Tag Archive | Kirtanananda

Review of Gold, Guns and God: Volume 2–A Pioneer Community

Jul18

by Chand Prasad, Ph.D.

Academic scholars will benefit from reading Gold, Guns and God: Volume 2—A Pioneer Community (GGG Vol 2). Prabhupada disciples should be forewarned. GGG Vol 2 presents Prabhupada in an unjustifiably negative light.

Doktorski contributes to the literature with his (a) coverage of Kirtanananda’s heretofore undocumented defection from ISKCON in September 1967 and his subsequent reunion with Prabhupada in July 1968; (b) insights into the inauspicious founding of New Vrindaban; (c) detailed information on the community’s expansion through the purchase of properties in the McCreary Ridge. Doktorski provides a valuable understanding of Kirtanananda’s charisma, his extensive travels outside of West Virginia, and the separation that the New Vrindaban community felt when Kirtanananda was away. I have not found this information elsewhere.

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Review of Gold, Guns, and God: Vol 1–A Crazy Man

Jul18

by Chand Prasad, Ph.D.

Shrila Prabhupada did not timidly admit that ISKCON is a cult.  He boldly and repeatedly declared it.  How could anyone claim he did not know he joined a cult?  ISKCON likely started as a beneficial cult, then degenerated into a malevolent cult to the detriment of its members, both old and new.

Shrila Prabhupada’s stated objective is to preach the cult of bhakti.  The question that remains is Prabhupada’s role, if any, in imposing the undeniably harmful cult characteristics that are well documented in the literature on ISKCON. The addendum to Volume 1 of Gold, Guns, and God does not give a balanced, even-handed treatment of Prabhupada’s alleged complicity in the creation of a detrimental cult we know ISKCON to be.

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