Srila Prabhupada's Poison Complaints

Hello, Hare Krishna, my name is Puranjana dasa. I'm going to be narrating a tape which was originally made on November 8, 1977, and it contains the words of His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Srila Prabhupada, the founder of the Hare Krishna Movement. The tape where Prabhupada complains about being poisoned has in recent times become quite a controversy mainly because he made this complaint 20 years ago. It is now 1997, and for 20 years the tape where he complained about his being poisoned has not been available to the devotees of his movement and has not been available for sure to the general public.

So it has been, you could say, a hidden piece of information. In fact, at this point in time, I myself am the only person who is publicly distributing copies of this tape in the whole world. No one else is distributing this tape, especially not the official ISKCON organization, which is supposed to be Srila Prabhupada's official organization. So this in itself has led many people to think something very suspicious happened in November of 1977 just from the simple fact this information has been hidden and suppressed as much as it has been. But it should be noted herein that some people did know that Prabhupada had complained he was being poisoned in 1977 - and that was a small group of devotees in Vrndavana (India) at the time who had heard his poison complaint, or some of them heard about the complaint.

For different reasons, some of these people did not come forward with the story. There was a lot of mood of suppressing this information, and some of the leaders who it was revealed to by persons in the vicinity, that Prabhupada had complained he was being poisoned, they just said, "Well, it's not important because he doesn't know what he's talking about," or "He's an old man," and so on and so forth. There was this mood that Prabhupada was not in a clear state of mind to make an analysis of his own condition. We do not think that that is the case, though, because he was translating a very complicated Vedic literature, the Srimad-Bhagavatam, a Sanskrit literature, and he was narrating the story of the brahma-vimohana-lila, which is a very actually intricate, complicated, philosophically complex story; he was narrating this story in November just very shortly before he departed. So how could he be narrating this very complicated literature and not be aware of his faculties? So we think he was very aware and that there was just some attempt to make it sound like Prabhupada was making some extreme off-the-wall comment which was not realistic and, therefore, it was covered up.

* [2003 Update: At this point it has been discovered that one of the main reasons "the innocent" people who were aware of the poison complaint in 1977 did not speak up was, they were afraid of retaliation by some of the ISKCON leaders who were apparently connected to the complaint. Fear. Others were in the room when the poison complaint was made, "the less innocent" so to speak, like Adridharana, Hansadutta and similar folks. They were aware of "the poison complaint" and they simply ignored it as meaningless and of no real consequence. They were in sum compromised with the hijacking conspirators.

They more or less tried to say that Srila Prabhupada was confused when he complained of being poisoned, to protect the poison sabha of hijackers. They certainly took no steps to investigate the complaint or help Srila Prabhupada get away from the situation. This made "the innocent" even more hesitant and fearful since they saw that others, like Adridharana, Hansadutta and similar other leaders, they were compromised with the persons generating the poison complaint, the core cadre conspirators who were feared.

These compromised leaders like Adridharana and Hansadutta and similar others have held this deviant view to the present day, that the poison complaint is not a very important matter. The crucifixion of Jesus is of no real consequence, it is a minor detail best to be ignored. They simply do not think that when a pure devotee or a guru says, "I have only one request, do not torture me and put me to death," as Srila Prabhupada said in November of 1977, that this is something they should show any meaningful concern over. These severe statements have no meaning to these types of leaders but many "innocent" devotees told me subsequently, that when they later on heard these statements as presented by us pada folks, after we began circulating these tapes in 1997, "it cracked their hearts." The innocent are mortified by such statements and the hijackers and their getaway car drivers don't seem to care.

Similarly, self - advertisied "Srila Prabhupada's successor," Narayana Maharaja vociferously fought against us and opposed our exposing the poison case, and he defended the hijackers as his idea of "gurus," although he has been worn down subsequently into submitting that we are correct. So many local people in Vrindavana agreed with us and he was looking rather foolish to be still defending the GBC. More telling is that when we launched the case, Adridharana and Hansadutta types said, let pada struggle with this alone, we will not help. So there is suppression, sometimes with violence added, and when the truth starts to come out, some of the people who know some of the facts prevaricate, drag their feet, make obstacles, do not cooperate, obfuscate, deny, outright lie, and so on. And this has helped the hijackers. This is also how the same Adridharana and Hansadutta types indirectly helped the mass molesting of children in ISKCON, the same policy was there, of assisting the policy of prevarication, obfuscation, harassing the exposers, and so on.

Thus, some of the other leaders who knew of the complaint in 1977 were already compromised with the GBC hijacker cadre. And thus they accepted the idea that the apparent poison conspirators were not wrong or evil, but they were pure and holy "Srila Prabhupada's trusted appointed successors." In short, some people trusted the words of the ISKCON hijacking conspirators, people like Tamal Krishna, a big GBC leader. And as a result they did not trust the words of Srila Prabhupada.

And after 1977 folks who were in the room when the poison complaint was uttered, like Adridharana and Hansadutta, they then supported the GBC's "homosexual guru regime" which has violently suppressed any expose of the truth whether it is over the molestation issue, or the poison issue, or any other crimes. So, there was fear by the innocent class, and suppression by the GBC class, and that suppression included violence and murders. This is how these issues were and are covered up. For example, the first thing that Adridharana and Hansadutta should have said in November of 1977 is, Srila Prabhupada said he is being poisoned, let us get a legal forensic investigation of his food remnants, his clothing, his utensils, all the items in his room, his medicines and so on, let them be studied for forensic evidence of poison. They simply did not believe Srila Prabhupada and they instead believed -- the hijackers.

For that matter, Adridharana still says that Srila Prabhuada's poison complaint is not important and he is still compromised with the poison party and he is still trying to suppress the poison case as he has all along. And he still harasses, insults and attacks people who try to expose the poison complaint. In fact, the GBC has said all along that us exposers are "demons," in order to get us beaten and killed, and Adridharana's spokesman has recently said that pada is a heinous "barking gargoyle," so in this way they try to paint anyone who sympathizes with the molested children, or Srila Prabhupada's poison complaint, as essentially "a demon." That way, they can get us banned, beaten, and in sum suppressed, or even killed -- as has occured. So this mood was already there in 1977, and the issue was suppressed despite that some innocent people knew about it and they wanted to speak, but they were afraid. And they had good reason to be afraid.

Actually in my own case I have been shunned, kicked out of ISKCON, banned, have received numerous death threats, have been chased down the street with aluminum baseball bats, have been assaulted, glared at, sweared at, cursed by hired voodoo witch doctors, have seen my friends beaten and killed, and so on and so forth. So we can speak from first hand experience of how the GBC suppresses people by fear. Of course it now appears that the poison plot was specifically done to get rid of the master, and make some of the "servant" leaders appear to be the "appointed" successors, since there is evidence that the 1978 "guru appointment" project was a total fraud. There never was any appointment of gurus, and so now it seems like the butler poisoned the master to take over the estate. And thus, some people did not speak up because they were already compromised with the poisoning butler's party. Even Judas had some advocates and supporters it seems. Meanwhile, some who suspected the butler, they were afraid he would kill them too if they spoke up.

Several important locals in Vrindavana later on said that they were suspicious of some malefic intent on the part of the ISKCON leaders towards Srila Prabhupada in 1977, but they too were afraid to speak up or demand any further investigation. As one of the local Vrindavana residents said, "if they would dare to poison someone like Srila Prabhupada, they would not hesitate to kill us." In short, "fear" was perhaps the main reason some of the people who knew of the complaint did not speak up early on. It is for this same reason that people are often afraid to "speak up" against other criminals and fearful political tyrants, and so on.

One of the Western devotee eyewitnesses in Vrindavana at the time told me he too was fearful, and this caused him to be silent. Yet at the present time, the year 2003, many people have subsequently come forward with testimony regarding the poison complaint since "the mood of fear" created by the deviant leaders has subsided dramatically. And more and more people are coming forward with helpful testimony all the time. Since the most "fear inducing leader" of the ISKCON GBC has died in a car crash, namely Tamal Krishna, this has encouraged more people to come forward with testimony regarding the poison case and other deviations of the ISKCON GBC including their orchestrating mass child molesting.]

- The other interesting thing is that Prabhupada narrated the main portion of the poison complaint in the Hindi language, although most of his followers at the time were Americans who only spoke English. So the message was sort of hidden, so to speak, within a different language; and I think it's for this reason that this tape is still existing and it was not destroyed, because there are many other tapes that we are trying to gather together at this point in time and we're finding that some of these important tapes, important conversations that were made, are now missing, they are not available from the official Archives and so on. So we believe that some of these tapes were hidden, lost, or destroyed by some of the so-called leaders of the Movement who had a motive to chop and change some of the information that Prabhupada had given.

* [2003 Update: As of this writing, confirming testimony has emerged that some of the (especially 1977) audio tape recordings were in fact intentionally hidden, permanently lost or destroyed. There are, for example, mysterious "gaps" in the audio tape archives.]

- Of course, we've written many different papers about how "the letters" and "the conversations" and many personal testimonies of devotees were hidden and suppressed by the deviant leaders, and in fact there were some murders of people who were trying to bring forward some information about what Prabhupada had wanted and intended. But we're not going to get into that too much at this point. We're going to just deal primarily now with the November 8th tape itself, some of the statements that are made there. Some of them are in Hindi, some of them are in Bengali, and some are in English. So we're going to do our best. We're not native speakers of Hindi or Bengali, or we're not even speakers of these languages. However, we have had people listen to these tapes and give us what seems to be an approximation of what Prabhupada is saying in these languages. Plus we have played these tapes on the radio to thousands of people who have heard them and they have not challenged the assessment that we have made, which is that Prabhupada is saying that he is being poisoned. So it seems to be the consensus of people, especially Hindi native speakers, that Prabhupada is in fact complaining that he is being poisoned by someone, not poisoned because his kidneys are bad or something like that. He's making a direct statement that an individual is responsible for his being poisoned. So without further ado, we'll start with the first statement from November 8th, the first complaint about the poisoning.

Srila Prabhupada: Keu bole je poison kore diyeche.....hoy to tai. [Someone says that someone has poisoned me. Maybe it's true.]
Balaram Mishra(?): Hmm?
Kaviraja: Kya farma rahe hain? [What, may I ask, is your holiness saying?]
Srila Prabhupada: Koi bolta hai je mujhko koi poison diya hai. [Someone says that someone has given poison.]
Kaviraja: Kisko? [To whom?]
Srila Prabhupada: Mujhko. [To me.]

So this has been translated as "Someone is being given poison here," and the man asks "To whom?" and Prabhupada says "mujhko," which means "to me."

