Posted on 03/30/2012 5:28:06 PM PDT by BonRad
On October 26, 2011 the UK's Telegraph newspaper ran an obituary which read Disgraced former leader of US Hare Krishna community dies at 74 and recounted the bizarre life and passing of cult leader Swami Kirtanananda Bhaktipada (1937-2011). Kirtanananda was born Keith Gordon Ham in upstate New York the son of an extremely conservative Southern Baptist minister. Keith inherited his father's zeal and recruiting tactics and successfully converted many classmates to "born again" evangelical Christianity. Despite a childhood case of polio, he excelled in high school academics graduating with top honors in 1955 and received a degree in History from Maryville College in 1959, and graduated magna cum laude, first in his class of 117.
Ham received a fellowship to study American history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he remained for three years. Somewhere along the way Ham lost touch with his Christian Fundamentalist roots. While studying for his master's degree he met Howard Morton Wheeler (1940–1989), an undergraduate English major who became his lifelong friend. Later Ham admitted that he engaged in an intense homosexual relationship with Wheeler that lasted for many years as he recounted in the film Holy Cow Swami, a 1996 documentary by renowned PBS film maker Jacob Young. The two lovers resigned from the university on February 3, 1961, and left Chapel Hill after being threatened with an investigation over a "sex scandal" involving intimate relations with underage boys, and fled to New York City. ...[snip]
(Excerpt) Read more at williamhkennedy.com ...
I knew the writer briefly in 2002-3. He was then loosely tied to traditional Catholic circles but has apparently ‘fallen away’. He resides in greater Boston and is son of a once prominent politician (no relation to that other crew). I cannot in the least condone other matters in his website but this article is stunning. I only just found it as I do check from time to time the site.
Worth mentioning too the presentation is replete with many quality photos (including the famous one of George Harrison) documenting much of US-English Hare Krishna movement, which I’m sure many who were familiar ‘in the time’ will recognize.
Stunning in-depth article on demise of one, if not THE most famous modern US ‘convert’ to Krishna.
May that pos rot in hell.
Who hasn’t at one point or another wanted to kill a Hare Krishna?
now, now...you didn’t read the author’s preface for ‘peace and blessings’.
They regularly -well i think once a year- will throw themselves under a really, really big wheel of one of those real big wagons.
Yeah I saw one in one of their parades I think a decade ago in Boston. I shuddered when it went by thinking of what they do in India.
Then there are the widows tossing themselves on funeral pyre fires of deceased husbands.
If people only knew...
I don't think that they're any more silly than some 'Christian' denominations. Normally a lot less violent, too. Talk to a serious Jew sometime about 2000 years of Christian love...
Better yet actually talk to a real Christian, you'll know one when you meet one. I promise you.
I have, and I do.
I also have met and know people who are nearly completely ignorant of history.
Life is pretty much the same all over the world, even in the home of a HOLY MAN and his ticked off wife. :o)
Well, an airport flowershop hath no fury like a woman scorned....or something.
The strangest thing is that I had no idea the guy was still alive, until he died last fall.
When LSD came in with the hippie revolution, a lot of people turned to strange religions. I can understand Indians being Hindus, but it really makes no sense for a westerner to go that way.
LSD poisoned a lot of lives. A friend of mine has a son who fried his brains with it when it first became popular, and he’s still not right, 40 years later.
I heard a story I thought was told by a legitimate individual of a swami-yogi in the Orient whose feces was dried into powder and consumed by followers.
Followers on the West Coast would add the fecal powder into LSD and have a real ‘holy S&*^! trip!!!
Well, since no one is reading the thread now:
I was entering college in 1969 and am sad to say I did my couple dozen trips each of my first two years. I certainly hurt myself terribly in the spiritual, the psyche, for a long, long time. And I have a couple horror stories of aquaintences. One hard to judge: a guy who “tripped” on one “hit” of LSD the whole summer while practically everyone else went home. He spent the whole time counting steps in various paths around the University of Houston. That’s be a “takeable” story as I recall he came out of it. My guess is at least 1 in 1000 didn’t. And I’m including the many who did had couple mescaline trips, got (properly) scared and swore all hallucinogens off. At least down Texas, this stuff got around pretty far.
20 year old brains can take a lot of abuse physically- its the psychological damage that is incalculable, alright. The whole world could be said to have lost its way late 1960’s - as many have said. LSD and Hinduism were big engines.
We didn’t listen to our catechism teachers etc. And there was complete ignorance of the Eastern Ways. Total denial.
LSD affected individuals very differently, plus a lot of it was mixed with other stuff which made it even worse.
Nothing worse than fake holy men/priests/swamis/reverends etc. If they want to be criminals/con artists etc, they should take off the robes/collar etc and at least be an honest criminal/pedophile/murderer.
Fake holy men/religious leaders are the very worse of criminals.
Read about this in “Monkey on a A Stick.”
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