Astral Hassles and Previous Ashram Life

Meditationtime Forum Post

Date:  Posted 3 years before May 02, 2016

MiBeloved 3 years ago

Last night in the astral world, I was in an adjacent dimension in which the person who was known as Kirtanananda Swami has a community of followers. This person was disowned by his parent society, ISKCON, but he is still affiliated with it in the astral world.

He is now departed from his physical body, after being disgraced as a sannyasi and as a Hare Krishna devotee and after having served a jail term and then coming down with some serious illnesses in his last body.

In this person there is no self-reflection of the fact that he is not worth of being a guru. He still feels that he is a guru and a leader of souls. In the astral world, people who were affiliated with him when he served as a bonafide (his description of himself) guru are still attracted to him because of the nature of the astral bodies.

The astral forms maintain their attachments and even if such attachments are unfavorable, so long as the energies are in the psyche, the astral form will be sure to seek them out. In the tussle between preference and attachment, attachment will always get its way in the astral existence, because that is the place of whimsy and impulsion.

When I first got to that astral place, I considered why I was there in the first place, because I have nothing to get from Kirtanananda. I ran into the guy in this life because of having to get into the Brahma-Madhva-Gaudiya sampradaya for getting under the authorities who are supposed to be caretaking of the Srimad Bhagavatam. When I finally got to the sampradaya, Srila Bhaktivedanta Swami had just left his body. I was in communication with him some years before around 1973 but that communication was spoilt by one of his disciples in the Denver ashram, who explained to him that I was sentimentally interested and that I was not worthy of engagement.

Later in 1978 when I tried to get in touch with the Swami again, that was out because he passed from his body. The secretary for his society in the USA, referred me to Kirtanananda because I expressed an interest in living off in the country and that was their main community involved in farming and that life style.

In 1973, Srila Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada had instructed that I write a Bhagavad Gita for children. This was after I suggested to him that maybe he could do that since his Bhagavad Gita AS It Is, is a very academic presentation. I got that book for children finished around 1973 but his disciple in the Denver temple where I presented it did not like the fact that I was from the Kundalini Yoga Ashram of Sri Harbhajan Singh and that I was not interested in moving into the ISKCON ashram on Cherry St.

This person met with one Mohanananda Das who was at the time the head of the Gurukula for ISKCON in the USA and blacklisted me and that was the end of that.

I kept the manuscript, which I no longer have even a single copy of, and later in 1979 presented it to Kirtanananda when I moved to New Vrindavana, the community which he founded on behalf of Srila Prabhupada.

The first thing Kirtanananda clarified to me was that I would have to be his disciple and that I could not be the disciple of Bhaktivedanta. Since Bhaktivedanta was deceased, all persons who entered the sampradaya at that time had to accept the authority of one of his leading disciples, and Kirtanananda was the leader of these persons because he was the first sannyasi of all those disciples and he was the functional founder of their largest farm community.

I played along with the whole thing because that is what one has to do if one is to live in peace with an ashram environment. But more important was what I had to get from the sampradaya. In all situations, everything has its price. I don’t think that Kirtanananda knew what I was about or what I wanted. He had some psychic perception so he suspected me every step of the way but as providence would have it I submitted as his disciple.

So what did I need to get?

Why should a person like me submit to a person like Kirtanananda who in the end, proved to the whole world that he was not really worthy of being a guru much less appraising himself as a bonafide guru?

Many persons in the society condemn Kirtanananda for taking the position of guru but these individual shy away from explaining why there were so many statements and letters where Srila Prabhupada appraised this person as a pure devotee of both himself and Lord Krishna. In fact Srila Prabhupada directed many potential disciples to go to Kirtanananda for instruction and send their initiation names to Kirtanananda who gave those names in official rituals on behalf of Srila Prabhupada.

Here are the commodities which I needed from the lineage:

·        Actual knowledge about the situation of the lineage

·        In-depth knowledge about the philosophical thesis of the lineage at this point in history

·        In-depth knowledge about the deity worship procedure of the lineage at this point in history

·        Firsthand knowledge about the introspective habits of the lineage at this point in history

·        Firsthand knowledge about the process used today in contrast to the process used in the time of the writing of the Srimad Bhagavatam.

These were very expensive commodities and to get them I literally had to lick ass in the society. But it was worth it because otherwise I could not complete the mission for which I took this body.

The reason for licking ass is that most of the authorities in the society were not doing the correct austerities of yoga and hence did not have the required degree of purity to be free from the motive for prestige and personnel exploitation.

But that is history and history cannot be argued with. Sir Paul Castagna and my eldest child, Bloom Beloved, and I went to New Vrindavana in 1979. Sir Paul had doubts about the society and when we got there, he definitely decided that it was not the place where he wanted to be.

