Nori Muster: My Years After Leaving ISKCON

My Years After Leaving ISKCON
By Nori J. Muster [Nandini dasi]
July 30, 2001

Thirteen Years After Leaving ISKCON

In 1978, when I was twenty-two years old, I decided to join the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) and dedicate my life to the organization. Over the next ten years, I lived and worked in ISKCON as a Hare Krishna devotee. Finally, in 1988 I resigned my position as associate editor of their newsletter, ISKCON World Review, and left. It has now been thirteen years of learning and recovery, including publishing a book about my experiences: Betrayal of the Spirit. This essay will explain some of the major hurdles and lingering effects of my fateful decision.

Organization of Bad Vibes

One of the most insidious teachings of ISKCON is that you must give up your previous “material” life and devote one hundred percent of your time and energy to the group. At ISKCON’s request, I abandoned all my friends and family without thinking about how it would hurt them or make them worry about me. When my book came out, relatives and friends of other Hare Krishna devotees have contacted me for advice. Listening to their grief made me realize how my own family may have felt. It has been a struggle to reclaim some of my roots. I also found that once cut off, some relationships never grow back. It has been difficult for me to face this consequence. Like many other members, I believed that the organization had The Answer and everyone else was in the dark. I tried to force my group’s beliefs and values on other people. ISKCON preachers tell members and others to accept their whole philosophy and reject any other philosophy. They forbid members from reading outside literature for fear that they would be influenced by opposing philosophies. I now recognize this as a disrespectful and fanatical attitude meant to control members. I also got a few people to join and i’ve apologized to a few of them.

When I met devotees in 1977, the original guru Srila Prabhupada died (some say he was murdered). This lead to a power struggle within ISKCON, as the alleged guru killers quickly assumed the mantle of leadership and then mounted a tremendous campaign to hold onto their power. Living inside an institution like this, which was based on a lie, took its toll. During the years I was a member, ninety percent of the original members left. Looking back now, I see that the eleven gurus (the alleged murderers) were highly motivated to make their own disciples stay. They manipulated us with warnings about the karmi (non-devotee) world and told us that if we blooped (left the organization), we would go to hell. They told us that before taking initiation we were dogs and that we would go back to being dogs if we left. The gurus told horror stories about other blooped devotees, meant to scare us into staying. Insiders told nasty jokes about ex-members and make fun of them behind their backs. Gurus’ thugs (called kshatrias) beat people up to maintain order. In 1986 a devotee thug killed a man in Los Angeles for speaking against the gurus.

I developed some of the same bad qualities that the gurus and their followers exhibited. Financial abuses were rampant in ISKCON and I committed several financial abuses myself. I also learned to be judgmental and superstitious, character flaws I’m still trying to unlearn, thirteen years after the fact. The group was extremely chauvinistic toward women, minorities and anyone who disagreed with them. It’s been a struggle to get my real personality back, because before joining ISKCON I was open minded and much more gentle. I went through a long phase of hating myself for staying in a group like that. It has been ten years of psychotherapy to overcome my guilt and forgive myself. I’m still working out my victimization issues because I came to ISKCON innocently seeking spiritual life and became a cog in the wheels of a dysfunctional system. I agonize over how my common sense to leave a bad situation failed me. It was co-dependency pure and simple.

Conclusions: Living with the Betrayal

I tried being a fringie (a fringe member) for a few years. I even went back for a time to try to help the children of the organization. Then in the late 1990s I came to the conclusion that I couldn’t fix ISKCON anymore than someone can fix their own dysfunctional family of origin. I had to leave completely to restore my own soul. It has now been three years since I’ve visited an ISKCON property or attended any of their functions. Sometimes I meet people who only remember the Hare Krishnas’ good old days in the sixties. When I tell them about my book, they are shocked to find out about the things that went wrong in the group. Most people probably wish that the Hare Krishnas had remained as innocent and carefree as they appeared in the sixties. I do too, but I’ve had to live with the reality that even the Hare Krishnas became corrupt.

