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- [00:01]
Julian Walker
Support comes from Wise.
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Julian Walker
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- [00:35]
Natai Joseph
Hey, sweetie. Your mother showed me this Carvana thing for selling the car. I'm gonna give it a try. Wish me luck.
- [00:42]
Julian Walker
Me again.
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Natai Joseph
I put in the license plate. It gave me an offer. Unbelievable. Okay, I accepted the offer. They're picking it up Tuesday from the driveway. I haven't even left my chair.
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Advertisement Voice
It's done.
- [00:53]
Natai Joseph
The car is gone. I'm holding a check anyway.
- [00:55]
Julian Walker
Carvana.
- [00:56]
Natai Joseph
Give it a whirl. Love ya.
- [00:58]
Julian Walker
So good you'll wanna leave a voicemail about it.
- [01:00]
Advertisement Voice
Sell your car today on Carvana. Pickup fees may apply.
- [01:05]
Matthew Remsky
Hello, everyone. Matthew here with a little intro to the reposting of our episode 152from just over three years ago, May 4, 2023. Tulsi Gambard's Krishna Consciousness with Natai Joseph. Why repost, you ask? Well, let me read you the show notes from the original. What does it mean for a prominent American politician to come as the sleeper cell of an eccentric Hindu American cult? Does she act independently or has her God man got her on speed dial? Can she bridge the divide between left and right with the radiant glow of Ka Consciousness? And. Well, according to new investigative reporting from John swain published on June 25 in the Washington Post, we nailed looks like Guru Jagad Siddhaswarupananda Parmahamsa. Chris Butler had Tulsi Gab on a very long set of marionette strings strung with marigolds stretching all the way back to his ashram in Hawaii. Swain got access to over 25,000 pages of documents, including hundreds of encrypted memos, emails, Skype messages and social media records spanning from 2011 to 2017. And he found consistent parallels between Butler's alleged directives and Gabbard's legislative actions, TV talking, talking points and social media posts. Gabbard's office has, of course, denied the allegations, calling them anti Hindu bigotry. So that's very important, dear listener, as you consider who you are going to believe. Now, we got invaluable help on this episode from our guest, Natai Joseph, who shares some heritage with Gabbard because he too grew up in a breakaway Hare Krishna sect. And unlike Gabbard, he went on to learn about what exactly he'd been through, getting a Master's of Science in the psychology of Coercive control, and then going on to work across a range of issues connected to ideology and manipulation, including cultic awareness, child sexual abuse prevention, adverse meditation experiences, and organizational ethics and accountability. So here you go. Episode 152 A Rewind Presentation Everything Old is New Again. Hello everybody. Welcome to Conspirituality Podcast. My name is Matthew Remsky.
- [03:46]
Julian Walker
I'm Julian Walker.
- [03:47]
Matthew Remsky
You can follow us on conspiritualitypod on Instagram and you can subscribe at Patreon and Apple Podcasts now.
- [03:56]
Julian Walker
This past week on Patreon, Matthew, you did a really great Ask Me Anything livestream that ended up being about RFK Jr and astrology and surviving the cynicism of being immersed in conspiracy and cult subject matter as we are.
- [04:12]
Matthew Remsky
Yeah, I did do that and it was great. I really love the questions that we get. They're very, very thoughtful from our supporters. I really like this format. I'm looking forward to continuing it.
- [04:24]
Julian Walker
Yeah. And then this past Monday, Derek dropped a bonus episode for our Patreon supporters, unpacking how wellness rhetoric employ apocalyptic themes. And he also explores in that bonus how perhaps secular Buddhism could be an effective antidote to that kind of fundamentalism. Please remember that you can pre order our book either through the link at the bottom of the show notes here or if you can't find those, just go to our website conspirituality.net we got this endorsement from our friend yoga teacher Sean Korn, who was one of the early industry leaders to realize that QAnon was RIPP through the yoga world.
- [05:05]
Matthew Remsky
Yeah, she was. And she she really paid for it too. You can read about that in the book. Anyway, Sean says Conspirituality is a fascinating, straightforward, well researched and sobering unpacking of the complex history and present day phenomena of distorted beliefs within New Age yoga and wellness spaces. These beliefs, when devoid of magical thinking, expose the deep fears and distrust that often lead well intended and vulnerable folks to embrace conspiracy as fact, value feelings over critical thinking thinking and recognize intuition as the ultimate guide for reality. A reality that often mitigates science, evidence based research, or even common sense. Having had a front row seat to the ways in which conspiracy theories and misinformation divide communities and the impact these beliefs have had on valued relationships, I highly recommend reading Conspirituality to understand how we have come to this place in our collective awareness and the profound effect it has proven to have on our emotional, mental, and physical health and wellness. Wow.
- [06:07]
Julian Walker
That is a comprehensive blurb. Thank you so much, Sean. Conspirituality152 Tulsi Gabbard's Krishna Consciousness with Nitai Joseph.
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Advertisement Voice
Madana mohana.
- [06:47]
Matthew Remsky
Dear listeners, these are the dulcet tones of Jagad Guru Siddhaswarupananda Paramahamsa Chris Butler, backed by a chorus of voices from his cult, the Science of Identity foundation in Hawaii. These are the soothing, ethereal, immersive vibes that enchanted Mike and Carol Gabbard in the late 1970s as they found themselves in Butler's divine grace and built their lives around his every whim. These are the vibes that lulled their daughter Tulsi Gabbard in her cradle, that attended her homeschooled and ashram education, serenaded her rise to fame as a representative of her guru's mission, and likely haunt her dreams to the present day. Because Gabbard remains a close devotee of Butler and the relationship isn't just one to one, it's more like a network. Many of her staffers are Butler devotees, as is her husband, who films her as though he's filming a goddess. And as we'll explore in this episode, this whole scene may tell us a lot more about her choices and directions than any political analysis can offer. After all, Chris Butler does not hold your typical political objectives. According to former group members, to be devoted to him is to seek the divine path, away from all worldly concerns and impurities. It means serving him hand and foot. And while you're in the group, it evidently means never mentioning how weird and dominating he is, how secretive, controlling, germaphobic, puritanical, obsessed with his followers, sex lives, and like the Hare Ka leaders, he learned from burning with hatred for gay people. Today we ask the questions, what does it mean for a prominent American politician to come into power as the sleeper cell of an eccentric Hindu American cult? Does Gabbard act independently or has her God man got her on speed dial? Can she bridge the divide between left and right with the radiant glow of Ka consciousness? Joining us today to help answer these questions is Natai Joseph. He shares some heritage with Gabbard because he also grew up in a Hare Ka sect. He holds a Master of Science in the psychology of coercive control and studies manipulation, cultic techniques, child sexual abuse prevention, adverse meditation experiences and and organizational ethics. All right, Julian, just pretend for A moment that you don't know anything about Tulsi Gabbard, nothing about her politics, nothing about her background. You click on a YouTube link and she's center screen speaking directly to you. What's your first impression?
- [09:58]
Julian Walker
Well, I mean, the obvious first impression is she's very beautiful. She comes across as strong and very confident in what she has to say.
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Matthew Remsky
I agree with that. Now, Natai, as we're going to hear, I think this is a more complicated question for you. It's a little bit closer to home, but if you can just eek it out, imagine that you forget that Tulsi Gabbard grew up in an offshoot cult from the cult that you grew up in. If you saw her giving a speech on the steps of your state capitol, what would your first impression be before you even grasped what she was saying?
- [10:37]
Natai Joseph
She's always reminded me a little bit of Storm from X Men because at least when I was a kid, the cartoon that was on, they had like, a gray strip in her hair. And I know she. She says that's to, like, commemorate battle and those lost in battle. Now, that's like, how she explains it. Beyond that, I think there's a confusing array of subjects that get grouped together and then also sort of a blend of very passionate proclamations with what seems like really scripted statements. And like, again, it's just that contrast is confusing. Depending on the blurb one heard her saying, it could sound pretty appealing to me at least, especially in years past. You know, that's becoming less and less the case. But, you know, there's a lot of issues, and she doesn't necessarily fall where you'd assume on each one. And so depending on what she's talking about, a lot of different people might find something that they're like, oh, yeah, good point. You know.
- [11:46]
Julian Walker
Right.
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Matthew Remsky
Well, there is something of kind of like a universalist sheen to her. And the word that comes to me is darshan, really, which is, you know, kind of what people in Indian religious tradition traditions talk about when they're in the presence of somebody who's, you know, giving some kind of discourse, especially if it's philosophical or religious. So she's meticulously put together. I. I mean, many celebrities and politicians are, but there's something on top of the, you know, really tight wardrobe, the perfect hair, the calibrated lighting. It's like she presents as a kind of icon in a religious sense. Like, I feel like clasping my hands in prayer when I see her. You. As though she's rendered in you Know, plaster and encased in varnish or something like that. I feel, though, that I also could spend a lot of time sort of contemplating her and never really have the sense of who she is in herself because, like, it feels like she's there to manifest something abstract. So, I don't know, I have this uncanny sense that she's not a politician, a typical politician with typical political goals, that something else is happening.
- [13:01]
Julian Walker
Okay, so who is Tulsi Gabbard, really? Hawaiian, Samoan, Hindu, pro level surfer? Her name is the Sanskrit word for holy basil, a pungent herb used for millennia in India for spiritual clarity and subtle body healing. Gabbard is a military vet who is against foreign military action, but also a huge Islamophobe who's fond of dictators. Her dad is a Democrat state senator, most famous for being one of those homophobes who's so obnoxious and single minded about it, you have to wonder what's really going on for him.
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Matthew Remsky
Yeah, old man Gabbard is just a little bit obsessed with what the boys are consensually doing with their penises, I think.
- [13:49]
Julian Walker
Tulsi became the first congressperson to be sworn in with her hand on the Bhagavad Gita after winning her seat in 2012. In 2016, she endorsed Bernie even though they aligned on almost nothing but reducing or avoiding foreign military intervention. As a Democrat also ran presidential candidate in 2020, she eventually dropped out to endorse Biden, which really threw her growing MAGA fan base for a loop. In Mike Prysner's great overview for qaa, he dubbed her a political chameleon.
- [14:23]
Matthew Remsky
Yeah, and I would strongly encourage all of you to listen to those two episodes with Preizner, who's. It's super comprehensive in terms of Gabbard's background and orientation. We've also got really good profiles from New York Magazine and the New Yorker. But I think that Preizner's chameleon tag is perfect because Gabbard is famously slippery. And this has led to all kinds of speculation that we can't falsify. You know, things like, she must be a Russian asset, or she's on the payroll of Narendra Modi, or she's a chaos agent who's attempting to fuck up Democrat minds in solidarity, including through her latest move of just breaking her affiliation with the Democratic Party and declaring herself as an independent natai. When you hear these takes, I suspect that you hear something is missing. Is that. Is that fair? Do you think?
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Natai Joseph
It's. It's oversimplified to think of her often in those ways. I think that she is a true believer, to the best of my understanding and assessment. And like, with that becomes. Or with that comes ends, justifies the means, mentality, serving this transcendental aim, ultimately, as she would see it. And then with that and with being sort of the face of her sect in a sense, like, you know, Butler's very private. I think there can easily be a sense of, like, being empowered to act on stages larger than she is and use that to their advantage rather than be used by it, perhaps naive in my view. And then I think that when someone talks about someone being an asset, it sort of is a little loaded. It's sort of clandestine and implying one party's aims being executed through the other. But, you know, in some instances, like a lot of stuff with Modi, I imagine her true views align with his.
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Julian Walker
Yeah. I mean, I've formed the impression over time that she may be even more available to letting ideological concerns take a back seat both to her ambition and perhaps to the higher calling she may be driven by in terms of achieving those ambitions.
- [16:47]
Matthew Remsky
You know, Natay, you pinged Chris Butler, and that's getting ahead of ourselves a little bit because we have to sort of get into who he is. That's fine, that's fine. But, you know, and we're going to be pinging her, her record throughout the episode, but you have this background that gives us the opportunity to imagine our way into what it might have felt like to grow up and to still be in, as is the case with Gabbard, her entire life in the Science of Identity Cult, and how that might play a, you know, a continued but difficult to see role in her current actions. And I think the reason that we're doing this is that we're in a particularly strange political moment where there are now, I would say, three challengers to top positions who are presenting a very scrambled and religiously inflected politics that doesn't align with material realities or the potential for real coalition building. And, you know, there have always been waves of religion in politics and especially American politics, but today these religions are novel. They're not well known, they're volatile. And they're volatile because they are governed more by charisma than by strong and diverse communities of faith.
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Julian Walker
Yeah. So, for example, we have Marianne Williamson coming from the left with regard to her policy proposals and posturing, I would say, but still compromised by the bootstrap metaphysics of the Love Alone is real gaslighting of a course in Miracles. And then we have RFK Jr. Perhaps a little more centrist, but squandering his family's social capital on anti vaxx messaging photo ops with Mike Flynn and speaking at evangelical churches about the coming apocalypse. And then here we have Tulsi Gabbard, whose fluidity can best be understood through the infinite resilience she's been trained to exhibit by the high demand group that surrounds a white Hawaii based surfer dude named Chris Butler who founded an offshoot of the Hare Krishna movement in 1966.
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Matthew Remsky
Let's just plunk our thesis down at the top here. I think what we're going to present makes an argument that the fluidity of Gabbard's political identity reflects her true commitments to a charismatic religious movement and its grandiose reactionary ideas. Do you think, do you think that's fair, Natai?
- [19:22]
Natai Joseph
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that the, the fluidity is really this ends justifies the means mentality that I think appears in all sort of totalistic ideologies. And we, we see it a lot with certain Christian politicians already like Dominionists. And there's kind of these two core aspects of that. The first being like democracy is an impediment to their ultimate aims. But also the second being like democracy just isn't a good system. It's not, you know, we often speak about something being anti democratic with the assumption that everyone in the discussion puts a negative on that, and that's just not necessarily the case. And a strong example of that is the founder of the Hare Krishna movement, of which Tulsi's in an offshoot is often quoted and on record as referring to democracy as demon crazy. The word play is popular with the gurus.
- [20:29]
Matthew Remsky
Wow, I hadn't heard that. Had you heard that, Julian?
- [20:33]
Julian Walker
No, I had not. That's pretty phenomenal. I want to say that. I think that's a really astute observation. And what we see here is a kind of the emergence of very similar themes on both the left and the right in terms of a kind of revivalist political religion that, you know, like, like with, with a lot of the evangelicals, people spend a lot of time trying to make sense of how they could endorse someone like Donald Trump who is so obviously amoral and not, not a religious person. And it was like, well, the ends really justify the means and Trump is going to get us what we want and lo and behold, the stacked Supreme Court. Right.
- [21:13]
Matthew Remsky
So, Natai, if we're asking you for insight into Gabbard's inner life and motivations, let's just run down your own life credentials first because you grew up in iskcon, so can you tell us a little bit about that?
- [21:28]
Natai Joseph
Yeah, and I want to also acknowledge that anything we'll say that I'll say at least, you know, is speculation as to her internal experience and motives, but, but with some additional background. So I just want to acknowledge, and hopefully I'll provide the appropriate caveats throughout for myself. I was really raised on the fringes of ISKCON and within iskcon, the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. Fringes is kind of the term they have for the lapsed members, the people who kind of show up on high holidays, so to speak, or things, things like that. And so that's kind of how I grew up. But my parents had both joined in their youth, so obviously their entire adult lives had been shaped by it. It was basically an arranged marriage for my parents. You know, my mom was given an option of two men who were interested in her and my name is a hare Krishna name, etc. So despite, you know, me personally going to public school as a kid, it was always sort of threaded there in the background and then more kind of systemic ways, you know, the impact of that ideology on a family. So my father left when I was a baby and that is encouraged as, you know, a form of renunciation, etc.
- [22:50]
Matthew Remsky
Oh, like men are actually encouraged to
- [22:54]
Natai Joseph
take, not take leave of newborns.
- [22:57]
Matthew Remsky
Okay.
