Pure Devotee Fanaticism Hinders Hare Krishna Progress

By Dean Dominic De Lucia/Dharmapad Das

Let’s look at one of the negative results that the different Hare Krishna movements around the world have collectively achieved: the wholesale alienation of the intelligent class of man/woman, i.e, a negative image in society, if not society’s utter distain. There has even been strong rejection from the Hindu community.

The dynamic created by absolute obedience to a divine individual acts as a filter - if not in the short run, then in the medium and long run -  which chiefly allows the type of membership to pass through which is over simplistic and dysfunctional. Only the most insecure, confused, forlorn, and down-and-out come forward to integrate into a religious movement/organization that offers such a scheme of things. The movement’s membership comes to lose balance and the ranks fill up with such dysfunctional adherents.

Those that have had an emotional collapse at some point in life but recover later on, or those that grow up and mature, often come to admit to themselves the negative nature of the pure-devotee, guru-cult dynamic; then they often become rejected and alienated by their Hare Krishna organization in some way, cast out even (this is true in any of the Hare Krishna movements). In this way, the dysfunctional nature of the personnel that is left behind thickens, so to speak, and a result of this that the Hare Krishna movement remains reclusive from society and dysfunctional.

Cult dynamics come into play, such as peer pressure and shame which is applied to followers as persuasive measures.

There are various comments in literature such as the Chaitanya Charitamrita which stipulate that only a pure devotee can elevate one to Krishna Consciousness; one can’t give what one doesn’t have. But this becomes an impediment to a guru who desires to make a more honest presentation because, unless he is seen as being divine in the eyes of his disciple, he cannot demand the disciple’s absolute adherence. However, there seems to be an over simplistic understanding in this regard.

The key to proper understanding is that the siksha guru is on the same level as the diksha guru, and that the book Bhagavat is as good as the person Bhagavat. In the purport to the 18^th verse, second chapter, first canto of the Bhagavat Purana, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami, Prabhupada, spelt this out very nicely: "There are two types of Bhagavatas, namely the book Bhagavata and the devotee Bhagavata. Both the Bhagavatas are competent remedies, and both of them or either of them can be good enough to eliminate the obstacles. … Bhagavata book and person are identical.”

So much is this so, in fact, that Chaitanya Mahaprabhu spoke to Satyaraja: "One does not have to undergo initiation or execute the activities required before initiation. One simply has to vibrate the holy name with his lips. Thus even a man in the lowest class (candala) can be delivered. Purport: In the Ramarcana-candrika it is stated: vinaiva diksam viprena purascaryam vinaiva hi vinaiva nyasa-vidhina japa-matrena siddhida. In other words, the chanting of the Hare Krsna maha mantra is so powerful that it does not depend on official initiation...The offenseless chanting of the holy name does not depend on the initiation process. Although initiation may depend on puracarya or purascaryana, the actual chanting of the holy name does not depend upon purascarya-vidhi, or the regulative principles. If one chants the holy name once without committing an offence, he attains all success...Simply by chanting the holy name, one is immediately delivered." (Sri Caitanya-caritamrta Madya-lila 15.108)

The idea should be that a guru deserves absolute respect because the disciplic succession that he represents is absolute, the teaching is absolute, although the guru himself may not have reached divine status. Thus, putting disciples under the aegis of the disciplic succession more than under the aegis of an individual guru is the only arrangement that offers justification for the absolute authority of a guru who is not an absolute and divine personality. At the same time, such an understanding offers an honest arrangement for the devotee and allowing a less than sect-like, fanatic presentation to the visiting public. 

We don’t see examples of trickery or false dealings between preceptors and devotees in the Vaishnava literature, more specifically, in the Gaudiya Vaishnava literature. Such rationalizations have no precedence and go against the grain of what it means to be a worshipper of Vishnu/Krishna.

In the Chaitanya Charitamrita there are statements that identify the various acharyas and gurus as pure devotees, and absolute obedience to them is also stipulated. But the idea that a whole cadre of divine-personality, pure devotees has suddenly incarnated at this particular point in time to initiate disciples is unbelievable and ludicrous to any reasonable mind. How could it be? If we add together any and all of the divine-personality, pure devotee gurus presented in ISKCON (minus all the ones that have fallen away) to all of the pure devotee gurus in the other camps, we come up with quite a number of divine beings; in fact, they’re as thick as flies nowadays.

However, this dysfunctional dynamic is not ludicrous to the mind of one who is susceptible to fanaticism and cult following. It’s dysfunctional nature is easily

perceived, though, by interested parties who investigate and familiarize themselves with the Krishna consciousness movement(s). Unfortunately, more often than not, this insistence on there being divine-personality gurus acts as a filter which alienates the “intelligent class of man” which A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami, Prabhupada, identified as being the target of Hare Krishna public relations (preaching) activities.