In regards to Betrayal of the Spirit, some ISKCON followers show their hatred of my book by writing negative comments about it at Amazon.com or showing up to argue with me at book signings, etc. I find their attitudes hypocritical, since most of them have never even read it. Devotees who actually read it usually like it. Many have given me positive feedback. One of my objectives was to tell the collective story in a loving way. I think insiders tend to exaggerate what I may have written, based on their own fear of ISKCON’s secrets. I’ve told them that my book is my offering, written from my heart. Still the critics refuse to read it.

Thirty Years After Leaving ISKCON
By Nori Muster
August 21, 2018

Thirty Years After Leaving ISKCON

I joined the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) on June 19, 1978, and stayed ten-and-a-half years. On December 26, 2018, it will be thirty years since I moved away from their West Los Angeles center on Watseka Avenue. In this essay, I will revisit the experience and explain where I stand with it now.

There were some good things about being a devotee, but for the most part it was a difficult, destabilizing experience. I was a college grad; my indoctrination took place my senior year at UC Santa Barbara. I was new at the school, didn’t know anybody, and was looking for a spiritual path. A man from ISKCON decided to stay at the preaching center, a rented apartment in Isla Vista, to cultivate me and convince me to join up. The day after graduation I drove to the temple, and thus began my odyssey.

I now look back on my life-changing decision as an attempt to recreate my family of origin, which broke apart when I was fourteen. My parents were both unfaithful and finally my mother got an affair that would carry her and us children to Arizona. I didn’t want to go, and must have been awfully stubborn. She left me in Los Angeles at her best friend’s house to complete the ninth grade at Van Nuys Junior High.

It seemed like a good idea, except her friend was also going through a divorce and was an alcoholic. In that household I was neglected, and ended up getting raped by a stranger. That pretty much ruined whatever was left of my self-esteem. When I finally moved to Arizona, I was damaged and never felt like part of the family again. Instead, I embarked on a dangerous path of drugs and casual sex throughout my adolescence. My family noticed a change in me, but even I did not understand what was the matter.

My mother tolerated me; my stepfather and I fought all the time. I didn’t get along with my step-siblings who turned up one at a time to spend a semester or a year living with their father. My relationship with my stepsister was especially contentious. She was two years older than me, gregarious, and beautiful. I was damaged and shy. She immediately attracted the attention of all my friends, and I felt they abandoned me for her. At age fifteen I was diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic and psychotic; at age seventeen the problems came back and my parents committed me to a psych ward for two months.

I finally pulled it together and got my bachelor’s degree, but then to the disappointment of nearly everyone I knew, joined a cult. I had to do it, because I was not mentally able to move into adult life, even though I was twenty-two.

I regret joining ISKCON because it was a sick well. I suffered spiritual abuse, while other members suffered emotional, spiritual, physical, financial, or sexual abuse. Yet I thought I had found the nurturing situation I needed to grow into an adult. Perhaps if I had joined a better group, or gone into a fulfilling career after college, I might have found a healthier source for the support I needed. At least the place I landed in ISKCON – the public relations office – was a safe, family-like situation.

The people who worked in the PR office were more aware of what was going on in the organization, and we had more social interaction with the outside world. Most devotees were isolated, meeting members of the public only to solicit donations. However, we were dealing with reporters, celebrities, big donors, scholars, publishers, printeres, and outside advisors. Thus, the life I led was closer to the real world than other parts of ISKCON, and the immediate people I was around were more like family, and they were not abusing me.

Unfortunately, the system itself was abusive. The PR office was new within ISKCON back then, put together mostly to combat bad press over a drug bust in Southern California that included a murder. It wasn’t exactly the organization’s murder, but the drug smugglers were ISKCON followers associated with the Laguna Beach temple. The murderer was from the Witness Protection Program, and had happened to get involved with the devotees only to take advantage of their money laundering operation. However, instead of helping the devotee drug smugglers, the PR department worked to distance the organization from the whole mess.

