chapter 11

    the Universal Farm 

     "it's not to be considered unusual. God wants his people to go
first class!", --debunked psuedo-spiritualist jim bakker, on being
asked if he didn't think it excessive that his dog had a carpeted dog
house with air conditioning and a swimming pool.



    k swa had promised world domination by the year 2000 and the non-
believers had but two options, one could either "go along to get
along" or they could just plain "get along". many did choose just
to "get along!". while NV was touting itself as "the largest community
of Prabhupada disciples in the world", the Prabhupada disciples were
being forced, daily, in many ways, to "surrender to k swa" or to "hit 
the road".
     the Rule was a loyalty oath that everyone was required to sign
if they wanted to maintain contact with NV. it swore an undying allegiance
to k swa and it forsook all other instructions one might have formerly
held sacred in lieu of any new instruction that k swa might give in the
future. it was a requirement for continuing on at NV and many now chose
to find another residence rather than compromise the principles that had
brought them this far in their KRSNA consciuosness. the community had
dropped from a one time high of over 700 to the seemingly eternal static
count of two hundred. many of the remaining 200 would have left except 
for real estate concerns and certainly this 200 did not have the 
emotional fervor of the pre-1979 200. two hundred members used to mean
198 in the temple room and the cook and the pujari. 200 members, now,
could scarcely be seen. Deities clothes went unchanged for days for
lack of pujaris. the NV schools had closed and most of the students
had relocated their education to the local public school systems. many
of the new vrndaban school teachers had to leave NV, knowing that
the time for the scam had run it's course.
     some of the more prominent retiring gurukula wardens were sri
galima, aravinda, gopinath, madhavacarya, manihar, gauranga and 
naragadev. while their departure may have eased some of the childrens
minds, k swa was still maintaining a live in ashram and he ruled that
with an iron fist. naragadev and manihar had moved their operation to
pune, india. they had set up in an orphanage and they ran the same
game they had run at the frazier smith farm at NV. now they were
competing for the blessings of either k swa or gopal krsna because
those two were locked in a life and death struggle for the control
of juhu beach's 5 star, twin tower hotel and restaurant complex.
     gopal krsna had no power over k swa, his sanyass guru, but he
had been catapulted into the hot seat when vrndaban temple president
damodara pandit had banned k swa from entering KRSNA Balarama mandir.
would gopal follow suit and ban k swa from mumbai? did he have the
power to do it, even if he was willing to try? damodara pandit had 
exiled k swa from vrndaban for "inappropriate speech". k swa had said
that there was no more mahaprasadam at vrndaban mandir because The 
Deities had left. the GBC voted their support at a hastily arranged
conference, prior to Gaura Purnima and k swa and all his supporters 
were to be banned from any ISKCON events or temple sites.
     "lo, what is this! i, an indian life member am not allowed to 
take darshan of my beloved Radha-Rasabihari? who can help me? who 
can tell us why?" moaned mahaprabhu das to gopal krsna on the front
steps to the juhu beach temple at a sunday feast. a crowd of no 
less than 1,000 were instantly drawn to the site and barrister
mahaprabhu das worked the crowd well. knowing that he had more
allies in the throng than gopal did only emboldened the complainer
and it wasn't long before gopal folded his house of cards resistance
and moved out of mahaprabhu's way. this was much to the chagrin of 
the group of Prahbudada disciples that thought they had given
gopal krsna enough backbone to get through this.
     gopal's approval ratings were no higher than k swa's and, 
in fact, most of his senior Godbrothers dispised his behavior 
almost as much as they hated k swa's arrogance. jaya adwaita,
himself not yet having reached the jagat guru platform, had 
no regard for gopal krsna and would always vist with the other
devotees before going to see gopal. the slights and the outright
insults were not due to boorish oversights on JAS's part. they 
were well targeted jabs, aimed at undermining what little, if any,
authority gopal held in KRSNA-Balaram mandir. such highly effective
devisive tactics paid all kinds of dividends to the developing 
"jayadwaita"ism in ISKCON. satsvarupa came on board immediately.
   three of the 11 had had fall down in the last six months. jaya-
titha had been beheaded, hansadutta had been expelled to only NV,
hrydayananda's indiscretions had been exposed and now umapati 
was making claims about TKG's sexual antics.
     hansadutta had been expelled from ISKCON for his "sanyass by 
the yard" program. he and a crew of his expelled sanyassis had
gone to southern kalifornia to protest their expulsion but to
no avail. ISKCON had been targeted by the reagan administration
for elimination and the internal fighting only made their
demise more imminent. ed meese's justice department had targeted
certain organizations and individuals for "dirty tricks", and in
many of the cases, some had been targeted for elimination. the
plethora of groups had at the top of the list, lyndon larouche,
followed by reverend moon, then rajneesh and his cult from oregon.
new vrndaban had made it to number 4 on the government's list
because the government felt they posed much more of a threat than
their smaller numbered counterparts that were usually diltued in
the vast numbers of an overpopulated city.
     the international organization, ISKCON-worldwide, made number 
8 on that same list, along with MOVE of philadelphia, the
williamsburg hassidic community, the branch davidians in waco,
the montana freemen, and even the aryan nation. this proved to
be quite a windfall for one informant, joshua kunkel, of
philadelphia. "i used to only get $ 1,000 per tattle at the 
roundhouse(philly police HQ, built in the shape of a pair of
handcuffs), but now that i'm telling on NV i can go to the federal
building on 5th st, and i don't go in there for less than $ 3,000
per snitch.", josh would brag to his friends at the bar. josh was, 
"a regular" at the sunday feasts, at least twice a month or more, as
were most of those used to infiltrate the ISKCON temples in the US.
he knew all the devotees by name, and while he had seemed serious
for a while, he had gone back to his old job of selling smut at
the downtown philly doc johnson's sex shop, graveyard shift.
another thing josh sold was cocaine. at the time ISKCON's GBC
saw fit to make ravindra swarupa an"in good standing, bonafide
ISKCON guru", there were not less than seven residents of the
allens lane temple that were regularly using cocaine WHILE
THEY LIVED IN THE TEMPLE, but allegedly under the divine and
infallible guidance, vision, and wisdom of the most recent of
the His Divine Graces.
     seth spellman(sesa das), the current ISKCON minister of 
justice, was the temple president and minister of justice for
the allens lane temple and yet he remained unaware that his head
pujari, sarada vihari das was on cocaine and not the brahmastra 
juice that he was claiming. ravindra did not know that his food
for life housing scam was busted for prostitution? he did not know
the husband and wife team handling the money were stealing enough
for two coke habits? why not? if the pot washer in the temple
knows these things, shouldn't the person in charge? if they truly
didn't know, the issue is their competence. if they did know, then
the issue would be their ethics. fact is, it was common knowledge
on both sides of the breezeway. isa knew. satsvarupa used to say
the three fastest ways to spread a message in his zone was to
telephone, telegraph or tell isa. once isa knew something, everyone 
knew it. he was one of those places the flow of devotee gossip
crossed the gender line. he would tell "the wife" and she would 
promptly proceed to the female portion of the planet. that meant
ravindra's wife would know and with that, a GBC edict wouldn't be
too far behind.