Brahmins don’t lie, so how can a presentation of the highest truth be made while the foundation that we stand on is a lie? It is said: “what a wicked web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.” And how true it is that good devotees have been subjected to so much pressure only to conserve the myth, nay, the lie, of the guru as a divine personality.

Gurus don’t have much in the way of options, though, because the majority of other gurus, including a few from India, allow it to be asserted that they truly are pure devotees to the detriment of those that might be willing to turn over a new leaf by admitting that they are not actually divine personalities.

The Hare Krishna bureaucracy as a whole can be as fierce as that of any corporation or large company. Consider that, in a large company with a bureaucratic organization, at least the bureaucracy stops at a certain point. Bureaucratic companies pay their employees to bear the bureaucratic burden, Hare Krishna movements do not; they do just the opposite, they take from their followers but really put them through the mill. In a Hare Krishna movement, the bureaucratic umbrella typically encompasses who one personal, family and economic life. If workplace bureaucracies can grind a person down and lead to depression, alcoholism, and family problems, imagine how much impact an all-encompassing, bureaucracy-coming-down-from-the-divine can have on the members of a Hare Krishna movement who live in the trenches. Again, who would accept joining a Hare Krishna movement with such characteristics? In other words, what kind of personnel does such a Hare Krishna movement fill its ranks with? And what kind of impact do such personnel have on normal, competent middle class individuals who come to investigate Krishna consciousness? A negative one?

And what can we say of the character of the supposedly divine-personality devotee guru who imposes such a scheme in a calculating way?

To assess the true damage caused by the divine-personality devotee guru syndrome we have to not only take a headcount of the dysfunctional segment of Hare Krishna membership, but we also have to count the uncountable- we have to take into consideration those that never joined, those that were alienated by the dysfunctional nature of the guru-disciple relationship and its natural extension, the Hare Krishna movement’s organizational structure. Think of all the prospective Krishna bhaktas that were repulsed and, instead of joining, went off to practice Transcendental Meditation, that went to the Ramakrishna Society, etc., because they were alienated by the obvious cult aspects of the Hare Krishna movement, starting with the idea of having to absolutely and meekly bow down to a divine human being guru, then with the idea of having to give up everything and live in the local Krishna community while exposing their lives to an administrative organization. There are a lot of people who are smart enough to see the dysfunctional aspects of these practices and smell something strange behind them; those who aren’t smart enough are the ones that join.  

Let’s get this drippy, soppy, emotional – but dangerous – monkey off of our backs once and for all, and go forward with the Hare Krishna movements in a clean and brisk way.

As long as the pure devotee myth is continued, it is unlikely that a straightforward, mature individual will ever be able to function in a Hare Krishna movement and deal with its organizational structure because these are just too extreme.

This is where older, veteran devotees, such as the disciples of A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami, Prabhupada, run into so much difficulty. When Bhaktivedanta Swami was active on the planet, it meant so much more, there was reality to the idea of a pure-devotee guru- enough said. Mature devotees now resist the wholesale application of this concept. However, since current organizational structures are so dependent upon it, the more mature devotees become alienated and find themselves either unwelcome or unable to stomach the manipulative dealings that they become subjected to when they try to correct the situation.

For all of these reasons, it becomes necessary to adopt a better way.

What is being suggested in this essay is a wholesale overhaul and a search for a new model to follow. An interesting model can be found in Brazil in the form of cultural centers (espaço cultural) and yoga clubs. Their spiritual practices aside, they essentially operate by offering programs of interest to the paying public, such as yoga classes, astrology, and Vedic cooking, etc. There is no one that claims to be a divine personality in those groups, and to become a member in good standing, no one has to give up everything in life, go live in a temple or isolated farm community, and struggle within a bureaucracy. Needless to say, the yoga school/cultural-space structure functions much better, and some of those groups are even rather wealthy and well known.

The point is that the basic Hare Krishna movement scheme of things, with a divine guru at the top and devotees who join and give up their autonomy, has to be reconsidered. For one reason, because there is nobody left; really, they are all gone! There were something around 10,000 disciples initiated by A.C. Bhaktivedanta by the time he left, and now there are probably less than 500 or so in the world who are still actively participating, that’s about all. They are all gone. And they are the ones who learned the philosophy and studied the books so thoroughly at one point, distributed so many books, and built various temples and buildings in India. It is noteworthy, too, that the first generation of disciples of the gurus that followed hasn't fared much better. The scheme just doesn’t work, it is socialistic if not communistic, autocratic, it alienates and is rather dishonest, something that most members come to realize in due course of time. 

With this is mind, those interested in participating in moderated discussions about the cult nature of the different Hare Krishna movements and about how to help the ship righten itself are invited to join the Yahoo!Groups  list at: