08/20/98-2046

Harikesa Letter to Russian Disciples

Germany (VNN) - by Harikesa das August 16, 1998

Dear devotees in Russia. Hare Krsna.

I have heard about your troubles because of disputes. Please, under no circumstances, do physical harm to your own bodies or the bodies of others. It is not proper and will not accomplish your goals. You should look within yourselves to see the source of our anxiety and cure yourselves and become stable.

Go to the Deities and pray and meditate before Them and ask Them for Their special mercy. Since They are persons (as you are) They will help you for They are very great and you are part of Them. They love you and you should feel love of God. Do not worry about me. I am fine and happy, although quite disgusted and appalled at the hardness, cruelness and heartlessness of the leaders of ISKCON.

Take care of yourselves because otherwise you will be cheated like me when you understand the actual situation and dare say it. Good luck for you. May Krsna bless you with all good fortune. The Lord loves you, but at present, we do not have any real contact with Him. Because we are constantly cheating each other, even over petty things, and we lie, steal, and do the needful ("By hook or by crook"), we have lost touch with reality and how we are negatively affecting the world. Therefore, intelligent and balanced people are not interested in our movement. Although we are a process of self-realization, even 30 year old devotees do not know who they are and hardly anyone has love of God, and if he does he is branded as a sahajiya and crazy, or an opportunist. But we have seen that as soon as one deviates from the "party-line" he is considered a heretic and rejected, although any thinking person can understand that the time has come to search deeply within ourselves to find out why this movement is mainly interested in money, power, buildings and empty institutionalization without any real spiritual energy or power and with few realized souls, while the children are abused and neglected, and the women are used and exploited without real respect as equal partners in life.

Therefore our family situations are in chaos and there is constant divorce and broken families which ruins the children. Sure it also happens in material world, but someday you might wake up and see that ISKCON is worse than the material world, while proudly posing itself as the only bona-fide and authorized institution for love of God. If devotees actually had such love, then how could they deal with each other so coldly? You should open your eyes and see for yourself what is going on in this so- called spiritual society. I pray for Krsna that there is not and never will be an ISKCON in the spiritual world, otherwise I will reconsider going back home.

Good luck for you. My love goes to those who are actually capable of thinking for themselves and accepting gold, even from a filthy place.

Your guide as long as you want it.