Kaviraja: Kaun bolta hai? [Who is saying this?]
Srila Prabhupada: Ye sab friends. [All these friends.]

So the next little section is "Who says that you are being poisoned?", and Prabhupada answers that "they are friends." So "who" is this friend or friends who informed him that he is being poisoned? It could be anyone, of course. It could be Krishna Himself because Prabhupada is, according to our philosophy, in direct communion with the Supreme Lord. So why couldn't his friend, his best friend, Krishna, have told him that "someone is poisoning you"? This is a possibility. The other thing is that we do not find any other discussion prior to this on record where Prabhupada was talking to anyone about someone poisoning him. So all of a sudden out of the blue Prabhupada says, "A friend or some friends has said that I am being poisoned."

[2003 Update: Subsequent digital forensic audio analysis of "the poison tapes" shows that there were in fact "friends" (some GBC leaders) speaking "background conversations" (some of the leaders were whispering) at least on some of these tapes. Professional forensic analysis confirms that some of these leaders were in fact discussing how they were poisoning Srila Prabhupada. So the "friends" whom Srila Prabhupada refers to above, discussing his being poisoned, they are apparently his own leaders. Indeed these leaders were in fact discussing poisoning him as audio forensics confirms, and he was apparently aware of their talking about poisoning him.

Some folks like GBC members or for example Yaduraja dasa of the "ISKCON Reform Movement" (IRM) have criticized Srila Prabhupada for his not speaking "more directly" about his poisoning. They are now very upset and angry that Srila Prabhupada's complaint has been confirmed by audio forensics experts, arsenic forensics experts, more and more testimony and so on. They complain that he was making "indirect" comments about his poisoning, so they can be discounted. Yet we think that there are good reasons for this. Perhaps his statements were intentionally "indirect" to see how some of his leaders would respond to the word "poison"; or so that the poisoners would not become too suspicious and simply kill him faster. This is what could easily have been the outcome. If there was a conspiracy of "friends" who were giving him poison, and if they thought he might expose them, then they might "finish off the job sooner." In other words, the GBC and Yaduraja types think that Srila Prabhupada should be forbidden from using: common sense? Even in ordinary criminal activity, when for example a person is hijacked or kidnapped, he may not always reveal his mind to the kidnappers? Yet some of the GBC and IRM leaders say that unless Srila Prabhupada reveals his mind to the people who may be poisoning him, he is guilty of the crime of speaking poorly, in their estimation? "Unless Jesus says, right now I am being crucified, he was not crucified"? This is how they attack the poison complaint of the pure devotee.

Some say that Srila Prabhupada's being "killed sooner" is what actually happened anyway for his exposing the poison issue. As soon as he complained he was being given poison, the poison was apparently increased, and so he departed from his body shortly thereafter. In other words, some of the critics of the method Srila Prabhupada handled this poison crisis are not to aware of how people who are being poisoned might respond to that situation. They may not come out and say directly, "I am being poisoned, by my leaders, the "yeh sab friends," and they want to kill me." If the victim is physically weakened, and isolated, and surrounded by apparent conspirators, the victim may speak in a more oblique manner. So we would argue that the fact that "the poison complaints" are a little oblique, and this fits with the idea that he could not trust the people around him, so he was being a little discrete and indirect. The GBC and IRM assume that Srila Prabhupada trusted Tamal and his coterie so he could speak "directly" to them -- and we do not.

Also, perhaps this complaint was "indirect" since there are other indications that he was trying to get out of the leader's grips and he did not want to alert them so they would halt his plan to escape. Srila Prabhupada kept saying over and over and over, get me out of this room, take me to Mayapura, take me on parikrama, get me out of here. So he wanted to escape, and yet the leaders were holding him back and keeping him in a small room. So he may have wanted to be more careful how he complained about his apparent poison since he was in a confined space and he was surrounded by a cadre of the conspirator "friends." Perhaps he was "indirect" since he knew he was going to leave his body soon anyway and so he wanted this conversation to be a little covered so that it would not cause too much alarm within his circle of attackers. If he had been "more direct" the conspirators may have destroyed these tapes and killed a few eye witnesses. Instead, by Srila Prabhupada's "indirect" method, the audio tape, and the story of his poison complaint, would eventually emerge, as has apparently occurred in fact.]

- Tamal Krishna: Who said that, Srila Prabhupada? (15-second pause)

[2003 Update: This shows that Tamal Krishna swami, one of the main suspects in the poison case, was aware that Srila Prabhupada was complaining of his being poisoned and Tamal later confirmed this in his diary, that Srila Prabhupada had complained he was being poisoned. Yet at the time, notice, all that Tamal really wanted to know was, "who" was telling him that he was being poisoned? Was one of the inner circle of poisoners betraying the others and telling Srila Prabhupada of their plot? Notice that Tamal is not very alarmed at the idea that Srila Prabhupada was in fact being poisoned and maybe killed by his saying, "Oh, Srila Prabhupada is thinking someone is giving him poison, so we have to analyze all of his food and medicines immediately. He should be tested for poison content in his body." There is just this rather casual comment, "Who is saying that"?

No such alarm was thus raised, no such alarm apparently even existed amongst the other leaders. Thus no suggestion was made by anyone to see if the complaint had merit. And if the complaint was valid, then it perhaps could be corrected, and perhaps the poison effect could be reversed. Notice that no such alarm bells were being rung by those who heard the complaint. Rather, all that Tamal wanted to know was: how did you come to understand that you were being poisoned? Thus the "alarm bells" seemed to be, not that Srila Prabhupada is being poisoned but: Is there a leak in our conspiracy? "Who" is saying that you are being poisoned? The crisis seems to be: How can we contain the leak that you are being poisoned? Adridharana dasa of Calcutta also originally told me (in 1997) he too was alarmed at the poison complaint in 1977, but he too did nothing to correct it or investigate it either. Later on Adridharana even tried to oppose Srila Prabhupada's statements by de facto saying: there never even was any poison complaint? So, there has been a mood of suppressing Srila Prabhupada and his complaint by those in posts of leadership, and in sum protecting the poison conspirators, but this is rapidly changing as the evidence piles up that there is a poison complaint and it is valid.]

- Srila Prabhupada: I do not know, but it is said. Mmmmm. (?) jyoti jnana. [The astrologer knows.]

So this little section is interesting because Prabhupada is being asked "who said that" and he says, "I do not know, but it is said." So in other words, it's a fact, it's a fact. So "who" has said it, Prabhupada is somewhat reluctant to say perhaps here, but "It is said, it's a fact, I am being poisoned."

[2003 Update: If Tamal was one of those suspected by Srila Prabhupada in the poison plot, Prabhupada is not going to say, "I do know there is a conspiracy to poison me, and you Mr. Tamal, are part of it." So he rather diverts the issue by saying, "I do not know who is saying that 'I am being poisoned,' but it is being said by someone." He is being intentionally vague apparently to throw off the persons whom he suspects. Srila Prabhupada is just mildly pushing out the issue indirectly to see if there is some way to either get out of the situation or at least, to expose it. So "I do not know who says I am being poisoned, but it is said." This is also going to put Tamal on the defensive, "who" is saying this? He does not know? So that means Tamal has to maybe be careful, the story is perhaps getting out. So this was also a means for Srila Prabhupada to perhaps protect himself, "watch out, someone is talking about my being poisoned, maybe your party will be found out." This also could have been a defensive tactic on Srila Prabhupada's part.

Again this is also perhaps to test how Tamal and others will respond. Another thing is that the critics of Srila Prabhupada's poison case, such as the GBC, Adridharana, Yaduraja of the IRM et al., they have failed to identify who these "friends" are, those who are speaking of his poisoning, in all these years? Nor have they even tried to get their own forensics done, nor have they studied the whispers we have had analyzed according to their spokesman? They seem to want to make the impression that Srila Prabhupada was getting old, maybe his mind was slipping, maybe he was hearing voices? They simply say more or less that "no one" was talking about his poisoning, he was making it up, maybe he was mentally unsound, that is their sort of complaint against Srila Prabhupada. No, there are solid forensic evidences that the people in the room in Srila Prabhupada's presence were in fact discussing poisoning him, his so-called "friends." Again, as of this point, no counter audio forensics has been forwarded by the GBC or their IRM counterparts. Meanwhile several more audio labs have confirmed that the whispers of the conspirator "friends" do in fact exist. "It is said that I am being poisoned," and this was in fact being said. And this has been verified by audio forensics labs: it is being said that he is being poisoned by his leaders, his "friends."

Worse, the GBC and the IRM forwarded a false audio forensics "expert" to counteract us, but their "expert" has subsequently admitted in public that he has no audio forensic credentials. In sum the GBC and the IRM tried to bluff their way out of the poison complaint and they tried to paint Srila Prabhupada as incoherent, incompetent, and they tried make a huge joke and circus out of the poison complaint of Srila Prabhupada with their bogus counter forensics and other falsity. This has backfired on them badly. Worse, the GBC tried to start a web site to counteract the poison complaint and this was also subsequently endorsed by the IRM, and now that web site has disappeared, being discredited, and in addition the main leaders of that site's GBC are being sued for starting a mass homosexual pedophile molesting regime.]

- Then he says jyoti jnana. "The jyoti knows," this is I think the way this would be translated. So in Prabhupada's chart, his astrological chart or jyotish, it says "you will live for six more years." This was read in August of 1977, his jyotish, just a few months before he left his body. In his chart it said, "You will live for six more years if you can live for the next six months. But watch out over the next six months, you will have some danger from juniors and subordinates, meaning the leaders, the people around you, they could be very dangerous." So Prabhupada makes a reference here to the jyotish, and in the jyotish there's a warning about his leaders being a potential cause of his death over the next six months.

[2003 Update: The Astrology chart of Srila Prabhupada indeed confirms that there is a warning about his life being cut short due to some dangerous activities from some of his "juniors and subordinates," his leaders. The chart says that he will live, but only essentially if "the subordinates" do not kill him. Many people have studied this statement in his chart, by today, and the consensus is that Srila Prabhupada is making a reference above to his astrology chart predicting "danger from juniors and subordinates," i.e. that he could essentially be murdered by his "juniors and subordinates." And so he says, "the chart knows" -- who is talking about poisoning me, since the chart says there will be danger -- of being murdered -- from your juniors and subordinates. So now we have the idea that some "friends" are talking about poisoning him, and his chart has a warning about a plot to end his life, something like poison being used by his juniors against him, by the same party of "friends."]

- Kaviraja: Yeh maharaj ji, ye kotha ap kaise bola aap ki... koi bola hai ki poison diya hai. Ye ap ko kuch abhas hua hai kya? [So, Maharaj, what is this that you said about someone telling you that you had been poisoned? Did you feel something?]

