The Journey Home Debunked Exposing Mayavada Infiltration into Shrila Prabhupada’s Family Essays by Kaliya Mardana dasa Brahmachary PART ONE 1 Dedicated to The Founder-Acharya of The International Society for Krishna Consciousness His Divine Grace AC Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada nama om vishnu-padaya krishna-preshthaya bhu-tale srimate bhaktivedanta swamin iti namine namaste saraswati deve gaura-vani-pracharine nirvishesha-shunyavadi pashchatya-desha-tarine I offer my respectful obeisances unto His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, who is very dear to Lord Krsna, having taken shelter at His lotus feet. Our respectful obeisances are unto you, O spiritual master, servant of Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Goswami. You are kindly preaching the message of Lord Caitanya and delivering the Western countries, which are filled with impersonalism and voidism. 2 Table of Contents Author’s Preface to the Full Edition Chapter One: The Journey Home Is the Worst Form of Guru Aparadha Chapter Two: The Journey Home Could Be the Worst Book in the World Chapter Three: The Journey Home Is a Flaccid Study in Compromise Chapter Four: The Radhanatha Gita—With the American Swami on the Battlefield of Life Chapter Five: The Dalai Lama and How Radhanatha Achieved Zero Gravity Chapter Six: The Journey Home: Does Pretentious Love and Peace Make You Angry? Chapter Seven: Get the Picture: Has The Journey Home Caused Mass Hysteria in ISKCON? Chapter Eight It’s All One—“Whoever Describes Vedic Knowledge as Impersonal is a Demon” Chapter Nine: “Ek, Ek, Ek”—The Oneness of Ignorance Chapter Ten: Journey Home and the Dance of Ecstasy—Krishna’s Dance on the Heads of Kaliya Chapter Eleven: Maharishi Mahesh Yogi—Glorifying “Rascal Number One” Chapter Twelve: “Maharishi is the Agent of Maya”—ISKCON’s Leaders Are Ignoring Shrila Prabhupada’s Instructions Chapter Fourteen: The LSD Baba: “It isn’t Gay and it’s Not Not-Gay” Chapter Fifteen: The Company We Keep—Reviewing Bad Association Chapter Sixteen: Shrila Prabhupada—Mayavada Is Not Very Good Logic Chapter Seventeen: Sex and the Swami—Mayavadi Literature Gives Impetus to Illicit Sex Life 3 Chapter Eighteen: Mayavadi Literature: Why it Must Be Avoided and How it Destroys Devotional Service Chapter Nineteen: Meeting Mother Teresa: ISKCON’s Descent into Mundane Welfare Activities Chapter Twenty: Sahajiyas Dancing on Thin Ice—Anemic Contentions from the Camp of Oneness Chapter Twenty-one: Spreading the Poison to a Center near You—The Yogification of ISKCON Chapter Twenty-two: Destruction by Design—from Krishna-loka to Yogaville 4 Author’s Preface to the Full Edition These essays were written around 2018-2019 and were published as articles in the Sampradaya Sun whose editor is Rochan dasa. I have wanted to see this collection somehow formed into a book, and then distributed to the computer screens of devotees who are sincere about Prabhupada’s personalist teachings of Vaishnava dharma. Now a couple of very enthusiastic Vaishnavas, a model devotees intent upon seeing that Prabhupada’s actual tradition is kept alive in ISKCON and elsewhere, have fulfilled my wish. I am very grateful for this opportunity that the truth behind the most spurious of pseudo-yoga crap ever, The Journey Home, should be told to all the addle-pated sleeping zombies with tilaka who have gone somnambulistic whether in their old age or in the New Age. The Supreme Personality of Godhead is Krishna, and we—each and every one of us—are His eternal servants. This knowledge and realization is the gift of Shrila Prabhupada, the Supreme Lord’s pure devotee who is none other than His empowered incarnation or shaktyavesha avatara. As stated in Shri Chaitanya Charitamrita (Antya.7.11): kali-kālera dharma--kṛṣṇa-nāma-saṅkīrtana kṛṣṇa-śakti vinā nahe tāra pravartana “The fundamental religious system in the age of Kali is the chanting of the holy name of Kṛṣṇa. Unless empowered by Kṛṣṇa, one cannot propagate the saṅkirtana movement.” Krishna consciousness is the greatest blessing that anyone can receive ever because these teachings comprise the essence of philosophy and the goal of yoga: pure love for Krishna. Our relationship with Krishna is eternal. The pure science of bhakti was inaugurated in the Gaudiya tradition by Krishna Himself in full His avatara-lila as Lord Shri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. The dance of ecstasy in the sankirtana dust of His lotus feet is not only liberating from the endless pangs of samsara, but it imparts us fully with understanding eternity, knowledge and bliss in the highest sense. And that is the sense of being always sheltered by the Supreme Lord Shri Krishna in His eternal domain of Vrindavana. 