Podcast transcription:
Against “ISKCON”
Interview with Kailäsa Candra däsa
Part 2
The following Monthly Audio presentation for July, with a transcript included, was conducted by seven directors, officers, and members in good standing of The Vaishnava Foundation. It is an interview with Kailäsa Candra dasa recorded on June 27th, 2026. Although twenty-one questions were edited for clarity and syntax, the contents and intention of each question was formed by those seven inquirers. They are: Bhakta Ernest Dras, Bhakta Çréhari Vijaya Räghavan, Gokulänanda, Hasya-rati, Ompürnam, Sanätana, and Bhakta Alexandar Peric.
12 ALEX I would like to first say that I am very thankful to you, prabhu, for your selfless, dedicated service to Srila Prabhupäda and the Vaiñëava worldwide community. You are steadily preaching genuine spiritual truths and messages as they are given by Srila Prabhupäda and previous Acaryas. You are doing so without any compromise or biases, despite many obstacles which have come to pass after Srila Prabhupäda departed physical manifestation and entered samadhi.
From the Spring of 1978, the genuine spiritual Vaiñëava movement founded by Srila Prabhupäda has been grossly deviated. It has been gradually watered down to the level of a new organized religion, a Church, and a de-facto apa-sampradaya. It functions in the name of pure devotional service, spreading mistaken knowledge related to guru-tattva and the process to attain perfection in spiritual life!
Despite all of that havoc, you remained a loyal disciple of Srila Prabhupäda, dedicated to his instructions and teachings and continued to preach the Absolute Truth. Specifically, your two books, (namely, Beyond Institutional Gurus, Initiations, and Party Men and the newest one, On Consciousness and Perfection of Man) are extremely helpful to distinguish between Absolute Reality and illusion! Thank you very much.
Here is my question: When and how did you realize that the first eleven so-called dékñä gurus were neither appointed by ?r?la Prabhupäda as dékñä gurus nor qualified for such service? What steps and what stand did you make after that realization that they all cheated about their alleged appointment?
This realization did not take place for over two years, because it could not be known immediately after Prabhupäda departed. What was touted as an appointment tape was never transcribed. That tape was kept in the vault in Los Angeles by Rämeçvara. Only six G.B.C. men in Prabhupäda’s private quarters at the Raman Reti complex during its interview, knew of its contents. It was called “The Appointment Tape,” but it turned out to be something else. No one knew that until mid-1980, however.
It contained no appointment of any guru or gurus whatsoever. That is a very long story and covered elsewhere in my other presentations, as well as in my books and articles. The tape was pried out of the vault by two devé-däsés at Los Angeles in 1980, when they pressured Rämeçvara to give them the tape, in order for them to listen to it for verification.
Instead, their doubts were validated. One of these disciples, a very fiery woman who was a huge collector, read Rämeçvara the riot act after she understood that she and the movement had been misled for over two years about what that tape was supposed to have proved. She was a heavy-duty preacher and determined to get the message out. She did so to a significant degree, but there was no INTERNET at that time, and communication back then was far more limited than it is today.
She preached that the gurus were all bogus. This got her not only ostracized but beaten severely. She eventually took shelter of a small group of devotees that Y.N.S. had linked up with in Buffalo in late 1978. My group was separate from his, but my men were still favorable to him. One of them called long-distance to check up on him.
He then revealed that the appointment tape was a hoax. As such, we stopped our activities in the lower Midwest and immediately traveled to Buffalo in order to listen to and discuss the shocking details. One thing was crystal clear: No one was appointed to the post of guru or spiritual master on that tape. It was supposed to contain conclusive evidence that Prabhupäda appointed eleven spiritual masters in July of 1977 after that aforementioned meeting in late May of the same year in his private quarters, but it contained no such evidence at all.
This was a major revelation. It became clear that the eleven appointments in July, 1977, were only of rittviks. Everyone in the movement, without exception, had been brainwashed into believing that Prabhupäda appointed gurus, but he never did. As such, there was potential for a major shake-up. There was something in the air. This is when I first realized it, as per your question, viz., in early November of 1980.
What did I do about it? That would take a presentation in and of itself equal to the length of this one. I have done quite a lot. I wrote position papers. I circulated them. I held one meeting with other senior devotees in Kingman, Kansas in early 1981. As the years went on, I continued with my personal insurgency. I never stopped preaching this truth and pointing out the ramifications and repercussions integral to it.
I took advantage of the INTERNET in the mid-Nineties, well before most of my godbrothers got online. I incorporated The Vaishnava Foundation in early 1988 in Sacramento, California, after it had functioned for thirteen months under the same title as an unincorporated entity. One of the pillars of my preaching is that the original eleven great enjoyers and deviants were never appointed by Prabhupäda to the posts they usurped via a kind of smash-and-grab in the late Seventies.
I took a stand against all of them before the appointment that never was revealed itself to me at the beginning of the Eighties. I upgraded and further empowered my resistance from time to time. None of my godbrothers have matched me in this connection, in no small part because virtually all of them are entangled in one of three major deviations—”ISKCON,” Neo-Mutt, and Rittvik—all of which I exposed early in my preaching and continue to do so.
