Baffle them with Cow Dung
That is indeed a very tragic scenario… but despite all the hyperbole, pages of so-called testimonies, dramatic stories to track down hearsay rumors heard by children who disappeared in Mexico, pages of audio charts, medical history, and tangential stories about Chandra Swami, Napoleon, Blanch Tyler Moore, Arsenic Annie Doss of Lexington, Dr. Michael Swango (Doctor Death), Jagannatha Dasa (Giuliano), Sri Ram Jethmalani, Narasimha Rao, Rich Man Adnan Khashoggi, Shyama Ma and several additional pages of other arsenic case studies, all the “poison conspiracy” adds up to a lot of very intentional distracting, irrelevant, inadmissible hearsay. However, the strategy is effective because the average person has far more important things to do than to try and plow thru all the propaganda, speculation, conjecture, interpretations and odious bloating that drips from everything related to this well-crafted conspiracy. What we have here is an excellent example of what W.C. Fields was referring to when he said:
“If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit.” ? W.C. Fields
Overwhelming the opposition with a mountain of paperwork is an effective legal tactic – albeit sleazy – when used to frustrate the pursuit of justice. It is done here to also provide the illusion that the mere volume of material submitted suggests there is a lot of evidence to support the allegations. The Truth team virtually comes right out and says this very thing… but a whole truck full of broken glass would never be as valuable as one very well polished gem. All we are getting is the broken bottles of intentional confabulation presented to look like uncontested facts.
“Often it is assumed that the “poison theorists” have a secret agenda based on material considerations or are simply deranged, troubled individuals. Or it may be assumed that the “poison theory” has not been substantiated with real evidence. This is a shame because, as a reader of this presentation who carefully considers all the material herein will see, this issue is not a theory or conspiracy, but full of facts and evidence. So much so, one may note that the size of this presentation is voluminous; it is meant to provide all the relevant data in the poison issue to anyone interested to know.” – KGBG p18
Jesus Is the Only Way
Every devotee is very familiar with the eccentricities of the Born Again Evangelical Christians. Most of us have encountered them. They harass us at major Rathayatra parades, and although they think they are doing wonderful God’s work and things to help promote the Christian faith, most people – including other Christians – tend to see them as complete fanatical nuts. I would like to think maybe some devotees were once hard-hitting evangelicals, but became more broadminded after eventually being led by Paramatma to find Krishna. That could only happen when they realize that the concept of Jesus“Is The Only Way” to love God simply doesn’t make any sense. To obtain this realization requires a deep personal honesty and proper intelligence; however, the psychological conditioning of the eccentric Christian types generally doesn’t have those required assets, therefore they stay very stuck. They are so 100% absolutely convinced, beyond a shadow of any doubt, that they got the truth and they have a whole lot of evidence to prove how they are right. There are 2000 years of extraordinary paintings, sculptures, dramas, music, literature and magnificent cathedrals for them to point to and declare… “this is proof that – Jesus is the only ticket you have in order to be saved from the deceptions of the devil”! Yup…. They must be right!
Except for the fact that they are wrong! As Vaishnavas, we know that while they may have the best intentions, and may even be very pious people blessed by the mode of goodness, they need to believe what they are saying, or else their whole world will fall apart. What is really sad is that the average Christian is actually a pretty decent person and much more humble than all those who take up some new-age path, which teaches that you don’t need any priest, rabbi, fakir, monk, book or especially a guru to understand God. Yet in many ways, due to the ambiguity of the Bible, combined with the lack of a comprehensive philosophical theology in the Christian tradition, much of their history has been the worst thing to happen to the Western world in regards to how religion is portrayed.
The underlying theme of this poison antidote is that those who are behind it really focused on bringing down King GBC by planting distrust and suspicion in the minds of the kings highest advisors. Comparing their fanaticism to that of the well-intended evangelic Christian is an acknowledgment that their delusional poison campaign may very well be coming from a subliminal plane. Such extreme behavior is confirmed by those who study the mentality of individuals who rely on conspiracies to make up for the lack of accomplishment or control in their own lives.
What Rumors?
One of the most important observations a devotee ever gave me came the first time I stepped into a Hare Krishna temple (which happened to be in Paris, France, Feb. 1974). He simply said: “Spiritual life is Serious Business.”I never forgot it, but I have had the occasion to wonder several times since then – how many other devotees realize the magnitude of this very simple sutra?
I was never a member of the GBC and never had any desire to be one. However, for the first several years after Prabhupada departed, I was the “On Site” managing engineer tasked to get the Vrindavan Samadhi Mandir underway. Those two years gave me an opportunity to personally meet and interface with virtually every member of the GBC, as well as become acquainted with a tremendous cross-section of other devotees who journeyed to Vrindavan during that time. The Truth Committee leads us to believe there were widespread rumors about Srila Prabhupada being poisoned right from the first day he departed. Yet, those rumors never surfaced in Vrindavan where the crimes were allegedly committed. If such rumors were as prevalent as alleged, I think it is reasonable to expect that they would have come up in the many conversations I had with those passing thru at the time. After all, I was managing the construction of Srila Prabhupada’s Samadhi Mandir for the first two years after he departed! The important point here is to recognize that the acorn that fell on the head of Chicken Little in L.A. never fell in Vrindavan, despite the fact that it was the most visited temple (after Mayapura Chandradoya Mandir) in our entire society.
