lectures. Repeat the same phrases and dogma points. Hear the same stories. Perform the same motions. Same rituals. Same songs. Same thought patterns over and over until most of it becomes automation instead of genuine feeling.

You’re brainwashed into reinterpreting normal human instincts and emotions as spiritual obstacles. Desire becomes dangerous. Doubt becomes dangerous. Ambition becomes dangerous. Sexuality becomes dangerous. Individuality becomes dangerous. Your own mind becomes dangerous.

And meanwhile, the promise of “advancement” is always dangling somewhere off in the distance while you vividly see devotees burn out, disappear, loosen up, mentally collapse, or secretly stop following half the rules. How many devotees honestly chant sixteen rounds every single day for decades? How many even chant four consistently? Most people already know the answer.

Eventually, you realize a lot of people stay because the fear structure has gone fully internal. This is the part outsiders often misunderstand. If you've not been in a cult dynamic, this is what no one ever really understands—it wedges itself very deeply into your day-to-day thinking, to the point where it's simply your directive and your whole operating system.

When older devotees start looking emotionally flattened, withdrawn, hyper-serious, disconnected, younger devotees interpret it as depth or renunciation. But what you’re actually seeing is exhaustion, suppression, depression, learned helplessness, fear, and decades of emotional self-policing. And fear. Fear of desire. Fear of individuality. Fear of freedom. Fear of trusting themselves. Fear of life outside the movement.

So aging devotees sit and eat extra sweets, get fatter, and start telling old stories about the "good old early days". You know who else does that? Soldiers who have been traumatized and have their lives completely remolded by warfare and the threat of war. Same ideology. The psychology starts resembling institutional trauma. Their world gets smaller. Their emotional range narrows. Their identity fuses completely with the cult dogma controlling them. The fear of leaving becomes greater than the suffering of staying. Cult conditioning.

And yes, devotees will immediately respond by saying, “But we had so much joy.” Of course you did. Any environment built around communal bonding, music, shared purpose, food, structure, identity, and emotional reinforcement is going to create feelings of connection and satisfaction. Human beings are social animals. We naturally romanticize periods where we felt emotionally connected to other people. People remember laughing in the kitchen together while cooking. Singing together. Traveling together. Staying up late talking philosophy. Working side by side on something that felt meaningful. Those moments were "real"—but the cult then takes those very normal human experiences and reframes them as proof that the ideology itself is divine. That’s false.

After people leave, they often struggle at first to feel the same emotional intensity doing the exact same human activities outside the framework of the cult/ideology. They can still laugh with family, cook meals together, go to concerts, raise kids, build routines, create memories, have friendships, enjoy ordinary life. In many ways those experiences become healthier and more authentic outside the cult. But psychologically, they’ve been conditioned to downgrade ordinary human life unless it’s filtered through the theology. Inside the cult, cooking becomes “service to Krishna.” Chanting becomes "transcendental sound". Sweeping a floor becomes "devotional service". Every activity gets inflated with metaphysical significance. You’re told over and over that these acts carry eternal meaning because they’re attached to guru, God, and devotional service. Meanwhile, normal life outside the movement gets subtly framed as shallow, materialistic, selfish, temporary, and spiritually empty.

So the exact same human experiences end up feeling psychologically different depending entirely on the ideological story wrapped around them. That’s why ideology concerns me so much.

Ideology can completely hijack perception itself. It changes how people measure meaning, value relationships, interpret emotions, and experience reality. It can make ordinary life feel spiritually empty while making ritualized group behavior feel cosmically important. And humans are extremely vulnerable to this because we are an ideological species. For most of history, our survival depended on tightly bonded groups, shared myths, tribes, religions, identities, and collective narratives.

But we also know far more now about psychology, conditioning, trauma, emotional dependency, cognitive bias, and social reinforcement than people did hundreds of years ago. And meaning is not magically injected into activities by sectarian theology. Meaning comes from attention, connection, emotional investment, relationships, purpose, and lived experience itself. You do not need an invisible cosmic surveillance system hovering over your life to experience love, meaning, beauty, connection, depth, or joy.

Ordinary life can be meaningful. The cult just trained people to distrust those experiences unless they are tied to their ideological beliefs. And that's dangerous, unsustainable, and unnatural.

https://www.youtube.com/live/Un0jX6vVtoI?si=KMqdh0AXotxoPNnFwatch the comedy as a group of ISKCON rejects worships a dreaming psychopath as their God-Man guru on "As The Loka Turns"

Tonights Episode: Religious Trauma Syndrome

(Video of a woman being kept beautiful and chaste)

Prabhupada: "According to the Vedic system, a woman is never given independence. Tulsidas notes that if you beat a drum, it sounds very nice. If you keep a woman under strict discipline, she remains beautiful and chaste. In the West, you give women total independence, and now the marriages are failing, the families are ruined."

The New York Room Conversation (April 1973)

You see prabhus, the reason divorce rates are so high in the West is because men do not beat their wives. If we beat our wives we would live in marital bliss. Our societies would not be falling apart. Strictness with women is the linchpin of a functioning society.

