IDOL WORSHIP: ISKCON'S GIFT TO THE WEST?

Idol worship is to religion what the Stone Age is to the 21^st century. Whether caveman or computer programmer, the general motivation is the human tendency to get something one desires with as little effort as possible.Typically worshippers offer flowers and incense accompanied by repetitive chants or prayers with the ceremonies led by a high-born priest. If conducted in what is believed to be a holy place of pilgrimage, the pious effect is generally held to be magnified exponentially. In general, attendees are taught from childhood to believe that worship in such a place will cleanse them of sin and grant them direct communion with the deity. Many also exhibit a type of religious euphoria akin to possession and display passionate and violent displays of emotion.

On the other hand, ISKCON uses the uneasy familiarity of its Judeo-Christian converts with religious notions of pilgrimage sites of their own heritage to get them to engage in worship of deities without having the slightest knowledge of what they are worshipping and for what reason. In fact, their introduction to the whole business is the chanting of the Hare Krishna mantra as a kind of group hysteria punctuated by loud singing before any deity whatsoever. Then they are fed food offered to the deities ("prasadam") and are read a few snippets of the Gita and Bhagavad Purana, a,ll translated and with commentaries by the ISKCON founder guru, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. Insofar as actual Hinduism is concerned, they know very little and the scope of their knowledge is kept deliberately minimal. My own experience in this regard is instructive:

When I first entered a Hare Krishna Temple, I hardly noticed the small Radha Krishna deities, but found the animistic Jagganath group charming with their huge eyes and colorful abstract representations of form and feature. Soon my sister and I learned to create more of them ourselves and wore them around our necks like amulets.[i] As the saying goes, we had no idea of what we were getting into.

In a few years as the ISKCON cult grew and attracted more gullible, opportunistic youth, our daily lives centered around worshipping our guru and the temple deities, the latter which we addressed as “their lordships” as if they were not idols of brass and wood, but the Godhead themselves. We never regarded them as symbolic representations of Krishna and his associates in material form, but as purely spiritual, transcendent entities.

So mornings starting at 4:30 (after sleeping six hours, later reduced to four) and evenings we would prostrate ourselves before them and sing their praises like star-struck teenagers infatuated with their latest heartthrobs. Afterwards, we would vie for the remnants of the delicacies offered to them with all the avidity of a pack of starved vultures.

Imagine spending with best years of your life dancing and chanting before a group of extravagantly dressed idols garlanded with gorgeous flowers while devotees lived like the homeless, sleeping on the floor, underfed and exhausted by hawking our guru’s plagiarized books on the street and in airports.

The fate of the children deposited at the infamous “gurukula” schools—or rather, hellholes—was worse: starting from the age of four or five, these innocents were cut off from any semblance of family life and, in many cases, sexually abused and tortured by the lowlifes who were recruited as their teachers. By order of our guru A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami, parents were expected to send their children away, which was simply a practical application of his belief that “the ends justify the means.”

Who can forget the sight of those near-skeletal kids reciting the slogan beginning with “this body is a lump of ignorance” before sitting down and eating a plop of ill-prepared gruel or other cheap vegetarian fare that had been offered to the deities? To make matters worse (and unhygienic), it was eaten off wax paper or paper plates placed directly on the floor and the famished kids gobbled it down with their fingers as their only utensils.

ROCKS, BATS, AND THE LIMITS OF IDOLATRY

When I recall my first pilgrimage to the town of Vrindavan, the awe-inspiring 16^th century “old” Govindaji temple looms into view. Situated between a temple in the South Indian style and the “new” Govindaji temple, it is a marvel in red sandstone as well as an architectural triumph with a rich history. When we arrived it was twilight and an arati ceremony was in progress. I still remember the chill I felt when I looked inside and before I saw anything, heard a rasping, squeaking sound and looking up, saw that it was produced by a massive swarm of bats circling around the high ceiling.

After stepping back in horror, I walked out of the temple and headed right, where I was told the “new” Govindaji temple was situated. At the time, the deities of the temple were lined up in an open plaza of sorts at the base of the main temple. Another shock soon followed the last when, near the feet of the typical brass Radha Krishna deities, I saw what appeared to be a piece of smooth black river rock, onto which had been painted a pair of lotus eyes and tilok. Now, this struck me as plainly idolatrous, even though by that time I had spent years worshipping brass and wooden deities. A piece of rock? This was way too much!

No Matter How You Dress it up, a Stone is just a Stone

Mind you, Vaishnavas (worshippers of Vishnu) regard worshipping their deities as 100% the same as adoration in the presence of the Godhead himself. After feeling my eyes start from their sockets at the sight of this rock deity I soon learned was called a “Salagram Sila,” even I, a befuddled teenager at the time, knew that I had reached the limit of my toleration of Hare Krishna idolatry.[ii]

REWARDS AND PUNISHMENTS

"The formless Supreme Spirit that pervades the universe can have no material representation, likeness or image." YAJUR VEDA 32: 3.[iii]

Why, then, do so many ISKCON devotees, most of whom were raised in Judeo-Christian religions, take to deity/idol worship with such enthusiasm? From my own experience, its source is their gullible acceptance of the exaggerated promises of liberation from sin that our guru, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, first attributed to chanting the Hare Krishna mantra and later on extended to deity worship and the strict observance to fasting days such as Ekadasi.