[2003 Update: The kaviraja was aware that Srila Prabhupada was saying that "someone" was saying he was being poisoned, so this means that the eyewitnesses understood that he was saying "someone says I am being poisoned." Again the GBC and IRM types have tried to say that he was complaining about his liver or something like that, but no, there was the idea that by malefic intent poison was being given.]

Srila Prabhupada: Nahin, aise koi bola je...debe-sa hi ja hota hai. Shayad koi kitab men likha hai. [No, some people say like this, that ...it is like that when it (poison) is given. Perhaps it is written in some book.]

[2003 Update: Srila Prabhupada says, (a) Some friends say I am being poisoned, (b) My chart say beware that my juniors may use something to kill me, and now he says (c) That he has the symptoms of a person who is being given poison. A number of Indian doctors (kavirajas) confirm that he appeared like a person who had the symptoms of being poisoned. So this is further confirmation, someone says I am being poisoned, my chart says beware of juniors may be plotting to kill me, and now, moreover, I have the symptoms of poisoning. Many experts subsequently agreed, he did have the symptoms of a person who was being given poison.]

- Kaviraja: Kai karanon se ho jata hai, kacce mercury se ho jata hai, ya aur koi bhi ciz aisha hai vaisha ho jata, lekin apke liye kaun karega ham to yahi samajhata hai. Aise devpurush ke liye koi manasi vicar karega, vo bhi rakshas hai.
[It could be for a number of reasons, because of raw mercury and there are other things which can have a similar effect. Who would do such a thing to you, I cannot understand. Anyone who could even consider doing such a thing to a divine personality like yourself is a rakshasa (demon).]

So this section is very significant. The word mercury is introduced. It is a poison, severe poison that is used or could be used to kill somebody. So mercury and also the word rakshasa, which means a demoniac individual. So if we connect these ideas together, the speaker, who I think is the kaviraja, the doctor, is saying that someone is giving him some poison like mercury and whoever is doing that is a demon, a rakshasa. So some people have said that this tape or this conversation means that Prabhupada was saying "my liver is bad" and "my liver is poisoning me" and so on. That is not at all what's being said here. What is being said is that there are some demoniac forces here, some evil force at work. It is not some physiological thing, it is not an accidental thing. It is the work of a rakshasa or an individual who has made a design to try to eliminate the pure devotee of the Lord, Srila Prabhupada. And this demoniac person is maybe administering some metallic poison like mercury.

[2003 Update: So now we have, (a) Some friends say I am being poisoned (b) My astrology chart says beware that my juniors may use something to kill me (c) I have the symptoms of a person who is being given poison (d) The doctor says some "demon" may be giving him mercury. The metallic poison has turned out to be arsenic, which was found in excessive amounts in Srila Prabhupada's hair sample.]

- Tamal Krishna: Srila Prabhupada? You said before that you ...that it is said that you were poisoned?
Srila Prabhupada: No. These kind of symptoms are seen when a man is poisoned, he said like that. Not that I am poisoned.

[2003 Update: This phrase, "not that I am poisoned," has been used by the GBC and their defenders like Adridharana, Yaduraja and the IRM to make it seem like this is all a contradiction: (1) He is saying he is being poisoned -- but (2) He is -- not -- saying that? They try to establish that Srila Prabhupada is crazy or confused? No, he is saying that he is being poisoned, and the doctor understands this and says a (rakshasa) demon is giving the poison, but again while speaking to Tamal, Srila Prabhupada back pedals because he does not want Tamal to know that he is aware that their party is giving him poison. The GBC and IRM cannot understand that one may not always talk openly to one's kidnapper or hijackers, so they rather try to say that Srila Prabhupada is speaking gibberish -- apparently to defend the poison plotters. They also say that you have to reveal your mind to your kidnappers or hijackers, so you will not be able to escape and you will be killed faster? They are the ones not making sense?

Notice that Srila Prabhupada already totally deflected Tamal's first question, "who is saying this," and now he is again deflecting Tamal's next question. Of course this begs the bigger question, if he has "the symptoms of a person being poisoned," why didn't Tamal try to have the situation analyzed and try to identify where the source of the poison was? Why does Srila Prabhupada have "the symptoms" of a person who is being poisoned anyway? Why was this not investigated? And since the doctor said that a demon was maybe administering the poison, this shows that "a person or persons" were being blamed for the poisoning. This was not investigated either? Notice that Srila Prabhupada did not correct the doctor and say, "no, you are wrong, no one is giving me poison," rather he lets that statement stand, and maybe there is a demon who is giving me poison, and maybe it is something like mercury. Only when the conversation flips back to Tamal does Srila Prabhupada try to downplay it, and that is because we think: he suspects Tamal.]

- Tamal Krishna: Did anyone tell you that, or you just know it from before?
Srila Prabhupada: I read something.
Tamal Krishna: Ah.

So this conversation is very significant. Srila Prabhupada is saying that he had the physiological characteristics of a person who is being given poison, and we have had an 82-year-old doctor, an expert in Ayurvedic physician medicine, a practicing doctor, who has given an analysis by looking at Prabhupada's videos, seeing how he looked physiologically, and he said that Prabhupada had the physiological characteristics of a person who is being given poison from this doctor's viewpoint. This doctor also pointed out that in India poison is a little more commonly used than in the West. In the West, of course, we use guns and knives and dispatch people as quickly as possible; but poison is also used in the West sometimes, especially when you're trying to kill someone by subtle background means or you don't want to make it conspicuous that you're trying to get rid of someone. So poison is a more insidious form of trying to eliminate someone. So anyway, Prabhupada said, "I look like someone who is being poisoned." And he says, "I read it somewhere also. Someone said that." He doesn't say who that someone is, but also he read it. In other words, Prabhupada was an expert in medicine and pharmaceutical products, he was a salesman for pharmaceutical products. So he read somewhere perhaps that if a person is being poisoned, this is how he would look or this is how his body would react. So either way, he read it himself or someone told him or he had an intuition or Krishna told him. Somehow or other he had the understanding that he looks like at least a person who had been given poison, and he had the physiological characteristics of a person who had been given poison.

- Tamal Krishna: I see. That's why actually we cannot allow anyone else to cook for you.
Srila Prabhupada: That is good.

[2003 Update: So it is clear, "someone" may be giving him poison, and therefore they have to make sure no one suspicious is allowed to cook for him. It was thus clearly understood that "someone" was near or in his presence who could be giving him poison, and therefore precautions had to be made to try to halt that person or persons from having access to his food and medicine. The problem here is that the people who had access to his food and medicine are: the leaders. Notice also that Srila Prabhupada agrees, yes someone may be giving me poison, so we have to make sure no one else has access to the food that I am ingesting. Of interest, recent testimony is that one of Tamal's associates was seen pouring a liquid over Srila Prabhupada's food just before giving it to him.]

- Tamal Krishna: Jayapataka Maharaj was telling that one acharya, Sankaracharya, of the Sankaracharya line - this is a while ago - he was poisoned to death. Since that time, none of the acharyas or the gurus of the Sankaracharya line will ever take any food cooked except by their own men.
Srila Prabhupada: My Guru Maharaj (Srila Saraswati) also.

[2003 Update: Notice that some of the GBC leaders were in fact discussing the issue of poisoning of gurus?]

- So in this section we find that it is known that sometimes great saintly persons are attacked by someone trying to put poison into their food. Tamal Krishna points out that "We've been very liberal letting people cook for you, Srila Prabhupada," and Prabhupada says this should be stopped. Of course, the mystery here is that no outside person was in fact cooking for Prabhupada at this time. His cooking was very tightly controlled by Tamal Krishna and Bhakticharu and a very small circle of people. So there were no outside people at this time cooking for Srila Prabhupada. A testimony we have recently from a devotee who now lives in the Bay area is that Prabhupada's sister, Pisima - he called her Pisima, which I think means sister - he had requested her to cook for him because he told her that "I'm being poisoned, and I want you to buy the (uncooked food) bhoga at the market and cook for me."

So in other words, the process of potentially poisoning someone through food is well known; and Tamal Krishna points out herein that this was used, this process of poisoning a guru was used in the Sankara Sampradaya, and then Prabhupada says, "My Guru Maharaj also." So his Guru Maharaj, Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thakur, was said to have been poisoned. Srila Prabhupada mentions this in other conversations that his Guru Maharaj was being given injections. One of his disciples had made this arrangement with a doctor from Calcutta, and his Guru Maharaja objected to that. Prabhupada says, "My Guru Maharaj would have lived for many more years, but he was very disgusted with the way he was being treated." So in 1936 his guru Srila Saraswati had repeatedly said, "I do not want doctors and I don't want injections," and this man, a so-called follower, arranged for these injections. So Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati left the planet untimely.

So you could say perhaps he was also murdered, and that's what Prabhupada says here: "My Guru Maharaja also" was poisoned and/or given something that he should not have been given, and this caused him to leave his body untimely. Now, many devotees have at this point, inside the institution, they have questioned our analysis that the guru of the 1930's, Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thakur, who was Prabhupada's guru, that he had been poisoned; but here we have it very clearly. Prabhupada is saying, "My Guru Maharaja also" was given something just like these Sankaracharya guru lineage people. So it's very clear, his Guru Maharaj was given injections which he objected to, he was poisoned. What's very interesting here is that the person that Prabhupada says was responsible for giving these injections to Bhaktisiddhanta in the 1930's was actually glorified by Tamal Krishna, their advisor Narayana Maharaja, and the rest of the GBC later on as an example of one of their gurus.

They said in 1990 that this man who Prabhupada credited with giving these injections to Bhaktisiddhanta, causing him to leave his body, was an example of Tamal Krishna's idea of what a guru is. So this is very interesting. Why would Tamal Krishna glorify a person that Prabhupada had specifically said had caused the untimely death of his own guru, and why would the entire GBC print that statement? And why would Narayana Maharaja make this statement? Notice that Narayana Maharaja and Tamal were close friends just after Srila Prabhupada departed.

This was all printed in their 1990 ISKCON Journal. They said that this guru who Prabhupada credited with the untimely departure of Bhaktisiddhanta, "he's an example of one of our gurus." So it's kind of a Freudian slip here, in my opinion. They glorify a person who actually, from all points of view, seems to have poisoned and killed his own Guru Maharaj. Why would they glorify this individual? So many questions are coming up here. Why would Tamal Krishna say "we shouldn't give you outside food" when no outside food is being given here? The food is being very carefully dealt with by a very small crew of hand-selected people that Tamal Krishna had control over that were not outside people. So this was another perhaps Freudian slip, "Yes, we shouldn't let outside people cook." So who is the outsider? Who is that person who is outside of the confidence of Srila Prabhupada?