I have a large body of work; in due course, it will become immense. It will continue to cover all of the bases and facts in granular detail. It will continue to expose the three great deviations that are parading themselves as part of Prabhupäda’s plan, although they are anything but. All of them are engaged in killing Kåñëa consciousness in the name of spreading it. “ISKCON” opened that Pandora’s Box, in no small part, because its leaders hid the truth about the appointment that never was.
13 ERNEST Your primary mission has been exposing the deviations that emerged in what only appears to be Prabhupäda’s movement, mostly after ?r?la Prabhupäda’s disappearance. Against whom or what has your effort primarily been directed? Is it against the cult itself?
My effort is against any and all movements that have emerged as deviations from what Prabhupäda ordered. You do not offer constructive criticism of a pseudo-bhakti deviation, as that only feeds it. The ISKCON movement that Prabhupäda founded and developed in the Sixties and Seventies no longer exists. It can be compared to the creeper of devotional service, and such an analogy is apt on many levels. You have to till the garden and remove the weeds. If you do, the real creeper can grow, flourish, and produce fruit for those who then relish it.
The genuine ISKCON movement was the creeper that got strangled by the weed of “ISKCON,” which prevailed when it killed the real creeper. The ripened fruit of the essence of the Vedas is pure Vaiñëavism. It is at the top of the tree of Vedic revelation. It is passed down carefully from branch to branch in order to be relished in unadulterated form at the end.
The spiritual science and buddhi-yoga process of devotional service is delicate. It must be passed carefully from guru and disciple, as well as from a more advanced disciple to new follower. It must be passed down as it is, without any change or adulteration. It must be passed down in Truth, which entails complete honesty. As per this analogy, the truly spiritual movement functions in exactly the same way.
When an imitation weed enters—which, in the case of ISKCON, it did in the mid-Seventies, including the plainclothes pick—it required that to be uprooted by the movement’s leaders. It wasn’t. Exactly the opposite took place: The imitation weed began to grow stronger as it strangled the creeper of Prabhupäda’s actual ISKCON.
As to when the imitation weed prevailed, that can be debated. What was the deathblow? A deathblow does not always produce immediate death, although it often does. Many would consider that the hijacking of the movement by the pretenders in the Spring of 1978 was the initial shock, the deathblow to Prabhupäda’s branch of Hare Kåñëa. Once that die was cast, did the real ISKCON movement then cease to exist?
Or did it still have a chance to recover? Did it continue on life support for awhile. If you believe that it could have recovered, that a return to square one was still possible, however remote, then, in continuing with this analogy, the ISKCON movement hung on until the mid-Eighties. However, The Second Transformation, led by Professor Blueblood and NATPA, required to engage in emergency surgery.
It required a revolution.
That never happened, and the chameleon imitation weed of the fabricated, so-called “ISKCON” movement changed its shape and its colors, but its essence of deviation remained. The initial dishonesty was not uprooted, and the real movement was so emaciated by that time that it was taken off of life support. This is one other view, of course.
Either way, therein lies the accurate history, even if you opine that the deathblow of 1978 was immediately effective and “ISKCON” completely triumphed at that time. Either way, by the mid-Eighties, what appeared to be Prabhupäda’s Hare Kåñëa movement was a perverted reflection of the real thing, which was then killed, scattered, and lost.
I engage in withering criticism against the perverted reflections, yet I simultaneously offer a positive alternative. Everyone can see that I engage in destructive criticism as far as “ISKCON” is concerned, yet we do not simply dovetail negativity. The Vaishnava Foundation offers positive seva opportunities for its members in good standing. It has allies. It has patrons. And these friends recognize the service it is engaged in.
Destructive criticism and its concomitant preaching, preaching which successfully works to expose the deviations and check the momentum of a pseudo-devotional scam, constitute positive service to the guru-paramparä. We are AGAINST the perverted reflection of ISKCON.
14 HASYA You have spent decades uncompromisingly exposing systemic falsehoods and deviations within the post-1977 institutional structure of the fabricated, so-called “ISKCON” confederation. Because of this bold stance, have you ever been personally targeted, harassed, or threatened by the leaders of that fabrication?
To some degree, I have been threatened. Certainly, I have been harassed on countless occasions, most of these assaults on the astral plane. Aggressive leaders of institutional delusions generally do not allow people outside of the cult to know their targets; even within it, they do not let this become common knowledge.
It could only work to hurt them in the long run if they did so. If once loyal members privy to the details of such intrigues leave the cult and work against it, they could provide testimony in court which would severely hurt their former leaders.
I was de facto and specifically ostracized in the Spring of 1979 by the vitiated G.B.C.. Those leaders knew it well that psychic harassment, at a bare minimum, would follow such condemnation, and it did. Figuratively, I was made radioactive; this played out not just within the organization’s circles but outside of it amongst former members, also.
Things tightened up when I became more effective in my preaching, when I was able to spread the message that the appointment that never was and is a colossal hoax, which I did not yet know at the time of a previous death threat. I was harassed, targeted, and threatened with violence about as much as could have been expected.
