Kamrā devī dāsī Autobiography Part 6
My name is Kamrā devī dāsī, and this is part 6 of my autobiographical video series.
The demons in the garb of devotees used their gifts of erudite scholarship, proclivity in the Sanskrit language, empowered speech, and mundane charisma to purposely hide Śrila Prabhupāda from the world, to mask his mood and teachings, to actually make the practice of Kṛṣṇa Consciousness appear harsh, impersonal, daunting, and unpalatable, to either turn people away from the real thing or to lull them into a mere shadow of the brilliance of the real connection to our glorious previous acaryas. Our dear Śrila Prabhupāda was surrounded by these hideous creatures, yet he persevered for the sake of his innocent followers. “Hideous creatures” is the correct wording. It may sound strong, but it is not strong enough. The evil in which they participated, and may still be participating, and with whom they are participating, is beyond the scope of belief of most normal humans. Even to become aware of a fraction of it could easily induce spontaneous vomiting. I know. I have seen the belly of the beast.
So much has been watered down, veiled…. The story of the lady who caught her husband in bed with their so-called spiritual master, the woman who jokes that at least her “guru” will never fall down with a woman. The lady who did the transcription from the audio tapes of one of the original soft cover books and then found that it was printed very much changed from the recording and who was then thrown out of the temple for questioning the leadership about the editing. The lady who was thrown out of her temple for reporting that young girls were being brought into the GBC meetings to “serve” the organizational leaders. The people in leadership positions in the organization who were informed of certain goings on and would rather support the ruling elite of the organization than look at what is happening or has happened. Maybe their “social security” and retirement and peer support are at risk. They are implicated by their compliance. Who knows. What a disgusting laughing stock. This is not what Śrila Prabhupāda gave us. How can an honestly seeking person be attracted? They will be attracted to the Absolute Truth, and they will have to be courageous and insightful enough to separate that from the organization. Devotees may say that the organization is Śrila Prabhupāda’s body, so can’t we all just get along or whatever, but sometimes a body gets so diseased that the soul must depart. Unfortunately, this is the situation.
The so-called leaders used their positions to disempower everyone else, to stifle creative outreach, to make the other devotees feel “less than,” subservient, unsure of themselves. They destroyed the individual and collective spirit, the individual and collective empowerment in the propagation of real religion. Therefore, they created false religion, a society of the haves and have nots, poverty consciousness. Destroyed it all. The inner spirit, the preaching mission, the potency, destroyed it. Everyone self-flagellating with the philosophy, nothing can get anywhere, sweetness gone, sad faces. And they laugh at their success.
What I just said may seem like a summary study, and it is. I will go into some things more deeply, and how I was personally affected. On the superficial level, which some of our listeners have noted, and even criticized, I have had to gradually regain my own confidence in Vaisnava attire.
Śrila Prabhupāda wanted the women to dress chastely. I was not with him in the very early days, but he suggested nice dresses for the women or even saris, and the latter was enthusiastically adopted. For me, over the years, wearing a sari and tilak became very painful. They were associated with being stifled, minimized, demeaned, and even tortured and abused. There were also women involved in the demonic takeover of the organization, nicely dressed in saris and tilak, and I became very averse to being associated with the dress style. I had given away the most of my saris, and even could not even wear tilak for the first of my videos for PurelyPrabhupada.com. I cringed to be identified as a Hare Kṛṣṇa, but I would not take off my Tulasi Neckbeads, and had to let people know who questioned me about being a devotee that I was an “independent contractor.” However, I later decided to reclaim my legacy as Śrila Prabhupāda’s daughter and dress as he desired for the sake of representing him nicely. I reclaimed it for the sake of pushing on what he so kindly gave to us and can now wear it proudly and with confidence. I reclaimed it for those who are devotees, not to be the disposable doormat for the cheaters in devotional attire who do not have the well-being of the devotees or the preaching mission as any sort of priority.
The really scary thing is that the evil doers think they are doing the right thing and see me as some sort of enemy of the state. They understand what they are doing, and there is no witness, no conscience on their part. The difference between the real demons and those who act as demons by demonic influence, by my observation, is that the actual demons have no conscience, no ability to witness their own behavior, no sense that what they are doing is wrong and destructive. There is a sense on their part of raw power, a striving for even more power no matter the cost, a sense of immortality almost, and to the core, they feel they are right and unconquerable. A person who is innocent by nature but badly influenced will still have a sense that what they are doing is not really right.
But what the demonic influencers don’t understand is that the organization and the pure spiritual essence upon which it was originally founded are not the same. They are unable to understand that there is really a pure spiritual essence, as all they can see is materialistic power, which they insatiably crave. They see the success of the organization as the all in all, but it has lost its very heart. Therefore, the organization has not only become a useless shell, but it has become its own worst enemy in what it originally set out to do.
