Life after ISKCON

an interview between William Ehrlichman and Guru Gauranga das


Giving up a medical career in 1969 to establish K.C. in America, nine years later, renouncing family life to enter the sannyas order, were sacrifices he felt at the time were necessary to move forward in spiritual life. He would later come to re-examine these choices and with new insights, redefine himself.

One of the principle waves that began to dislodge the way he saw himself and the society he was an integral part in directing, was the unfolding of perverse physical and mental child abuse, that in time began to surface everywhere. As the years passed, it became more and more flagrant, to the point where it had taken root amongst his peers at the highest levels of authority. His departure was a rejection of the current denials of the status quo way of thinking about the pervasive child abuses within ISCKON… and it was indeed a blow to the functionality of the institution as a whole. However, after he left, instead of the focus being on the real issues of child abuse, which many in ISCKON were trying to brush under the rug and even defend against, the focus and mis-information perpetrated, became about his “fall down with a woman” and his failure as a guru and the failure of all the gurus…

For him, these abuses began from the very inception of the gurukula system in Dallas in 1973 and ended with his leaving the movement in 1986, after finding out that even his own children were being abused. He left with a mother who was coping with the fact that her children had also suffered abuse. To this day, he considers these children to be his immediate family.

His son Vaisnava entered the Dallas ‘gurukula’ at the age of three and a half. He returned to France, 3 years later with unsettling stories of children regularly being beaten and made to eat spilled food off the floor; violently awoken early in the morning to attend spiritual programs and forced to fast, to the point that spiritual life was becoming tasteless. Upon returning to New Mayapura, in France he found little relief in the new ashrams, where unqualified ashram teachers perpetrated terrible abuses.

Vaisnava recalled: “When I told my father what Sudarsana was doing - locking us up for days in closets as punishment for minor disobediences, hitting some boys so hard he would break broomsticks over their backs and then later, turn around and perversely try to touch them… he was in shock. He called Sudarsana into his room with us present. After it was apparent that what we were saying was true, in a rage he pushed him against the wall, grabbed his throat, lifted him off the ground and kicked him out of New Mayapura for good.” Unfortunately that was too mild a punishment.


GG: What other incidents came to your attention?

B: After Prabhupada’s departure I was traveling in America with Ramesvara Swami. We met at the Denver temple and it so happened that when we arrived, it came to the surface that the ashrama teacher Chakradara, was abusing the boys terribly. The fathers approached us angered and confused. I asked myself how had this cannibalistic behavior taken root within our ashrams? I was shocked and disturbed, overall troubled by this level of darkness. I told the fathers to take him into the woods and beat him.

GG: What went through your mind when you began to hear these stories?

B: For me, shock and disbelief how anyone could get twisted pleasure from the sexual abuse of children - especially from people for whom self-control was supposed to be a way of life. In the beginning it wasn’t something we were on the lookout for. The first knee jerk reaction was to get rid of the symptom by expelling the perpetrators and making them feel some level of pain. Unfortunately, in other places, the incidents along with the perpetrators were minimized or ignored to avoid embarrassing public attention.

In the name of being spiritually advanced and determined, detachment from family life - from affection for wife and children, was a spartan regime that crippled relationships. Few recognized the denials and dangers in that thinking, which weakened the firewall of a parent’s natural protective powers and left children vulnerable, exposed and subjected to demented caretakers. We were up in our ideological heads with no feeling or intuition that our own children were in danger. Fear of physical and emotional intimacy provided an opening for un-lovingness to enter. Far from being a gurukula, it was in many cases becoming a cesspool of perversion, spawned by deep-rooted sexual misunderstandings.

The image of what a gurukula was supposed to be often references the well-known photo of Prabhupada holding Dwarkadisa’s hand as he helps him write a Sanskrit letter. It is one thing to call a school a gurukula because an enlightened master or teacher is present, awakening children to their highest potential. It is quite another to put children in the care of those who are mentally, emotionally or spiritually undeveloped, or in the extreme case, downright twisted. It would have been better to put the children in regular schools or have a day school and have them live with their parents. Except in cases where the parent is mentally or physically violent, it is not natural for parents to be separated from their children.