- [22:58]
Natai Joseph
But you know, there is some notion of, of I could go into it at length, you know, any, any like monastic environment and maybe this will come up a bit later. Makes family household status, second class to some extent.
- [23:14]
Matthew Remsky
Right.
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Natai Joseph
So for a lot of people in my parents generation, the men had been Brahmacharis, you know, celibates. And then the move to marriage is like a lessening of their spiritual standard, you know, and so there's just so much baggage attached to families existing. It's like.
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Matthew Remsky
Right.
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Natai Joseph
The evidence of you not being better. And so when I say he was encouraged, it was like literally as a well known speaker and writer, he specifically was praised for going to India and preaching and speaking and so on.
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Matthew Remsky
Right.
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Natai Joseph
I grew up on the fringes, but that really made the space for me to have of a conversion experience of sorts when I was a teenager. And so like my brother had become very devout and preached to me and that started shaping my thinking. And a few years later, so I got real into it, started participating at the local temple and ultimately joined a small offshoot sect called Sri Chaitanya Sangha, led by a Guy named Tripurari Swami, who had been within ISKCON and had branched out.
- [24:31]
Matthew Remsky
How would you say, in general, the ISKCON experience shaped your brain in childhood?
- [24:36]
Natai Joseph
It's a lot of these indirect impacts, you know, like the emotional instability of a mother who was in a, you know, unhealthy marriage that then ended abruptly, too, and is beholden to these ideals that don't give you a lot of tools for. For health, you know.
- [24:56]
Advertisement Voice
Right.
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Natai Joseph
And so I think that that had a lot of indirect impacts, the sort of disdain for mainstream culture. You know, Prabhupada, the founder, they like to quote him as saying that secular schools are slaughterhouses of the soul. So when I decided I wanted to leave school at 13, my mom was like, cool, you know, and so my life began getting very unusual at that point.
- [25:23]
Matthew Remsky
Wow.
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Natai Joseph
And so, you know, that. That then brings in things. You know, kids who went to boarding schools often were understimulated. And then in the aftermath of some of these maladaptive childhoods, there's a lot of Hari Krishna kids getting substance use and things like that young. So there's that component attachment. You know, it's funny because, like, you both are familiar with Eastern thought, so you understand how extremely loaded the word attachment is in those ideologies. And then to realize, like, attachment theory is, like, one of the most established psychological models for interpersonal health that exists. And it's like, that's a big gulf there. So I think that's definitely a factor that comes through. Even despite my mother being a loving person, she was a hippie prior to joining, she still had a lot of those values. And nonetheless, she didn't at times even know what's the okay way to love a child because of all this rhetoric about detachment and, like, the enrapturing nature of family life.
- [26:52]
Julian Walker
Would it be fair, a fair sort of statement on what you're talking about, to say that within this religious belief system, if you love too much, if you bond too closely, if you are, in other words, too attached to your family members, you're actually hindering the both their spiritual progress and your own spiritual progress. Because the true goal is to renounce the world and to focus, to put. Basically put all your eggs in the basket of the divine, a thousand percent.
- [27:22]
Natai Joseph
And I would say the slightly trickier layer that gets added in, like a bhakti devotional tradition is that they don't just say, detach to nothingness. They say, redirect all that love to Krishna, to a guru. Cook delicious food for them. Like you would A child, so on and so forth. And so there's a, there's a, a form of validating that humanity within that. But it, but then it goes on to basically say the only way that's not exploitation is once you've transcended the material world. So, so it then very quickly undermines humanity again.
- [28:03]
Matthew Remsky
So it might be cooking food, it might also like be the creation of a very, you know, powerful political Persona that is actually really appealing to a lot of people.
- [28:16]
Natai Joseph
Yes, yes, absolutely.
- [28:18]
Matthew Remsky
All right, so you passed through the period of being devout and now you have gone on to get a really sort of fulsome education in the psychology of coercion. Right. Like this has become something that you now study.
- [28:34]
Natai Joseph
Yeah, I think that I always had a pull for psychology. I was in the temple, living in a yurt, reading, you know, Scott Peck and Erich Fromm and things like that. And you know, there's, there's highly appealing to spiritual people type of psychologists.
- [28:55]
Julian Walker
Sure. But also like humanistic, sacrilegious kind of psychologists.
- [29:00]
Natai Joseph
Exactly, exactly.
- [29:01]
Matthew Remsky
Yeah.
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Natai Joseph
A lot of great, great stuff in them. Absolutely. I think. And so like even I, you know, reading, if you're familiar, like A Different Drum, which is like Scott Peck's book all about like community building and community dynamics. And I remember and he goes into like his study of veterans of that awful massacre in Vietnam that he worked with professionally, like who participated in this massacre. And he's talking about like the social power of emblems. And I'm like reading this at night in the temple and we had just made our new logo and we're like getting it printed on things and I'm like, so I think that thread was in me.
- [29:46]
Julian Walker
So the answer really is to ban books. I mean, if you want to keep everyone on the straight and narrow, you're making a good case here.
- [29:55]
Natai Joseph
You're not wrong. It was the double edged sword of us wanting to be and appear intellectual and well thought through. I was given that leash and took advantage of it.
- [30:06]
Matthew Remsky
Okay, well, to zoom out a little bit or maybe even in, I don't even know. I've got queued up a video made by Tulsi Gabbard's teen that came out in 2016. And it's a little bit different from what listeners would typically hear from her. If you've heard podcast clips or interviews on Fox or CNN or whatever. This is a religious address that is dedicated to the celebration of a feast day called Janmashtami. And it runs about three minutes, but I think it will help us get into the vibe of this part of her life and how it plays out. This is not that long ago and I imagine that if she was to do a message for Janmashtami this year, it would be somewhat. So let's relax, let's close our eyes, let's take a few deep breaths and we'll listen to Tulsi here.
- [31:13]
Advertisement Voice
Today is a very special day because it's the celebration of Janmastamy, Lord Krishna's appearance in this world some 5,000 years ago. On this day, I'm especially grateful to be reminded that whether we are aware of God or not, and regardless of what name we know him by, God is our best friend. He is present in the heart of all of us, patiently waiting for us to turn to him and always willing to give us guidance, shelter and unconditional love. Krishna tells us that the essence of real spirituality is our personal, loving relationship with Him. In Krishna's Bhagavad Gita, the Supreme Lord abandon all varieties of religion and just surrender unto me. I shall deliver you from all sinful reaction. Do not fear. This is true spirituality. True spirituality means love for God. It means one's personal, loving relationship with the supreme soul. It doesn't mean belonging to a particular group or organization. In the past, I've described how I was raised in a multi faith family. But perhaps a better way to describe it would be a faith inclusive family. It wasn't as if my Catholic father was on one spiritual team and my Hindu mother was on the opposing team. It really wasn't until my late teens that I became became aware of the concept of sectarianism. The false notion that there are many distinct and opposing religions, each with their own God and each the enemy or competitor of the other. The true Vaiava Hindu perspective is not like this. Rather it is very inclusive. We focus on the essence of real religion, which is spiritual love. According to Vaishnava, in Anishinava Hinduism, there's one supreme being who is called many names by different people around the world at different times. It's not that there is a Christian God, a Buddhist God, a Hindu God or a Muslim God all competing with each other. There is only one God, although we may call him by different names. It is the loving exchange one has with God that is true spirituality. And one who is experiencing such love for God is able to see beyond our external differences and designations and recognize that we are all relatives in the deepest sense. We are all children of the same supreme Lord. This is the message of Bhagavad Gita. The message of love, of how we can achieve real harmony with others, no matter the different backgrounds we come from. Jaya Sri Krishna.
- [34:06]
Matthew Remsky
Wow.
- [34:07]
Julian Walker
I mean, how do you argue with that though? My heart is really open right now.
- [34:12]
Matthew Remsky
It's incredible. She has such a beautiful voice. Can we just say that like incredible. She could be a voice actor anyway, I guess we're gonna kind of get to that, right?
- [34:27]
Natai Joseph
But Natasha, she could be a, a Siri. She has a beautiful, very machine like voice.
