“And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended these sayings, the people were astonished at his doctrine: For he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.” (Matthew 28-29)
This Bible verse appeared in my mind again and again while reading Kailasa Chandra dasa’s book, On Consciousness & The Perfection of Man. Why? Kailasa Chandra speaks as one having authority, and his authority stems from his obedience to the instructions given by his spiritual master: His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, the Founder/Acharya of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness.
Obedience is of primary importance, but Kailasa Chandra also, by Krishna’s grace, possesses a brilliant and logical mind. It seems to me he is able to see through the dark curtain of illusion which has blinded many, perhaps most, of the disciples and followers of Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. In this book, he analyzes, among other things, Prabhupada’s instructions regarding initiations before and after his disappearance and convincingly reveals the most-logical meaning, even if the meaning, to others, appears obscured. All his conclusions are backed by guru, sadhu and sastra.
Of course, many who disagree with Kailasa Chandra’s conclusions also quote guru, sadhu and sastra. What is the difference between the mental processes which generate opposing conclusions? This is not a minor question, as many, many scriptural quotations appear to contradict each other. In my humble opinion, it would take a self-realized sage to recognize the applications of such apparently contradictory instructions, or a person with a brilliant mind who is cent-per-cent devoted to the great teachers in the Gaudiya-Vaishnava sampradaya. I consider Kailasa Chandra to be a great teacher. I expect he will begin initiating his own disciples, when he receives the order on the astral plane from his spiritual master. He already has a following.
Kailasa Chandra gives us the key which opens the locked treasure chest of the torchlight of knowledge. In the Introduction to On Consciousness & The Perfection of Man, Kailasa Chandra informs us, “The purpose of this treatise is the same as the purpose of Bhagavad-gita: to assist in delivering mankind from the nescience of material existence. Our very existence is in the atmosphere of nonexistence, and what has gone down in ‘ISKCON,’ along with its inimical splinter groups, makes for a complicated puzzle. This book is meant to help you in putting the pieces of that puzzle together in the right way, the way in which all of the pieces perfectly fit.”
I especially enjoyed reading Chapter Four, which deals with the botched May 28th 1977 initiation interview between Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada and a few of his bungling (and self-motivated) senior disciples. I was impressed with Kailasa Chandra’s crystal-clear analysis. All the puzzle pieces fell together. I have studied this conversation for ten years, and devoted an entire chapter to it in my 2020 book Eleven Naked Emperors, yet I found his explanations enlightening. He also devotes a chapter in his new book to the Neo-Gaudiya Math and another chapter to the Rittvik movement, and compares both to ISKCON. He finds some surprising similarities.
Kailasa Chandra explains, “You cannot reform the Rittvik movement. Rittvik has altered the essentials of the initiation process. It is a retrograde and reactionary movement of priestcraft, harboring resentment against, and exasperation with, ‘ISKCON.’ They both promote initiation arrangements in opposition. Just as you cannot convert yogurt back into milk, neither of these disparate organizations can be converted back to genuine Krishna consciousness. The chances that they can ever unify are slim.”
Kailasa Chandra’s book is a weapon to battle perverted reflections of the Absolute Truth. He is no stranger to fighting against Maya and those influenced by Maya. In February 1979, seven years after receiving diksa from His Divine Grace, he wrote a position paper for two highly-placed and influential godbrothers in an effort to help them defeat the eleven zonal acharyas in a debate in Vrindaban, India. Due to his paper exposing some of the defects of the Zonal-Acharya System adopted by ISKCON, Kailasa Chandra received a death threat from one of the zonals, and was forced to leave ISKCON. Another of the eleven self-proclaimed acharyas defamed Kailasa Chandra as “the black snake who is trying to chop down the tree of ISKCON.”
In the early 1980s, Kailasa Chandra joined a small group of godbrothers and sisters who were convinced the eleven ISKCON “acharyas” were not authorized gurus. He edited several papers by Jadurani on the position of guru which were photocopied and distributed widely. In 1985, Kailasa Chandra met his radical and outspoken godbrother Sulochan dasa (Steven Bryant), a former New Vrindaban resident who was convinced that the leader of New Vrindaban was not a bona fide spiritual master. For three months the two traveled together and during this time Kailasa Chandra edited Sulochan’s book manuscript to be titled: The Guru Business: How the Leaders of the Hare Krishna Movement Deviated from the Pure Path as Taught and Exemplified by its Founder: His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, Founder/Acharya ISKCON.
Kailasa Chandra also co-founded The Vaishnava Foundation in 1986, a forum dedicated to presenting “the philosophy of Krishna consciousness as it was presented most recently by our spiritual master, His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada,” with a special focus on “the need to discriminate between sentimentally-driven Krishna consciousness and Krishna consciousness which is actually based on the instructions of the previous spiritual masters.” His monthly podcasts on YouTube are enlightening, and at times entertaining.