A few highlights of the scandals the PR department confronted during those years include trying to distance ISKCON from the “cult” stereotype after the Jonestown mass suicide; distancing ISKCON from the debacle in the Bay Area when police arrested one of the gurus for illegal weapons trafficking; and distancing ISKCON when a federal grand jury indicted one of the gurus on six counts of mail fraud, and five counts of racketeering, including conspiring in two murders. I remember my life in the PR department as one disaster after another.

We also led positive projects, such as publishing books and magazines to promote ISKCON, and starting the “Food for Life” free vegetarian food distribution program at ISKCON centers. We wanted to spread the word about ISKCON’s good side, but that led to cognitive dissonance, trying to minimize and rationalize the organization’s dark side. It seemed the harder I tried to defend ISKCON, the more the criminal element took over. It took a couple years, but finally I could no longer justify defending them, so I resigned.

My husband and I had met and married in the group, and during my years of disillusionment we found a way to support ourselves doing freelance graphic design work. By the time we left, my husband had already let go of his grievances, and was glad to be done with it. However, I hung onto it and spent years writing my memoir. Every so often, I would ask him to read my five hundred page manuscript, which he did. We decided we would break up as soon as the memoir found a publisher. Dave and I divorced in 1996 and the book came out in 1997. He was free and I would go on to be the author of the tell all book about ISKCON.

Most of my growing up took place in the first couple years after the book came out. For one thing, I found out the people in ISKCON did not appreciate it. Their official review was a rude awakening, since I had written the book with love in hopes it would help reform the organization. Realizing they did not want to reform, I quit going to any ISKCON properties in 1998. With the support of a pre-ISKCON friend, I realized I could live without ISKCON. Los Angeles was a big city, and Watseka Avenue was just one short street on map with thousands of streets. I continued living with my friend in L.A. until 2005, when I moved back to Arizona and got my real estate license – taking the exam on my fiftieth birthday.

Fast forward to 2016, age sixty, I discovered I had kept a journal throughout my ISKCON years. Along with daytime notations, I also recorded my dreams. I decided it was time to do something with the dreams, so I got the journal into a dream content analysis study. This year, I transcribed the first ten years – the ISKCON years – and presented my preliminary findings at the annual conference of the Dream Studies Association. I love the new dream research frame for my ISKCON experience. I’ve also derived satisfaction from presenting at the Cultic Studies Association conferences, and helping teach people about cultic behavior. The rewarding parts of life as an adult come in the form of publishing and public speaking. I feel especially good about the people I’ve met along that path.

When I lament my involvement with ISKCON, people often remind me I would not be where I am today without those experiences. However, I am not completely happy with where I am, or what I’ve done with my life. So for me there is not much solace in that truism. At times I’ve let my mind wander to alternative paths:

I could have gotten my license directly out of college and sold real estate in Santa Barbara.

I could have avoided ISKCON if I had stayed at Humboldt University and become a social worker. I could have lived up there the rest of my life like some of my classmates did.

I could have developed a career at my father’s company where I worked summers during college.

I could have gone to graduate school – tuition was cheap in the seventies and my father would have paid.

I could have become a nun – except I’m not Catholic!

There are millions of things I could have done with my life but didn’t. I joined a crime-infested cult instead. I believe someday I’ll come to terms with the spiritual abuse I endured, and stop feeling guilty for ISKCON’s crimes and ethical problems. Another thing that made my leaving traumatic was my father’s death. He had been fighting terminal cancer, and had gotten a two year reprieve from an operation, but he died surrounded by his children and friends just eleven days after I moved away from the temple. He was my supporer and best friend throughout life, and I still miss him sometimes.

All I can report at this time, thirty years out, is how much I regret lying for an organization instead of doing honest work in my twenties. At age sixty-two I simply accept and live with the past.

