BIOGRAPHY Kailasa Candra dasa: MY PERSONAL APPRECIATION OF HIM AND HIS CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE VAISHNAVA FOUNDATION By Bhakta Eric Johanson, co-founder of the Vaishnava Foundation After a hiatus of several years, I am pleased to personally re-launch our website, prominently featuring the articles of Kailasa Candra dasa. Navigation through and within this new site, as well as its appearance, have been both updated and significantly improved. As is our policy, articles have been edited to improve readability, but the points made in them now are identical to those made in their previous incarnations—we have not edited or changed any of our conclusions, our realizations. A couple of new articles have been added to the website, and the site has been trimmed down to only include articles directly related to Krishna Consciousness. We are personalists. Sometimes our articles seem very objective and almost detached, but that's because we attempt to avoid injecting any undue personal coloring into them. If we did not make this effort, then readers could criticize us as being falsely self-motivated, harboring resentments, or on some kind of vendatta. None of these accusations are applicable, but we owe it to you, our readers, to make every effort to help you avoid such speculations. The flip side of this effort is that it sometimes appears that we are almost clinically detached in our presentation. To counterbalance this charge, I am writing a personal biography of Kailasa prabhu. This will include my personal assessments of his character and contributions to the Krishna Consciousness movement. This biography is highly personal, and it obviously contains my opinions. There can only be one opinion in Krishna Consciousness, and that opinion is ultimately realized by seeing how Lord Krishna sees. Seeing things as paramatma sees them is perfect Krishna consciousness, and the closer we come to attaining this vision, the closer we come to being purely Krishna conscious. So, although I am giving my personal opinions in this article, that does not mean that they are automatically jaded or wrong or misguided. I've had up close and personal experiences with Kailasa prabhu on uncountable occasions. I believe that my opinion of Kailasa Candra dasa may very well be shared by the paramatma, if not fully, then to at least some substantial degree. It really can't be proved one way or the other, just like it really can't be proved that some fire sacrifice in a temple automatically means that the bhakti-lata-bija was transmitted to what appears to be a spiritually initiated disciple. Maybe that disciple got the social bija, or the money-making bija, or the political bija, or the sahajiya bija, instead. My point is that how Lord Krishna actually sees his spirit souls in their sojourn throughout conditional existence cannot be proven, one way or the other, on this plane shot through with mistakes, illusion, and imperfections of all varieties. You are free to agree or disagree with my view of Kailasa prabhu, but my overriding point is that this is a personal biography from my personal perspective. I should also like to make mention that Kailasa prabhu and myself were two of the original contributors to the VNN website during its initial weeks of inception. Some of those contributions are, as per our previous website, included in this new offering. Unbiased devotees not very familiar with the history of Srila Prabhupada’s movement—particularly with how the spin-offs from his movement ( particularly after his departure) came into existence—will find all the postings quite enlightening. The Vaishnava Foundation was a positive alternative to these deviations. This organization was founded by your humble servant and Kailasa prabhu as an unincorporated association in 1986. Thirteen months later, the Foundation was incorporated, and it received its tax-exempt status four years after that. Then, in the mid-Nineties, we made our first attempt at spreading this message of Krishna Consciousness, uncompromised by the concoctions that elsewhere were apparently flourishing, via our initial web postings. I have an appreciation of the Vaishnava Foundation and consider it a genuine ashrama, or shelter, from so many quasi-Krishna Conscious temples and communities. I also have a deep appreciation of its website, which helps to validate the manifestation of the worldwide web. So this biographical article allows me to personally express this appreciation and communicate its importance to your reasoned intelligence. Kailasa prabhu first heard about Krishna consciousness in early 1972, and he moved into the Madison, WI temple exactly one week after attending his first Sunday love feast there. He was initiated by Srila Prabhupada, with Prabhupada speaking to him from the vyasasana, in early September of 1972. He was on the first party that opened the O'Hare Airport for book distribution. He was considered a serious devotee. He ran a college preaching party in the Midwest for over a year, and a number of devotees came from those campuses, moved into the temples, and