- [34:36]
Matthew Remsky
Oh, fantastic. Wouldn't that be great? Tulsi, can you find me Anyway, Natanja, I'm assuming that this language and the affect is very familiar to you. You know, can you describe the positive or perhaps, I don't know, idealized the glowing sensations of devotion that ISKCON members feel in their reverie? And I'm asking because it feels like she's in a state of pleasure in this statement. Although, you know, who really knows Before
- [35:18]
Natai Joseph
I answer that, because I hadn't listened to this clip recently, I just have to flag because Julian made a face. This, this, this Bhagavad Gita quote she gave about surrender unto me and I'll deliver you from all sin. This is a really significant verse internally for them, but also externally. There's a famous case in the 80s where an underage girl had joined the Hare Krishnas, been wedded to older man who was basically shuffling her around the country so that her parents couldn't find her. Ultimately this went to a court case as the Hare Krishna's know, the Robin George case. And one of the things that Iskan guru had to testify about was, does this verse give you license to do whatever you want?
- [36:08]
Advertisement Voice
Wow.
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Natai Joseph
And so he had to specifically explain away this I'll deliver you from all sin if you just do what I want kind of attitude. And, and so I, I think that's important to, to note.
- [36:24]
Matthew Remsky
Yeah.
- [36:24]
Natai Joseph
So to your question, I think that Tulsi has access to something that not even all ISKCON members have, which is when you have a living guru who you're in proximity with and in close relationship with, with the texture of that blissful experience which comes and goes. But the feeling of that satisfaction is much richer and more real. And I remember specific instances where the sense of how pleased my guru was with me, how, how fulfilling that that could be and feel, you know, and I often think of thought control, so to speak, if we're gonna use a term like that in my mind, at least in my experience was really like this point at which the truest Feelings I felt in a variety of circumstances were the ones that the ideology would dictate you to feel. It wasn't like I was feeling one way and talking myself into feeling another way. It was like I genuinely, the truest emotion that I possibly had access to was I was happy when I was supposed to be happy, because whatever, something good for the collective, I was ashamed when I'm supposed to be ashamed, and so on. And so at that point the like, whatever, the leader, the enforcer, whatever you want is internalized. It's just, it's seamless, you know. And so I would imagine that's probably the case for her. On the flip side, I have to imagine that her life would be exhausting. I mean, all the, all the jet setting, all the appearances, all the image management. And then I think being a leader when you're actually a puppet, for lack of a better word, you're at the behest of someone else, is a really tricky and often unresolvable situation to be in. I can just imagine she's traveling around and has a better pulse on the public than Chris Butler might her guru. But is his take determining how she speaks about an issue, et cetera. And that becomes really hard or how you're even managing your own inner team.
- [39:10]
Julian Walker
The thing that really stood out to me that I actually wanted to ask you about Nitai, is that it's a very outward facing message. It's very much a message of it doesn't matter. It's not about belonging to a group. It doesn't matter what name you have for God. Exactly. And what's, what really matters is that you, that you have this true spirituality, which is the true essential meaning of all holy texts. As, as I'm going to quote you now from the Bhagavad Gita, it's like this, there's this ecumenical kind of syncretist, you know, it wouldn't be out of place with, with within theosophy or something like that, within like a lot of New Age movements where it's like, oh yes, we just draw wisdom of all the ascended masters.
- [39:56]
Matthew Remsky
It's so disingenuous though, because I mean, if you're quoting out of the Bhagavad Gita and saying, you know, this is the essence of real religion, which is a combination of all religions. Come on, this, it's like the most sectarian thing you could do.
- [40:10]
Julian Walker
As the Bhagavad Gita says, all religions are true.
- [40:13]
Matthew Remsky
Yeah, exactly.
- [40:14]
Natai Joseph
This goes way back. I mean, this isn't, you know, novel to them. This goes back to in one form, you know, a British India where you have people wanting to legitimize themselves to a Christian culture. And so you see in Prabhupada and well before Prabhupada, some real feats, like there was one person in the Hare Krishna lineage who tried to analogize like the avatars of Vishnu to like evolution because there's some like animal complexity moving towards human kind of thing. So really you see a lot of that. I think I forgot my other point you just finished on.
- [41:02]
Julian Walker
Well, just talking about this outward facing message being really inclusive and economical.
- [41:07]
Natai Joseph
I think that also it's not very different. To me it's less subtle. But perennialism as I basically view it is like Edwaita Vedanta as supposedly the essence of all religion. And there's a very disrespectful hubristic intellectual move in that, which is to say, like, you know, okay, extrinsically like the Christians can have their version and the Buddhists can have their version, but like intrinsically what they're all actually getting at is this thing. And the language we're going to use to articulate that thing comes from one of those traditions.
- [41:49]
Advertisement Voice
Yeah.
- [41:50]
Julian Walker
So it's all non dual awakening as laid out in Advaita Vedanta. But actually all of the traditions are referring to that. But the thing that I also always find fascinating about that too is that's almost like the do your own research version of interfaith spirituality. Right. Because you can discover for yourself this ultimate truth and then you'll realize that that's what all the religions have been
- [42:12]
Natai Joseph
talking about anyway, the wisdom traditions.
- [42:14]
Matthew Remsky
Yes, Natai. I just want to come back to the exhaustion for a moment, which I find very poignant because to think about the cultivation of this person's image as being wrapped in a kind of glow of wellness with the surfing and there's a lot I've seen, I can't be specific about it, but I've seen a lot of, you know, I was out for a jog this morning or this
- [42:40]
Natai Joseph
is me doing this particularly and like, here's my workout.
- [42:44]
Advertisement Voice
Yeah.
- [42:45]
Natai Joseph
And yeah, yeah.
- [42:46]
Matthew Remsky
I don't know if she does food stuff, but I imagine that there's a fair amount of food purity involved with science of identity. And I guess it's very interesting to think of the person who is cultivating an image of wellness whilst being exhausted working for others, you know, but it wouldn't work otherwise, like if you did look haggard as the mouthpiece of your Sect. It. It wouldn't fly, would it?
- [43:20]
Natai Joseph
Yeah, yeah. And I think what I wonder about is I really believe that people who get to a certain level of guruness like this, like, pathological need for control at a scale that, you know, extends even beyond like an abusive family, I feel like they somehow have just this fountain of energy for that activity. Like, you know, Trump is an old man who, as the former right hand man to a guru, I saw how much work it takes to meddle in even a small number of people's lives all the time and, and always be angling for something really.
- [44:07]
Matthew Remsky
So.
- [44:07]
Natai Joseph
So I have to wonder, like, does she have that? Has that been cultivated in her? Or is it like I was? Which was like falling asleep at the wheel. Because I'm doing the bidding of the mission and I'm truly, truly exhausted. This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome.
- [44:34]
Julian Walker
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Natai Joseph
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Julian Walker
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Natai Joseph
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Julian Walker
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- [44:46]
Natai Joseph
Gemini and Chrome is here for it,
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Julian Walker
ready to make anything online make sense.
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Natai Joseph
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Julian Walker
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- [44:53]
Natai Joseph
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- [44:57]
Matthew Remsky
And we're live from the living room as Doug eyes up the match day spread. He's reaching for the buffalo wing. Perfect. Hang on, what's the this? Oh, he's gone for a can of Pepsi too. Incredible. What a finish. Sensational combination. Look at the delight on his face. There's no doubt about it. It just tastes better. Match days deserve Pepsi. Food deserves Pepsi. Grab a pack of Pepsi. Zero sugar for today's match. It's poetry in motion.
- [45:27]
Natai Joseph
I wrote a little song to remind you. Choice hotels gets you more of the experiences you value. The Cambria Hotel's got it all. A rooftop bar, have a ball, bring
- [45:37]
Matthew Remsky
a date, your squad or even your mom.
- [45:39]
Natai Joseph
Book direct@ChoiceHotels.com how did we get into this?