CONCLUSION

It is heartbreaking to see what happened to ISKCON. Now, after thirty-six years, the drama of ISKCON had affected several generations of families. Within ISKCON, people have gotten married, divorced, had children, had grandchildren, lost relatives, and watched the organization go through its political stages. These are real dramas that have affected people’s entire lives. It’s a serious slice of humanity. I’m still filled with regret for some of the things that happened. It was a difficult history to watch, to experience, but the lessons that ISCKON provides are also deep. I believe it’s important to study what happened, so that future generations of Srila Prabhupada’s followers may be spared some of the grief and pain that we have had to endure. It is possible to learn from the past and that’s what motivates me to continue to write about it. Judging what happened, or trying to blame the problems on individuals is unnecessary. Even more destructive is to manufacture a white-washed version of history and try to pass it off as fact. What’s most important is to document an accurate picture of what happened in ISKCON in its first three decades so that future generations will have the truth and then they can decide what to do with it.

TWENTY YEARS AGO
– THEN AND NOW –

Then and Now: Continuing on the Path after ISKCON

Twenty years ago I met Hare Krishna devotees and joined the temple in Los Angeles. I stayed in the ISKCON organization for ten years. Over the last decade as an outsider I’ve learned a lot about my subject and my relationship with it. John Knapp, trancenet.net executive director, asked me to write about what it was like then and what it is like now.

I was young when I decided to dedicate the rest of my life to Krishna. The devotees I met were nice people who were living in the temple, working for ISKCON. They encouraged me to join them. I felt that I was old and wise enough to make an informed choice. But now at forty-two, I look back and realize how young I was and how that decision made a permanent mark on the rest of my life.

I became a dedicated follower, faithfully chanting and observing the principles, accepting initiation, attending the morning program and festivals, preaching, reading all the books several times over, and working six to ten hours a day without pay. I’m glad the people I worked with encouraged me to complete the morning program every day. Some devotees had services or other responsibilities that took priority over their spiritual practices. I still meditate daily, by choice.

Another habit I have kept is working at home. Our p.r. office was just like any other office, with desks, a conference room, multiple phone lines, plus a newspaper production facility, and at times a dark room. Our department rented six apartments in the building; each of us had our office in the front and private living quarters in the back. I learned job skills and discipline working there, so there were some good parts.

Goodbye to Bad Vibes

One bad part was the stress of living in a crumbling institution. During the years I was a member, ninety percent of the original members left. Looking back now, I see that the eleven gurus were highly motivated to make their own disciples stay. They manipulated us with warnings about the “karmi” (non-devotee) world. The gurus said that if we blooped (left the organization), we would go to hell. They told us that before taking their initiation we were “animals,” or more specifically, “dogs,” and that we would go back to being dogs if we left. The gurus used other blooped devotees’ horror stories to scare us. I developed a debilitating fear of leaving, just as they hoped. Insiders subtly discouraged people from leaving by making fun of blooped devotees who visited the temple wearing civilian clothes. They would tell nasty jokes and make fun of ex-members behind their backs. Some of this still goes on.

Another disquieting symptom of ISKCON’s disintegration was the all-pervading competition for limited resources. The allocation of budget funds from the BBT (Bhatkivedanta Book Trust) was a big point of contention. The BBT received money from book sales and funded projects such as the p.r. department, the legal department, the publishing house, and about a dozen other things. It seemed everyone was watching to see who was getting what, and whenever someone’s budget increased, the other projects wanted a raise too. In 1986 when Ramesvara left ISKCON, BBT Council members flew to L.A. and resolved to cut off funding for all Ramesvara’s projects. When I no longer had money to pay rent, I should have left. However, I stayed because I “believed” in ISKCON’s goals and thought I could “help” through my publishing work for the ISKCON World Review.

Cultural Habits and Attitudes

Within three years of leaving the temple I had changed back to my middle-class American habits. I quit observing the fasting rules and rituals over food, although I remain vegetarian. I quit wearing saris and enjoy shopping for clothes. I started wearing my shoes in the house, despite the danger of tracking toxic waste and germs onto the carpet. I simply find it impractical to remove my shoes all the time (or get others to do it) so I gave up. I quit taking cold showers required in the ashram and I wake up at a reasonable hour, instead of four a.m.