Once the assassin of Sulocan was apprehended in a one-in-one-thousand circumstance arranged by the Paramätmä in Kent, Ohio, it became clear to all of the “ISKCON” leaders that they better not stretch the rubber band by putting out hits. If they are cursing me (which is almost certain), that harassment has stayed at astral level.
This should not be misinterpreted to mean that I do not keep my intuitive antennae up, because I am, more or less, always ready for some kind of assault on some level from my enemies. I do not allow it to minimize the intensity of my output in preaching against the deviants. They know this, and my intensity keeps increasing.
At this point, they tolerate my activities, despite the fact that I did, in the mid-Eighties, take a center 10 away from them. If murdering someone like Sulocan (who was not following the bhakti process or its restrictions) could still boomerang and the assassin apprehended by circumstantial luck, it minimizes the chance of taking anymore such risks.
A wing of “ISKCON,” under the so-called authorization of the Moundsville compound’s leader, did take that risk in the mid-Eighties. It came back to destroy both the hitter and his guru. If you are targeted and harassed, you have to learn how to deal with curses.
15 VIJAYA You had encamped in the Indian centers of Swämi Näräyana (in Mathura) and a sannyäsé godbrother Gaura-Govinda (in Bhuvaneshvara). What was your experience of them in their association? As is claimed by his current followers, could Swämi Näräyana have been the natural Successor to ?r?la Prabhupäda? What about Gaura-Govinda?
Swämi Näräyan is Gouòéya Mutt. I stayed with him at his Keçava-jé Mutt in Mathura from mid-October of 1983 until sometime in January. When I arrived there, I had previously, in August of that year, sent, via Western Union, a donation to him of $300.00. Although he was informed of it, he never retrieved or redeemed it. This despite the fact that he had many favorable connections, particularly with politicians, in New Delhi, and he traveled there quite regularly.
The first seva he gave me was to return to New Delhi (where I had just landed), retrieve that money and bring it back to him in rupees. He then put me up in a room in the basement, which was under renovation. Its air was thick with fine particles of construction detritus. I soon got sick, what to speak of the dysentery I picked up within a few days, which was always the case whenever I went to India. 11
He later informed me that he wanted me to suffer. I also caught a really nasty cold; perhaps, it was borderline pneumonia. It gets frigid in northern India in late November and especially in December. He took me on a parikramä via a donkey-driven rikshaw in November, although I was blowing my nose constantly. I then saw that he had all kinds of loose friends in that area, who greeted him in a very congenial way. None of them showed any of the markings of Vaiñëavas.
He had one other even closer friend, however, who did not have that Western dress and did have Vaiñëava markings. These two were very tight. It was the notorious Parväta Swämi. 12 That so-called sannyäsé was a disciple of another guru, who was a godbrother of Swämi Näräyana’s guru, Bhakti Prajïäna Keçava Swämi.
Parväta twisted my arm in order to have me agree to accompany him on a rikshaw to some remote property he had purchased just outside of the Mathura jurisdiction. He was recruiting me to be one of his disciples for the temple he was proposing to build on it.
He criticized Prabhupäda in many ways during this trip, trying to convince me that Prabhupäda was held in very low esteem by his guru, who Prabhupäda, a junior godbrother of that guru, served under for a brief time at the New Delhi Gouòéya Mutt. Referring to Prabhupäda, Parväta would interject: “But he could not accomplish anything.”
It was a stunning example of a complete lack of judgment in respect to recent Gouòéya history. No disciple of Siddhänta Sarasväté was able to do anything comparable to what Prabhupäda accomplished. Prabhupäda accomplished much, much more than what all of his other godbrothers produced combined.
All of this caused me to have doubts about Swämi Näräyana. I once attempted to ask him some basic philosophical questions, but he made it clear that he was uneasy with that. The one he did answer proved to be wrong, but it took me a lot of time to discover that fact.
Over and above this, we would clean up together in the early morning. He did answer one question I asked him at the shower: I asked him whether or not we were ever in the spiritual world. His verbatim answer was: “We have never been there.” This, as you know, contradicts what Prabhupäda preached in this connection. 13
Nevertheless, I was adjusting and gradually regaining my health. Swämi Näräyan made it clear to me that he did not approve of how Swämi B. R. Çrédhar Swämi was dealing with the “ISKCON” leaders. As you may remember, a major schism had gone down just a year and one-half previous to this visit of mine to Mathura. In a raised voice, Swämi Näräyan said to me: “Even if Lord Caitanya appeared to me and told me to accept how he (Swämi B. R. Çrédhar) is dealing with ISKCON, I would not do so!” Think about that statement for a moment.
I was advised (or, you could say, ordered) to write a letter to some leader of Neo-Mutt in West Bengal to see if they would consider whether or not I could join them. I had no such inclination. There was no feedback, which neither surprised nor disappointed me.
One afternoon, out of the blue, I was summoned to the second floor inside veranda of his center. Swämi Näräyana was sitting with Puré Mahäräj from Jagannätha Puré. He was one of the few godbrothers of Bhakti Prajïäna Keçava Swämi still living. Along with these two were three leaders of “ISKCON.” Word had gotten out that I had bivouacked at the Swämi’s center in Mathura, and “ISKCON” wanted that nipped.
