ISKCON AND INDIGNITIES: A RATIONAL LOOK AT THE FOUR "REGULATIVE PRINCIPLES"

If you’re thinking about joining the Hare Krishna temple in your area, you’ve probably heard about the “four regulative principles” every devotee is expected to follow. Here’s a objective look at what they involve in practice from somebody who joined as a 14 year old and followed them for the next 13 years:

1. No eating of meat, fish, and eggs. No garlic or onions or mushrooms. According to the ridiculous propaganda that newcomers are fed along with the Sunday Feast, these vegetables “grow in dirty places and increase passion.”  

COMMENTS

Vegetarianism in various forms is practiced by millions of people world-wide for reasons that are religious or ethical, and sometimes both. Buddhists and Jains, for example, are even more stringent in their vegetarian practices than the tiny minority of Hindus who avoid the above-mentioned foods. Other than proscribing the eating of beef due to their cultural reverence for cows, most Hindus include animal protein in their diets. 

The Abrahamic religions follow a similar pattern, excluding certain foods that are deemed unclean or culturally inappropriate and including others some might find offensive. The reason is simple:  both the Vedas and the Hebrew Bible frequently mention animal sacrifice in their scriptures and in all cases, the sacrifice is eaten. Later on, various ethical and hygienic considerations crept in, but, in the main, it is hard to deny that humans are omnivorous by nature. 

Some say that Hindus who follow the Vedic diet do so because they believe in reincarnation and the karmic laws governing actions and reactions. Taking this idea to an irrational extreme has led some to subscribe to the notion that, since all animals contain a soul, killing them without provocation is tantamount to murder. This mistaken equation of human and animal life is at the heart of most religiously-based forms of stringent vegetarianism. 

Here are the facts: eggs sold on the market are unfertilized, so consuming them does not involve taking a life. As for garlic, onions or mushrooms, the truth is all of these vegetables grow in normal conditions and are extremely healthful. Using the foul-smelling resin asafoetida instead of them is unnecessary. Furthermore, passion cannot be increased simply by eating “hot” foods, if that were the case, the chili peppers that are used in most soups and vegetables in Vedic cooking might be blamed by some hot-heads for the continuing population explosion in the sub-continent. For more on this topic, please see: 

https://harekrishnacultexposed.blogspot.com/2009/11/cult-dietary-restrictions-example-of.html.

2. No alcoholic beverages and no tea, chocolate or coffee: all are intoxicants. Tobacco is also out.

COMMENTS

The sheer hypocrisy of this so-called regulative principle coming from a cult aiming to restore the caste system is staggering! No one has condemned these practices as eloquently as B.R. Ambedkar in his unpublished treatise Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Ancient India and it is worth quoting him at length:

Drinking was another evil which was rampant among the Aryans. Liquors were of two sorts:Soma and Sura. Soma was a sacrificial wine. The drinking of the Soma was in the beginning permitted only to Brahmins, Kshatriyas and Vaishyas. Subsequently it was permitted only to Brahmins and Kshatriyas. The Vaishyas were excluded from it and the Shudras were never permitted to taste it. Its manufacture was a secret known only to the Brahmins. Sura was open to all and was drunk by all. The Brahmins also drank Sura. The priest to the Asuras drank so heavily that in his drunken state he gave the life giving Mantra known to him only and with which he used to revive the Asuras & killed by the Devas—to Katch the son of Brahaspati who was the priest of the Devas. The Mahabharata mentions an occasion when both Krishna and Arjuna were dead drunk. That shows that the best among the Aryan Society were not only not free from the drink habit but that they drank heavily

(Chapter 2. The Ancient Regime: The State of Aryan Society.)

Responsible adults don’t need anyone else to tell them that consuming anything in excess can be dangerous to their well-being: moderation is the key and total abstention is a waste of time. In addition, modern science has proven that wine, tea, and coffee when consumed moderately, have great health benefits. It is also patently ridiculous to view the caffeine in coffee and tea as “intoxicants,” what to speak of chocolate (coffee and chocolate were also unknown in the early Aryan civilization). 

Furthermore, the issue shouldn’t be intoxication, but what causes the tobacco or marijuana addict to seek escape in the first place; in other words, a rational person should first humanely inquire after the cause of an addiction rather than simply condemn the effect. No religious belief is necessary to inform you that tobacco and recreational drugs are poisons. Also keep in mind that the founder/acharya of the Hare Krishna movement, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, regularly took snuff and never hid his habit from the disciples close to him.

3. Only sexual intercourse between married couples is allowed and even then it must be strictly for procreation.Unmarried men and women must live as monks in ashrams.

Please note: I have dealt with this issue elsewhere and recommend that you read it to get a fuller picture of how this prohibition impacts the lives of the disciples of A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. 

See:https://harekrishnacultexposed.blogspot.com/2012/01/hare-krishna-mating-ritual-revealed.html.