A few months after Bloom’s mother, who is Sharon Thornton (Ellinghausen) joined me and then some months after the mother of my other children, Marcia Beloved joined us at New Vrindavan.

======================

Now let us take a look at why I needed those commodities which I paid so dearly for to Kirtanananda and other authorities in the Hare Krishna Movement.

Before you can represent a lineage of gurus in India, you must be familiar with the present situation, as to how the lineage functions at this time in history as compared to how it should have functioned ideally as per description in its books. You should know how the sampradaya evolved because no spiritual lineage can remain in the exactly the same way forever. There will be changes made by individual leaders as well as changes which come on because of political and cultural pressures. Thus to understand these one has to get to the inside of the society. One has to look, learn, listen and see exactly what is going on.

These spiritual lineages have two aspects which are their propaganda and their actual functioning. In many cases those two realities are worlds apart. There is no point complaining about it because that is the nature of the material world but at least one should be aware of it and should honestly try to break down the dichotomy and decrease the hypocrisy. Even in the Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna explained to Arjuna that Krishna would again give the information about karma yoga because it was no longer available in its original form in the India, and those times were much more culturally aligned to the way of the Vedas than we are today.

One has to know the degree of deviation even if one cannot do anything about it. At least if a mariner knows that his instruments are 10 degrees off he can adjust his course to suit even though he may not be able to calibrate the instruments when he is out at sea. So it is important to first know the condition of a sampradaya before one stands up as a representative of it.

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To work in or on behalf of a sampradaya from India, one has to get deep into the theories of the sampradaya. The Vaishnava sampradayas are based on something which is called the Samkhya Philosophy. However one has to be careful when one goes looking for that because there are two of those coming out of India. One is put out by the atheist Kapila and the other is by the Kapila who is the son of Devahuti. I studied both texts in detail.

Some parts of each are similar but there is a detour by the atheist Kapila. To get some understanding of the Vaishnava Samkhya one should read Canto 3 of the Srimad Bhagavatam.

Theory is theory and practice is an entirely different matter. Unfortunately most of the Vaishnava sampradayas today have some information of the correct Samkhya philosophy but they have no practice of the yoga which was required for integrating that knowledge in the times when the Srimad Bhagavatam was written. This has produced some serious defects in the sampradaya.

When I investigated in ISKCON to find out why this came to be, I found out that yoga practice as it was done in the time of the writing of the Bhagavatam was outlawed in the society and that situation was traced to Lord Chaitanya.

Since such a supreme authority in the lineage outlawed it, it was a dead letter and no one would reinstate it in the lineage.

When I first got to New Vrindavana, Kirtanananda already had some information about me because a woman I was married to (Michele Hassenauer) was in the society in the Detroit temple. She had given some information about me. Kirtanananda knew that I was a proficient kundalini yogi before I arrived there and therefore he briefed me that yoga was a no no in the society based on the rules that Srila Bhaktivedanta Swami established.

While I lived in their ashram, I suspended yoga practice totally. I had no choice.

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I needed in-depth knowledge about the deity worship procedure in the society because this society was supposed to have the highest form of deity worship, which is a system through which many previous ascetic were able to call and have interviews (darshan) with divine beings, deities.

My investigation was to see if these procedures were still working as they did at the time of the writing of the Srimad Bhagavatam. I found out that they were not working in exactly the same way.

In the first place to get the methods one had to lick ass in the society. In the second place many of the pujaris (ritual experts) got their procedures in a fragmented way. I was luckily because even though Kirtanananda did not trust me one inch, still he has the sense not to block my access to the procedures. I was under the direction of a person who was known as Garga Rishi, a tall gracious disciple of Bhaktivedanta who was somewhat adept at the procedures. He also learned them fragmentally but that is no one’s fault because originally these were taught from father to son in the lineages of Brahmin families. Initially these were teachers who were within a certain caste and family in India.

It is a miracle really and it goes to his credits, that Bhaktivedanta Swami extended these procedures to people who were using other-than-Indian caste bodies. He took a great risk here and he must be appraised for that.

I was really shocked at the fragmented way in which they were teaching Deity worship at New Vrindavan at the time but I could do nothing about it. Fortunately for me the woman whom I was married to previously and who was living in the Detroit temple, was still in communication with me by mail. She was a pujari there and had access to a confidential book which had the worship procedures. When I explained to her the situation of the training at New Vrindavana, she mentioned that the procedures were laid out in a book which was written in the society itself, by one Jayatirtha Swami who was a householder guru-authority appointed by Bhaktivedanta before his demise.

This lady secretly procured a copy of that book and sent it to me. So here I was at New Vrindavana with a confidential book which was never shared to newbies and especially to suspect disciples like myself.

I secretly studied that book and began putting its procedures into practice when I did deity worship.