I was invited last to this conclave, and the reason for that was not at all difficult to discern: “ISKCON” was trying to convince Swämi Näräyan that I should not be allowed to stay there. One of those men was stressing that I had not been forced to leave ISKCON but had done so on my own accord. They wanted me to move back in at Raman Reti. Swämi Näräyan was not even slightly disagreeable to this suggestion; he was amenable to it, and he made no effort to defend my remaining with him.
I had no inclination to return to Raman Reti for many reasons. If I did not agree to that idea, they proposed back-up plans. One was that I travel to Bhuvaneshvara and stay at that center under construction there. It was being run by Gaura-govinda Swämi, who was highly favorable to Gouòéya Mutt and had many connections with both it and Neo-Mutt leaders. He associated with them more than he did “ISKCON,” although he still remained a representative of “ISKCON.”
If that was not accepted, then I was to take shelter of Puré Mahäräj in his äçrama at Jagannätha Puré. In other words, Swämi Näräyan had agreed with the local “ISKCON” leaders that I was no longer to stay at his center in Mathura. He had acquiesced to their politics.
I no longer could look up to him after the cumulative effects of all of this. I gave it a go, and he came up short. He was not a representative of Prabhupäda, and that was certain. He once said, as if he were making a prediction, that he would give me sannyäsa. That day was never going to take place if I had any say in it.
However, it is wrong to conclude that I left Uttara-Pradesh and headed to Bhubaneshvara and Jagannätha Puré disappointed, with a bitter taste in my mouth. I had realized what I needed to learn, and I had paid the price via direct experience. Those experiences proved helpful in the intermediate and the long-term; in some ways, I cashed in on them.
As far as Gaura-govinda is concerned, I stayed with him for just a short time, about a week in Bhubaneshvara. To say that he was a major disappointment is an understatement. I found nothing at all attractive about him. His bevy of adoring young boys was obnoxious. His lectures were at the A-B-C-D level, without the CD.
The one philosophical reply (from one question that I asked him) turned out to be mistaken knowledge. His face was eerie. Half of it was white, but the upper half was very dark. He played “ISKCON” and Gouòéya Mutt against one another as it suited his purposes. I have no doubt that he accepted Gouòéya Mutt-cum-Neo-Mutt teachings.
His dealings with me were minimal. He allowed me to stay there only because Swämi Näräyan and Puré Mahäräj had convinced him to take me in. Those who today opine that he was some kind of saint are just as wrong as those who claim that Swämi Näräyan was Prabhupäda’s Successor in our line of disciplic succession. The vibration I got from my contact with Gaura-govinda is that he was an expert politician cloaked in pukka saffron. He cut quite the profile.
16 ERNESTHow did you come in contact with Sulocana? How much influence did you have on his book, eventually entitledThe Guru Business?
I was in Houston in the first half of 1985, after having returned from India the previous year and having moved there in September of 1984. A funny thing about memory: Some long-term memory can be vivid, and, on the other hand, some of it can be completely wiped out, the synapses broken over time. Such is the case with areas connected to my first contact with Sulocan, but it was in Houston when that contact was made.
We decided to link up and wound up in Gopa-Våndäpäl’s 14 parking lot in Santa Cruz during the summer of 1985, where we worked on his fledgling manuscript for a book yet untitled. Word processing was just becoming available at that time, and it was certainly a step up from the manual typewriter. He had a Commodore, which was arguably the best of its class. Typing up the work and then printing it out on his first-class printer assisted my editing of his very rough draft.
He had some major misconceptions, and he was not chanting rounds. He was a body builder, good looking, and a womanizer whenever he wanted to be, although neither of us were engaged in that way during this period at Santa Cruz. He was also into intoxication of all varieties, but while I was with him, that was not engaged.
While we worked together, he began chanting eight rounds per day. His grudge was focused upon Kértanänanda. 15 He was thinking that the G.B.C., pressured by everything he would expose in his book, could be forced to take action against Kértanänanda. This was wrong thinking, and I convinced him that the vitiated G.B.C. was the actual root source of all of his problems. As such, he modified his writing to reflect this, mixing criticism of the governing body and the current “ISKCON” gurus 16 with condemnation of Kértanänanda.
His second major misconception was in relation to Lélämåta, the contaminated biography of Prabhupäda. I pointed out that it minimized Prabhupäda and glorified, sometimes surreptitiously, the G.B.C. in the process. I had contributed to a position paper in 1981 which focused on this theme with numerous quotes from that six-volume work.
One morning, Sulocan had his Eureka moment and told his realization. He explained how the goal of Lélämåta was to make Prabhupäda out as a guru who was basically the same as the eleven great pretenders. This realization fired him up to condemn that biography, and that criticism then worked its way into his manuscript.
An elder godbrother, Bhakta däs, had smuggled the letters out of the vault in Los Angeles, and Sulocan, who was gregarious and very friendly with many devotees, made copies of those letters given to him by his friend. This was the basis of his manuscript, which badly needed editing. He recruited me as his editor, although I was not accredited in his book, because we had a falling out previous to its publication.
I had significant influence on his book. It would not have been very professionally produced had it not been for my editing. Sometimes, I cut down long, wordy commentaries to their essences; in one case, culminating in only one hard-hitting sentence. I also gave him chapter titles, such as ”ISKCON: The Greatest Showbottle on Earth.”
