Epilogue to Gold, Guns, and God: Vol. 9—Pushed Out Completely

It is not a simple matter to erase years and decades of conditioning caused by deranged devotion. It is like a blindness; the victim of deranged devotion cannot see clearly. His values are skewed. It may be difficult to form personal relationships with others. Some fortunate people can return to normal life after escaping from a mind-control cult; but unfortunately some others may never recover fully. At this time, I wish to tell a personal story about my own experience in this regard, and how I managed to conquer my insidious attachment to my former “spiritual master.”

My confrontation with Bhaktipada at his cabin at Silent Mountain on September 30, 1993, as described earlier in Chapter 99, had exhausted me. I found it incredibly stressful to approach him in private and ask him about his alleged sexual abuse of boys and young men. I suppose it took a fair amount of courage on my part to challenge him. At that fateful meeting, I intellectually rejected him as my spiritual master, but my heart was still attached to him. Fortunately, at that meeting, my mind overruled my heart, but in the process, my energy had been depleted. I felt somewhat shell shocked. It took me a little time to regain my composure. I went on with my life.

About ten months later, in August 1994, I performed a ritual, a “fire sacrifice,” which served as a catalyst to dissolve whatever remaining sentimental attachment remained in my heart for my former “spiritual master.” But before I describe the ritual, first I must describe the setting.

I joined the New Vrindaban Commuity in August 1978 at the age of 22, three months after graduating from college with a Bachelor of Arts degree with majors in Piano Performance and Music Education. In March 1979, I accepted diksa initiation from Kirtanananda Maharaja, and I accepted the name Hrishikesh dasa. After becoming known as a maharathi picker, Bhaktipada ordered me to marry a 19-year-old Indian girl. We were married in June 1986.

In 1992, my wife, two children and I lived in the house across the street from the RVC temple and lodge. Our rent was $175 per month. The house was a fixer-upper, as it had been neglected for some time. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada had stayed in that house during his 1974 visit to New Vrindaban. At the time of Prabhupada’s visit, the house was located a few hundred yards up the hill towards Prabhupada’s Palace. Kasyapa and his team of heavy equipment operators moved the house to its present location across from the RVC temple in the mid-1980s, as I recall.

In April 1994, at the age of 38, I left New Vrindaban, my home for close to half my life, and moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, about a ninety-minute drive north, to find gainful employment as a musician and continue my music studies which I had abandoned sixteen years earlier. I wondered how my monthly bills would get paid, as I didn’t have a steady source of income. But at the end of every month, all the bills got paid, as if by magic. Krishna sent me work.

At times I served as a substitute church organist. At other times I played accordion at wedding receptions. I spent a couple hours daily hawking my compact discs on a Shadyside street corner. (In November 1993, while still living at New Vrindaban, I recorded and released my first CD: A Classical Christmas featuring myself on accordion with members of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. The Washington Post said my album was “The most interesting instrumental collection of Christmas music this year.”)

Although I lived in Pittsburgh, my wife and children still lived in our house at New Vrindaban. Therefore, I visited frequently, once or twice a week or more. During one visit to New Vrindaban in August 1994, around sunset, I walked outside and into my basement where I had stored several cases of Bhaktipada’s 1993 vyasa-puja homage books. I had served as executive editor and producer for this book, and I printed about a thousand copies. Most had been distributed during Bhaktipada’s birthday festival the previous September, but there were still one or two hundred copies left which had not been sold. I carried the cases of books from the basement to the back yard and placed them on the ground next to an empty 55-gallon steel drum. The fire sacrifice was about to begin.

As the sky overhead darkened with the evening twilight, I silently picked one book out of the cardboard box, fanned the book pages open, and ignited the pages with a match. After a few seconds, I dropped the blazing book into the empty steel drum. With determined resolve, I dropped in more and more books one by one, and watched the bright yellow, orange and blue flames lick each page printed with flowery praise for the “Founder/Acharya” of the Worldwide League of Devotees, the “self-realized” “pure devotee.” Each page was transformed into glowing ash. I saved only one book for my personal archives.

The solemn ritual lasted about an hour. I felt neither hatred nor love for my former “spiritual master.” My heart was neutral; detached, equipoised. When the last book had been burned, I looked up into the black sky which was brightened with hundreds, if not thousands of twinkling silver stars. The night was quiet; not a creature stirred. The evil spirit which had tormented me for so long had been destroyed. My heart was at peace. My soul had been renewed. A great burden had been lifted.

This impromptu “fire sacrifice” helped me to severe my emotional ties with my former spiritual master. It helped me to achieve closure, despite Bhaktipada’s deceptive insistence that he was innocent of any wrongdoing. The hidden, aching burden in my heart which I had carried for nearly a year had dissolved; burned up by the fire of purification. I had conquered an oppressive evil and now I was free to embark on a new direction in my life—a new life free from the confining shackles of deranged devotion. The feeling of relief was liberating.

Within a month after my book-burning ritual, I received a Graduate Assistantship to study at the Duquesne University School of Music. My duties included serving as an assistant for the Chairman of the Graduate School of Music, and teaching ear training classes to freshmen. I got a full ride; no tuition payments. Around the same time, I started working as an organist for a Protestant church on the corner of Fifth and Penn Avenues in Point Breeze. I also served on the faculty of the City Music Center as Instructor of Accordion. A year later, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra hired me as a second keyboardist, and I began playing celesta, harpsichord, piano, organ and accordion at their concerts when they needed a second keyboard player. I received my Master of Music degree with a major in composition in August 1997. Five years later, I started writing a history of New Vrindaban.

Now, I’m 67 years old. I want to complete the ten volumes of Gold, Guns and God before I die. If Krishna wants, it will happen. I’ve only got one more volume, Vol. 10, to go. About fifteen years ago, when during my research I discovered many of the crimes which were committed at New Vrindaban, I became morose. I thought I had wasted sixteen years of my life serving a criminal enterprise run by a cheating guru gangster. And certainly, serious criminal activities were committed during my tenure there.

However, after my first book, Killing For Krishna, was published in 2018, I began receiving emails from many people thanking me for writing this book, which exposes the danger of deranged devotion. A few people who had been traumatized by their time in ISKCON wrote to me sharing their gratitude, for, they claimed, their lives had been healed to a great extent after reading my book. As their long-unanswered questions were answered, their understanding about what happened during a very important and formative time in their lives became more complete, and with more complete understanding, they were able to more easily and effectively heal and move on with their lives.

Today, I think perhaps Krishna put me in New Vrindaban for a reason: to write a biography of Kirtanananda Swami and a history of the West Virginia commune decades later in my old age to help others heal who have been traumatized by deranged devotion, and perhaps to help still others from getting sucked into a dangerous charismatic relationship in the first place. If, by my writing, I can help others improve their lives, my mission will be successful and I will die in peace. Om Tat Sat.

Henry Doktorski
January 15, 2023
Temecula, California

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