Ground Control to Bhakti Akasha
My samadhi service did, however, give me a crash course on getting to know the gurus, GBC’s, Temple Presidents, and prominent individuals who were in charge of managing Prabhupada’s worldwide movement. On one hand, I was honored to meet so many hardworking and enthusiastic devotees, but on the other hand, it was also unsettling. It appeared many were very naive, or shall I say, so focused on transcendence, that it seemed the pragmatic realities of life were often trivialized and in some cases completely set aside. Many were very committed to the concept that “Books are the basis” and “Preaching is the essence”, but the concepts that “Purity is the Force” and “Utility is the principal” were not given equal emphasis.
For example, one time the Vrindavan temple president revealed to me his anxiety about the mandir not generating adequate funds to function properly. I responded by saying I wasn’t qualified to advise him how he could increase revenues, but I knew how he could save Laxmi by implementing cost-effective strategies to run the temple with less waste. His response was to scoff and walk out with the departing words: “You don’t understand what I need to do.” Although he was British, he apparently had never heard of Benjamin Franklin, who is well known for saying: “A penny saved is a penny earned.”
Perhaps an even better example of what I observed was related in Hari Sauri’s Diary:
“(Prabhupada was..)quite frustrated with Aksayananda Swami’s style of management. Although Aksayananda is undoubtedly sincere, he seems to not have any realization about what is to be done or not done, nor how to do what Prabhupada tells him has to be done. Even when he says he understands, things don’t get done.” => TD 4-5: Sri Vrndavana-dhama
Hypocrite, Tame Thyself!
So despite the vitriol that surrounds the corporate decisions made by the GBC, it makes no sense to say they poisoned Srila Prabhupada. However, for a conspiracy to really gain momentum, certain individuals had to be accused of this horrible deed. The Truth Committee slips in a lot of disclaimers about their reluctance on having to do that in an attempt to keep any correlations to Thomas Putnam from being made. Mr. Putnam was the seed for all the hysteria that led to the 1692 Salem witch trials, where a dozen innocent individuals were executed and numerous other lives were irreparably destroyed.
Instead, the Truth Team engaged in a lot of obvious apophases in order to appear gentlemanly, a tactic used to deflect the arrogance that lies just below the surface, but as we shall soon see, everything they present is dependent on a variety of these types of cheap tricks, black and white thinking, propped up with unreputable co-conspirators served out with a whole lot of bloviating and sloppy editorializing.
“..we must proceed cautiously… we KNOW that Srila Prabhupada WAS POISONED… this author has tried hard not to cast any undue aspersions upon any individual, including Tamal Krishna Goswami. … Those presently under suspicion as possibly involved in poisoning Srila Prabhupada are Tamal Krishna Goswami” -SHPM p.281
Don’t ya’ get a nice warm feeling of integrity when you read such a clear declaration of generous courtesy? We are told the Truth Team wants to be careful to avoid casting undue aspersions upon anyone, but they themselves behave just as hypocritical as the worst of those they criticize. Within just a few sentences after declaring how cautions they want us to believe they are, they come right out and point the finger directly at Tamal Krishna Goswami, Jayapataka Swami, Bhakti Charu Swami and all those who were present in the room during the last few months of Srila Prabhupada’s lila on earth!
Chicken Little’s stampede gets so out of control that they dedicate 249 pages of whatever little things they could dig up to demonize anyone they could find to drag into this controversy. It’s clear by the 160 pages of lambasting everything they could find to discredit Tamal Krishna Goswami that this “poison” issue appears to be nothing more than the writings of a very angry lynch mob. Proof of how far they are willing to go is evident in the inclusion of voice stress analysis (KGBG p.659-669 and an astrological reading which suggests that Tamal Krishna’s stars line up in such a way that he had a definite proclivity for poisoning someone! (KGBG p.516-517) These self-congratulating individuals are so obsessed with trying to convince us of how horrible Tamal is that they have no hesitation to include even disparaging testimonies that showed up in the dreams of a former GBC! In 2015 this unidentified individual had a dream about how Tamal Krishna became the Mafia Godfather in ISKCON. The Truth This conspiracy is a delusional dream shared by others, but the Truth Team is so vigilant about publishing whatever they can to promote that dream they will scrape it up even from the bottom of a sewer. In this case the sewer was in the head of someone who had a dream about how dictatorial they believed Tamal Krishna Goswami was!