- [45:43]
Advertisement Voice
The chanting of the names of God, right? They say, oh, you're just programming yourself. That may be that I am programming myself, see, but I'm the one doing it. I want to do what I know will have a good effect on my consciousness. I don't want to just hand my consciousness over to you and say, here, you do what you want with it. I'm saying, hey, I want my consciousness back. I want my mind back. And I'm going to try to make it so that my mind, my consciousness is of a Certain is a certain way. And what way is that? Well, I've received information from great spiritual masters and scripture. I received information from God that I can influence my consciousness by engaging in particular activities. I can hear and chant God's names. I can study his Word. I can associate with people who are trying to develop their love for him. And I will gradually influence my own consciousness. See, that's my freedom to influence my own consciousness as I want to. They're saying, no, you don't have to. That you're not. But what you're doing is. You're becoming a robot. No, just that I am gradually leaving your influence and entering into the influence of the supreme Lord. I will be influenced by someone. The question is whether or not I will be the servant of the materialistic people, whether I'll be the servant of my senses, whether or not I will be under the influence of. Influence of material nature, in other words, or whether or not I will be under the influence of God. God's influence. I want to be under God's influence. I trust God and I don't trust the materialists. If I'm going to put myself, put my consciousness, put my heart in someone's hands, it's going to be God, not some materialistic person whose only interest is exploiting me.
- [47:43]
Matthew Remsky
So there's a little bit of Chris Butler on YouTube talking about how all he's doing with these followers is helping them get free of their programming to get away from those who would exploit them. What a guy. All right. As we've established, Gabbard grows up in a parallel world to your world, Nathai. But as the founder of Science of Identity, Butler, Chris Butler, the leader that Tulsi Gabbard has had this relationship with for her entire life, is described by many ex devotees as, you know, a megalomaniac control freak who's the head of a very secretive organization. He's a germaphobe. He's obsessed with sex and sexual deviancy. And he positions himself beside God, really, in terms of the respect he demands and all of the titles and the multiple Sanskrit names. You know, followers need permission for really everything. What to eat, when to fast, whether they can hold jobs or have relationships outside of the group.
- [48:56]
Julian Walker
Children born in the group were isolated in ashram schools, which of course failed to provide adequate literacy skills. And they report an immersive context of complete obedience and surrender, but also being terrorized by Butler's constant catastrophizing about homosexuality and perversion.
- [49:17]
Matthew Remsky
Yeah, and famously, there's a Butler school in The Philippines, where his followers would be pressured to send their kids. And Gabbard actually went there for two years in high school after being homeschooled. And funding for the group in general is coming from various businesses that the devotees run. So there are vegetarian food shops and farms. And then also there's gotta be income from the yoga accessories company founded by his wife Wylana. And so, Julian, do you remember the Y Lana Company as kind of like a fixture in the brochures and the catalogs of yoga supply companies?
- [49:58]
Julian Walker
She was just very well represented. I feel like her image was everywhere for a while. Right when those catalogs were the way to sell those kind of products. Very colorful, wearing like this headdress and always smiling. And there's just the beautiful scenes of nature behind her. She was ubiquitous.
- [50:18]
Natai Joseph
Yeah, she was on my TV as a kid growing up on, on just basic tv, on public broadcasting. There was a show, I think like five days a week maybe where she's doing yoga on a giant rock in the ocean and like the waves are crashing against it. And I didn't know until years later that that was the case. Yeah. I also want to mention that Tulsi's father, I believe, at least at, for some time, ran the school in the Philippines as well.
- [50:48]
Matthew Remsky
If we are looking at Gabbard as being the child of a high demand group who's risen to political power, let's imagine the most generous and non polarizing intention we could have for that discussion. What do you think, Natay?
- [51:03]
Natai Joseph
Yeah, I tend to come at this kind of through the lens that I come at a lot of my different work now around manipulation, influence in different settings, which, you know, one of the core frameworks that I lean on is really the betrayal trauma and betrayal blindness frameworks that then, you know, also evolved into institutional betrayal, et cetera. But you know, really at the core of that, what's being said is that when harm, abuse, hurt is coming from the same source as, as love, safety, spiritual guidance, whatever, being able to understand that harm accurately becomes very difficult, if not impossible. And if we become aware of it there in, in this theory, you know, you either have to confront it or get away from it. You can't just live in ongoing awareness of betrayal indefinitely. And so that's where Frey proposes, like betrayal blindness, which is like the mechanism that makes the intolerable, tolerable when there's no perceived escape. And so she has this like, very beautiful poetic phrase, you know, that betrayal blindness occurs when the stakes of knowing are too high. And so, so My view would be that Tulsi was born into this kind of deal where the, the stakes of independence are life and death socially and, and when you're a child actually often physically, you know, there, there's no, no option there. And so I think I certainly can have sympathy for that.
- [52:55]
Matthew Remsky
Yeah, I'm glad that you're referencing Frayed. We'll put those resources into the show. Notes.
- [53:03]
Julian Walker
Well, I want to say too natai, because you mentioned attachment theory earlier. There's significant kind of resonance here with the most difficult attachment style that people developed disorganized attachment where there is that association between the person you're relying on for survival also being the person and you're afraid of.
- [53:27]
Natai Joseph
Yeah. And of course Alex Stein's book delves into this great terror, love and brainwashing. I find that really goes well with the betrayal trauma theory.
- [53:38]
Advertisement Voice
Yeah.
- [53:39]
Matthew Remsky
Okay, so let's look at some overlaps and contrasts between ISKCON and Science of Identity. We've gotten into it a little bit so far, but let's, let's go a little bit farther in the ty. What would you say the main overlaps and contrasts would be?
- [53:54]
Natai Joseph
I think a lot about scale because as a group grows, its relevance to the society beyond it also grows. And so the potential eyes on it, accountability on it may, may increase. And so you know, the Catholic Church ultimately at least feels or should be, you know, more accountable to the public than some obscure little group who's, who's relatively unknown. And so I think in that secrecy and smallness a lot of unhealthy things can flourish even more than in large scale organizations. And I mean we don't need to get into it but you know, science of identity has historical connections to huge drug smuggling, you know, international heroin rings. This is mentioned in QAnon Anonymous episode. One thing they don't mention was when two followers killed themselves building a bomb for a slaughterhouse because this extreme extremism, vegetarianism, this was in New Zealand. And in the process of that they killed themselves. I saw the newspaper clipping. I was a bit in disbelief myself. So I think that that the sort of secondary tertiary effects of size and secrecy are one of the differences. And also related to size is like the whole group can take on the leaders idiosyncrasies which in this case include like covering stuff in tinfoil and checking for toxins in the air. And so you know, it's a much smaller dissemination pool to get everyone to be weird in those ways. And this was certainly the case in my experience. The Guru in a small group can really meddle in every person's life in a pretty personal way. They can be in their marriage details. They can tell them where to send their kids to school. And that just becomes harder at scale.
- [56:00]
Matthew Remsky
There's a real sort of echo of Dunbar's number here where we have at around 150 or 300 or whatever it is. The leader has the capacity to, as you say, know everybody interpersonally. There's nothing abstract about the connections. And I like what you say about, you know, it's. It's easier for the leader to actually disseminate their oddnesses and have them be mimicked by the entire group, whereas in a larger group that those effects would be more, you know, dissipated. Yeah, it's really interesting.
- [56:31]
Natai Joseph
And I also would say, I mean, I should have mentioned this at the top. The huge distinction is ISKCON is no longer led by one person.
- [56:38]
Matthew Remsky
Person, right.
- [56:39]
Advertisement Voice
Yeah.
- [56:39]
Natai Joseph
You know, so the person that holds the most faith and authority is no longer alive and couldn't be local to you even if they were. And so that requires, like, people to submit to people whom they have less faith in. And so you could probably speak to, like, how the Catholic Church tries to manage this to, you know, to what extent is your local priest considered a one to one representative of the Pope? You know, I don't know.
- [57:12]
Matthew Remsky
Very small, actually. Yeah, I thought, yeah, Very, very low. Very low. Like, I mean. I mean, the parish priests that I grew up with were really kind of administrators in a larger structure. There was no sense that they had individual personalities or, or their own ministries or anything. They read out of the same missile. They were bureaucrats, really.
- [57:32]
Natai Joseph
Right.