COMMENTS

This extremely reductive treatment of human sexuality has nothing to do with Vedic culture and was in fact an experiment the founder of ISKCON created to further his ambitions to open temples all over the West as well as facilitate the selling of his books. For a man who entered into an arranged marriage to an eleven-year old girl when he was 24, and who begot six children with her, this prohibition reeks of pure hypocrisy. Much has been written about how he openly discussed his dislike for her and how he came to believe that his dislike of her made it easier for him to abandon his family and become a sanyasi. Frankly, his own experience was the product of a culture that keeps both men and women in a state of perpetual adolescence. 

All of us remember what is was like to be around twelve or thirteen years old and just beginning to feel attracted to the opposite sex: in most cases, the ignorance of biology in the early teens results in mixed attraction and revulsion, both of which subside and are transformed when the boys and girls gradually learn “the facts of life” as well as learn mutual self-respect for each other’s intellectual capabilities. This process of growing emotionally is as important as achieving legal adulthood, but it takes time and patience. 

Unfortunately, the so-Vedic system our guru propounded disturbs this process by marrying off girls just after the onset of puberty, on the ridiculous plea that they are so lustful (nine times as lustful as men, to be exact) that they must get married to a much older man to control them. Legally speaking, this practice is nothing more than the crime of pederasty. No adult male has the right to compel a child to engage in a sexual act (the so-called “consent” of the child is a moot point). Moreover, even if the child you married is now a legal adult, your keeping her as your sexual partner is compelling her, meaning that your so-called wife is actually your sex slave. Requiring unmarried men and women to live as celibate monks in ashrams is a confirmed pervert-making machine, whether you replace ashram for convent or cave, the results are the same. 

Srila Prabhupada used to say that of all the human propensities of eating, sleeping, mating, and defending, mating was optional. Sorry to say, he was mistaken in this respect, but, as we all know, he was in good company: this idea is behind most restrictions on the personal lives of monastic individuals in many faiths. As I have said before, no adult needs another adult to tell him or her how to govern their intimate lives. The notion that celibacy is better than the alternative is fundamentally wrong: men and women have strong emotional needs and these cannot be suppressed and then transmuted into a fit of “ecstatic” chanting in front of the deities or whom they believe to be a “pure devotee.” 

Furthermore, you cannot brainwash a normal adult into “renouncing” their sexual selves by treating love as a category of feeling that has been purged of “lust”: that is both puerile and self-serving. You only have to read about the horrible rapes and other perversions that accompanied the gurukula experiment to see what monsters are created when repressed, immature individuals who have themselves been denied a modicum of privacy and dignity gain access to a group of terrified innocents. Worse, many of these abusers were sannyasis, who are supposed to be exemplars of renunciation. 

4. No Gambling. 

COMMENTS

Another example of A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada’s attempting to create a “Vedic” society in the West that never existed in India or even in another of his Krishna-conscious fantasies. Here again I must express my gratitude to the great B.R. Ambedkar for his illuminating descriptions of the gambling habits that typified Aryan society during the lifetime of Buddha (583 BCE-483 BCE): 

Every king had a hall of gambling attached to his palace. Every king had an expert gambler in his employment as a companion to play with. King Virat had in his employment Kank as an expert gambler. Gambling was not merely a pastime with kings. They played with heavy stakes. They staked kingdoms, dependants, relatives, slaves, servants. King Nala Paskkar and lost everything. The only thing he did not stake was himself and his wife Damayanti. Nala had to go and live in the forest as a beggar. There were kings who went beyond Nala. 

The Mahabharata tells how Dharma the eldest of the Pandavas gambled and staked everything, his brothers and also his and their wife Draupadi. Gambling was a matter of honour with the Aryans and any invitation to gamble was regarded as an injury to one's honour and dignity. Dharma gambled with such disastrous consequences although he was warned beforehand. His excuse was that he was invited to gamble and that as a man of honour, he could not decline such an invitation. This vice of gambling was not confined to kings. It had infected even the common folk. Rig-Veda contains lamentations of a poor Aryan ruined by gambling. The habit of gambling had become so common in Kautilya's time that there were gambling houses licensed by the king from which the king derived considerable revenue.

This restriction against gambling is also particularly entertaining since obtaining money by sleight of hand is an ISKCON specialty: have you ever been to the airport or another public place and witnessed first-hand what the Hare Krishna devotees term “book distribution” or “sankirtan”? As someone who spent years participating in this charade, I can tell you that it is nothing more than a campaign of misinformation and theft. No wonder so many of these books and magazines end up in trash bins almost immediately after the unwary traveler realizes the foolishness of his or her purchase.

Let me give you a great example of what this can lead to by referring to an incident in my past: When I lived near the Los Angeles temple in the later 1970’s (just before I finally left ISKCON), I worked in their Bhaktivedanta Book Trust (BBT), fulfilling orders for a scam they advertised in the National Enquirer: they had an ad that told people that they would sell them a talisman that would guarantee them good luck, all for $39. When the orders came in, I would send the poor fools a picture of the Jagganath deity pasted onto a round metal badge and also include a slender ISKCON pamphlet: can anything more degraded and cruel be imagined? I remember complaining about it, only to be told that it was approved by the BBT leadership.

ISKCON, truly a society of the cheaters and the cheated!

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