This particular book which was called the Archana Paddhati was translated from another book of the same name which was written under the direction of Srila Bhaktivedanta’s guru who was Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati.

However that text was based on the ultimate authoritative book which is the Narada Pancharatra which is a discourse of Narada on what was taught by Lord Shiva to Goddess Devi in this regard.

If one goes through the Narada Pancharatra one would be surprised to see how much of it is cut out of the Archana Paddhati.

By carefully studying these texts and putting what they suggest into practice, I realized why these procedures being used were not effective in causing the devotees to see the spiritual form of Krishna. In fact in the sampradaya the deity forms are regarded as the spiritual forms, as if they are no actual spiritual forms and as if these deity forms are the ultimate.

The reason for the failure is that yoga practice, particularly mystic yoga practice is conspicuous by its absence in the modern sampradaya.

====================

So what are the introspective habits of the sampradaya?

They have two procedures:

·        Chanting gayatri mantra in silence thrice per day with emphasis substituting Savitur with either Lord Krishna or Lord Chaitanya

·        Reading and mentally absorbing the explanation of the Srimad Bhagavatam, the Srimad Bhagavad Gita and the Srimad Chaitanya Charitamrita.

I tried to follow these procedures. Under pressure of my mystic ability, Kirtanananda awarded me brahmin initiation after just 9 months after I took formal harinama initiation from him. With that I got the gayatri mantras and access to the pujari room.

He explained the way to chant gayatri mantra and the meaning of the mantra in the sampradaya. Using this I discovered that it was lacking the mystic content which the ancient yogis used because of their practice of ashtanga yoga. But I could do nothing about it because Bhaktivedanta Swami already established the standard for the society.

Instead of using the maps of psyche in the Srimad Bhagavatam to proceed with introspective yoga which is termed as samyama in Yoga Sutras, they were using the maps as the actual psyche itself and they felt that this was the final authority.  Imagine if I gave you a map of New York while you are in the middle of Africa and I tell you that this map is itself New York City. That would be a terrible fantasy indeed if you became convinced, that the map itself was the city.

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By assessing all of the above, I got some insight into what I needed to do to complete my spiritual process in this life as well as what I could share with others about what was lacking in the modern sampradaya. I did this in seven commentaries, three on the Bhagavad Gita and one on the Uddhava Gita, one on the Anu Gita, one on the Markandeya Samasya and one on the Yoga Sutras.

By the grace of the Supreme Person, Krishna, I was able to complete these within the life span of the present body.

When I saw Kirtanananda in the astral world last light, he was still in the same mind-set. He was blindly involved in being a sampradaya lineage leader even though he is not qualified even by the whittled down standard set by Srila Bhaktivedanta Swami. Kirtanananda is pathetic. The whole environment which he has in the astral world now is miserable.

One person who was there was Bhaktitirtha Swami who was a junior sannyasi under Kirtanananda and who was in the same trap of being an authority for the sampradaya, posing as what they defined as a pure devotee of Krishna.

There in that astral situation there was another feature of the ashrams which are dirty toilets because of the fact they tried to design toilets which allowed them to squat while the Western toilets are designed for sitting. Western people are not trained from birth in the use of water to clean their anus after evacuating. Thus when that is introduced to them later in their lives, they don’t seem to get it and cannot keep the surroundings clean because their tradition used dry paper which does not deposit water everywhere.

Interestingly, during that dream, when I was hiding from Kirtanananda, he came to me in a wheel chair and told me that I should go to do the pujari services at the next worship service. In his mind he was going over the way he treated me when I used to go to him for his editing of articles I used to write for an in-community magazine which I began to publish at New Vrindavana.

Sometimes I had to wait three weeks for him to read one page of typing and then I would have to change this or change that to the tone set by Srila Bhaktivedanta Swami.

Kirtanananda, however, and I accredit him for this, did filter out anything that I included which was not part of the sampradaya’s ideas from the Samkhya system. This was necessary because the Vedanta Society under the influence of Ramakrishna Paramhamsa and Swami Vivekananda and later Sri Swami Yogananda contaminated the Srimad Bhagavatam by mixing in the Advaita Vedanta views of Adi Shankara.

Alfredo 3 years ago

Michael!

Thank you very much.

I have followed before your interaction with Swami Kirtanananda, and a while back read his curriculum vitae from several sources, including the controversies and criminal activities, plus what his face in pictures reflected when I looked at them.

This you wrote above is enthralling to me, and make me realize the great service you have done to the spiritual community that is dedicated to gain knowledge from the original and unfiltered sources, untainted by human ego. These original sources are critical for success in yoga, for the others mostly provide costly diversions.

What I read above is corroborated in your writings, especially the Uddhava Gita Explained.

Now I also understand your original reaction once to Avadutha in LinkedIn. Although he moved to another similar sampradaya, he apparently follows the same dictums that contain the same errors.