- [57:32]
Julian Walker
Yeah, yeah. That contrast that you're talking about, Nithai, I think, is really fascinating. Right. Because you had Prabhupda sort of originally as the figurehead with millions of devotees around the world, I would imagine.
- [57:47]
Natai Joseph
No, that's very effective propaganda on their part.
- [57:53]
Matthew Remsky
Just for the listeners, I want everybody to know that Natai really cracked up there. As soon as he heard a million, he's like, oh, you bought it.
- [58:03]
Natai Joseph
Yeah, I can't recall exactly. I feel like he had somewhere around 10,000 formally initiated followers. You know, probably half of those were gone in years and, you know, nowhere to be heard of ever again. They'll claim like 90,000 globally, I think now. But then there's one number which is like, how many, many different people cross the threshold of the temple this year.
- [58:29]
Julian Walker
Yeah.
- [58:29]
Natai Joseph
Which is much larger. And then there's.
- [58:32]
Matthew Remsky
Oh, it's huge. Yeah, it's huge because there's, because there's kirtan, there's, there's usually a vegetarian restaurant with like really sweet desserts.
- [58:40]
Natai Joseph
And all of the western Hare Krishna world primarily is composed of, you know, Indian Americans, British Indians, et cetera, like the diasporic. And so that's also mellowed out some of the dynamics I think in certain ways. But it creates much larger numbers than there are. People who are initiated, have received a name, have taken formal vows, things like that. But yeah, millions, you'll love that.
- [59:13]
Julian Walker
Billions and billions. But you have this figurehead over a larger group. And then this is contrasted then with these breakaway groups that have that. We were saying you have a smaller group. They can all sort of be more deeply under the sway of the personal idiosyncrasies of a particular leader. And then there's also the interesting historical stuff around after Prabhupda dies. You have these, these multiple appointed leaders. Right. And you were just describing some of the stuff that signs of identity has been involved in in terms of criminality. But it's my impression that that, that's pretty like well distributed amongst all of these different leaders that came into being, whether mainstream or breakaway. Right.
- [60:03]
Natai Joseph
They carved up the planet into 11 sections. And if you joined the Hare Krishnas in this section, this was your guru and that was their like initial attempts. And, and of those 11, yeah, I mean there was stockpiling, weapons theft, breaking into stores, stealing horses in Northern California, there was one of the branches, you know, they all were taking a ton of acid, which is like not, not the tenet. And the guru began sleeping with or a relationship with one of the followers, wives, and the follower killed one of those gurus, one of those 11 gurus. And, and then that's not even to speak of, you know, the financial scam. There were people over in Asia faking heart attacks in high end jewelry stores and robbing them. And like truly, truly is like what some of the temples are built on money from these kind of, of efforts. There's.
- [61:04]
Matthew Remsky
Wait, wait, wait, let's, let's back up there. So, so, so devotees would go into diamond shop in India, fake heart attacks and in the hubbub they would grab the jewels.
- [61:13]
Natai Joseph
Look, I don't know detail, but it was at least a two man job. And it's like it wasn't in India from what I remember, like Japan maybe.
- [61:25]
Matthew Remsky
Okay.
- [61:26]
Natai Joseph
And so what I've imagined is, you know, you pull out the tray of nice stuff and it's being looked at and one you Know, there's an evolution of selling books to people who don't want them is you walk in and
- [61:43]
Matthew Remsky
then you fall over on the tray, it goes everywhere on the floor and you've got one of your kids there to pick up the jewelry. Unbelievable.
- [61:51]
Natai Joseph
Yeah, I don't know the exact. But you know, my former guru was the person who invented what they call the Change up and was flown around the world to train other people, book distributors, on how to do it. And if I understand it correctly, because I didn't do any of this stuff, it was basically a way to use interpersonal domination to get people to end up giving you more money than they had wanted to by like not having the exact change and then sort of like pressuring them into like just, oh, just keep the 20 or what? I can't remember the exact sequence. But you know, they wear wigs, they wear suits, they like.
- [62:36]
Julian Walker
I'm getting. I'm getting like a Hare Krishna, Ocean's Eleven kind of vibe here where there's an elaborate set of grifts that all have, you know, code names. This is the Change Up. This is the Heart Attack.
- [62:50]
Matthew Remsky
Except that it's all for 20 bucks at a time. Julian. They don't.
- [62:55]
Julian Walker
That's the natural evolution here.
- [62:57]
Natai Joseph
There has to be a more comedic, less successful heist movie to compare them to.
- [63:03]
Matthew Remsky
Yeah, it's more like John English or something like that. Okay, so that's. Okay, that's enough of the hilarity because I want to go back to this eyewitness account, this testimony from a woman named Lolita who's got this amazing article up on a medium that Julian can read from. And it really gets into what is the sort of day to day psychological reality of living within this group.
- [63:38]
Julian Walker
I also remember Chris Butler held this larger than life presence in my childhood. Everything I did, I had to think about how it benefited him. He was my parents spiritual master and they looked to him for guidance on everything from what to eat to how to raise their children. And they did it all without question. When I talk to people about the lack of questioning, they find that aspect odd. It is odd. But to put it into perspective, I was raised to believe Chris Butler was God's voice on earth. And if you questioned him or offended him in any way, you were effectively offending God. And because we believed in reincarnation, that meant you would be reborn as the lowest life form imaginable and then have to spend eons working your way back into God's good graces. So questioning the leader was spiritual suicide. Which was seen as worse than death. So no one questioned. Chris Butler also would ridicule the intelligence of anyone he didn't like, belittling anyone he felt was questioning his authority even slightly. He demanded the utmost dedication and loyalty from his followers. And if he didn't get it, the punishments were swift and severe. I remember hearing stories of people who were told they weren't allowed to eat because they didn't make food to his liking, who were not allowed to sleep because there was a light making a buzzing noise in the house and the follower didn't have the foresight to fix that issue ahead of time. Literally everything we did had to go through Chris. If you wanted to work outside of the group, you had to ask his permission. No one could get married without his consent. From the late 80s, all of us kids were removed from public schools because he didn't want them influencing our minds away from our service to him. So from that point we were homeschooled until there were schools established in the Philippines. After that, all the children were sent to the boarding schools there for intensive schooling. From the small pieces of information that made it out of the schools to me, a lot of the kids were traumatized by the environment as it was almost prison like classes were on hygiene and cooking and all the ways that they would need to serve Chris Butler best. This is only speculation, but I'm certain that this was because places like the US and Australia had standards of education that the home schools have to meet and they just weren't. They could avoid scrutiny by having the kids in boarding schools in the Philippines. I can't even imagine how dreadful it was for my friends who got sent there. I was lucky to avoid it. I didn't avoid the lack of schooling though. And by the time I officially left the Science of Identity foundation in 1997, just before I turned 20, I had only received up to a fifth grade education.
- [66:40]
Matthew Remsky
Oh, it's tragic. My God.