“… A steady stream of senior devotees came one after another to pay obeisances and homage to Tamal, who sat on his Vyasasana in the Dallas ISKCON temple room. Srila Prabhupada’s deity sat on another Vyasasana in the background, but no one was interested in going there. Everyone was obliged and indebted to Tamal. It was sort of like he was the Godfather in ISKCON. We cite this one because we feel it very accurately describes how Tamal was almost like a Mafia Godfather in ISKCON, where so many owed him allegiance and he pulled the strings as the controller, all to advance his program which we call “Tamalism.” -KGBG p.530
Does any of this vituperation sound like something from a bunch of reasonable, even-minded, fair individuals? If you aren’t convinced we are dealing with an extremely prejudicial KKK mob-like group of kangaroo-court conclusions, consider this wonderful unilateral conviction:
- An examination of Tamal, his life, activities, statements, character, and history is a virtually certain indictment that he was deeply involved in Srila Prabhupada’s poisoning, to the standard of beyond a reasonable doubt. – KGBG p681
Unreasonable people have no access to the part of the brain necessary to evaluate what constitutes a “reasonable doubt!”
Throw Tamal Under the Bus!
At this point it should be very clear that those who believe that Srila Prabhupada was poisoned are certain that Tamal Krishna Goswami was the most likely suspect, all based solely on their meticulous circumstantial evidence! Well OK Then! Tamal Krishna passed away in 2002, which offers all the other so-called co-conspirators the perfect way to immediately put an end to all of this. Since the “co-conspirators” are portrayed as very envious, low class, eccentric turn-coat narcissists, why wouldn’t such a horrible group of extremely intelligent, slick and cunning manipulators not just get back together in their secret hideout and agree to pin all the blame on Tamal Krishna Goswami?
These so-called terrible co-conspirators have had 40 years to rethink their horrible crime and repent. All the suspects are portrayed as selfish, insensitive liars and cheats, so it wouldn’t require a moment’s hesitation for people of this character to dump it all on Tamal’s head and be done with it. This would be especially quick once they realized that there is a whole enclave of very determined head-hunters that are campaigning for a hanging. The perfect way to escape the ever-tightening noose and come clean would be to rat out Tamal Krishna Goswami and let him take the heat… God bless brother Tamal!
Even after 40 years, 1359 pages of “evidence”, endless spam on this topic, the gnawing persistence of these bloodhound sleuths and still no confessions? Why Not? Well, the most likely reason is that even though these other men may still have all sorts of shortcomings to work out, they have enough personal integrity to not accuse Tamal of doing something they have no reason to believe he did. Polished diplomats, maybe yes; overwhelmed managers, maybe yes; crafty politicians, maybe yes; conspiring murders, NO!
Personal Character Reference
I happen to have had the opportunity to work enough with all the four Vaisnavas being accused of this horrendous deed and have gotten to know them pretty well. I knew them as individuals who had their own complex mix of talents, weaknesses, charisma and blind spots. I enjoy many good memories about all of them, but that is not intended to excuse them for their shortcomings, which I sometimes found myself conflicting over as suggested above. With apologies to all those who may be disciples of these individuals, I must simply point out that as my godbrothers, I did not see them as flawless pure devotees like Srila Prabhupada. They committed mistakes, sometimes made terribly bad assumptions, and on occasion may have come off a bit too pompous for my taste. They all reminded me that, no matter how sincere one may be, we all need to surround ourselves with mature devotees we trust as our own accountability team. Without that, we run into a real underlying problem when there are no corrective measures in place. Who can discipline a king?
Yes, Tamal knew how to dish out the “Sauce” and had a tendency to upset a lot of people. Japapataka was disparaged for accepting too many disciples and was also known for roaring on occasion. Over the last 30 years, Bhakticharu has become a very adroit diplomat, for ISKCON yet in 1977 hardly anyone outside of India knew him and we all know what Bhavananda’s weakness was. Despite these foibles, what these men all had in common was a very deep respect, conviction, and dedication to Srila Prabhupada. Their ambition was sublimated into their service. They all had the skill and ability to do great things, which they demonstrated by enduring many hardships to win Srila Prabhupada’s attention and approval.
Each of these Vaishnavas loved their spiritual master with gusto and affection, probably more than many of the rest of his other disciples and certainly more than all the fringe people who never surrendered. We were so committed to doing whatever His Divine Grace ordered that some disciples got married even to strangers, simply because Prabhupada asked them to do it! 
Everyone was so dependent on Prabhupada’s direction and guidance that many were spooked by the fear of what would happen when that dreadful day came and Srila Prabhupada would no longer be there to put an end to our petty egocentric disputes. He was our father; he was everyone else s father too. We were not perfect and neither were they, especially Keith Ham who drove New Vrindavan into the ground, due to his irrational, maniacal character. Still, I couldn’t imagine ANY disciple of Srila Prabhupada ever dreaming of trying to Kill Guru so they could BecomeGuru. That would be equivalent to murdering a medical doctor you depend on for keeping you alive! In fact, I feel so strongly about this, I would even venture to say that back in 1977; any one of these four “suspected” individuals would have immediately taken a bullet for Srila Prabhupada, even if it would have preserved his life just a little longer – that’s how we all were. There is no doubt that these men still had a lot to learn and grow as true leaders and saints and they may have even done some disgraceful things along the way because they were not perfected human beings… but they also most certainly were not killers!
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