Hamsaduta: So we should meet and make a program for going around Vrndavana.
Srila Prabhupada: Yes.
Hamsaduta: You'd like to begin tomorrow morning?
Srila Prabhupada: Yes.
Jayapataka: In this part of India it's very cold now for Your Divine Grace.
Srila Prabhupada: Underneath the tree it is not cold.

So this portion of the tape indicates that Srila Prabhupada was trying to get out of the room that he was in. He was not also happy being confined in a small room, which he said there was no air in there and he said, "Don't keep me locked up in here." So this was one of the indications, which was given many, many times by Srila Prabhupada, "Please take me out of this room," and he wanted to go on a tour around Vrndavana on a parikrama. He wanted to go to Mayapur, he wanted to go to Calcutta, he wanted to go different places, basically indicating he wanted to get out of this room. And so one of the devotees is saying, "Well, it's very cold outside right now for you, Srila Prabhupada." And he said, "Well, underneath a tree it's not cold." So in other words, "Just get me out of here, please, and I'll live under a tree and that will be better for me than staying here in this situation of being confined." And also perhaps if he had gotten out and was living under a tree, he could have said, "Hey, I want someone else to be in charge of my food and medicine" and so on.

Tamal Krishna: You sound like you are very determined to go, Srila Prabhupada.

So this is the voice of Tamal Krishna Goswami kind of indicating in a supposedly questioning manner, "You sound like you're very determined to go, Srila Prabhupada." So in other words, yes, Prabhupada was very determined to go. So who was determined to stop him from going? That's the question here, and why is Tamal saying, in other words, "You seem to be determined what you want to do, and we want to do something else." There's a sort of conflict here.

Jagadish: Can you tell us why you want to go on the parikrama?
Srila Prabhupada: (?)
Tamal Krishna: This seems like suicide, Srila Prabhupada, this program. It seems to some of us like it's suicidal.
Srila Prabhupada: And this is also suicidal.
Tamal Krishna: Hmm. Prabhupada said, "And this is also suicide." Now you have to choose which suicide.
Srila Prabhupada: The Ravana will kill and Rama will kill. Better to be killed by Rama. Eh? That Marichi, if he does not go to be misled Sita, he'll be killed by Ravana. And if he goes to be killed by Rama, then it is better.
Tamal Krishna: So who is this Prabhupada's talking about?
Devotees: Marichi.

So Marichi was a servant of Ravana, who is a famous demon, and Prabhupada is comparing himself herein to the position of Marichi. Marichi was requested to go and fool Sita so that Rama, who is an incarnation of God, would kill him. Marichi would be chased by Rama and be killed. So Marichi understood, "I'm going to be killed by Ravana if I stay here, and if I don't follow his order I'll be killed. If I go to Rama I'll be killed also, but better to be killed by Rama, who is an incarnation of God." So Prabhupada says, "Take me out on parikrama because then this will be Rama killing me instead of staying here and having Ravana kill me." So who is the Ravana Prabhupada is referring to? He's saying, "If I stay here, Ravana will kill me. It's very clear that a demoniac type of force is at work here if I stay here." That's the implication. From another point of view, we could say let's just forget totally about the poison issue here for one second. Let's just say that Prabhupada was like Grandfather Bhisma, who wanted to go out and die gloriously in a battle. Bhisma wanted to die in a battle because he was a warrior and that was his nature. So Prabhupada wanted to die preaching because he was a preacher. So he said, "Please take me out on a parikrama and let me die in the mode of preaching." So he should have been allowed to go on parikrama simply on that basis. Never mind who would kill him or not, that's not the question here. The question is he is requesting, this is his final request, this is his last request: "Take me out, let me die in the battle. Let me die doing what I am doing, preaching. Don't let me die locked up in this little room here, please." So this is another major, you could say, misunderstanding that the leaders had at this time. They did not understand that Prabhupada was a great preacher and he wanted to die preaching. So even if there was no poisoning issue here (although there is), a separate issue is that his wishes were not being fulfilled. So if he is their master, their duty is to follow his wishes and they did not do so.

Kaviraja: (Hindi)
Bhakticharu: He said pathological point of view there is nothing wrong.
Kaviraja: General condition is now good.
Bhakticharu: His condition, the heartbeat is perfect...
Tamal Krishna: So what is wrong?
Bhakticharu: Blood pressure is perfect.
Tamal Krishna: It is a spiritual...

So this is an interesting section. The kaviraja is saying that the heartbeat is good, pulse is good, physiological condition is good. So what is wrong? What is possibly wrong with Srila Prabhupada? In other words, from ordinary circumstances he should be healthy, but he's not. He's very ill. What could possibly be the problem here? So Tamal Krishna comes up with this very strange explanation at this point: "It's a spiritual thing." Prabhupada, the spiritual master of the Hare Krishna Movement, Tamal's master, has a spiritual problem. Yes, how can this be? How can a person who is fully Krishna conscious, 100 percent Krishna conscious, who wrote 70 books about Krishna consciousness, has put himself in the World Book of Records for writing more books than anybody in a short period of time in the history of writing, he's the world's most prolific author on spiritual topics and yet he's having "a spiritual problem"? No. Tamal is having a problem. He's having a problem understanding what's going on here, the dynamic that's going on here - either that, or perhaps he's covering something up. "Oh, yeah, it's a spiritual problem." No, he's being poisoned. This is not a spiritual problem. He doesn't have a general health problem. So we'll see later that Prabhupada says, "Even ten medicines couldn't save me." In other words, it's not a medical problem, it's not a spiritual problem. The problem is: someone is giving him poison.

Bhakticharu: ...when the Saturn looks away from him and he...
Tamal Krishna: But what did Prabhupada just say?
Kaviraja: (Hindi)
Bhakticharu: No, when he said that pathological...
Kaviraja: (Hindi)
Bhakticharu: He said how can you define it, how can you explain it?
Tamal Krishna: What did Srila Prabhupada say?
Bhakticharu: Like the condition couldn't have improved by ten medicines also, but with one medicine it become perfect.
Tamal Krishna: What did Prabhupada just say?
Bhakticharu: Prabhupada just said that, I mean, this morning his condition was bad, not now.
Bhavananda: But Prabhupada was complaining of mental distress this morning also.
Bhakticharu: Srila Prabhupada?
Srila Prabhupada: Hm?
Bhakticharu: Ota ki byapar hoyechilo, mental distress? [What was that all about, mental distress?]
Srila Prabhupada: Hm, hm.
Kaviraja: Boliye, boliye. [Go ahead, say it.]
Srila Prabhupada: Vohi baat hai, koi hamko poison diya. [Same thing, someone administered me poison.]
Bhakticharu: Oh, accha.

So it almost seems like the kaviraja, the doctor, is trying to pry out of Prabhupada, "What's really wrong with you? Bole, bole, please tell us. You're experiencing mental distress. We can't really figure out what's wrong with you from a physiological point of view, pathological point of view. But you're mentally distressed, so you must know something about your condition that we don't know. So what is that? Please tell us." So Prabhupada finally just says, "OK, I'm being poisoned. That's the problem. That's the cause of my mental distress."

Srila Prabhupada: Vohi baat hai, koi hamko poison diya. [Same thing, someone administered me poison.]
Bhakticharu: Oh, accha. (?)
Bhavananda: Hm?
Kaviraja: Dekhiya bat ye hai, ki, ho sakta hai kisi rakshash ne diya ho. [Look, this is the thing, that maybe some rakshasa gave him poison.]
Bhakticharu: He's saying that someone gave him poison.

[2003 Update: Rather oddly the GBC and their IRM advocates says that there is no reason for Srila Prabhupada to be experiencing mental distress, rather he is complaining about, nothing? Apart from everything else, most devotees say they are heartless for saying this. We think it is because they are likely in sympathy with the poisoner clique. "Our guru is experiencing mental distress from being poisoned, who cares" says the GBC and the IRM? We do not want our dear pals on the GBC to have any mental distress from being exposed in this plot? Jesus was crucified, who cares, we do not want Judas and Pontius Pilate to be implicated?]

POISON TAPE TRANSCRIPT Pt.2

...So I know that that area is a little confusing, but if you listen very carefully you'll hear Bhakticharu, who is now currently Bhakticharu Swami, one of the ISKCON gurus by the way, he is translating what Prabhupada had just said, "someone gave him poison here. Someone gave him poison here." This is not, "Oh, he has a liver problem which is causing poison." No. Someone, a person, an individual, has tried to get rid of Srila Prabhupada. That's what he says.

Of course, Bhakticharu, at this point, for 20 years he's been silent on this issue. So this is a major problem that we're having right now. Here is one of the key witnesses, he's there, he's one of the few people who understands Hindi and Bengali and English, and yet instead of saying at the time, "Whoa, let's hold on a minute, folks. Srila Prabhupada just said that he is being poisoned by someone. Let's make a big investigation."

He could have gone out and recruited many devotees to help him. He didn't say a word, though, to the rank and file devotees. He did not try to recruit any help here. So this is very strange, and we're not sure legally even how this works. If you know someone says "I'm being killed" and you're just not helping that person, not demanding help and investigating the cause of this person being killed, are you implicated legally? I'm not sure, according to different laws. We're studying this issue right now.

Kaviraja: Dekhiya bat ye hai, ki, ho sakta hai kisi rakshash ne diya ho. [Look, this is the thing, that maybe some rakshasa gave him poison.]

[2003 Update: Again, that idea that some "rakshasa" (a demoniac person) is consciously and purposefully administering poison to Srila Prabhupada is repeated. Again, the GBC keeps saying that this was a complaint about a bad liver, but this is clearly not the case. The complaint has to do with the "demoniac" intent of persons giving poison to Srila Prabhupada.]

Bhakticharu: He's saying that someone gave him poison.

[2003 Update: Again notice, "He (Srila Prabhupada) is saying that someone gave him poison." So this was how the conversation is going, he is being poisoned, and it is intentional, and it is being administered by "someone." Oddly, Adridharana dasa of Calcutta, one of the people in the room at the time of the poison complaint, he has subsequently tried to agree with the GBC that this above conversation is not a poison complaint. He says that the people in the room were misunderstanding the complaint, since there really was none? Yet, if he was in the room at the time, and he understood Hindi and Bengali, why did he not clarify this "misunderstanding" at the time? And why didn't he clarify it later on but he remained silent for 20 years, until we brought it up?