17 ALEX What were your reasons and goals for establishing The Vaishnava Foundation?
As the saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention. I was de facto kicked out of the Berkeley center in the early summer of 1986. A small group of us, one of whom was devoted to me, rented a one-story house in Lafayette, an eastern suburb of the Bay Area. In late August, the strain of two unmarried men living in the same house with two married couples could no longer be sustained.
A proposal was made that I and my companion shift our residence to the Mount Kailäsa retreat in the mountains of Lake County, about an hour and one-half north of the Bay Area. It was semi-independent from the G.B.C. man, who controlled both San Francisco and Berkeley.
I was well received at Mt. Kailäsa by its president, who had been impressed by what he had read in The Guru Business. From direct experience, he had a negative impression of Sulocan and intuited that the book which he published (this man had read it thoroughly) must have been created mostly by someone who was more spiritually advanced.
He had, just before I came to Berkeley in March of that year, found out that I was its its editor and chief writer. The directors of Mt. Kailäsa were sharply divided. The whole operation was in very deep debt, compounded by major lawsuit which would, once adjudicated, certainly be lost; an obvious transgression had occurred, in which Mt. Kailäsa would no doubt be ruled responsible. It would bankrupt the community, which had had no reliable source of income for some time.
Its Board of Directors consisted of three, two of whom predominated it and were in semi-hostile camps. One of those camps was centered far from Lake County in SOCAL. The third director was an absentee board member, an unwilling placeholder inserted by the governing body commissioner of the Bay Area. 16 That “ISKCON” commissar, a wealthy man from Iran, was gradually manipulating a takeover of Mt. Kailäsa, saying that he would extinguish the compound’s huge debts if it would allow him one more appointee on the Board of Directors.
TATTVAMASI
I was approved to move there with my young friend, although there was tension involved in that decision. After that, I could recognize what was going down. As such, I urged the other two directors to remove the placeholder. That young man signed off, because he had no interest in being a director in the first place. This leveled the playing field to what it had been before the takeover attempt, which obviously was aborted. The Bay Area commissioner’s man, who was supposed to become the fourth director, immediately vacated Mt. Kailäsa.
Making a saga as concise as possible, after two other departures by those who were unfavorably inclined to me, I and the temple president, a sannyäsé, 17 formed an unincorporated entity in order to control the finances which our men, including that temple president, collected daily. We named it The Vaishnava Foundation. We maintained the operation of the rural compound through our collections, but whatever was left over was deposited in our own bank account.
That president, who was one of the Directors, soon gave up his saffron status, as well as the name he had been given by one of the eleven great pretenders. That was Hansadutta, who formerly was in control of both the Bay Area temples, as well as Mt. Kailäsa. The saga of Mt. Kailäsa is very long, and that will not be described. The Board was expanded to four, although it was as divided as before. I was added to it later when one of the men on our side decided to leave Mt. Kailäsa. There was a great deal of intrigue involved this.
Mt. Kailäsa went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy. However, I found a competent attorney in Ukiah to represent us in that aforementioned ominous lawsuit, which we had no hope of winning. Fortunately for us, his investigation uncovered that the Berkeley center had taken out an insurance policy for Berkeley and Mt. Kailäsa conjointly. We were able to settle, with the insurance covering a large and deserved payment to the young man who was the victim in the lawsuit.
Still, there was the divided Board and that outstanding huge debt. The creditors were pressuring us for their money. We would have to sell the property, although I did make an offer to the other side of the Board, as an alternative to selling.
After the sale of the property and paying off the creditors, the agreed upon plan was to divide remaining monetary assets into donations to separate non-profit corporations, created by each side of the Board. Just previously, we also had to fend off a lawsuit filed by Hansadutta, which cost us $13,000.00. We won that court case not only on the merits and testimony, but also on a technicality related to the promissory note, which was the Plaintiffs’ basis for filing the lawsuit.
Once our Realtor put the property up for sale, our attorney in that Hansadutta case arranged for one of his buddies to draft a bare bones document in the form of a one-page purchase offer. However, in making this offer, that attorney (who was personally unfavorable to me) failed to recognize that Mt. Kailäsa had property in not just Lake County, but also thirteen acres in adjoining Mendocino County. It was not listed in the sales tender, which our Board was willing to accept and did accept.
This wound up netting us an extra $13,000.00, which was both fitting and justified. Nevertheless, before the sale, I made an offer to the other side of the Board that we would move our operation to those Mendocino acres and continue running Mt. Kailäsa from there.
The other side did not form its own non-profit corporation, but we did. I incorporated The Vaishnava Foundation on January 20, 1988 in Sacramento with the other Director on the Mt. Kailäsa Board at that time, a younger godbrother. I did so without the aid of an attorney. I drew up all of the documentation required, and my work was approved. As mentioned at the beginning of this answer, The Vaishnava Foundation was formed out of necessity for not only separate collection but also due to an eventual legal split of assets, 18 which took place after escrow closed.