- [66:41]
Julian Walker
From a young child I remember one of the main features of my life was the lectures that were sent to us via tape for us to listen to. Basically these were one hour long sessions of Chris talking about his beliefs. How evil and out of control gay people were, how women were inferior and subhuman and should be controlled by their husbands. How messed up and evil the outside world was and how his relationship to God was so special. Only he could lead you back to Godhead or heaven, that he had so much control over his existence on earth. He could choose the moment of his death. We worshiped him, loved him, Even another part of his teachings was that all life is an illusion, and because of that, all relationships were an illusion. We were encouraged to not invest in any relationships other than with him. So we were, in effect, isolated from our parents, who did their best to not love us, us as per his recommendation, and instead looked at him like a surrogate father, messiah figure. He was this imposing force in our life that we weren't supposed to offend, which is frankly terrifying when you're a small child. I remember having many nightmares and a condition called sleep paralysis, which can be brought on in times of great stress. My sister developed stress induced epilepsy during the time when we were supposed to be taken out of school. For my parents part, they did try to keep us in school for as long as they could. But when Chris heard parents were resisting him, his directive was clear. Get them out or else. Every time my parents would try to take us to school, my sister would become hysterical and then she started having seizures. That was the power he had over us. I really wanted to paint this picture of my childhood because Tulsi Gabbard grew up in the same group that I did. She was subjected to the same environment I was. She's still surrounded by this group and calls Chris Butler her guru. This is why the increased interest and her rise to power concerns me so greatly. I want to be very clear. I have no issue with Tulsi. As far as I'm concerned, she's as much a victim as I am, more so because she was groomed from an early age specifically for the path she's now on. What I'm concerned about is the control I know Chris Butler has over her, the influence he has over her ability to make decisions, decisions that could become law and impact a whole lot of people. I know what an abusive, misogynistic, homophobic, germaphobic, narcissistic nightmare Chris Butler is. And I know what kind of relationship he has with Tulsi. If I could put it in a way that maybe more people could understand. Look at the relationship between Ivanka Trump and her father. It's very clear to me that Ivanka walks a very fine line between trying to do and be her own person and trying not to piss off her father by doing so. Donald, by many accounts, is a person who demands utmost loyalty, who will attack anyone who doesn't give it and remove them swiftly from his life. So you can imagine Ivanka, while being her own person, would immediately shut down her own feelings and opinions if she knew her father would see her as disloyal she would get cut off if she lost favor. There's a lot she has to lose if she opposes her father. Tulsa Gabbard is in the same position, only the stakes are higher. Not only would she lose the support for the position she holds, but she would lose her family, all of her friends, and this messiah father figure. If she opposed Chris Butler, she would be outcast from the only existence she has ever known. That's a hugely powerful reason to continue to please Chris Butler, without question.
- [70:54]
Matthew Remsky
Incredible. Natai, what goes through your mind when you hear Lolita roll it out like this?
- [71:04]
Natai Joseph
A lot of sympathy. First and foremost, she's someone I know personally via the Internet over some years, and I can think about the ways this has impacted her, but also for me, the life that she leads despite it. And, you know, she's a bit older than me and left at a young age. And so she's been a source of inspiration to me at times. I think that I agree about Tulsi being a victim, but I think as Lolita touched on, at a certain point, you know, like, the backstory of a villain ceases to have much relevance in terms of like, at least like, explaining what they've done, what they do. And this is a unique instance where, yeah, she truly is so much more powerful Tulsi, than her guru ever has or will be in, like, tangible, real senses. And so that must be a complicated dynamic. And then I think the other thing that Lolita doesn't mention, maybe because she didn't spend some of her life as her adult life as a believer like I did, it's not just all these costs in, in the present life that, that are potentially to be paid. You're talking about this is the necessary portal to eternal transcendence and God. And on top of that, losing that connection, the rhetoric around offensiveness and specifically offensiveness to the guru or offensiveness to other members is the strongest, most dramatic kind of prohibitions that exist. They, you know, there's rhetoric about offending another member being like letting an elephant into a, like, young garden, like an angry elephant into a young garden, you know, devastation. And so that serves a really powerful function against thinking, you know, like a thought, like the most thought stopping cliche that could exist, which is like, that's offensive and could kill your spiritual prospects, essentially.
- [73:45]
Matthew Remsky
Julian, how did. What came up for you as you go through that story?
- [73:49]
Julian Walker
I really appreciate the comparison she drew at the end. I feel like very often this is kind of like an unintended side effect of living in a relatively free kind of democratic society where for the most part there's not overt force applied in terms of the religion that you have to believe in and belong to. One of the unintended side effects is that I think there's a taking for granted that is present for most people within this kind of society and outside of controlling religious groups that like, yeah, you can get into therapy and offend your parents by telling them the truth about your emotions. You can leave a religion you used to belong to and there's life on the other side of that, you know, and there's a sense of being able to sort of move with some fluidity in and out of these different structures and to sort of forge your own path. But I think it's very easy then to underestimate the power of belonging to a group in which you really believe that the leader is the voice of God, is the only doorway into God. And your eternal salvation or damnation depends upon being loyal and obedient and not offending. It's just, it's, it's hard to grasp, you know, but it's, it's, it's, it's so much more powerful than, than I think many of us can imagine.
- [75:26]
Natai Joseph
That was actually the other thought I had when you were reading that is like I really wanted to underscore like these are the stakes in a lot of different environments, you know, like this is what children are experiencing. As someone who spent most of my last few years working in child abuse prevention, more specifically, like this is going on in a lot of places all around us and sometimes in connection to groups that we are aware of, a lot of people have a positive bias when they hear Hare Krishna. A lot of liberal people, you know, and so it can be hard sometimes to convince someone that, you know, for every well balanced against, you know, Hare Krishna who might like be your co worker at a normal job, there might be one or five who are greatly disadvantaged in their life because of how they were raised in it, you know? This episode is brought to you by Fox 1. Watch all 104 matches of the FIFA
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Julian Walker
Honey, what are you listening to?
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Natai Joseph
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- [77:58]
Matthew Remsky
Ty I want to turn a little bit to social policy, which is something that is becoming very, you know, prominent in Tulsi Gabbard's profile. What would you say discussions of sex and sexuality feel like in ISKCON and ISKCON related spaces?
- [78:15]
Natai Joseph
Yeah, I want to acknowledge as a blanket that there's a lot of variants. Unlike some groups that manage a lot of ideological conformity. I think like maybe Jehovah's Witnesses. I think there's even more variations in the Hare Krishnas. But with that said on, on balance, disdain is is the word that comes to mind. Like in Buddhism there's rhetoric about the body being a bag of blood, pus, stool, urine kind of. And, and like you know, sexual desire being akin to lusting after those things. You know, it's just this very like, like sort of gross visceral attempts to associate sexuality with viscerally nasty things.
- [79:07]
Matthew Remsky
Right.
- [79:08]
Natai Joseph
I think I mentioned earlier just that anytime I believe deeply anytime that celibacy is a trait of spiritual authority in the culture, anytime that that's the case, non celibacy is going to become a second class status because you're less pure, less devout. And so that has those effects that I mentioned before about householders being second class citizens, children being sort of the product of your lesser devotion and all the negative effects that that has. And then right. Historically the dominant standard has been sex for procreation. Only rarely I think is that been followed. Some gurus may have tweaked that minded. I don't know about iskcon to like sex within a committed relationship but often that that was the case. Sometimes they would say sex within marriage only but obviously sex only for procreation implies heterosexual sex only.
- [80:14]
Matthew Remsky
But then also, Prabhupada is intensely misogynistic and homophobic. Is that right?
- [80:20]
Natai Joseph
Yeah. And yes. And I'll acknowledge that like many people who spoke and write a lot and are recorded extensively, there's contradictory statements in the record and there's examples people will point to of like, but really, he's a feminist. On balance, I don't think that holds. There used to be a website still in the wayback machine. Prabhupada said.com that a friend of mine had compiled a lot of the most objectionable statements and organized them by tags. And. And it's all, you know, you see things like Butler's talking about women as, like, slaves to their husbands, but also, you know, he was from India and he believed that women in America kept big dogs so they could sleep with them. You know, this is like, on record as him saying that, because he probably, like, heard it on a. On a street somewhere once upon a time.
- [81:19]
Matthew Remsky
Wow. Right.
- [81:20]
Natai Joseph
And then, you know, women are always sort of responsible for and at fault for the sexual downfall and improprieties of the men and the celibate men.
- [81:34]
Matthew Remsky
It's a very anxious and tense sexual environment. And I imagine that all of this pressure very likely contributed to the widespread sexual abuse scandal within iskcon. You know, can you give us a sense of how big it was and was there any resolution to it?
- [81:54]
Natai Joseph
Resolution? You know, kind of. I mean, you know, I'll acknowledge child abuse goes on everywhere. Yes. But the rates and the response greatly vary. And so the classic instance, which was like, children of ISKCON versusCON class action lawsuit for people older than myself who were raised in boarding schools, there was a $10 million settlement. Ultimately, you know, people received a very small amount of funds. And in that case, ISKCON pioneered a legal maneuver of declaring bankruptcy to sort of undermine the discovery and civil process.
- [82:38]
Matthew Remsky
Right.
