Around July 15th this year, most of the devotees in Hungary received a copy of the BTP Special Summary Issue in Hungarian. Realising that if the devotees actually read this, the guru hoax would be exposed, the only guru for Hungary HH Sivarama Swami (“SRS”) immediately swung into action, employing the usual cult tactics of suppression, censorship, and misrepresentation to try and stop the truth reaching the innocent devotees. We detail here the pathetic moves taken to try and keep the devotees in ignorance.
Mind control – 1
“I am writing to you in regard to the magazine “Back to Prabhupada,” which many of you may have received and seen […] Therefore ritviks and their literature should be ignored […] This same instruction is reflected in the direction of the GBC Body, the ultimate authority for ISKCON, in their 1990 law regarding ritviks and their doctrine: […] The tone of the above law makes it quite clear that persons who are in breach of it can expect to be the object of serious sanctions.”
(SRS Letter to all devotees, 17/7/08)
So the immediate response is to basically tell everyone they are forbidden to use their own minds and read BTP. And to ensure compliance, SRS invokes the threat of “serious sanctions”, relying on fear and force rather than “love and trust”. That SRS operates in a cult-like manner is evident from the following exchange:
| Devotee: | “I also had another question. When we meet these devotees, should we start arguing with them, should we beat them up? I’m sorry to say that but it came up amongst the devotees.” |
| SRS: | “[…] You just ignore them, you don’t waste time on them. They cannot be convinced. […] You just ignore them.“ |
(SRS Istagosthi, Budapest, 17/7/08)
This is the result of the ‘mood’ engendered by SRS’s preaching all these years – that an alternative opinion is to immediately be met with violence. And this is reinforced by the fact that in SRS’s reply, though he does not agree that violence should be used, he makes no attempt to admonish such a cult-like response either!
Mind control – 2
“Those who receive it should say ‘Please don’t send me any more, because I don’t need it.’ Please give some feedback. Or just send it back saying that ‘such a person isn’t living here’. I would just like to request devotees who receive such magazines to bring it in to the temple, give it to me I’ll collect it, it shouldn’t be around in the devotee community.”
(His Holiness Sivarama Swami, Istagosthi, Budapest, 17/7/08)
Again, SRS emphasises that no one should read such literature, and so desperate is he to make sure that no one does read BTP, he even offers to act as the personal ‘collection man’ for the magazines!
In addition, following the sending out of these warnings, SRS dispatched devotees to visit devotees’ homes and ask them to return BTP. So afraid are they of BTP that they have now moved beyond trying to collect them up from devotees at Ratha Yatra festivals, to even visiting devotees at home to do so!
Clearly, one can only have such fear from the truth, because if we were speaking rubbish as SRS claims, he would not need to adopt such desperate tactics to keep everyone from reading what we have to say.
Mind control – 3
But the cult mind-control techniques do not end there. In addition to telling devotees what they must read and think, SRS then had the “Director of Communications” for ISKCON Hungary, Govardhana Das, dispatch the following letter to all devotees, telling them what they must also now do:
“Since this ritvik postal and email campaign was organized by Braja (an IRM devotee in Budapest), we ask you do to the following:
1. Write him an e-mail describing how disgusted and surprised you are, since he has gone to far with his audacity. So you all are free to express your dissatisfaction, there will be no aparadha....
(Letter to all devotees from Govardhana Das, Director of Communications, ISKCON Hungary, 19/9/08)
Devotees are instigated to effectively insult Braja Das, being told that you can say whatever you like to him, since “there will be no aparadha” (offense) in doing so.
Mind control – 4
Having taken steps to try and stop all Hungarian devotees from reading the truth, in classic cult-control fashion devotees are then directed to read out of date discredited information instead:
“I have included a refutation of ritvika-vada penned by His Holiness Jayadvaita Swami over ten years ago called, Where the ritviks are Wrong. Jayadvaita Swami’s arguments should satisfy devotees who are curious to understand the pros and cons of ritvik-vada, …”
(SRS Letter to all devotees, 17/7/08)
Yet these same arguments were refuted at the time, over ten years ago, as anyone can check for themselves at the following web references:
https://www.iskconirm.com/docs/webpages/a_reply_to_jayadvaita_swami.htm
https://www.iskconirm.com/docs/webpages/where_hhjayadvaita_is_wrong.htm
And the refutation still remains unchallenged to this very day. SRS deliberately feeds the devotees outdated, already defeated material since he has already banned them from reading the rebuttals, and so hopes he will get away with such cheating.
What makes this whole mind-control campaign particularly laughable is that SRS simultaneously boasts that:
“our Krishna consciousness movement really trains devotees in the topmost philosophy, the topmost theology, the topmost way of life, and cultivates intelligence so that the devotees can be discerning and know the difference from right from wrong, what’s illusion, what’s reality.”
(SRS Podcast, 18/8/08)
Yet SRS is effectively admitting that he has failed to train his disciples in the “topmost intelligence” and failed to “cultivate their intelligence”, so that they will be able to “discern and know the difference from right from wrong, what’s illusion, what’s reality.” Otherwise there would be no need for him to organise people to go and collect BTP magazine from them and forbid them from reading it!
