All Aboard! Poison Conspiracy!
The vile idea that Srila Prabhupada was poisoned by his top disciples became the acorn which fell on the head of LINK: Chicken Little. The short 9-minute rendering of this classic children’s tale provided here is well worth the watch. It very accurately captures the phenomenon that has occurred – the allegations of a conspiracy to poison Srila
Prabhupada as more than just childishly foolish. It is sinister because it employs all of the Machiavellian tactics that are so expertly illustrated in this entertaining and very educating Disney rendering of LINK: Chicken Little. Consider the following lessons that are conveyed.
- To influence the masses aim first for the least intelligent.
- If you tell them a lie don’t tell a little one, tell a big one.
- Undermine the faith of the masses and their leaders.
- By the use of flattery, insignificant people can be made to look upon themselves as born leaders.
The culprits behind this conspiracy artifice have leveraged all of these tactics. We know that ANGER is one of the three gates leading to hell, and there is a whole lot of unresolved anger in the material world including those who are in the process of moving from material conditioning to Krishna Consciousness. Unqualified selfish devotees drove innocent people out of the temple for a whole list of unfortunate reasons. Anger + Rumors = Conspiracy opportunity. Bingo!
Certainly, those sincere devotees who felt responsible for correcting the mistakes of the past, who also wanted to rebuild the trust in ISKCON management, would not perpetuate rumors antithetical to that objective. But when those who had an ax to swing found an opportunity to generate a conspiracy about someone poising Srila Prabhupada… they were not going to miss their chance. Here was an opportunity to unleash a tsunami of doubt, intrigue, and suspicion at the very top of ISKCON management. The ISKCON leaders were already overwhelmed with what it takes to manage a revolutionary new worldwide religious institution. All it would take is the deadly seed of a well-crafted conspiracy to accelerate the death of ISKCON – and that is what the vengeful disgruntled individuals set out to do.
Psychology of Conspiracy Perpetrators
In a book called: Empire of Conspiracy, Professor Tim Melley identifies those who get caught up in conspiracy thinking share two common characteristics: 1) They hold strong individualist values and 2) They lack a sense of control. The first attribute refers to people who care deeply about an individual’s right to make their own choices and to direct their own lives without interference or obligations to a larger system (like the GBC). When that is combined with a sense of powerlessness in one’s own life, it becomes what Professor Melley refers to as agency panic, characterized as an “intense anxiety about an apparent loss of autonomy.” Conspiracy theories help insecure individuals cope with distressing events, as it offers the frail a way to make sense out of difficult circumstances. Conspiracies assure us that bad things don’t just happen randomly. Conspiracies, however unwitting, secret or incomprehensible, tell us that someone out there is accountable; therefore, it’s possible to stop these people and punish them, and in due course, give everyone else a chance to re-establish control over their own lives.
Well, that pretty much explains it all, but I know much more will be required to help readers parse all the accusations that have been recklessly hurled around.
False Accusations
Some people are so paranoid that as soon as they misplace something they believe someone broke into their home and stole it. Mature individuals are much more cautious about not accusing others of anything until there is a good reason to do so. That usually requires clear and tangible evidence to support one’s allegation. It is the emotionally unstable individuals that have a reputation for blaming others for their own mistakes or inadequacies. Low self-esteem drives those who suffer from insecurity to lash out at others in all sorts of bizarre ways over the most trivial of issues.
To accuse anyone of conspiring to poison another human being with little more than rumors, controversial whispers or unconfirmed lab studies on suspicious evidence is so blatantly reckless that those who are not blinded by their own negative conditioning will be quick to dismiss this scandal. They will be equally vigilant about reassuring others why they should not give it any further thought.
I have taken the time to compose this analysis as a service to help others achieve that objective. Others need not wallow in the waves of emotionally-charged reckless allegations, with its intentionally confusing pontification that’s merely used to bewilder and paralyze the innocent, which in the end effectively poisons the sankirtan movement at the root. I have waded thru this refuse pit for those who simply found it too distasteful to address this issue. So now please take it freely, share this poison antidote with those who have become victims of this poison.