For example, the Garuda Purana states that observance of Ekadasi “removes sins and wards off hell—nay, it enables one to attain Vishnu loka and gives everything desired.” The sheer number of boons for observance and condemnations for non-observance for this one fast are mind-boggling and can be found in any Internet search. Similarly, in the Sri Hari Bhakti Vilas, it is claimed that “merely by touching a genuine Salagram Sila one becomes free the sins of millions of births, what to speak of worshipping by puja of Salagram Sila one gains the direct association of Lord Hari.” 

Claims such as these are the staple of folk tales of every nation and religion, and typically are found in the kind of fairy tales parents read to children as bedtime stories. Adults familiar with the stupendous acts of epic heroes in such works as the Iliad, the Ramayana, and of course the Mahabarata, are or should be well aware that a staple of the epic genre is exaggeration. Whether the purpose is to entertain and/or inspire, taking them literally is mere foolishness and something one would expect from an ignorant buffoon. 

The list goes on and on.  In this way, religions ensnare weak-minded and intellectually lazy people who treat their strict observances as lottery tickets with guaranteed winning numbers as long as you abide by the rules of the game. In practical terms, these so-called “Vedic” rules and prohibitions encourage the faithful to indulge in superstitious practices instead of investigating matters with their innate reasoning powers.[iv] After a while, it becomes clear that acceptance of a pile of rules and regulations has turned what was once an inquisitive soul into a gratified or terrorized dim-wit, depending on what quasi-spiritual fantasy he or she is willing to indulge.

Some protest that Christians are also idol-worshippers because they allegedly "worship" the Crucifix and various carvings or paintings. Nonsense! Venerating or showing reverence is a far cry from worshipping an object as a deity. The difference should be obvious.

Enter the Hare Krishna followers, who in their never-ending quest to appear more Hindu than Hindu, worship deities of brass, wood, and stone, but also include idols representing the 16th c. religious reformer Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and four of his associates. They specifically worship Chaitanya as an incarnation of “Krishna in the mood of Radha,” which is the way they get around the fact that he—while certainly an enthusiastic devotee of Krishna—was a high-born Brahmin who is known for and usually depicted wearing a mix of masculine and feminine attire. If not for his high caste status, there is little doubt that such antics would have not been tolerated by any fellow Hindus of his time and certainly of ours.

Only members of the intersex Hijra or Kinnar transvestites are allowed such behavior and are traditionally featured in religious enactments of tales in which a god or goddess behaves in a sexually ambiguous manner. These performances are characterized by the intensity with which the hijra devotees play their parts and the sheer spectacle of people who appear biologically male dressed in the garish attire and jewelry of professional prostitutes (which many of them are). More on the background of this topic and its application to the legend of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu can be found at https://writingknight.blogspot.com.

When will people stop believing in quick-fix solutions to their problems and in nonsensical transactions that insult rather than respect the deity they claim to worship? As for the priestly classes behind these ruses, now more than ever we have come to realize that their abuse of innocents is an outgrowth of their skills in manipulating and brainwashing.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ESSAY AND ILLUSTRATIONS ARE THE PRIVATE PROPERTY OF THE AUTHOR/ARTIST. The Goya print is public domain.

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[i] See letter dated 1 February 1969 to Ekayani Devi Dasi. https://prabhupadaletters1969.blogspot.com.

[ii] These stones originate from the Gandaki river in Nepal and look like mostly smooth black river rocks with various markings that devotees regard as symbols of specific deities. They are in fact fossils of ammonites, which were mollusks that lived in a spherical shell similar to a snail and died out in the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event approximately 66 million years ago. Many varieties are available on eBay.

[iii] http://www.aryasamaj.org/newsite/Light_Of_Truth.pdf. See Dayananda’s Satyarth Prakash for a conclusive refutation of idolatry. Pages 370-375 are especially illuminating.

[iv] The practices of Hindus—regardless of their philosophical or folkloric underpinnings—are not the subjects of this essay. ISKCON cultists are another matter entirely.

Please note:

Although holy places of pilgrimage exist in all major world religions, India is a special case because of the great antiquity of Hinduism and the reverence with which its people regard certain of its rivers, mountains, and other geographical elements. Indeed, Hinduism appears to have arisen partly from India itself as a child from the mother and partly as an outgrowth of centuries of philosophical discussion and commentaries. In both cases, as a pearl develops over time from a grain of sand irritating a humble bivalve, contention and criticism have contributed to the durability of Sanatan Dharma. I respect the variety of religious practices unique to Hinduism and regard them as products of its heritage.