Now you can just lie
Having taken all these steps to try and ensure that devotees do not read BTP, SRS is now free to blatantly misrepresent what we are actually stating to try and discredit BTP, knowing full well he can get away with such lies, since he is banking on the fact that no devotees are allowed to read what we actually say. And he lies repeatedly regarding BTP and our position. We present here just a couple of examples of these lies, as there are too many to cover in just one issue*!
“Prabhupada never said that some ideology that hangs on a few words, like “henceforth” (sic) in Prabhupada's letter and in Prabhupada's Will - “my initiated disciple” - it's amazing.”
(SRS Podcast, 18/8/08)
What is amazing is that he claims The Final Order and our arguments “hang” on words like “henceforth”. Yet The Final Order actually states the exact opposite:
“Furthermore, the argument that the whole ritvik system 'hangs' on one word -'henceforward' -is untenable, since even if we take the word out of the letter, nothing has changed. One still has a system set up by Srila Prabhupada four months before his departure, with no subsequent instruction to terminate it. Without such a counter instruction, this letter would still remain intact as Srila Prabhupada's final instruction on initiation”
(The Final Order)
SRS also claims:
“Another example, devotees can examine at their leisure, there's the “kiba vipra kiba 'nyasi” sloka where Caitanya Mahaprabhu says: 'Everyone
should become a spiritual master'. And according to ritvik-vada, yes you can become a spiritual master, 'guru' means you just become a siksa guru, not a diksa guru -that's what Srila Prabhupada had intended for us.”
(SRS Podcast, 18/8/08)
The “kiba vipra kiba nyasi” sloka does not state “everyone should become guru”. It states that the qualification to become a diksa guru is that one knows the science of Krishna:
“Whether one is a brahmana, a sannyasi or a sudra -regardless of what he is -he can become a spiritual master if he knows the science of Krsna.”
(Sri Caitanya-caritamrta, Madhya-lila, 8:128, “kiba vipra” verse)
Maybe it is SRS who needs to examine this sloka “at his leisure”?! The IRM does not dispute that this is the qualification required to become a diksa guru.
Lord Caitanya's order to “become guru”, however, is actually from a different verse, Madhya-lila 7:128, and in the purports to this verse, Srila Prabhupada states: “one should stay at home” and “It is best not to accept any disciples”, which make it clear this is not an order to become a diksa guru, and we simply repeat Srila Prabhupada's explanation of this verse.
Then lie some more
To assist him in his cult mind-control campaign, SRS recruited infamous GBC apologist Drutakarma Das (“DKD”) to come to Budapest, who like SRS also proceeded to fabricate stuff out of thin air, relying, like SRS, on the hope that the Hungarian devotees will never get to read what the IRM actually says. Again, a couple of examples*. The quotes in the blue tinted panels are from a lecture on ritvik given by DKD in Budapest on July 18th, 2008.
| “When the devotees, the GBC devotees, asked Srila Prabhupada this question, 'Are they your disciples?', Srila Prabhupada said, 'Yes, my grand-disciples'.” (DKD) |
Srila Prabhupada actually states the exact opposite of what DKD claims here:
|
 Why consider? |
So when asked if they are Srila Prabhupada's disciples, Srila Prabhupada clearly states “yes”, they are his disciples, not his “grand-disciples”!
| “And (in May in Vrindavana) Srila Prabhupada very clearly said that there will be gurus, you will become gurus, and you will accept disciples.“ (DKD) |
DKD here presents three concoctions in one sentence, by claiming that in the May 28th conversation, Srila Prabhupada states:
“there will be gurus”
“you will become gurus”
“you will accept disciples”
These statements have just been fabricated out of thin air by DKD, since these 3 statements never appear in the May 28th conversation!
*For many more examples of these lies, see web reference in the conclusion.
'Srila Prabhupada is dead' blasphemy
To round things off SRS, who was previously a follower of HH Narayana Maharaja of the Gaudiya Matha, shows his Gaudiya Matha sympathies by quoting them as authorities to blaspeheme Srila Prabhupada by claiming he can't give initiation because he is “dead”:
“If they convince Prabhupada that he initiates them, that's another thing (laughter). Gaudiya Matha's reaction to this is, how they express it is you cannot marry a woman who died (laughter), the same way you cannot take initiation from someone who passed away.”
(SRS, Istagosthi, Budapest, 17/7/08)
Conclusion
False doctrines rely specifically on keeping people in ignorance to flourish. Cults use such techniques all the time, being able to control the followers by constantly feeding them lies, which is made possibly by cutting the cult followers off from information.
Above we have chronicled a classic case of attempted cult control and manipulation to keep the truth out. Hence, despite all the fancy PR done for outsiders, mind control continues in ISKCON.
We are however happy to report that a growing number of Hungarian devotees have not succumbed to the above cult mind-control techniques, and despite the edicts to avoid reading what we have to say, have decided to use their own intelligence and visited our special Hungarian IRM webpage in their droves:
https://www.iskconirm.com/Magyar.htm
Additionally, a full set of materials from which the above exposé is drawn, demonstrating the blatant lies and misrepresentation in detail, is available in English on our homepage via a special Hungarian report:
https://www.iskconirm.com/docs/webpages/srs_hung.htm
The beginning of the end of the reign of terror and tyranny for Hungarian devotees has commenced, and freedom from “tyranny in the realm of thought” is upon them.
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