The other side of the Board kept legal control of Mt. Kailäsa, Inc. Yet, to say that what has just been described is the only reason for formulating and forming The Vaishnava Foundation would be many bridges too far.
The Vaishnava Foundation has accomplished a lot since Mt. Kailäsa ran its course in late 1988. We have produced many powerful articles, videos, audios, and YouTube Shorts over the years. We have recruited members and kept a handful of them. Although the attrition rate has been high, this spiritual entity has been on firm ground for quite some time now, decades. It has many dedicated members.
It was meant to accomplish much in an area where almost none of my godbrothers dared to tread. It exposes all the bogus, so-called Kåñëa groups in painstaking detail. It has produced the accurate narrative. It has two functioning websites. It offers a positive alternative to the three chief groups 19 advocating that they represent the guru-paramparä, when, in point of fact, they do not.
It is checking the momentum of the largest and most powerful of those groups, which is, of course, the fabricated, so-called “ISKCON” confederation. If you come to The Vaishnava Foundation, you can expect to receive knowledge that you would otherwise be unable to access. You can convert that into realized wisdom if you continue to follow us.
You can expect clarity that is available nowhere else, especially about the real narrative of Prabhupäda’s branch of the Kåñëa movement and in terms of the science of self-realization. You can also expect to feel the defiance this organization projects against the sahajiyä groups that has, and continues to mislead, thousands of innocent people.
We are steady. We move with intelligent deliberation. Our reasons for forming this organization are bona fide. We have survived a fire of ordeal, only a small part of which has been communicated here. One of our goals is to ultimately nip the influence of the three sahajiyä groups that are covering Kåñëa consciousness in the name of spreading it.
Our motto is: In like a pin, out like a plow.
18 ERNEST For many years, you have been able to penetrate the illusions created by sahajiyä deviants and provide the real explanation of all of that to fortunate individuals. In your opinion, what has given you the strength and insight to accomplish such an important task?
Aside from mental and spiritual strength provided by sädhana and the mercy of Parameçvara and the demigods who favor you, whatever you do a lot of, you get good at. Making muscles during body building depends upon the known principle that slightly tearing muscles will soon heal to make them larger and stronger.
Once the zonal äcärya imposition went down, I figured something was off about it. I did not know in detail how deviated it was at first, but I was inclined to be opposed to it immediately. My intuition proved to be right. The question was, at that time, whether I was willing to keep it to myself or act upon it by preaching against it. On the other hand, was I willing to give the zonal imposition a chance?
Turns out, I was not.
Then, from a personal perspective, how to proceed? The answer to this question, to a significant degree, was made for me in terms of the so-called service I was given by my governing body commissioner at that time. Short-term, it was spiritually terrible. However, it cannot be judged in that way from a higher perspective. It put me in a position to jettison from “ISKCON,” which meant breaking away from having any connection with the eleven great pretenders.
My sva-bhäva combines, down-line, the determination of the intelligence with some writing and speaking acumen. The luck factor played a part, as well. Without knowing that such would be the case, I walked into situations that were conducive (read, lucky) in order to find out just what was going down in the movement and why.
It is also a fact that most of the leaders of “ISKCON” handled me in such a way that it became almost inevitable that I would turn against them. There are no do-overs. However, there were circumstances where, if I had been handled differently and accommodations made, I may have gone along, to some extent, with the imposition. As one possible example, I may have become integral to that mid-Eighties event from NATPA if I had been favored by the non-guru leaders.
It was to my spiritual advantage that they did not handle me well, although two or three of them were helpful to me to some extent, even in the early Eighties. I am grateful to them, but all of those men were second echelon. As such, when push came to shove, they got shoved.
As far as insight is concerned, I do pick up the motivations of others very quickly, sometimes instantly. As far as strength is concerned, I am not without it. Specifically, I am strong when attacked. I boxed a bit in high school, and although not a good puncher, I was adept at counter-punching. When you have the Saturn and Mars that I have in my janma-kuëòali, you fight. This includes survival techniques, when applicable. As per that common aphorism: Whatever does not kill you makes you stronger. Although this is a relative truth (and is not always the case), it has mostly been the case for me during many years of ordeal.
All devotees in our branch of the guru-paramparä are dependent upon the mercy and protection of its most recent Sampradäya-Äcärya, His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedänta Swämi. We are also dependent upon the Parameçvara. We are dependent upon Çrématé Rädhäräëé, as this disciplic succession, especially since Lord Caitanya, has the Personality of Bhakti as its chief feature, unlike most of the other lines.
I brought into this life, from both the causal and astral planes, my own mix of the three modes, my own karma, and my own daiva. Some of what I am (or what I have become over time) can be dovetailed to what I have chosen—or, from another perspective, what was chosen for me–as my chief seva since the late Seventies. In conclusion: I am not only the best at what I do: I am the only one who does what I do.
19 GOK As I understand your history, you were a skilled writer even before you entered the Hare Kåñëa movement. This could explain why you have been able to write such excellent, groundbreaking books, the recent being On Consciousness and the Perfection of Man.
After reading this book, I gained a much deeper and comprehensive understanding of what exactly happened to the movement. What would you say makes this book so powerful?