became initiated disciples of Srila Prabhupada. He received brahminical initiation while Prabhupada was visiting the Chicago temple during this time frame. Obviously, Kailasa prabhu collected many thousands of dollars for the various temples he served in during the early Seventies, most of it from book and magazine collections. But there were also some considerable donations received from former university students who joined the temple with him. Kailasa prabhu was a regular speaker and platform lecturer not only on the campuses, but also in the temples where he served. He was able to convince others with his combination of dedication, intensity, shastra, and logic. He placed some of Prabhupada's books in university libraries and was on the library party for a brief time. He visited and served in numerous temples throughout the United States, and, with considerable difficulty, eventually made his way to the Oahu temple. There he arranged for Srila Prabhupada to have his most famous discussion and debate with Yogi Bhajan. Kailasa prabhu read most of the Bhagavad-gita verses that Prabhupada called to be read aloud. Kailasa also led a collection party throughout the European temple arena, and, just prior to Prabhupada's disappearance, Kailasa visited India for the first of three times. Just after Prabhupada's disappearance, Kailasa prabhu was serving as the personal secretary of one of the governing board commissioners of the corporate movement. While previously with a sannyasi in Europe, and also in this new situation, Kailasa was in a unique position to become aware of the corruption that had infiltrated Prabhupada's movement, particularly at the leadership levels. So, although it was still a shock to him, he was ultimately not surprised when the eleven self-appointed mahabhagavats announced that they were now the successors to Srila Prabhupada, but only had such jurisdiction in their own carved-out zones. In the spring of 1978, Kailasa prabhu went against the deviation from the day it was announced in the United States. Foreseeing great trouble ahead for both himself and the Hare Krishna movement, Kailasa, accompanied by an elder godbrother, traveled to India a second time. When their initial plan there was thwarted, he eventually was called upon by one of the sannyasis controlling a key temple in India to formulate a position paper, exposing the concoction that was now ruining Srila Prabhupada's movement. At great personal risk, he created this document. Eventually he was suspended and then, informally, excommunicated from the movement for making these kinds of efforts to expose the many deviations that was becoming dogma in the corporate movement. The position paper created a huge stir and confrontation. During a more or less rigged public debate that ensued in early 1979 in India, Kailasa prabhu was degraded and designated a black snake. The hierophants now in control of the movement attempted to degrade any other devotee who backed what had been presented during this confrontation. With the exception of Kailasa and the handful of devotees who traveled with him, all the others recanted and begged for mercy. To no small degree, Kailasa prabhu was then turned into the scapegoat for all the ills that were afflicting the Krishna Consciousness movement at that time. One of the ironies of this is that many if not most of the reforms advocated in that position paper were eventually adopted by what remained of the movement. Personally, it offends me that Kailasa prabhu has never received any kind of apology or reversal of his excommunication by the governing body, which was instrumental in adopting the deviations they later were forced by their congregations to reverse. In the early Eighties, outside the walls of the deviant so-called Krishna movement, he continued to pen position papers, sometimes alone and sometimes aligned with devotees initiated by Prabhupada before Kailasa prabhu. Always, those devotees sought him out, both for his guidance as well as his journalistic abilities. His papers gained some circulation, even though there was no worldwide web at that time. They clarified things for the ever-increasing numbers of disillusioned disciples initiated by Srila Prabhupada, helping them understand why they were disenfranchised or even ostracized. However, only a very few actually associated with Kailasa prabhu directly, since he had become highly radioactive by the propaganda of the deviant leaders. In the mid-Eighties, Kailasa prabhu both edited and made contributions to a series of writings by a devotee whose wife and children were taken from him by a charismatic leader. This devotee was deeply hurt but he was expert and intelligent in spreading his pamphlets, including The Guru Business. Kailasa prabhu also introduced that author to many philosophical points that demonstrated the contradictions, that this new author had been unaware of, inherent in the GBC dispensations. This devotee then realized how profound the nescience was in the movement, and he became a third rail to bring everything out in the open. Murdered soon thereafter by a