Clearly from the audio tape, everyone else in the room is agreeing: "someone gave him poison." And yet Adridharana says he was in the room too, and he was the only one thinking, this complaint is non-existing? Why did he not speak up at the time then? Why did he not come out of the room and notify the other devotees: the people in Srila Prabhupada's room are "making up" a poison complaint, as he now says is what occured? No, there was a poison complaint, and he knew there was one, and now he is trying to "get himself off the hook" of guilt by omission. He should have acted to do something about this complaint.]

Kaviraja: Caru Swami?
Bhakticharu: Yes?
Kaviraja: Kisi rakshash ne diya ho ye ho sakta hai, impossible nahin hai. Vo... Sankaracarya the, unko kisine poison diya, che mahine tak badi taklif paaye. [It is possible that some demon has given it. It is not impossible. Just like Sankaracarya was poisoned over six months with broken glass.]

[2003 update: One of our devotee associates was once eating at a GBC managed restaurant. One of the devotee workers at the restaurant told him to wait, they had some "special food" for him to eat in the back room. Then they brought out a plate of food from behind the kitchen door. He ate it but it tasted "crunchy." The next day, when he passed stool, blood came out. He felt through his stools and, there was finely ground broken glass in it. That means that some of the GBC and their followers were well versed in the techniques of poison and feeding people ground up broken glass and so on. They studied these processes, and since they would use these techniques against Srila Prabhupada, they would use it against some of us.]

- So in this next little section, the kaviraja, the doctor, is saying "impossible nahin," which means "It's not at all impossible that Prabhupada is being given poison because a guru in the Sankara line had been killed by being given broken glass slowly over a six-month period." Someone was putting broken glass into his guru's food preparations in order to kill him. So the kaviraja is saying, "It's not at all impossible that someone also is trying to kill Prabhupada because he's also a guru just like this Sankara guru was." All of this begs the question, why was the killing and poisoning of gurus being discussed a few days before Srila Prabhupada departed, and just after he complained of being poisoned? The malefic administering of poison and broken glass to grurus is being discussed, and the kaviraja says, "this is also what seems to have happened to Srila Prabhupada."

Kaviraja: Abhi bhi ye pakadta hai ki kidney kharab ho gaya hai. Kisi karan se, cahe bimari se ho, cahe graha se ho, cahe poison se. No matter what reason his kidneys are bad, whether from disease, planetary positions or poison, my medicine will counteract it.]

Tamal Krishna: Prabhupada was thinking that someone had poisoned him? Bhakticharu: Yes.

[2003 Update: Rather oddly, again, Adridharana (one of the people in the room when the poison complaint was made) first said in 1997 he agreed with us that there was a grevious poison complaint. Then later, he basically reversed that and said there was no poison complaint, and he joined forces with the GBC and defended them and advertised the GBC's web site. And thus, when we first posted this story and it was read by Adridharana dasa, he went into a complete rage. He said that we were "blaming" him for being a murderer and for poisoning Srila Prabhupada. So this is very odd is it not? He was saying we are right: there is a complaint. He even said he wanted to help us investigate the matter, then he became very much angry, aggressive and attacking us saying: we were fingering him as one of the murderers?

And then he began to side with the main suspects like Tamal Krishna in opposing us on this complaint. Yet, why would he go into a rage and support the main suspects if his hands were totally clean? This looks even more suspicious? We never said he murdered anyone and yet his party said we had called him "a murderer"? Why the rage? Why the misrepresentation? Why the lack of helping the investigation? So this means there were people in the room who knew of the complaint, and they were thinking it was never going to surface. And as soon as it did, they were trying to look surprised and helpful but later their real feelings came out, they were totally enraged that "their little secret" was going public.

Also, why would Adridharana later on say, Srila Prabhupada was not thinking he was being poisoned, when everyone else in the room was confirming he was saying: he was thinking he was being poisoned? Why would Adridharana countermand Srila Prabhupada's statements and try to blame us for linking him to -- murder? And why would he try to change the whole story of what occurred here, first seeming to help us and then supporting and defending the main suspects? And if everyone else in the room was, as Adridharana tries to imply, "making up some insane story about poison just to taunt and torture Srila Prabhupada for no reason," as Adridharana de facto says is what occurred, then, why did he not stop that from going on at the time? Why did he sit back and allow these people to torture Srila Prabhupada with a so-called "made up" story, as he implies is what occurred, when he was right there and he could have said something to stop it? So once again, the testimony of some of the people in the room: does not add up at all? And their subsequent blatant anger and rage makes it look all the more like, there is a cover up afoot? And it seems they are merely angry that the covers have been ripped off their carefully hidden twenty years of secrecy, secret GBC meetings, contrived cover ups, and perhaps longer, maybe thirty or more years of cover up? In any case the above two sentences alone totally defeat these cover up folks, "Srila Prabhupada was thinking someone had poisoned him?" and the answer is, "yes."]

Tamal Krishna: That was the mental distress?
Bhakticharu: Yes.

[2003 Update: Again, the reason Srila Prabhupada is feeling mental distress is that he thinks someone is giving him poison. The GBC and Adridharana try to say that there was no bona fide reason for his mental distress, de facto, they imply Srila Prabhupada was losing his mind. No, he was catching on to the poison plot, and this was causing him to be distressed. On the background "whispers portion" of these tapes Srila Prabhupada hears them saying they are giving poison and he says, "to me"? So he understood they were "giving poison" and he further understood: it was being given "to him." Testimony from Naranarayan dasa is that he heard Tamal say a few years before 1977, "Srila Prabhupada is a senile old man." Thus it seems that some of the leaders were setting up this poison plan, and if Srila Prabhupada caught on to their plot, then they could say that Srila Prabhupada is a senile old man, he does not know what he is saying.]

Kaviraja: Ye bolte hai to isme kuch na kuch satya rai hai, koi sandeh nahi. [If he says that, there must be some truth to it. There's no doubt.]

[2003 Update: This is very odd, the doctor says at the time that if Srila Prabhupada says he is being poisoned, it must be true. Yet some of Srila Prabhupada's "big disciples" are still doubting?]

- Tamal Krishna: What did Kaviraja just say?
Bhakticharu: He said that when Srila Prabhupada is saying that, there must be something truth behind it.
Tamal Krishna: Tssh.

So here we have Tamal Krishna Swami stating that Srila Prabhupada thought someone was poisoning him, and this was confirmed by two different devotees and also the doctor. The doctor said, "If Prabhupada said he's being poisoned, it must be true." So everyone present has understood and has agreed that Prabhupada is stating that someone is giving him poison at this point. One interesting thing is that Tamal Krishna Goswami wrote a book about Prabhupada's final days and in that book he does not mention one word about this episode where Prabhupada said he is being poisoned, neither has this episode been mentioned in any other official publications by the Governing Body Commission members. They've written many, many books about Prabhupada, his life and his pastimes and so many things, and this particular issue somehow or other never gets mentioned.

[2003 Update: After we originally publicly challenged the GBC over the poison issue in 1997, Tamal then published his diary "to counter the poison investigation." He at least admitted that Srila Prabhupada did make a poison complaint, he could not deny it, BECAUSE this was STATED on the tape, but he still gives us no good explanation why Srila Prabhupada had made that complaint, and why was the complaint hidden and suppressed and so on?]

- So very unfortunately, those of us who have had our lives threatened by the Governing Body Commission members are the persons who time and time again have to investigate various important issues and various important statements given by Srila Prabhupada, and this is simply another instance where the Governing Body Commission has covered up an instruction or an important statement from Srila Prabhupada and suppressed it. In any event, it's now very clear that Prabhupada is saying "I'm being poisoned," and this was the understanding that the people around him at the time also got from that statement. It was verified by the eye witnesses present at the time.

Tamal Krishna: What did Kaviraja just say?
Bhakticharu: He said that when Srila Prabhupada is saying that, there must be something truth behind it.
Tamal Krishna: Tssh.
Jayapataka: What did he say about Sankaracarya?
Bhakticharu: That someone gave him some poison like, you know, the powdered glass they put in his food.
Kaviraja: (Hindi) [(Somewhat unclear) He appears to be saying that he will give Srila Prabhupada certain medicine to be taken with pan, cold water or milk and results will be seen in the morning.]
Tamal Krishna: Srila Prabhupada, Sastriji says that there must be some truth to it if you say that. So who is it that has poisoned?

This is the voice of Tamal Krishna Goswami asking Srila Prabhupada, "Who is it that has poisoned you?" Now at this point in time, this is 20 years later, this is 20 years after this tape was made (this is 1997, this tape was made in 1977), many of the Governing Body Commission members are now trying to say that Prabhupada was referring to his general health, he said he was being poisoned because of a kidney failure and so on and so forth; but that's not how the conversation was going. Right here Tamal Krishna is saying, "Who is it that has poisoned you?" "Who" refers to a person. Someone is poisoning him. It is not a general health condition. So we just wanted to make this very clear because, as is often the case, the Governing Body Commission members try to twist and distort and change the emphasis or the wording, or they lose tapes or they hide tapes; and in fact, if we hadn't brought this tape forward, no one would have done it – no one from their side definitely. So anyway, somehow or other, Prabhupada is thinking someone has poisoned him. Tamal Krishna asks, "Who is poisoning you?" and Prabhupada does not answer the question at this time.

Kaviraja: Sabse bara poison je hota hai, vah mercury ha hota hai. [The most dangerous poison that exists is that of mercury.]
Bhakticharu: Voh to gaya tah unka... voh jo... [Which was given to him]
Kaviraja: Nahi nahi, ye jo Swarupa Guha ka aap parde the na swamiji... Kalkatte me? [No, no. Swamiji, did you read about Svarupa Guha? In Calcutta.]
Srila Prabhupada: Hmm.
Kaviraja: Rupa Guha.
Bhakticharu: Unko malum nahi. Unko nahi pata. [He has not heard about it. He doesn't know.]
Kaviraja: Us ke pati ne diya tha. [The husband poisoned the wife.]
Bhakticharu: Accha.
Kaviraja: Uska koi medicine nahin ata. Itne dose de diya jisko ham raskapoor bolta hai. [He gave her a dose of a poison called raskapoor, for which there is no medicine.]
Bhakticharu: Yehi... Mercury to isme tha, makharadhvaj me. [Right. Mercury was in there, in the makharadhvaj.]
Kaviraja: (?) mercury (?)
Bhavananda: Before that.
Kaviraja: Uska dusra (?).

Kaviraja: (?)
Bhavananda: What did he say?
Bhakticharu: He said that it is quite possible that mercury, it's a kind of a poison...
Tamal Krishna: That makharadhvaja.
Kaviraja: Raskapoor.

[2003 Update: Notice that the doctor is trying to correct people here, there is a bona fide medicine called makharadhvaja, but that is not going to make a person sick. Rather what we should be discussing now is poison, maybe Raskapoor, which apparently contains mercuruy.]