How I met Kailasa Chandra is an interesting story. I am a former inmate of New Vrindaban, and in 2002 I decided to write an article about the music at New Vrindaban. As my research progressed, my article expanded into a book about the history of the rural Krishna-conscious farm community in the northern panhandle of West Virginia. Later, while reading through the recently-discovered Swami Bhaktipada Archives, I discovered a box of classified documents which told much of the inside story about the conspiracy to murder the dissident devotee Sulochan dasa. After a few years, I submitted a few chapters from my manuscript to the Hare Krishna online news website Sampradaya Sun, which published parts of my work-in-progress. This online exposure permitted others around the world to learn about me and my efforts to document an important part of ISKCON history.
I first heard about Kailasa Chandra while reading an October 4, 2008 email sent to me from Bhakta Eric Johanson, the co-founder (along with Kailasa Chandra) of The Vaishnava Foundation. Eric wrote, “I recently reviewed some of the recent posting of the Sulochan dasa chapter from your upcoming book on the Sampradaya Sun website and found some key information lacking. After some deliberation and discussion with other devotees, I thought that I would contact you to see if you were interested in adding these things to your book.” Of course I was interested.
Eric mentioned a “friend” he met in Berkeley in mid-1986 who was “the one who had edited and strongly injected the real siddhanta into Sulochan Prabhu’s heavily motivated and sometimes both insane and brilliant writings.” Eric did not, however mention this person by name, only as “my friend.” Eric explained, “The reason Sulochan sought out my friend is that he was perhaps the most despised and reviled philosophical opponent of the zonal acaryas and he had the bona fides to demonstrate why.”
However, a short time later, Eric reneged in introducing me to Sulochan’s editor. “I am sorry,” he wrote, “to have wasted your time. We have had a number of discussions on this topic recently and have decided to not pursue this any further at this time. Again, I apologize for any inconveniences that this may have caused you.” However, despite Eric’s reluctance, it appeared that Krishna wanted me to meet Sulochan’s editor (through email), and this is how it happened:
In July 2014, I discovered that at one time for about a year Kailasa Chandra had been married to Jadurani devi dasi (Judy Koslovsky), an art and history student of Polish-Jewish heritage at New York City College who, at the age of nineteen, became one of Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada’s first female disciples. Jadurani was an important person in my history of New Vrindaban because she had been beaten bloody by two female New Vrindaban residents in 1980 after Jadurani claimed that Kirtanananda Swami, the guru for New Vrindaban, was not a real guru like Prabhupada. Although I managed to contacted Jadurani, she declined my interview request. That is when I decided to contact Kailasa Chandra and ask him to help me get the facts straight in the story.
In July 2014, I wrote to Kailasa Chandra by email and asked, “I humbly request your darshan. I am a former disciple of Kirtanananda Swami and currently am finishing up a biography of the man. One section of my forthcoming book relates the story of Jadurani and her beating at New Vrindaban.” I also sent him a portion of my manuscript-in-progress.
I think Kailasa Chandra was impressed with my manuscript, and decided to reveal himself and his involvement with Sulochan in the mid-1980s to me, and through me, to the world. He responded to my email on July 14th: “Factually, I can help you. You want to present historical accuracy about the Hare Krishna movement of Krishna consciousness. . . . Furthermore, since your ongoing story-line has quite a bit of information about Sulochan in it—it could even be said that Sulochan's assassination is almost its centerpiece—I was also influential in almost everything Sulochan published. I traveled with him in his (very difficult to drive) van for almost three months that summer (1985).”
In a March 2015 email to me, Kailasa Chandra explained why, seven years earlier, Eric refused to mention his name directly to me:
When I assisted Sulochan by making suggestions and editing his various documents in the summer of 1985, I made it known that I did not want my involvement in his mission advertised. Since the 1979 Vrindaban debate with the “zonal acharyas,” I had known about and witnessed the extreme and fanatical mentality possessed by most henchmen of the “new gurus” (not just Kirtanananda), and I was not willing, unlike Sulochan, to make myself an easy target.
This strategy of painstakingly keeping my identity more or less covert proved useful when New Vrindaban attempted to discover who was in cahoots with their arch-nemesis, Sulochan. . . . Even after Sulochan’s murder, for decades I continued to keep my former relationship with him more or less confidential. Only recently have I permitted my collaboration with Sulochan to be more widely known.
I tell this long story about how I first met Kailasa Chandra in an effort to suggest to readers that, as far as I know, Kailasa Chandra has never strived to achieve fame, honor, or renown during his 45-year-long quest to promulgate the authentic Gaudiya-Vaishnava siddhanta as espoused by the previous bona fide acharyas, and simultaneously expose the grave errors promoted by the leaders of “ISKCON.” To date, I have known Kailasa Chandra for ten years, and I think he is not only a very sincere disciple, but also a sincere leader. I believe you will benefit from reading this book. I have.
Henry Doktorski
Author of Killing For Krishna, Eleven Naked Emperors, and ten volumes of Gold, Guns and God
September 15, 2024