- [82:38]
Natai Joseph
The Catholic Church has followed suit, using that technique in lawsuits there as well. So there was some version of slight resolution. But right now, the ISKCON world is ablaze with child sexual abuse issues and renewed attention due to certain activistic members really keeping it online in the forefront front. But a huge scandal just happened where the headmaster of the boarding school in one of the two pilgrimage places of the whole religion was abusing children and. And having sexual relationships with an adult woman or something for decades. And multiple reports internally had been done, et cetera. And so they're kind of reeling. I've been able. I actually spoke to the global leadership of iskcon. A few months ago and gave a training on child abuse prevention and like culture change in an organization that is not in a good position to protect children. So ongoing, I guess, is the summary of their child abuse issues.
- [83:49]
Matthew Remsky
Would you say that against this general, you know, social backdrop of ISKCON and its abuse crises is the rise of Tulsi Gabbard as a strong female figurehead? Is that a challenge to the gender roles of the culture, or is it a validation in some way? Does it mark some kind of turning point? Is it a positive thing?
- [84:18]
Natai Joseph
I think that there's some portion of conservative members who would see it as inappropriate for there to be a stateswoman, but that's pretty far on the. On the kind of conservative end of the spectrum, I think more so the attitude is opportunism, like, whoever we can get into power. Cool. Like, you know, as long as. As long as they're kind of one of us, then that's okay.
- [84:48]
Matthew Remsky
Of course, she's taken a turn and gone all in on anti trans policy. So is that surprising to you?
- [84:56]
Natai Joseph
Not at all. I mean, especially if we didn't delve into the really well documented history of her and her father's campaign, you know, following in Prabhupada and Chris Butler's footsteps, comparing homosexuality to bestiality and pedophilia. All those things are in the mix for, for all of them. And so the fact that she would end up here is not surprising. But also she seems to be doing the, you know, mistreated Democrat to conservative wealthy influencer Diddy. And if you're doing that today, I don't know how you can leave out this issue because it's like, you know, it's their, like, rallying cry right now,
- [85:39]
Matthew Remsky
wrapping up Natai and Julian. I get the sense in our conversation about Tulsi Gabbard. I get this image of like, bubbles within bubbles that, you know, ISKCON is this mother bubble. And then it has these surface bubbles that pop off. And some of them are fragile and some of them are more resilient, but they're still within the sphere of this larger influence. And we know that Gabbard has never left Science of Identity. And we know that even when she travels to Washington or anywhere else, she's surrounded by science of identity members. Like, her husband was also born in the group. He's the video film person who helps make her look really good. And so I have this sense that her political ambitions are supported by this network of devotees, but also kind of hemmed in by that network. Not because people on the outside are going to tune into who Chris Butler is, because that's been exposed already. That's not suddenly going to change anybody's perception, I don't think. But I do think that this series of bubbles might make her a little bit incoherent as a public figure. Like, it scrambles the constituencies and what people would want from her.
- [87:02]
Natai Joseph
And.
- [87:02]
Matthew Remsky
And I doubt that she is often in a world in which she can feel herself kind of unmediated by Chris Butler. And that, of course, is going to limit anyone's ability to connect and build coalitions. So what do you guys think about that kind of summation?
- [87:19]
Natai Joseph
I think that's absolutely accurate and kind of gets at some of what I was touching on earlier, which is like, how can you be an authentic leader when you're ultimately under the sway? It's like, well, before I respond to you, let me, like, make sure what I'm gonna say is approved. And it really undermines the ability to bond and like you said, like, build. Build coalitions. And for me, I don't, you know, on one hand, there's no point in speculating, like, what could have been, what would have been. But I don't assume that she would have aspirations like this were it not for the. The existence of Chris Butler, you know, and. And so how much we can tease apart those things at this point, I think is, like, very limited. I think what might be interesting to see is, like, when he's gone, what. What happens too, and what she does specifically.
- [88:24]
Julian Walker
Yeah, I agree. I mean, when you were just talking there, atai, it made me think of her sort of being on assignment. Right. She's on assignment from. She's on a mission from God. She's on assignment from Chris Butler. It makes me actually quite sad to think of this little girl who was really groomed for this destiny embedded in this cultish community, following in her father's footsteps, politically loyal to her religion. Then she goes into the military, which is equally demanding, right of a submersion of self in the waters of duty and chain of command. It's hard for me to imagine how someone with this background, who's also of so much value to those behind her, whatever they perceive that value to be, in terms of her position in the world, how she could find a way into her own political or even personal identity as distinct from all of that.
- [89:15]
Matthew Remsky
I mean, I guess I want to ask Natai, what does the faithful iskcon, or Science of Identity Devotee, ultimately want? And how do you think Gabbard will continue to pursue her goals. Is she just going to keep going like Arjuna or some other mythological hero?
- [89:36]
Natai Joseph
Ultimately, they want a oddly specific, eternal, transcendental life in a North Indian pastoral setting, having transcended the cycle of birth and death. So ultimately that's the aim. That's a fairly abstract and esoteric, and most people aren't working on that directly. So in practice, it often becomes distilled down to pleasing the guru, advancing the mission. This is the. The highest form of devotion in this age, they believe. Evangelizing, that is. And so therefore evangelizing as your own spiritual progress is basically a given. And so in practice, it's more like they want to serve without any ego or be totally selfless or, or, you know, stop lusting after chocolate. A lot of different things, or like, chant with pure focus, you know. And as far as Tulsi goes, I assume she'll just keep plugging along. I mean, the death of the guru brings a really unique circumstance where people are kind of freed up to decide what the guru actually wants from you now, like, and start being a little more interpretive, which means autonomy. And so I don't know what directions it could take. But I agree with Julian that like a wholesale reevaluation along the terms that I've done would be even more arduous wrenching for someone like her. And it was rough for me. Don't get me wrong.
- [91:28]
Matthew Remsky
I feel very melancholic, actually thinking about this succession issue, because, you know, when you're in the position of really shining on behalf of others. I have this image of like an altar light at the end of a long and twisting wire. And you know how if one of the lights before the one at the end goes out, that it will kind of of impact the next one down the line. I just can imagine how strange it will be when those anchors just evaporate. And yeah, it will give her a chance that I'm sure will be very harrowing to maybe provide a clearer picture of who she might be on her own. Nathai, thank you so much for your time. Can you give us just a little bit of what you're doing now and where people can find you?
- [92:23]
Natai Joseph
You? Yeah, I'm. I'm currently taking a few months to sort of plot out my next move.
- [92:29]
Matthew Remsky
I.
- [92:30]
Natai Joseph
Studying interpersonal influence pulls you in every direction that exists because it's everywhere. And so I'm sort of taking a little time to. To decide if I'm starting some project on my own. But a lot of what I want to move more into is my cult was a 501c3 nonprofit. It I've worked in nonprofits and I really am interested in basically helping causes that I value avoid or address these issues, which are very human pitfalls. Ultimately, it's not about evil. It's not about, you know, a uniquely awful situation. It's like these things develop interpersonally without much effort to counteract and structure systems to avoid them. So that's really what I'd like to move more toward. But people can find me on Facebook or LinkedIn if you want to connect, and I certainly welcome that. One other thing I want to say when you're when you played the Tulsi Gabbard audio, aside from feeling very long, I was reminded that often listening to your podcast, which I follow, or decoding the gurus, I have this experience where I'm like, I hope nobody can hear what I'm listening to right now because they don't understand that this is an excerpt of some really awful ideas. Because, you know, I lived in a row house until recently and you know, Jordan Peterson clip would come on for two minutes and I'm like, oh, I really hope my neighbors don't think this is my thing.
- [94:10]
Julian Walker
So I actually have that exact experience every time I walk the dog, every time I'm exercising out of the backyard here and I have my phone and I'm listening to all of this source material for the podcast, I'm like, oh my God, my neighbors must think I'm this total right wing nutcase.
- [94:25]
Natai Joseph
Exactly. Exactly.
- [94:27]
Matthew Remsky
Natai, thank you so much for your time.
- [94:29]
Natai Joseph
Thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure.
- [94:33]
Matthew Remsky
Thank you everyone, once again for listening to another episode of Conspirituality Podcast. We will catch you back here on the main feed or on Patreon. Granger knows when you're a procurement manager
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