Bhakticharu: Raskapoor.
Kaviraja: Amiras. (?) tate poison ache. It a very poison.
Bhakticharu: Makharadhvaja (?).
Bhavananda: What was he taking, Prabhupada, before that?
Kaviraja: Makharadhvaja to amrit hota hai. In ke liye bhi suitable hota hai (?).
Bhavananda: What medicine was he taking before that?
Bhakticharu: (?)
Kaviraja: Kuch nahin (?).
Bhakticharu: So he was referring to a case, a big murder case in Calcutta. The husband poisoned his wife, yeah.
Bhavananda: Oh, Guha.
Kaviraja: Swarupa...

So at this point, the conversation focuses on a murder case, the husband poisoned the wife. So if we were discussing a problem with Prabhupada's liver or some general health condition, why would we be discussing a murder by poison case? So the word "murder" is brought up, and a famous case supposedly that took place in Calcutta. I don't know the details of this case but a famous lawyer murdered his wife by poison, and so this is being brought up in the context of Prabhupada complaining about his being poisoned. So why is the discussion now moving on and focusing on a murder? So in my view, it seems pretty clear that the conversation is just escalating up and up to the point where it's coming out more and more that Prabhupada, what he's really trying to say is that "Someone is murdering me here. That's what's really going on."

Kaviraja: Kuch nahin (?)
Bhakticharu: So he was referring to a case, a big murder case in Calcutta. The husband poisoned his wife, yeah.
Bhavananda: Oh, Guha.
Kaviraja: Swarupa Guha (Hindi)
Bhakticharu: Yes, Sankar Das Banerjee was.
Bhavananda: Our lawyer is the... (laughs)

So this is a very strange section. It turns out they're talking about murder, and Bhavananda starts laughing. It sounds like you can hear some wheezing type of laughter in the background here. "Oh, yeah, our lawyer is the..." ha, ha, ha. Very funny, very funny thing, isn't it? Yes, Srila Prabhupada is being killed here and it's a very funny joke to some of these people. So you can see why Srila Prabhupada is talking in Hindi to a very select couple of people that he might trust or that he thinks might get the story out or they might be able to help him get out of there, or who knows what. He obviously cannot really trust these Western people because you can see what happens. He says, "I'm being killed here, I'm being poisoned here." There's a murder by poison case being discussed here, and they react by laughing, by thinking it's some kind of a joke. "Oh, yeah, very funny. Prabhupada thinks he's being poisoned. Isn't that hysterical?" So in other words, they are either thinking he's lost his mind and he doesn't really know what he's talking about, he's an old man, he doesn't know what's going on, he's not aware of what he's doing – that's one way of looking at it – or they're very aware of what he's saying and they're very aware that he's catching up to what's going on around here, and their way of dealing with it is to try to make some kind of a joke and shuffle it off because otherwise the whole thing, if there is a plot or conspiracy to get rid of Prabhupada, it's being exposed right now. So now you've got to change the subject, laugh, and move on to another topic, which is what happens.

They try to change the subject, move on to another topic, and basically cover up, forget, hide, and eliminate this whole discussion as if it did not take place. So there are various motives possible for doing that. But it's very ironic also that in 1997, 20 years later, myself and my associate went out with a sign at Rathayatra, which is a big public festival for the Hare Krishna Movement, and we had a sign with a picture of Prabhupada with his statement, "I am being poisoned." And the reaction of the Governing Body members, maybe 20, 30 of them, they all started laughing hysterically. "Ha, ha, ha, Prabhupada was poisoned, ha, ha, ha!"

So one of the reasons for this type of reaction – laughter or, in other words, make light of the statement, don't take it seriously, this is not a serious statement from Srila Prabhupada, "I am being poisoned," it's something that we can just joke about and push it under the carpet and it will go away eventually if we just ignore it and laugh at it and so on and so forth. Of course, why would people laugh at a statement like this? Their own master says he is being killed, but it's a joke. Why is it a joke? Because as soon as we have to investigate why did Prabhupada say "I am being poisoned," then we have a problem.

[2003 Update: An eye witness in 1977 said he saw some of these GBC leaders laughing and joking outside of Srila Prabhupada's room around the same time he complained of being poisoned. The eye witness went in to the room and privately notified Srila Prabhupada that this was going on and that it was very alarming and it could even be very dangerous. Srila Prabhupada was reported to have said, "They have no respect for me."]

- Some of the people who said that they were also appointed as his "successors" are some of the prime candidates for questioning about this poison issue. So the so-called successors issue is related to the poisoning issue directly. The people who were there when Prabhupada said "I am being poisoned" then claimed to be his successors; and as a result of that, they appointed more successors. There's now 150 persons who are appointed as successors. So to investigate a part of the issue of what Prabhupada was saying in his later days would bring out the broader issue of what else was he saying.

He was saying so many things. He was saying things about how the movement will go on in the future after he departed, and so on and so forth. So this is why at the time the investigation was suppressed and it has been suppressed for 20 years, because people have made literally millions, in fact someone would say billions of dollars by covering up and misinterpreting and changing and ignoring important statements from Srila Prabhupada.

The conversation shifts to the story of Prahlad Maharaja, who was a famous devotee of Krishna. He was given poison also, and the poison did not affect him. So, therefore, the kaviraja is saying that even if Prabhupada is being poisoned, it would not affect him. Of course, there's many different stories and examples of the lives of pure devotees. For example, Prabhupada said that Jesus was killed. He says, "My Guru Maharaja was killed." And, of course, in the Battle of Kurukshetra, people from both sides were killed obviously and many of them were great devotees of Krishna. Krishna's son was killed, and so on and so forth. So there may be some instances where a great devotee will not be killed under certain circumstances, and there may be other circumstances where a great devotee will be killed or will be allowed to be killed according to Krishna's desire.

It's not a blanket, uniform thing. Unfortunately, some devotees have talked to me about this and they say, "Well, in every single case, Krishna protects His devotee from the hands of demons and they cannot be killed." So right away I say, "Well, why then did Prabhupada say that Jesus was a pure devotee and he was also killed?" So they have no explanation. In other words, in Krishna consciousness we have to understand that different things happen to different devotees at different times. It's not one blanket, uniform thing that happens to every single devotee every single time. So the other thing is about Prabhupada's own guru.

He says, "My Guru Maharaja was poisoned," but oftentimes he says, "My Guru Maharaja left in disgust." So the real reason Bhaktisiddhanta left the planet, although he was being poisoned, was not by the poison per se but because he was disgusted that he had some big followers who were trying to kill him. So he was just disgusted. He said, "These people want my property, they want my money, they want to take over my worship. So I'm going to leave and let them take it over." So leaving in disgust is the cause of Prabhupada's departure from the description he gave of his own Guru Maharaja in similar circumstances. Yes, he could have defended himself, he could have done so many things to try to overturn the plot to poison him, but instead he just decided, "Well, I'm being poisoned and what is the use? I came to America to try to give people Krishna consciousness and the result is that some of them are killing me. So better that I just depart now and go back to Krishna. What's the problem here?" So that's also the lila or activity of great devotees at certain times.

So at this point in the tape, I do have quite a few of the tapes from October and November, 1977, and I could actually find a lot of these quotes and have Prabhupada speaking directly. Instead I'm going to just read them in my own voice from the Conversations books which were produced by the Bhaktivedanta Archives, along with some commentary from myself. I just don't have the time or a secretary or anything to deal with all this stuff right now. But I think that many of these quotes are important because they show some of the underlying psychology of how Prabhupada could have been poisoned or how he indicated that some of his leaders might take some action against him or try to overtake him and overtake his position and take the assets of his movement.

A very famous story Prabhupada gave often was the yogi and the mouse. The yogi, he was sitting in meditation, a mouse came up and said, "A cat is chasing me, please make me into a cat." So the yogi snapped his fingers, "OK, you're a cat." Then the cat comes back and he says, "A dog is chasing me." So the yogi snaps his fingers and says, "OK, now you're a dog." The dog comes back and says, "Now a tiger is chasing me." So the yogi, he snaps his fingers and says, "OK, now you're a tiger." The former mouse is now a tiger. So the tiger starts licking his chops and says, "Oh, Mr. Yogi, you look like a nice meal for me." So now the mouse is about ready to jump on the yogi and eat him up. So the yogi snaps his fingers and says, "OK, again become mouse." Punar mushika bhava. This is a story that Prabhupada related many, many times. "Be very careful. Your guru is giving you information, he's helping you. But if you try to misuse that information or use that information against your guru," then bang, he snaps his fingers and again you revert back to your old position.

Actually we've seen this in many cases. Many of these so-called appointed gurus later fell away and started taking drugs and running around with various low-class women and getting into crimes and going to jail and so on and so forth. So in other words, they became mice. They were exalted devotees or could have been exalted devotees, but they misused their position, tried to overtake their guru, and as a result they fell down and became discredited. And that will actually happen eventually to all of the so-called "successors to Srila Prabhupada." They will all be very discredited and exposed, and they will be known as very vicious people who attacked Prabhupada, not as his pure successors. This is the inevitable history which will come out of this situation.

So very early on when Prabhupada first started this movement, he was having initially big problems with some of his so-called leaders. For example, in 1970 three leaders put him in a room, locked him up, and tried to take over his movement in 1970. So Prabhupada wrote a letter about this: "It is a fact that the great sinister movement is within our society."

So he was already having problems from square one. And he wrote letters, for example: "So by the grace of Krishna we have got sufficient properties all over the world. So there cannot be any diplomacy or conspiracy by any sane man. All these properties and opulence, whatever we have got, this will not go with me when I go away from this world. It will remain here. I am training some of my experienced disciples how to manage after my departure." That was the GBC, the Governing Body Commission, that he was attempting to train up. "So if instead of taking the training, if in my lifetime you people say 'I am the lord of all I survey,' that is a dangerous conspiracy. I shall do everything in my power to fulfill your personal ambitions." So this was written to a devotee named Karandhar, who was one of Prabhupada's early leaders. So he was saying, "Watch out. You guys are apparently trying to take over my properties and opulence now by a conspiracy." So he was already noting that sort of a takeover attempt. Also there was an attempt to make an umbrella corporation around 1972, I think it was, which would have legally put all of the properties of Prabhupada's movement into the hands of a few people, and Prabhupada disbanded the GBC at that time, being very upset.