How it Began
A simple review of how the “Poison” brouhaha took root, how it got fueled and catapulted into the devotee forum, reveals that it began with a lot of rumors, opinions, emotions, assumptions, innuendos, grandstanding and a bombastic form of constantly begging the question. Those who continue to foist this allegation upon the Vaishnava devotees of the Lord like to portray themselves as the “Truth Committee” who has no motive other than to historically establish what the real cause of Srila Prabhupada’s departure was. They shamelessly proclaim about what they believe the real cause was:
“This work is meant as a historical reference material. There is also a serious need to set the historical record straight in light of so much false propaganda and obfuscatio
n from ISKCON leaders who hope to fend off full truth discovery in the matter. Our effort is called revisionism, which, according to Harry E Barnes, is bringing history into accord with the facts. Why would history and factual evidence be at odds? It is because institutions falsify the past to keep their membership loyal and subservient to their corruption.” – KGBG p. 18
Here we are being told right up front what this agenda is all about. The authors want to be remembered in history as the ones who “Knew the Truth” who pressed for historical revisionism because the agenda of the evil ISKCON institution is to falsify the past for the purpose of keeping members loyal and subservient. Wow! We should all feel indebted to the keepers of the truth who have so valiantly taken on this difficult task to set the record straight for the benefit of future generations! It all sounds so noble
, righteous, and heroic. We are even introduced to Mr. Harry E. Barnes as the reputable authority to bless this thankless task. How could anyone object to the selfless service the devotees of the Truth Committee are doing for all the rest of us?
We can get a glimpse into just how pathologically crapulous the mentality is of those who would seek the blessings of Harry E. Barnes to condone their actions. I will just let the readers draw their own conclusions about the mental stability of those who want to be associated with a person described on Wikipedia as follows:
Harry Elmer Barnes (June 15, 1889 – August 25, 1968) was an American historian who, in his later years, was known for his historical revisionism and Holocaust denial… Through his position at Columbia and his prodigious scholarly output, Barnes was once highly regarded as a historian. However, by the end of the 1950s, he had lost credibility because of the major role he played in the inception of the Holocaust denial movement. …Barnes claimed that in order to justify the “horrors and evils of the Second World War”, the Allies made the Nazis
the “scapegoat” for their own misdeeds…. Barnes wrote: The courageous author [Rassinier] lays the chief blame for misrepresentation on those whom we must call the swindlers of the crematoria, the Israeli politicians who derive billions of marks from nonexistent, mythical and imaginary cadavers, whose numbers have been reckoned in an unusually distorted and dishonest manner. … Even if one were to accept the most extreme and exaggerated indictment of Hitler and the National Socialists for their activities after 1939 made by anybody fit to remain outside a mental hospital, it is most alarmingly easy to demonstrate that the atrocities of the Allies in the same period were more numerous as to victims and were carried out for the most part by methods more brutal and painful than that alleged extermination in gas ovens.(Emphasis in the original.)
I could just end this paper here. The association with the racist bigot Harry Barnes pretty much reveals exactly what we are dealing with here. Behind a very thin veil of a not so convincing scholarly patina, we find an extremely deviant agenda. Holocaust deniers insist that the descendants of Abraham were not imprisoned in horrendous concentration death camps during WWII. These “Holocaust Truth Keepers” boast that, for the benefit of the rest of us, they are the vigilant ones working to preserve the real history of what happened in Germany. They chide: “Nope. 60,000 innocent Jews were not tortured and killed in Nazi war camps”. These Holocaust deniers claim these are all fictitious tales promoted by the Jewish community to win the sympathy from the masses and to monopolize business opportunities. The evidence they use to foist this distortion on others is as nebulous as the tales told by the Poison Truth Team.
Like honor among thieves, those perpetuating the poison allegation theory are quick to pat each other on the back for their years of dedicated service, focused acumen & personal integrity that they gave to Srila Prabhupada. All this self-congratulatory bragging brings those who have been exiled from ISKCON back together under a common plot to bring down the GBC kings. It also gives the innocent reader the impression that the devotees who make up the Truth Committee are very credible individuals, who deserve our respect and trust. They want us to accept them as good, clean, honest boy-scout devotees who have no hidden agendas. But if that was the case then why are they following in the footsteps of their new nut-job guru Harry Elmer Barnes!
The book “Someone Has Poisoned Me.” (SHPM) relies predominantly on presenting pages and pages of antidote stories, opinions, impressions, historical sidebars, and colorful fluff, embellished with just the right coincidental synergy necessary to give birth to this insidious conspiracy. It’s the perfect storm for creating mass hysteria and agency panic that if left unchecked would inevitably evolve into the classic witch hunt! It is the only hope that disenfranchised devotees have to: “…hold someone accountable, stop them, punish them and give those who have been wronged an opportunity to re-establish control over their own lives.”
Download the full book (PDF) at this link.