It covers ground that no one else has covered. It also is the most granular explanation of the exchange between the two sannyäsés and Prabhupäda in his quarters at Raman Reti in late May of 1977. That was said to be an “appointment tape,” although there was no appointment contained in that botched interview whatsoever.
My detailed explanation of how that Q & A went down covers all of the bases. It can be consulted by any transcendentalist to advantage. It is now on the record, and it is likely that it will stay there for a long time, because the explanation is lucid. That clarity was and is sorely wanted, and now it has been provided to all.
There can be no mystical, obtuse, opaque, or allegedly inconceivable explanation that can stand against it, as long as enough honest men and women read that chapter, assimilate its message, and spread the facts and truths of that real explanation. Each chapter in my book contains detailed discussions of the topic taken up by that chapter.
As far as being a skilled writer is concerned, I certainly had to work at it. My earlier written treatises are inferior to what I have produced in the last decade or so. I am enthusiastic about writing when it comes to helping my fellow travelers on the theistic Eastern path overcome obstacles thrown up against them in the name of Kåñëa consciousness.
I was a writer, as previously mentioned, in both high school and college. I won a regional award for a short story in high school. I was sent to a two-week summer specialty program in Madison for budding journalists from five Midwest States between my sophomore and junior years. I later received a full-ride scholarship upon entering UW.
However, I was nothing more than an above average writer during that time frame. Managing a devotional community online and producing videos, audios, and YouTube Shorts requires tenacity in the area of both writing and forensics. It requires much more than that, obviously, but I am simply answering here the specific question asked.
In the service of my guru-mahäräj, it was and remains my duty to become an accomplished communicator. If you want to be excellent in any area, you must never be completely satisfied with your output; instead, you must strive to continue to improve in that area. I do that, and it has shown some positive results.
One of my godbrothers many years ago, just after the turn of the century, said that what I was trying to do is the most difficult task possible. He was referring to the fact that none of the members of our organization has ever met me in person. Indeed, none of the current members even lives in the United States. Yet, all of them, herein asking questions, are very devoted to The Vaishnava Foundation and myself.
This is, in no small part, due to communication skills between myself and each of them. Writing in the form of treatises and my many books 19 are part of that endeavor and accomplishment, but it should not be concluded that I am a spontaneous writer. I edit my work constantly in order to improve it. I edited my last book about three times over, but it still needed further editing by the great son of one of our organization’s members in order to bring it up to the standard.
The book having some power of influence is due to it being professionally and clearly written, well-researched, and organized as an honest presentation. We are all transmitters of various universal energies and principalities, both good and evil . . . or, as far as our group is concerned, transcendentally good (çuddha-sattva, as per the working principles of buddhi-yoga). We are responsible for our influence. We are responsible for dovetailing our abilities to the cause of The Absolute Truth. If and/or when we do so, then there is going to be some power intrinsic and integral to what we write or communicate.
20 OM Do you have many friends who help you carry out the mission of The Vaishnava Foundation? On the other side of the coin, do you have many enemies who undermine you in carrying out your mission?
I have more enemies than friends. That is certain. However, I do have some very devoted friends. Indeed, they can be considered either followers or disciples according to their own assessment of their relationship with me. Be ye hot or be ye cold, but if thee be lukewarm, I shall spew thee from mine mouth. And indeed, I have a hot nemesis. There is no need to name him, but he has caused much harm to me over the decades by engaging in potent character assassination and spreading it widely.
Paradoxically, he has helped me in a major way . . . twice, actually. Both are appreciated, although the harm he has caused me by running me through the grease and making me radioactive (figuratively, of course) via slanders, lies, half truths, innuendos, and rumors 20 is not appreciated. I do not praise my enemies, but I am also mentioning his help here.
He was part of that group which congregated at Mt. Kailäsa in the fourth week of August, 1986 and approved the president’s proposal that I move up there from my domicile in Lafayette. I could tell, during that meeting, that he was skeptical of voting in favor of it, but he did so.
After that, the contingent from the Bay Are was adamantly opposed to how I was conducting my mission in the service to my guru-mahäräj at Mt. Kailäsa, but the toothpaste was already out of the tube. They gave me a foothold and a service. I found an expert and effective attorney that each of them assigned me to find, and I took it from there as I saw fit. That godbrother then became my nemesis over time, but even while he became so, he later helped me in another way.
The Vaishnava Foundation got online early in the game, in the mid-Nineties. My nemesis also was on the INTERNET early, and his website became popular very quickly, much more than ours. For a brief time, The Vaishnava Foundation had only two dedicated members. However, on the website of my godbrother-nemesis, he reproduced and provided a hyperlink to our online IP address.
Bhakta Ernest Dras had come into contact with that godbrother’s website. He was researching everything he could find about the history of the Hare Kåñëa movement, particularly after Prabhupäda departed physical manifestation. On his own, it is somewhat unlikely he would have contacted our much less known—and much less popular—website. Maybe, but, if so, much later. However, my nemesis provided its hyperlink. Bhakta Ernest checked it out, and he accepted the better message.