zonal-acharya henchman, it was later proven to be a paid hit ordered by the same pseudo-guru who had lured this unfortunate author's wife away from him. I was in Northern California at the time, and I had read The Guru Business. I was both highly impressed and affected by it, but I also knew that the devotee whose by-line was attached to it was probably not either the inspiration or main author of the eye-opening document. I wanted to come into contact with whoever that was, and Lord Krishna fulfilled my desire. Kailasa prabhu was invited by me to lead the Northern California rural community in 1986, and he graciously accepted the invitation. This place still had some connections with various deviant factions, both socially and from a corporate perspective. Kailasa had to go through considerable resistance in order to live and remain at that ashram. We eventually founded the Vaishnava Foundation to have an organized base of preaching separate from the compromised situation of this rural community. For various reasons, we both had to leave that place, mostly because it was sold to liquidate debts previously accrued. When the rittvik concoction came to the fore in the early Nineties, Kailasa prabhu spoke out against it from the very inception, despite the fact that he was invited by one its primary leaders to join the movement. He tried to turn back the tide by convincing its leaders to give up this alternative to the established initiation scams, but he could not prevail in that effort. In 1996, the Vaishnava Foundation was one of the first groups of preach Srila Prabhupada's message using the worldwide web, and we have now continued in this effort. Kailasa prabhu, obviously, is the chief writer of this website's articles, and he edits everything that appears on it as well, including the document you are now reading. Many transcendentalists can, once again, take advantage of the reality, the logic, the facts, and the information that this website brings forth, as well as the history it helps to preserve. As for Kailasa himself, I have found him to be not the least bit interested in what he can gain from the results of his writings, or any of his contributions. He is primarily concerned with the transmission of knowledge rather than the promotion of a particular institution. He does not promote his personality, and, as such, fringe devotees enamored by society, friendship, and love interests are almost never interested in what he has to offer. The extraordinary value of Kailasa prabhu to the rest of the devotional community is the fact that he has never compromised. He has never accepted any kind of nescience propagated in the name of Krishna Consciousness. He has never gone under any strong leader who preached something that contradicted Srila Prabhupada. This is why I personally consider Kailasa Candra dasa to embody the spirit and mood of His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. It was due to Kailasa prabhu's faith in Srila Prabhupada that he was able to overcome all of the sentiment and see the offenses in the so-called biography of Srila Prabhupada. The corporate movement still publishes and sells this unauthorized Lilamrta, but anybody who has talked to Kailasa prabhu about it knows full well that this set of books is sweet rice spiked by virile drops of poison. Kailasa prabhu through the years has had to endure countless abuses and inconveniences at the hands of his godbrothers, but this has indirectly fortified his strength of conviction and realization. That is one of the reasons you now have the privilege to read these articles on this website. He is now mostly ignored, but, whenever they find it necessary, godbrothers or disciples of godbrothers will revile him, because, practically speaking, there is no one in those deviant groups who can defeat him in argument. There are now many personal followers of Srila Prabhupada who live outside the walls of any organized religion purporting to represent Prabhupada's movement. These followers can thrive, in no small degree, because they are able to access, for their own selves, important truths on the worldwide web that validates their doubts about the institutions. Before this, without such knowledge, these institutions could use bewilderment, doubt, fear, and guilt against almost anybody, and, more or less, impersonally coerce allegiance to the hierarchies they claimed as the only gateway to deliverance. Now, they can escape those confines. It was Kailasa prabhu, throughout the late Seventies, all of the Eighties, and most of the Nineties--and again now--who personally was either behind or connected to virtually every serious attempt to draw out and expose the deviations for just what they were. This has forced devotees to personally pay attention to the grave mistakes that have spread since Prabhupada's disappearance. The latest manifestation of the Vaishnava Foundation website features Kailasa Candra dasa' personal realizations, which are extremely sastric and logical presentations on relevant philosophical and pertinent issues facing our post-modern devotional community.