So in other words, there were various attempts by some of the leaders to take over the movement of Prabhupada by using various clever means. Sometimes they would even package these things as though they were some wonderful preaching activity. For example, Tamal Krishna had a Radha-Damodara bus project, and he used this project. He had buses traveling around the United States distributing books; but when his buses would go to the temples, they would tell the people in the temple, "You're all in maya, you're all householders living like nonsense. You should be brahmacharis. You should be living strictly and traveling with Tamal Krishna." So Tamal used his bus program as a means of extracting manpower from Prabhupada's temples, and actually Prabhupada's whole movement was being gradually shifted over into the hands of Tamal Krishna by this process. So this reached a point in 1976 where Prabhupada told Tamal to go to China. Prabhupada basically said, "You're ruining my whole movement. You're paralyzing my whole movement by taking the people out of the temples." So, of course, Tamal refused to go to China. This was a famous story of a sort of attempt to hijack the ISKCON movement away from Srila Prabhupada by draining away the manpower, money and assets, and putting these assets into Tamal's control.

In any event, there were various aggressive attempts to start different programs and projects that were designed to unseat Prabhupada's authority and bring the authority into the hands of some of these various leaders. In 1976, shortly after this China incident where Prabhupada told Tamal to go to China, I was standing in the Los Angeles temple room in front of Prabhupada's murti – there's a deity of Prabhupada in the temple. It's still there, by the way. I was standing in front of this murti in 1976. Tamal Krishna came up to me and said, "I know you, Puranjan, you're just waiting for Prabhupada to die so you can sit in his seat."

So in other words, here's his psychology. He's thinking I'm standing by Prabhupada in order to sit in Prabhupada's seat. I'm not standing there to worship Prabhupada, I'm standing there because I'm envious of Prabhupada and I want to pull Prabhupada off of that seat and sit myself in that seat. That's what Tamal was saying. So this is a very Freudian slip on his part because really he was revealing his own mentality. He just can't wait for Prabhupada to leave to sit in his seat, because the actual fact of the matter is that about a year after Tamal Krishna told me that, he was himself sitting in Prabhupada's seat.

He was the person who was thinking, "Who is going to be sitting in Prabhupada's seat after Prabhupada departs?" So it may be because there was some psychology all along really: "Who's going to be sitting in Prabhupada's seat? Who's going to be getting Prabhupada's worship? Who's going to be getting Prabhupada's properties?" There was some consideration of this among some of these leaders all along. They were very motivated, as Prabhupada pointed out in many, many letters. So when they perhaps saw that he was going to live for another six years and this was going to cause them a problem (just like it said in his chart, in his jyotish, it said "you're going to live for six more years"), they may have thought, "Oh, my God, he's going to live for six more years. We want to take over now. Maybe we should poison him, get him out of the way, and take over earlier." So that seems to be a very possible scenario.

...So also from a historical point of view, this can be understood. In the 1930's, there was a plot to 'take over' the Gaudiya Math mission of Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thakur, who was Srila Prabhupada's guru. And, of course, one of the first things they did was, according to various sources, they poisoned Srila Bhaktisiddhanta because he was in the way, so he had to be eliminated. And so some of the prominent members of the 1936 Gaudiya Matha leader's faction, supposedly the trusted 'leading secretaries' of Srila Bhaktisiddhanta, they actually poisoned him; and then some of them claimed to be his guru successors. The same party that killed him then said, "Well, we're his pure successors." This exact thing happened in ISKCON also. Prabhupada was killed. He said, "I'm being poisoned." Then the people who were there when he was being poisoned said, "We're his dear most purest followers, his successors." So the parallel is rather unnerving if you think about it. And in the 1930's, what happened was that the first wave of gurus, some of their corruption became exposed, and so a second wave came forward and they claimed to be the successors of the successors and so on. In this way dozens or even hundreds of false "gurus" could benefit from their false guru franchise business, established at root by killing the founder.

Srila Prabhupada summarized the 1936 takeover plot by saying their false gurus were "self appointed," and that they used their false claim of being "the appointed successors" to "usurp the properties." So this is a common story in history, the butler kills the master and he changes the master's 'last will' so he can usurp the master's property, or really he steals the master's house by eliminating the master and then using various clever tricks to make it appear that he deserves to be the proprietor of the master's empire. And all along he claims that he is the dear most loving servant of the master, and many times he may fool others into thinking he was the most sincere servant of the master. Yet after some time the family and friends of the master become suspicious, and then they are always making life difficult for this deviant butler since they know he usurped the property.

This is by the way another reason so much corruption has occured in ISKCON, and it still goes on. There is a sort of political situation where one leader cannot remove or expose another leader sometimes because they 'have the dirt' on each other. So imagine the poison cadre, they cannot remove each other easily because there is the problem that the other members of the plot might expose the whole 'usurp and takeover' scheme, if not the poison plot. Thus, many of the people in the room when Srila Prabhupada said he was being poisoned, like for example Tamal Krishna, Bhavananda, Jayapataka, Jayadvaita, Bhakti caru, and perhaps others, they always seem to have big posts and nice incomes. They are the eternal darlings of ISKCON.

And there were others in that room like Adridharana who are acting very suspect as well. First, he told me there was a big alarm at the time in 1977 over the poison complaint, that the poison complaint was very suspicious. Then later he said, let us make the criminal GBC plotters members: the next wave of leaders for ISKCON? Then he said, there was never any poison complaint? Then he said, he had "defeated" and nullified Srila Prabhupada's poison complaint? Then he said, we have to defend the position of the apparent poison plotters and take shelter of their web site?

Anyway, whatever storms and catastophes occur in ISKCON, most of these fellows seem to be always protected and provided for. So, some of us have concluded that unless the butler's takeover plot, the usurper's plot, or what some would call 'the poison root plot,' is fully uprooted, ISKCON will remain in a sick and diseased condition of pervasive corruption. Just like when there is an active cancer tumor, the whole body is afflicted, and unless that tumor is removed the whole body is always weak, ill, tired, and there is always the feeling that something is wrong. Yadubara prabhu summed this once by saying that ISKCON is like a place where a dead body is hanging and no one can talk about it, this was shortly before the poison case emerged. Just after that we launched the poison case we said, Yadubara is right, there is a dead body in our midst, it is Srila Prabhupada's, he was poisoned. Yadubara had a psychic realization that there was some dead body not being attended to, and this was destroying ISKCON, and this was correct.

Anyway, in the post 1930s no one sat down and said, "Wait a minute. Our guru, Srila Saraswati, was poisoned. What happened here, what was his real instruction?" This was not the interest within the movement itself, within the Gaudiya Math mission. An investigation was never made of why Srila Bhaktisiddhanta had complained about getting dubious injections from a Calcutta doctor, what were his real instructions about how his mission would be continued, and so on and so forth. So history repeats itself. But what is very interesting in this situation is that what the post 1977 GBC are doing now, by saying that some of the people who were there in his room in 1977, who Srila Prabhupada distrusted probably more than any of his other followers because he said they were poisoning him, have now become his alleged: bona fide guru successors. This also occured in post 1936, Srila Saraswati said he did not want these injections by a Calcutta doctor, and so he left his body in 1936 under these dubious conditions, then the people who were orchestrating these dubious injections, they said they were his pure successors.

This would be like saying that Judas or the soldiers who killed Jesus Christ were the people that Jesus trusted the most and wanted to have established as his pure successors. So this is a very ridiculous position, and that's why from a historical point of view we know this whole thing will cave in and fold up because it's based on such an outrageous and preposterous supposition that the people who Srila Prabhupada clearly did not trust at all have claimed to be: the most trusted. Of course he also said that some of the people in the room were demons, or "Ravanas," and they would kill him unless he left that room. So he said that the people in that room were up to some malefic purpose, indeed they would kill him. So how did Ravana become the pure successor to God, unless he used some Ravana-like tricks? Of course, those of us who have not accepted that the Ravanas are the pure devotee successors, we have had our live threatened by this same group.

Prabhupada also hinted that there were such people who wanted to kill him, that indeed he could be killed just as Jesus was killed. He said, "In India, although Indians they will want to crush down this movement, so this will be up to Him, Krishna, or Krishna's movement, the same thing. And Krishna was attempted to be killed by Kamsa, an atheist class of man and his company, the demons. So it will be there. It is already there. Don't be disappointed because that is the meaning that it is successful. Krishna's favor is there because Krishna and Krishna's movement is non different, identical. So as Krishna was attempted to be killed many, many years before He appeared, eighth child, if the mother produces a child yearly, still ten years, eight years, the mother was attempted to be killed. So there may be attempt like that. And Lord Jesus was killed, so they may kill me also."

[2003 UPDATE: There have been recent rumors that some folks from India worked to help the poison plot, perhaps some of the people Srila Prabhupada said "they will want to crush down this movement" (and him) as described above by himself, especially deviant members of the Gaudiya Matha, they are suspected to have helped with the poison plot. Notice, as stated above, that Srila Prabhupada indeed thinks that some people from India may participate in a conspiracy or plot to kill him. Yet he says that even if there is an attempt to kill him, we should not be discouraged since a similar attempt was made to kill Lord Krishna and Lord Jesus, so this is not surprising. Srila Prabhupada was thus very conscious that people wanted to kill him: "...the mother (of Krishna) was attempted to be killed. So there may be attempt like that. And Lord Jesus was killed, so they may kill me also." Directly or indirectly that means, "they may use weapons or poison to kill me."]

This is a direct quote from Srila Prabhupada: "They may kill me also," just like Lord Jesus was killed. So he definitely indicated that there may be some envious plot, just like there was an envious plot against Krishna, a plot against Krishna's mother, a plot against Lord Jesus. So this is the nature of this world, but he says, "Don't be disappointed here. This means you are being successful. If people want to kill you and get you out of the way, that means you're a very powerful preacher and you're doing good work and you're being blessed by Krishna." So this is one of the potential explanations for why Prabhupada was killed, because he was very successful and because some people were very envious of that and they wanted to be in his seat. Just like Krishna, He was very powerful and so many people envied His position and they tried to kill Him, or, in other words, they tried to take over His kingdom.

[2003 UPDATE: We also know that some of the "dissident" devotees who tried to expose and investigate what happened to Srila Prabhupada and his mission were banned, beaten and killed. So, if the GBC would orchestrate the banning, beatings and assassinations of Srila Prabhupada's followers, why would they have hesitated to kill him?]

But as we know, history does not tolerate these things for very long. For some time Kamsa ruled and reigned, and, of course, Ravana ruled and reigned for some time, but eventually the truth came out and these people were discredited. So we think there's a connection. Number one, there was a concoction of a guru appointment. Then there was a lot of hiding and suppressing of evidence, even violent suppression by killing dissenters and exposers. There was hiding of the appointment tape, there was hiding of the poison tape. We've now had it verified, that this so-called appointment tape, this was a splice job, confirmed by a professional audio expert. A forensics expert who works for the police said that this tape, the so-called "appointment tape" which was forwarded by Tamal Krishna and his pals, it is a doctored tape.