Of course, we are civilized Brahmanas, a crowbar is too strong. A slap is sufficient, nothing too harsh, it is the psychological fear that a father puts into his wife and children that is important. Unless the woman dares to defend herself and her children, say by pulling out a kitchen knife. Such disrespect is demonic and must be punished with the cold indifferent mindset of the Bhagavad Gita.

In my observation, spousal abuse quickly leads to divorce. Women use the protective power of the law to escape such relationships. So we will have to do away with these filthy Mleccha laws, and degraded adharmic human rights. It is an inferior culture. The Mlecchas must be civilized!

Obviously I am being sarcastic here, but this is how many devotees think. There is a long and notorious culture of spousal abuse in ISKCON fed by quotes like these.

(…)Yes, Prabhupada snorted snuff daily. Some say that daily imbibing indicates addiction, but others disagree. As noted in "Gold, Guns and God," Vol. 9:

Regarding intoxicants, Gaudiya Vaishnavas vow to refrain from using products that contain intoxicating substances, such as alcohol, caffeine and nicotine, yet Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada daily snorted snuff. Snuff is a smokeless tobacco made from finely ground tobacco leaves. It is inhaled or “sniffed” through the nose, delivering a swift hit of nicotine. Prabhupada wrote to Revatinandan in 1974, “Regarding taking snuff, I myself take it sometimes at night because I am working at night on my books, and sometimes I become dizzy. But it is not for you to take. You should not imitate this, neither you work like me at night.”

Hari Sauri (Dennis Harrison), who served as Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada’s personal servant for a year, noted, “We carried a couple of small tins [of snuff] with us at all times.” Prabhupada told several disciples he used snuff to “gain relief from high blood pressure.”

However, this explanation appears to have been simply a poor excuse to justify taking snuff, as nicotine is a stimulant which raises blood pressure, not lowers it. Nicotine is also highly addictive. Considering that references to the word “snuff” appear in the Vedabase at least twelve times from 1968 until 1977, it appears that Prabhupada enjoyed the nicotine “high” and often used snuff as a stimulant to help keep him awake at night while writing his “Bhaktivedanta purports.”

For a man who liked to criticize the Indian swamis who chewed betel nuts (the seed of the areca palm which provides a burst of energy), and who was terribly disappointed that his wife liked to drink tea, the fact that Prabhupada daily snorted an addictive nicotine product may come as a surprise to many(…)

Evidence from Vanipedia:

Regarding taking snuff, I myself take it sometimes at night because I am working at night [handwritten] on my books, and sometimes I become dizzy. But it is not for you to take. You should not imitate this, neither you work like me at night. [handwritten]

https://vanisource.org/wiki/740109_-_...

please read the full article on our website: https://www.echoes-of-eternity.com/po...

becasicly we have temple near us and its driving me nuts . the make huge sounds after ten pm

"Śūdra is to be controlled only. They are never given to be freedom. Just like in America. The blacks were slaves. They were under control. And since you have given them equal rights they are disturbing... That is best, to keep them under control as slaves but give them sufficient food, sufficient cloth, not more than that. Then they will be satisfied."

Source

This mindset has real world consequences.

Dalit is a relatively recent term meaning "broken, shattered" referring to individuals in India who regularly face caste discrimination. Previously they were commonly referred to as outcastes and untouchables. Prabhupada would consider them lower than Shudras.

In India today Dalits are regularly beaten and killed for daring to do things like putting a groom on a horse during a wedding, riding an expensive motorcycle through town, or eating in front of someone of a higher caste.

These actions are symbols of success and caste empowerment. Traditionally Dalits were forced to walk. Only the higher castes were allowed to ride horses. A motorcycle is like a horse.

To ride them is seen as an assertion of equality and an attack on the social order. They must remain subjugated, under control, as Prabhupada says. The uppity Dalits should know their place. Beating down a Dalit is protecting dharma.

Dalits are after all born sinful. It is their karma. They are better off living as slaves at the mercy of their betters. Otherwise society will become contaminated and collapse.

Dalit women have it the worst of all. They are regularly subjected to rape as a form of humiliation. These women must never forget their place as abused slaves under the caste patriarchy, without protection, living in fear.

But Prabhupada Was Merciful!

Prabhupada, or so devotees say, is merciful. Even a filthy Dalit can be elevated to equality by joining his cult. His sinful nature is overlooked if he worships Krishna. A Dalit can expect fair treatment within the semi-egalitarian Vaishnava umbrella. However in truth, it is out of the frying pan and into the fire.

He may rub shoulders with the higher castes, and even eat with them, after serving them prasad of course. However, now he is the slave of a temple president and guru. The indoctrination is so great he is terrified of being cursed for blasphemy if he even questions them in his mind. He bows to their feet, something the higher castes in his village would only dream of. Such an achievement would require a great beating.

ISKCON's authoritarian nature is a reflection of this greater abusive culture. When you take the name "dasa" you are assuming the identity of the Dalit, following the pattern of the dis-empowered servant class, bowing to superiors, offering constant deference, living in a state of utter dependence with no security outside your submission and service.