by Steven J. Gelberg, 1991
Since most devotees do eventually leave ISKCON (AC Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada correctly predicted that the great majority of his disciples would ultimately abandon the movement), the leaving experience itself (and its aftermath) is certainly one of the core experiences in the life of most devotees, and therefore worthy of reflection and discussion.
It's hard to imagine an experience more wrenching, more potentially disorienting, than leaving a spiritual community or tradition to which one has devoted years of one's life. To lose faith in a comprehensive system of ideas that have shaped one's consciousness and guided one's actions, to leave a community that has constituted one's social world and defined one's social identity, to renounce a way of life that is an entire mode of being, is an experience of momentous implications.
Especially when the community/tradition one is leaving defines itself as the repository and bastion of all goodness, all meaning, all truth, all decency, all meaningful human attainment, it may require a major psychological effort to reorient both to one's own self and to the wider world. Internally, one must work to rediscover and reclaim one's own unique, personal sources of meaning and to live authentically from those inner depths. Externally, one must learn how to deal with the outer world, the vast territory laying beyond the gates of the spiritual enclave -- that place that has for so long been viewed as a dark and evil abode unfit for human habitation. Very often devotees no longer content living in ISKCON prolong their stay simply out of fear of the demonized world.
This re-orientation to self and re-entry into the world is no small task, and it's more easily finessed when one has the support of others who've travelled a similar path. Though I've had little to do with ISKCON for nearly fourteen years now, I still feel a certain kinship with devotees, both past and present. How could I not? I devoted fully seventeen years of my life (ages eighteen to thirty-five -- my youth) to a life of Krishna consciousness in the association of similarly committed devotees. Virtually all my friends and acquaintances were devotees. I absorbed Prabhupada's teachings into the depths of my being and preached them with an enthusiasm born of serene confidence in their absolute truth and efficacy. I dedicated myself both to encouraging a deeper immersion in Vaishnava spirituality on the part of my fellow devotees (through editing such books as The Spiritual Master and the Disciple and Namamrta: The Nectar of the Holy Name), and to cultivating respect and appreciation for ISKCON among intellectuals and scholars such as with my volume of interviews, "Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna: Five Distinguished Scholars on the Krishna Movement in the West" (Grove Press, 1983).
Though my way of thinking and mode of being have changed considerably since leaving the movement, I cannot forget all my brothers and sisters who have shared the Krishna consciousness experience. I, like them, entered the movement driven by a need to know and experience truth, enlightenment, peace, bliss. I, like most devotees, felt an inexplicable attraction to the supernaturally beautiful, blue-skinned boy Krishna, to the strangely beautiful music of the Hare Krishna "mahamantra" to the promise of transcendence. I cannot help, therefore, but feel a special kinship with them.
Most devotees experience doubts, now and then, about the truth of Krishna consciousness, or about its relation to their personal spiritual and psychological growth. In my last few years in the movement I certainly did. And I know that, in spite of claims to the contrary, there are powerful disincentives to openly expressing one's doubts in the company of devotees.
Doubts, however, may be the voice of one's own inner self, the self that doesn't always exactly reflect the exterior "system" of Krishna consciousness, the self that protests being shaped and molded into something it is not. Notwithstanding one's outer loyalty to ISKCON and its parent tradition, if the inner self is not being addressed, respected, honored, allowed to grow, provided means of expression, that authentic self is, sooner or later, going to raise a protest. When that little inner voice first begins to speak, it can be quieted with regimental thinking, louder chanting, extroverted activity, or simple denial. But sometime down the road it is bound to return, a little louder, a little more insistent, and at some point one is left no choice than to acknowledge it.
I would like, now, to address that inner voice and answer it with my own. I have, by the way, no malicious intent in doing so. I'm no anti-cultist or any other species of crusading ideologue. I've nothing to gain personally from this exercise except the pleasure of speaking words that I think need to be spoken to old friends and friends yet unknown.
Allow me to relate some of the reasons why I left ISKCON after so many years of committed service. I've organized my reflections into several sections, which follow:
Where are the Pure Devotees?
As I think back, it seems to me that the factor that initially set in motion my gradual disillusionment with ISKCON was my growing awareness that, judging by its own criteria for success, ISKCON had, quite simply, failed as a spiritual movement. It became increasingly and inescapably obvious that the movement was simply not fulfilling its own stated primary goal: to create "pure devotees" -- to skillfully and successfully guide serious practitioners to those sublime states of spiritual consciousness elaborately described in the scriptures and endlessly reiterated in the movement's teaching forums.
One does, of course, encounter devotees who seem peaceful, content, full of sincere purpose and conviction, high-spirited, enthusiastic, and so on. And it is true that most devotees have experienced, at one time or another, uplifting feelings from chanting, seeing the deity, etc. But what of the more developed and sustained spiritual states described by such terms as "bhava" and "prema"? What of the love of Krishna that flows from the depths of one's being, overwhelms the mind and heart, and utterly transforms one into a holy person whose very presence inspires sanctity in others? Is ISKCON actually producing such manifestly Krishna conscious persons? Need I ask?