GG: How have you come to see this abuse taking root and playing out?

It begins with misunderstanding about the male and female dynamic. This misunderstanding is based on a judgment that sex outside of procreation cannot be connected to God. We hardly respected sex as a meditation that could connect us to our higher nature and open us to communication with our Creator. Of course anything can be abused, but the misuse of something doesn’t negate its brilliance. It is sex without love that makes it illicit. When this constitutional part of the self is judged against and held in denial, it opens the door to guilt. Having children when the heart is not in loving balance, means having children prematurely. If children are judged as the product of sense gratification, such judgment leaves them unprotected.

These misunderstandings and judgments caused men to be afraid and resentful towards women. It further led to abuse of wives and an unnatural detachment towards children. Mistrust of the feminine can be found in every patriarchal religion. Men are as much like fire as women and women are as much like butter as men. Philosophically, bringing everything down to “we are not this body” often brought denial or rejection of emotions and put heavy judgment on the physical - in this case sexuality, marriage and children. Feelings were considered sentimental, emotional baggage.

However, if we accept that we are part and parcel of a transcendent source of life - Radha-Krsna, Goddess and God, we must inherit our androgynous male and female natures from Them. Feeling, which is our feminine aspect and understanding, which is our male aspect, are the heat and light of what the self emanates. These yin and yang polarities are meant to balance each other in the heart chakra. That God is in the heart, means God’s presence can be experienced as Perfect Balance of the two polarities - the feminine (yin) charkas and the masculine (yang) chakras. When the heart is balanced in love, there is no fear of sex, sensuality, shame or guilt.

Children are the physical reflection of how well these polarities are balanced in the heart of each partner. If sex is considered a compromise to spirituality, children will manifest as guilt reflections. To “ detach” from the weakness of sense gratification, children were put in a school that taught austerity and detachment from family to come c loser to God. Children’s hearts are naturally open to receiving love. When these predators emerged, they filled the openness of our children’s hearts with fear and disgrace.

In our individual lives, it is this internal balance between our thoughts and emotions that gives us our ability to navigate life - to be Godlike in our feelings and understandings, or to be disconnected and toxic. Caution is required when something sounds good but feels wrong. Neither philosophy nor emotions are meant to dictate to one another. It is the imbalance of our male and female polarities that has caused the war against the goddess in her form of the environment and women in general. Men tend to see the female as something to be dominated, consumed and exploited. Both religion and consumerism have fostered this disrespect, which has led to the murder of so many women and children and the near extinction of the environment.



GG: What did you think about the gurukula legal case?

It shows how denial of these wounds was never given enough priority, openness and freedom to express, until it exploded. The perpetrators should have been pursued and still should be. Few ever went to jail. As you know, my leaving was in part prompted by the abuses of children in the L.A. temple school. After realizing the depth of the abuses and the reticence of the leadership to confront the issues in a meaningful way and legally, I encouraged the mother’s prosecution of the perpetrators. With the relentless and painful efforts of several determined mothers, fathers and others, including the L.A. Police Department, L.A. District Attorney, staff at St John's Children's Center and the children themselves, these criminals were finally convicted.

From what I understand, the “headmaster” in New Vrindavan was acquitted and Manohara went on to open an orphanage in India. Recently, Tattva Darshana from South India, was arrested in Thailand for being caught in the act of child sexual abuse. I understand that one of the former heads of the Vrndavana school, who used to violently beat the boys, has been a guru for some time. How did that happen? First he beats boys and now he takes money and worship from them.

I have always felt the perpetrators have to face their victims for healing and justice to take place. Money certainly won’t balance out the violence. It is only a token. The perpetrators are the reflections of the denied sexual guilt of both the parents and authorities and the terror and rage of the victims. Money won’t release such emotional charge, unless victims go through counseling. The molesters should be hunted as war criminals and made to face their victims. Also, the wife and sister of one of my close friends was molested by her father for years, when they were growing up. Years later, when he still refused to acknowledge his demented behavior, they printed posters of him as a pedophile and put them up around his neighborhood. There is always a way to find justice.