I earned my master’s degree within two years after leaving, which has been the cornerstone of my recovery. I’ve caught up on a lot of cultural things like music and movies that I missed. I joined the Los Angeles County Art Museum and a list of organizations that protect the environment. I watch tv, read magazines and books and subscribe to the Los Angeles Times.

Attitudes have been the hardest things to change. In the process of writing my book I had to take a frank look at ISKCON and what happened in that organization. Under Ramesvara, the BBT accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars from drug dealers and lied about it. It has been difficult to reconcile the violence and criminal activity done in the name of God. I am still working out my victimization issues because I came to ISKCON innocently seeking spiritual life and became caught-up in a dysfunctional system. At one extreme I think God planned this for me, so I would learn lessons about life. On the other extreme I agonize over how my common sense to leave a bad situation failed me. My mistake could be compared to a woman who stays in an abusive relationship to try to help her spouse. It is co-dependency clear and simple, so if I learn anything, I want to at least learn to think for myself.

Facing a Few Facts

I recently got a sense of the pain I may have caused my relations by “disappearing” into the temple. In the last few months people have told me about their loved ones who joined other cults. They describe feelings of being left behind, as though their lost relative were “dead.” I have attempted to apologize to some of my friends and relatives. The book helps. One of my great aunts read it and told me that she would have been less worried if she had known my father was involved. I still have a hard time understanding why people worry about me, but it is human nature.

When I was in ISKCON I felt like my organization had “The Answer” and everyone else was in the dark. Since leaving I have come to realize that people fall on a wide spectrum of spirituality. Some feel alienated from their spiritual center, so they may become drug addicts, overeaters, workaholics, analysis patients or abusers, or they may join a religious group to meet their needs. Healthy people with good spiritual roots usually avoid joining organized religions, especially groups that profess to have the answer.

As an ISKCON member I tried to force my group’s beliefs and values on other people. ISKCON preachers tell members and others to accept their whole philosophy and reject any other philosophy. They forbid members from reading outside literature for fear that they would be “influenced” by opposing philosophy. When I was a member I agreed with that notion, but now I recognize it as a disrespectful and fanatical attitude. Ever since leaving the organization I have studied Taoist, Christian and Buddhist philosophies, and my new spiritual path involves all of these, along with Hinduism.

Life as an Ex-ISKCON Member

One facet of life as an ex-member has been my love-hate relationship with the L.A. temple. I’ve lived in L.A. on and off and the temple is still there, pretty much the same as when I left. Many old friends still live there, so I have had pleasant encounters with them when I have visited. I sometimes join in a kirtan (chanting session) or eat in the restaurant. After knowing a person fifteen, twenty years, as I have known some devotees, it is pretty obvious that we will be lifelong friends. I hate to throw away the good things about my experience; at least some relationships have been salvaged. I have also formed new friendships among the second generation. There are many fine young people who were born in ISKCON, who have overcome the worst aspects of their abusive upbringing and I support them fully. However, I feel uncomfortable visiting the temple because of the repressive atmosphere.

ISKCON is a difficult group to be an ex-member of. For one thing, I still love Krishna and think about Him. Nonetheless, I feel distant from the group that led me to Him. That’s another duality I’ve had to accept, without resolving. Sometimes I meet people who love the Hare Krishnas, and only remember them from college in the sixties, and they are shocked to find out things went wrong in the group. Whenever I’m confronted with that side of the duality, I just tell them to read my book. Most people probably wish that the Hare Krishnas had remained the innocent and carefree group that they appeared to be when they were young. I cannot change ISKCON, so I let it go.

In regards to Betrayal of the Spirit, some devotees love it and thank me for telling their story too. I’m grateful for their positive feedback because the things I described affected a lot of people. One of my objectives was to tell the collective story in a loving way. Some devotees start out skeptical, but enjoy the book when they finally read it. However, most full-time members refuse to read it and base their judgment solely on the title. If they read it, they would find that it’s a lot different than they imagine. I think insiders tend to exaggerate what I may have written, simply based on their own fear of ISKCON’s secrets. I’ve told them that my book is my offering, written from my heart. Still my worst critics refuse to read it.