It's not an authentic piece of evidence. It would never hold up in court. In other words, it's bogus, it's false. So information was hidden, letters were hidden, conversations were hidden, tapes were hidden, and a false piece of evidence was put forward, "Oh, yes, we were appointed by Prabhupada." But this, as it turns out, was a lie, a concoction. So who hid these conversations? Who hid these tapes? Who changed these tapes? And who hid the poison tape? And who offered different transcripts of the May 1977 appointment tapes? At this point, we have many different "official" versions of the so-called appointment tape.

[2003 UPDATE: A number of the alleged appointed gurus have subsequently admitted there never was any "guru appointment." The whole guru appointment was a fraud from square one, the only question now is: what steps did the core GBC take to insure that they could declare that they were "the appointed successors"? Would they orchestrate the murder of Srila Prabhupada? Would the butler poison the master to change the will? Of course, as everyone knows, the butler is the first suspect in a case of poison or murder of the master. So the usurpers had a good motive to hide the will, and they did, they had a good motive to hide the letters, and the conversations, and the poison tapes, and so on, and they did. The motive was to hide the real instructions and declare themselves to be "the appointed successor," as they did.]

And who threatened and harassed and beat and killed the devotees who asked about these things? And who made homosexuals and pedophiles into gurus? And who reinstated a known homosexual pedophile and voted in 20 more gurus at the same time? And who changed Prabhupada's books? And so on and so forth. Are these all connected to Prabhupada's complaint that he was being poisoned? We think there is a connection. We think that some of the people who were there at the scene of each one of these crimes were also there. The same party, the same group, the same entourage, the same GBC core entity is responsible for all of these activities. They're connected, they're related, and they resisted investigating any of these things for the past 20 years because they're covering up, because they have to protect other cadre members, their friends.

Some of the people who may have poisoned Prabhupada, some of the people who hid the evidence, some of the people who made different transcripts of the appointment tape – they have to be covered for, they have to be helped along because if you uncover these people, what's going to happen to your million-dollar lifestyle or income over here? You're going to be cut off, they're going to kick you out, you're going to be on the street like all the rest of us. You have to get a job, you have to work, you have to take care of yourself. You can't just exploit the devotees anymore. You can't exploit this so-called appointment lie, and so on and so forth. So it's a big jump for a lot of people. It's a big decision they have to make. "Are we going to jump ship here and become honest and admit that all these different concoctions are a lie and they're false, and that Prabhupada in fact may have been poisoned? Or are we going to just lie more, cover up more, and keep putting money into our bank account over here more?" Which seems to be all that's going on. It's just a concoction designed specifically to exploit Prabhupada's movement for financial gain, and this will come out also even legally I think more and more. There will be cases lodged by various devotees even legally challenging what appears to be a very large fraud activity.

Anyway, Prabhupada gave many warnings. He said, "I am practically seeing that as soon as they, our students, begin to learn a little Sanskrit, they immediately feel they have become more than their guru. Then the policy is to kill their guru and become guru themselves." And he summarized the deviants of the Gaudiya Math: "As soon as he learns that Guru Maharaj is dead, now I am so advanced I can kill guru and become guru. Then he is finished." So this is rather remarkable that in the Gaudiya Math they had the philosophy that you need a living guru. They say, "You need a living body to worship. You can't worship the dead body of Bhaktisiddhanta, he's a dead body. You have to worship me, I'm a living body." Of course, they didn't mention the fact that they happened to poison Bhaktisiddhanta to get his body dead in the first place. So you kill somebody and then you say, "Oh, he's dead, why do you worship him? He's dead." So this would be like the Roman soldiers who killed Jesus now saying, "Well, look, he's a dead body. You have to worship me now. I'm a living body."

So they don't understand that by killing Prabhupada or being connected to the conspiracy or individuals who poisoned him and now then declaring that you're living, this is not the qualification for guru. It is not simply that you are breathing. In ISKCON today, this is what they say all the time, "You need to be living. The guru is living." No, a guru is not just a person who is breathing.

[2003 UPDATE: This living guru philosophy was upheld by the GBC's supporters (mostly from the Gaudiya Matha) like Sridhara Maharaja, Narayana Maharaja, both Puri maharajas and so on, they said you have to worship the GBC as gurus because you need to worship "a living (body) guru." So they were saying, either knowingly or not, "The deviants that Srila Prabhupada said are giving him poison, you have to worship them because they are living."]

A person who is breathing might be a criminal. There are many people in prison right now that are breathing, but they're not gurus. A guru is a person who is pure. So they've misunderstood that, and they say that "You need to have a living guru." So this also happened, the point is, in the 1930's. They killed their guru and then, as Prabhupada says, "Now I am so advanced I can kill guru and become guru. Then he is finished," Prabhupada says. This was August 16th, 1976, one year before Prabhupada departed. He is warning his followers, "Watch out. Don't kill your guru and try to become guru like they did in Gaudiya Math. Then you'll be finished." So he understood the psychology, the mentality that was there even in his own leaders, these people might try to kill their guru and declare themselves to be the next guru. Of course he concluded that if they do that, it will not last, they will be finished. The GBC guru empire is slowly collapsing and dwindling just as he predicted.

So Srila Prabhupada said also on the 13th of January, 1977, "These artificial claims to be guru are weapons. That was his only endeavor, how he," the Gaudiya Math guru who poisoned his guru to become guru, "could legally occupy the bricks and stones of the Gaudiya Math. That's all. He has no other ambition. It was simply a show. But the real purpose was to occupy, how to take the whole property. A business." So Srila Prabhupada explains the actual motive of these people who get rid of their guru and declare themselves to be his successors by artificial means is simply so they can "legally occupy the bricks and stones." In other words, it's a means of grabbing money. It's a simple motive. Why do people get murdered all the time, it is for money. They murder people, they shoot people in the bank, shoot people in the store, and they kill their boss, and they kill whoever is an innocent bystander in the way of taking money from people.

This is a common thing in this material world, it's not at all unusual. So that's the motive, and definitely that's what has happened in ISKCON. It's a legal takeover. They now say that "Anyone who objects to us, we're going to sue them, we're going to take them to court." They have no interest in discussing anything openly. The first thing the post-1977 GBC do is to say, we shall take you to court, or at least threaten to take you to court. So this also happened in the post-1936 Gaudiya Math. This man took over the property, and anyone who questioned, he said, "Go to court, take me to court." Same psychology: Kill guru, become guru, occupy the properties, then make a legal challenge to anyone who questions your authenticity. Gangster mentality. Take by force, then purchase a lawyer to protect your illegal ill gotten gains. As Srila Prabhupada says, a business. He calls this "the guru business."

So Prabhupada says here, April 20th, 1977, "We haven't got to manufacture. To manufacture idea is troublesome. Why should we take the trouble? As soon as you want to manufacture something to my..., that is dangerous." "'What our guru has said, that is life and soul. But we don't want that.' Ara na kariha mane." "As soon as this poison will come – 'Suppress guru and I become Brahman' – then everything is finished. Spiritual life is finished. Gaudiya Math finished, that..., violated the orders of Guru Maharaja."

So notice again, Prabhupada uses the word here "poison," meaning "If you try to take over your guru's mission (as they did in the Gaudiya Matha) this is poison." So it's interesting. He was poisoned, and so is the whole idea of taking over the mission. Srila Prabhupada explains, this mentality is also poison. And again, 21 April, 1977, Srila Prabhupada says, "Our mission is to serve bhakti-visesa and live with devotees. Not that you take the place of guru. That is all nonsense, very dangerous."

[2003 UPDATE: Notice that this guru takeover mentality is considered as "very dangerous." That means people can get killed, danger.]

"Then everything will be spoiled. As soon as you become ambitious to take the place of guru – gurusu nara-matih naraka sa. That is material disease." So he was giving a warning here to his leaders, seeing that they were motivated. He's saying, "Be careful, this is very dangerous." And Srila Prabhupada even says that the false gurus of the Gaudiya Math, he compares them to ferocious snakes. This is May 24th, 1977. "These rascals, Gaudiya Math," referring to the false Vaisnava guru factions that emerged after 1936 in India. "If somebody thinks, 'Oh, here is a snake with a jewel. Let me embrace him,' no, no, no, it is very ferocious. Similarly, these various false guru parties are very envious. Even if it has a jewel, it is ferocious. Although they have become Vaisnava, they are ferocious. They have not acquired the qualification of Vaisnava. Simply vesopidin, by dress."

[2003 UPDATE: Yes, these statements are very clear and very direct, this "guru takeover" mentality is the same as the mentality of a ferocious snake. "Ferocious snake" means: they will use poison, just as a ferocious snake uses poison.]

So this is another interesting thing, that in 1990 the GBC cited their then "spiritual advisor" Narayana Maharaja, in their "ISKCON Journal" published by Satsvarupa, Tamal Krishna, and the GBC said that this above man who Prabhupada says here is like a snake with a jewel, they said "he is our example of a nice guru, a bona fide guru," the person Prabhupada says is very dangerous.

[2003 Update: The 1990 ISKCON Journal cited Narayana Maharaja that Sridhara Maharaja (founder father of the deviant 1936 homosexual guru's party); Madhava Maharaja (the person who almost physically threatened violence to Srila Prabhupada and demanded he quit using the title of "Prabhupada"); and Tirtha Maharaja (the above mentioned snake with a jewel), are all bona fide gurus (acharyas). So there is a connection between the 1936 "kill guru and become guru" party, the guru poisoners, the guru threateners, the guru insulters, the guru takeover plotters, and the post-1977 ISKCON GBC.]

So 11th October, 1977, is when Prabhupada's chart was read to him, and this is found in the Conversations books, Volume 35, page 51. "An astrologer said that you could have big trouble from juniors and subordinates. In fact, you will live for six more years, but watch out because your juniors and subordinates over the next six months, they might try to take you away." In other words, "they may try to kill you." So that was read to Prabhupada, and he refers to that later on. When he's referring to his jyotish in November of '77, this is what he's talking about here.

[2003 Update: When Srila Prabhupada said to the kaviraja that the explanation for his poison complaint is: "jyoti jnana," (the astrology chart knows) he refers to the above statements that he might be assassinated by his juniors and subordinates, i.e. the GBC leaders.]

see also PADA article

All glories to His Divine Grace A.C.Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada!

++ Tamal Krishna Goswami's Disappearance 15. March 2002 ++
++ Bill Of Indictment Against Tamal Krishna Gosvami ++