To account for this embarrassing lack of pure devotees in ISKCON, one is forced to enact a version of "The Emperor's New Clothes": do the best one can to convince oneself and others that certain high-profile devotees are, indeed, pure devotees, and proclaim that those who don't acknowledge their status are either not yet advanced enoughfor such discernment or are "envious fools." Or, alternatively, redefine the term "pure devotee" in such a broad, generous manner as to include the greatest number of devotees possible (e.g., all those aspiring to be pure devotees, all those following their initiation vows, etc.)
Some few, highly self-motivated, highly disciplined devotees do apply themselves to the principles of bhakti-yoga and taste the fruits of their efforts. But for the overwhelming majority of devotees, spiritual life in ISKCON is little more than a perpetual struggle against the base material instincts. One goes on, year after year, hoping against hope that, "One day, yes, one day, a day far off in the future, one magic and wonderful day, I shall become a pure devotee."
After many years in the movement I came to the conclusion that whatever other success the movement may enjoy -- whatever the proliferation of shaved heads and saris, numbers of temples opened, books distributed, celebrity endorsements procured -- in the absence of the creation of highly evolved Krishna conscious persons, it's all an empty show.
Ethical Failure and Intellectual Dishonesty
Over the course of my years in ISKCON I became alarmed at the extent to which people who joined the movement in part as a reaction against the pervasive dishonesty in interpersonal dealings in mundane society, permitted themselves to become clever, sneaky and two-faced in the name of promulgating Truth. However much it may be hard to admit, The-Ends-Justifies-the-Means has long been a defining and controlling ethic in the movement. Based on the presumption that tricking, deceiving and cajoling illusioned souls to financially subsidize, and otherwise support ISKCON represents a "higher" morality, devotees are taught to say and do almost anything if it can be justified in the name of "preaching." From the new devotee in the street extracting money from non-devotees through blatant dissimulation, to the most intellectually and socially sophisticated devotee skillfully packaging ISKCON in such a way as to most effectively win friends and undermine enemies, the ethic of pulling the wool over the benighted eyes of non-devotees in order to save their souls is the same.
Though this attitude may appear justified from the point of view of a certain self-serving, contrived "spiritual" ethic, in practice it encourages a fundamental disrespect and superior attitude toward those for whom it claims feelings of compassion, and a manipulative, controlling attitude towards those it claims to liberate. Though some of the grosser manifestations of that cheating ethic have been tempered in recent years, the basic attitude, as far as I can see, hasn't changed, because it is rooted in ISKCON's presumption of moral superiority.
Another kind of dishonesty fundamental to the movement is an intellectual one: a learned orientation by which one's chief philosophical project ceases to be the sincere and disciplined effort to open oneself to Truth, but instead to study, memorize, internalize, preach and defend an already defined, pre-digested, pre-packaged "Truth." Instead of a genuinely open-minded, open-hearted quest for knowledge, one simply waves the banner of received "truth" come what may, however much that "truth" may or may not address the reality or facts at hand.
This tenacious defense of received "truth" in the face of potentially disconfirming realities represents, I suggest, not an act of courage but of cowardice: an ultimately futile attempt to defend a fragile existential security masquerading as enlightened certainty. I am continually amazed, and in retrospect somewhat embarrassed, by my own and other ISKCON intellectuals' easy willingness to sacrifice intellectual honesty in order to fortify our own and others' imperfect faith -- to wave our tattered little banner of Truth in the face of the wealth of ideas and multi-textured realities surrounding us.
Hard Hearts
I can recall, throughout my years in ISKCON, often being disappointed with the behavior of leaders, who seemed to care little for the personhood of the devotees under their command. There's a certain hardness of heart that comes from subordinating people to principles, to defining the institution itself as pre-eminent and its members as merely its "humble servants".
This rhetoric of submission has, of course, a certain ring of loftiness to it: the idea of devotees striving together, pooling their energies and skills, sacrificing personal independence and comforts in order to serve the Glorious Mission. The trouble is, in effect it creates a social/interpersonal environment in which the particular needs of individuals are devalued, downplayed, and postponed indefinitely -- leaving the individual devotee sooner or later feeling used and abused. Through my years in ISKCON I became increasingly aware, painfully and sadly aware, of the ways in which, in the name of "engaging devotees in Krishna's service," leaders and administrators at all levels deal with the devotees "under" them in a patronizing, condescending, heavy-handed and authoritarian manner -- viewing and dealing with their subordinates not as unique individuals possessing rich and complex inner lives, but as units of human energy to be matched to the necessary tasks at hand. I recall leaders criticizing, even ridiculing the very notion that special attention should be paid to the individual psyches and needs of devotees -- who dismissed such concerns as mere sentimentality, unnecessary coddling, a lack of tough-mindedness, and opposed to the sacred principles of humility and surrender.
This hard-nosed, hard-hearted attitude, this insensitive disregard for the individual, this almost cynical exalting of the principles of humility and surrender to ensure that the floors get swept and the bills paid, leaves many devotees, especially those low on the institutional totem-pole, feeling betrayed. Many of these devotees, when the frustration, anxiety and disappointment reach a high enough level, simply leave -- many becoming (understandably) bitter and vindictive.
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