5 The New Age Mayavadic Invasion There is a great need for understanding the dilemma of the New Age Mayavadic Invasion into ISKCON. This phenomenon that has seen the rise of the motivational guru, the gymnastic yogi, and the pretended yoga master hawking his books at the Tantrik Fest. Many imposters have jumped into the forefront from the ranks of ISKCON, led by the ghost of a bogus Vrindavana Babaji. Some of what is often found on book tables where Prabhupada’s books are distributed is a far cry from any sort of genuine spiritual teachings within any sort of genuine dharma whatsoever. Mayavada comes in many crooked and deceitful packages and incarnations. The hobgoblin of impersonalism arrives well dressed in a convenient outfit or costume. He may be attired as orange-clad yogi whose focus is humanitarian welfare activities—even if they are meant only for the temporary benefits of the body. The Mayavadi speaks seductively and appears knowledgeable—and destroys all chances for liberation from matter. Impersonalists, who are on the path to hell because they think of themselves as somehow having become “one with God,” do not immediately reveal their misleading notions. They do so delicately, like a spider spinning a web. They know how to attract deluded persons to their clutches through sahajiya-like presentations, and then lead their followers to regions of daarkness where there will be no opportunity to become Krishna conscious. Impersonalism is the green light for the syndrome of change disease wherein the result is always “kill guru to become guru.” Becoming guru is dead simple these days when a “motivational guru” becomes honored for speaking rubbish. Yoga exercises are fine in their place, but Prabhupada did not want them taught for money in purpose-built sweaty yogashalas next to the temple rooms of Shri Radha and Krishna. Neither was ISKCON founded to sanctify homosexual weddings as has happened in at least one center. Farms means farming, not a devotee Disneyland where Mickey Mouse wears a shikha. The spiritual master, always humble at the feet of the Lord, is the extreme opposite from the self-absorbed charismatic figure who needs constant worship of crowds of followers. There is a difference between the humble bhakta and the slick poser guru who hobnobs with the very wealthy on cruise ships, or in helicopter tours; and who demand parades of worship at the very birth place of the Supreme Lord. 6 Guru’s validation is not affirmed by the presence of a crowd of weak-minded “disciples” who fawn at his every move. Rather the genuine spiritual master is the transparent via media to the previous very genuine acharya gurus in the line of disciplic succession all the way back to Krishna’s lotus feet. One becomes guru through serving the previous guru and, when he is pleased, a new link in the sampradaya arises. Guru is not pleased by greenhorns who usurp his position with a theatrical performance of saccharine imitations and subtle intimidations. Shrila Prabhupada often admonished his disciples that “he has given us everything.” As a genuine purport of the Supreme Lord he cautioned that there would never be any need to add, to subtract, to modify, to alter, to re-think, to re- manufacture, or change anything that is embodied within his absolute teachings of Krishna consciousness. He taught only the highest and most personal form of love of Godhead as embodied in the trachings of the Gaudiya acharyas. Since his message is non-different from the perfect message of Shrila Vyasadeva, and he is the acharya of the torchlight message of the Bhagavata, his words must be left unchanged and as they are—far from the curse of fault-finders who think that Shri Guru’s words are composed of mundane sound vibrations or grammatical marks of punctuation. From the moment of Shrila Prabhupada’s departure in November of 1977 there has been a planned programme to usurp the throne of the acharya. To accommodate these treasonous efforts, unauthorized editing of the Bhagavad-gita As it Is was undertaken to accommodate the eleven “zonals.” Although each of these eleven have long since fallen away, the damage remains. With the 1977 hijacking of the ISKCON movement by a gang of self-designated Divine Graces, unauthorized changes in the very words of Krishna appeared. “Surrender to the spiritual master” became “Surrender unto them.” Consequently, there was a mass exodus of the disciples of Shrila Prabhupada— even though His Divine Grace had expected each of his initiates to each qualify themselves for carrying on the disciplic succession. As the ensuing links in the sampradaya from Shrila Prabhupada gradually wore away nnd broke in the face of falsification of the Guru-vani, gradually Mayavadi elements creeped into ISKCON through the back door. While the Governors of Hare Krishna Society were absorbed in misdirecting the devotttees via Mayavadic delusions that concern whether usurping the place of 7 the guru can be effected simply by editing his teachings, and the debate raged on, from the side door a new menace appeared with The Journey Home.