Jagadīśa: Some other statements by... There's a nice letter from one of the devotees to one important psychiatrist outlining our case. He does a very good job. Would you like to hear it?
Prabhupāda: Hm.
Jagadīśa: "Dear Dr. Lubin: In our recent telephone conversation you asked me to articulate in a letter those questions concerning the current brainwashing, deprogramming controversy which I feel may be pertinent to psychiatrists interested in religious issues and therefore a potential topic for discussion and or research within the Committee on Psychiatry and Religion of the Group for Advancement of Psychiatry. Speaking on my own behalf and informally on behalf of the Hare Kṛṣṇa religious society, I might suggest that this issue raises some very serious questions concerning possible abuses of diagnostic power in psychiatry against religious practitioners and movements for what may be social, political, and legal ends. Within the last ten years a large number of new religious groups, sects, communities and organizations have appeared on the American scene. Some are totally new organizationally as well as theologically. And others are, or allege to be, based upon some already existing spiritual tradition. I myself am a member for six years of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, the Hare Kṛṣṇa Movement. The term Kṛṣṇa consciousness is synonymous with the term bhakti-yoga, a theistic form of yoga which finds its scriptural authority in the Bhagavad-gītā and other major Indian devotional texts. The religious tradition represented in the West of the Hare Kṛṣṇa movement, Vaiṣṇavism, has centered the lives of hundreds of millions of Hindus for many centuries in India. This particular tradition has produced one of the world's largest and richest bodies of religious, philosophical, and mystical literature. The founder and spiritual leader of the movement, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda, has within the last ten years, offered more than fifty volumes of translation and commentary on major texts of the tradition: Bhagavad-gītā, Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, Śrī Caitanya-caritāmṛta, etc. These works are considered significant contributions to scholarship by specialists in the field and are studied in the universities throughout the world. See book reviews in the pamphlet, 'The Kṛṣṇa Consciousness Movement is Authorized.' The members of the Hare Kṛṣṇa movement, both men and women, single and married, live in strict adherence to Vedic and Vaiṣṇava principles in regards to religious practice, chastity vows, diet, etc. The movement's nearly one hundred centers are mostly urban monasteries from which members in accordance with Vaiṣṇava tradition perform evangelistic and proselytizing activities. The authenticity of the Hare Kṛṣṇa movement has formerly been confirmed by numerous Hindu religious academic and cultural bodies both in India and U.S. Of the new religious movements which are prominent, most are allegedly based on either a Western religious tradition: the Children of God and Unification Church are Christian oriented; or an Eastern religious or philosophical tradition: Zen groups, yoga groups, Hare Kṛṣṇa, etc. Of the groups based either on Western or non-Western spiritual traditions, some are seen as not accurately representing that tradition upon which they are ostensibly based. For instance, several Christian church organizations assert that the Unification Church, the Moonies, is not a bona fide Christian organization. Others, such as the Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement, are accepted as legitimate, both by scholars and adherents of that tradition. As the public tends, however, to indiscriminately lump together whatever appears to be strange or out of the ordinary, the mass media refers to all such groups with the derogatory term, 'cult.' All questions of legitimacy aside, the parents of many members of such groups feel, for one reason or another, that their son or daughter has been brainwashed and they are under the 'mind control' of the cult. Originally denoting the specific technique employed by Chinese Communists to effect ideological persuasion to extreme psychological and often physical coercion, the term brainwashing is defined as a colloquial term applied to any technique designed to manipulate human thought or action against the desired will or knowledge of the individual." That's from the Encyclopedia Britannica. "In popular usage it becomes an imprecise, all-encompassing and pejorative term used to describe any kind of persuasion or behavior with which one may disagree. In psychology it is not generally accepted, I am told, as a legitimate clinical term. How does one wash another's brain? The dynamics of 'conversion' in the case of Kṛṣṇa consciousness are quite informal. Talking with devotees, reading scripture, meditation, etc. and certainly do not include the application of any type of psychological coercion against the desire, will, or knowledge of the potential or novice devotee. Although life in a Hare Kṛṣṇa community is communal and monastic with well-defined guidelines affecting the behavior and religious practice, it is in fact, a good deal more open then many or most types of monastic communities. The Hare Kṛṣṇa member is totally free to increase or decrease his involvement with the Society at any time he or she wishes. Because full commitment, as in any religious tradition, is not easy. A high percentage of those who join eventually leave. If brainwashing is what we're doing, we're not very good at it. Distressed however by an apparent rejection of their own values and lifestyle, and unable to account for what may be radical or abrupt change in the lives of their offspring, some parents of cult members, believing that their sons and daughters have been brainwashed, hire someone like Ted Patrick to forcefully abduct and debrainwash or deprogram them. What is being called deprogramming involves extreme coercive tactics, including rather intense psychological and often physical intimidation aimed at inducing the cult member to renounce his or her religious beliefs and practices. (See affidavit enclosed.) During deprogramming the victim is isolated from his particular religious community and is physically restrained. His religious apparel and paraphernalia, scriptures, prayer beads, sacred pictures etc., may be confiscated and destroyed and his beliefs and religious convictions vilified. In one case a pregnant mother was physically beaten. In another, a Hare Kṛṣṇa devotee who refused to violate his religious vow of reciting names of God, had his mouth filled with ice and gagged. Such deprogramming lasts often for several weeks with deprogrammers working in shifts while the deprogrammee is deprived of sufficient sleep. All this so that the brainwashed youth can be returned to a normal state and once again be able to make free choices. Deprogramming often ends with the victim signing a statement admitting that he had been brainwashed. Perhaps just as the confessions of those accused of being witches during the Holy Inquisitions were proof of the existence of witchcraft, such confessions by members of religious groups are taken as sufficient proof of brainwashing by those committed to the idea of cultic brainwashing. But such tactics are a gross violation of fundamental human and constitutional rights..."
Prabhupāda: Hm?