As far as friends go, all the members in good standing in The Vaishnava Foundation are my friends. I also have allies, and most of them are friends. I also have a few patrons who are friendly. I am not without friends, but they are not as numerous as my enemies. How could it be otherwise? My preaching is confrontational, and there are many who hate me for it. That’s the price you have to be willing to pay after your spiritual master departs, when so many of his leading secretaries deviate and then splinter, forming all kinds of internecine wars.
21 OM You have predicted a black swan event coming in the near or intermediate future. Do you believe that either you, personally, or The Vaishnava Foundation, might have a direct or an indirect influence over such a coming event?
A black swan is an unknown-unknown. However, you can predict in what field the event may appear, but not specifically how it goes down. Then again, predictions can be made that would appear to be black swan events, although technically (this pun is intended in advance), they are not so. I shall provide one example of each of these.
Because I am specifically reproducing it here, the first one cannot be considered a black swan in the true sense of the term. It can be considered LIKE a black swan due to the extremely unlikely odds of it actually happening and the major repercussions it would produce if it did go down. It almost certainly will not, so let us call it a gray swan.
If one of the still living original zonals came completely clean, admitted to everything, exposed that scam fully, revealed the fact that, following it, The Second Transformation did not actually uproot the nescience that remained present from The First Transformation, 21 that would be LIKE a black swan event. It is so unlikely that it can be filed in the category of next-to-impossible, but it is still not actually a black swan.
An actual black swan would be different. It cannot be predicted or seen in advance, at least, not in the specific way that it plays out. However, you can predict the field or fields in which it transpires, but not the details.
The field I predict it to arrive in is relative to THE TECHNOCRACY. I am thinking that a real black swan event can come out of that early on as it takes over in the Western world, replacing the nation-state paradigm. How it would do so remains unknown to me and (probably) to everyone. One thing we can know about it: When it initially takes over, it will do so quickly . . . and it will be brutal!
I should like to add a sub-category to this field of a potential black swan event: It may include the Interfaith Initiative that “ISKCON” is currently active in. However, going granular in relation to a black swan event is, by definition, not only counter-productive but impossible.
If something is impossible to predict, then it is also impossible to predict whether or not The Vaishnava Foundation will be instrumental to it, either just before it, during it, or post facto. As the saying goes: When opportunity knocks, be there. If there is an opening for us at any stage of that black swan event, we shall surely take advantage of it.
I appreciate all of your excellent questions.
SAD EVA SAUMYA
ENDNOTES
10 Mt. Kailäsa, with an address and phone number, was still listed in the appendix of each Back to Godhead magazine as an ISKCON center in 1986 before I arrived there. Once I had become prominent at that rural center, the listing was dropped from the magazine;
11 I went to India three times from 1977 through the summer of 1984;
12 “This means that Parvat Maharaja is canvassing to break them from the society and remain with him. He is another edition of Bon Maharaja . . . From this note it appears that Parvat Maharaja is misrepresenting himself as the publisher of the paper “Truth.” But actually he is not so. . . it is clear that this Parvat Maharaja is trying to entice Jaya Govinda. . . I think both Acyutananda and Jaya Govinda have been poisoned by this Parvat and thus it is useless to request them to work for the society.”
Letters to Brahmänanda in Sept. and Nov. of 1968;
13 “Because he falls down from Brahma-säyujya, he thinks that this may be his origin, but he does not remember that before that even, he was with Kåñëa.” This is the most important sentence from the very long “Tal and Crow Addendum.”
In 1972, a devotee in Australia claimed that the living entities in this material world were originally situated in the brahmajyoti. He was under the influence of Gouòéya Mutt origination philosophy. This caused a disturbance there. Prabhupäda dictated a response, a typed copy of which was sent to Madhudviña. This was “The Tal and Crow Addendum,” his conclusive answer to this key philosophical controversy;
14 Gopavåndäpal was the husband of Müla Prakåti, who initially demanded to listen to the “appointment tape” mentioned in this interview. She and her husband were favorable to me. Like myself, they were against “ISKCON,” although they were previously very influential in and at the Los Angeles yatra in the Society. They were courageous to allow Sulocan to park his vehicle at their place, which was greatly appreciated by us;
15 Kértanänanda had taken away Sulocan’s wife at the Moundsville compound by belittling him and influencing her to consider Kértanänanda as the only one to follow in all respects. Sulocan also lost his young children in the process. They were later “accidentally” found dead there;
16 The G.B.C. man in the Bay Area was confident that this young, former disciple of Hansadutta would be amenable to whatever that commissioner either ordered or wanted. It would almost certainly have been the case had we not arranged to remove him from the Board of Directors;
17 Bhakti Våndävan Candra Swämi dropped the titles “Bhakti” and “Swami,” returning to the name given to him by Hansadutta. Soon thereafter, he dropped that name, also;
18 By the rules for non-profit corporations in the State of California, upon dissolution, a corporation’s remaining positive assets had to be distributed to one or more legitimate non-profit corporations registered in California;
19 I have published a number of soft cover books on either occult or spiritual topics. If you would like a list of them, contact us through one of our two websites, returntosquareone.com or therealexplanation.org. They can all be purchased via Amazon, in hard copy or Kindle format;
20 Half truth means no truth;
21 The First Transformation was the zonal äcärya debacle. The Second Transformation was the collegiate compromise in the mid-Eighties.