Nobody Expects the Spanish Inquistion

At a recent high level meeting of the ISKCON GBC [Governing Board Commission] and temple presidents, they sat and met with the leaders of the SSPT [Spiritual Strategic Planning Team] to discuss plans for the future of ISKCON.

As many of our readers are aware, outside of India and Indian communities, most of ISKCON membership and congregation has been in decline for many years. There are some places [ex-communist bloc countries] where ISKCON has not declined and is doing well, but the trend for most of the world has been a continual decline. It’s gotten so bad that many once thriving communities are now more or less nothing more than social clubs for the local Indian communities.

In order to counteract the continual decline of ISKCON amongst the non-Hindu populations, ISKCON leaders empowered the SSPT to devise “synergistic” solutions to the membership and participatory problems ISKCON continues to experience.

After a number of years of research and study by going to conferences around the world and searching for answers, SSPT members had all but given up. Disheartened at their abject failure to come up with synergistic solutions through management techniques, leading member of the SSPT, Goball Bhuttass, a businessman and long time ISKCON acquaintance, had a road to Damascus moment:

We need to embrace who we are and stop trying to be “cool” and “hip” in trying to impress the Indian community that we’re pure holy sages and mystic brahmanas so they continue to pay to use our temples and priest services; and we also need to stop trying to convince the media we’re like everyone else in order to attract people, when obviously we’re not. So people don’t end up feeling deceived when they find out what we’re really all about, we need to be honest. We should reach out to our true comrades in arms, our true soul brothers and soul sisters, and let them know who we are and that we share a deep bond and kinship with them — not only in our similar lifestyles, but also in that we’re both ridiculed and ostracised by the wider public simply for being passionate about who we are.

LARP LARPERS LARPING

Goball Bhuttass presented the ISKCON leadership with a brilliant synergistic plan — to join forces with the worldwide LARPer community. With ISKCON resources and the large enthusiastic LARPer community, ISKCON temples and communities could be re-energized and filled with new life; membership and participation would soar to unheard of heights.

The GBC were rightly confused, for none of them had heard of LARPing or LARPers. Goball explained to them that LARP was an acronym for Live Action Role Playing, and that there are thousands upon thousands of people around the world, and more every year, who are dedicated LARPers. The GBC and temple presidents still didn’t understand what Goball Bhuttass was talking about. So he had to explain that LARPing was a live action version of Role Playing Games like Dungeons and Dragons, or of video RPG’s like: Dragonquest, The Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy, World of Warcraft, Dragon Age, and the countless other fantasy or sci-fi driven games.

Goball explained how instead of the games being just played, they were lived, acted out, with costumes and clans, guilds and weapons, lords and maidens, and everything else you find in those games. Mostly they are medieval based fantasies, largely based on the original fantasy based and wildly popular RPG, Dungeons and Dragons.

Cosplay LARPers

Batterynarayan Das, long time GBC and well known gibbering mouther, couldn’t help but speak out: “What the hell are you talking about Goball?”

Goball explained that ISKCON was in essence a LARPer community:

Just like the LARPers we dress up in costumes and give ourselves fantasy based names and fantasy based titles and positions; we speak and act towards each other as characters in a fantasy world; we form ourselves into clans and guilds ruled over by lords and wizards — who are served by warriors and serfs, maidens and queens, artisans and entertainers. We even have battles. Let’s face it, we live in a fantasy world, it’s not a medieval based fantasy with trolls and elves, it’s a Vedic fantasy world with demigods and demons, ghosts and ghouls, good and bad yogis with supernatural powers, and so on. When you join ISKCON, you don’t just join an ashram or commune or church — you enter into a worldwide LARPer community, a Vedic fantasy live action role playing game.

The difference between ourselves and the LARPer communities around the world is that they’re all part time, and with little in the way of infrastructure. If they knew that we were also LARPers, and that they could join and enter into a full-time LARPer game, where they could actually be their characters rather than just play-acting, I think they would jump at the chance. These people are not happy with their lives, they seek out like minded people to create a fantasy world so they can escape modern culture and it’s pressures. They lack what we have, a fully realized LARPer fantasy world.

Batterynarayana Das then pointed out the obvious flaw in Goball’s plan:

Goball prabhu, maybe we share similarities with LARPers, but are they going to follow the 4 regulative principles? Are they going to submit to the GBC and sign an oath to us and Prabhupada? If they don’t, we wouldn’t want to associate with them. What seems like a fantasy is your idea.

Goball Bhuttass expected that type of negativity from Batterynarayan Das, so he was ready for him. He said:

We have to do something to save ISKCON from what’s it’s becoming, otherwise in a few years for all practical purposes Lord Chaitanya’s movement will have ceased to exist outside of India. It’s only a matter of time before the ex-communist bloc countries experience what the rest of ISKCON has gone through. They were exposed to ISKCON much later then the rest of the world, so I’m sure they’ll be going through the same stages of rapid development and then gradual disinterest that the rest of ISKCON has gone through. I’ve wracked my brain for years now on the SSPT, what I’ve realized is that it isn’t a management problem which is causing such widespread disinterest. I see the problem, but I don’t think some of you will like the solution. What we demand of everyone, by that I mean 4 regulative principles and absolute submission to our leaders as fully empowered spiritual teachers and guides, is the problem. Before the Internet it would take time for people to find out they hate what we stand for, now it takes a half hour of web surfing to think we suck. Besides new people being scared off, the older ones get fed up with 4 regulative principles and being forced to accept everything we teach as gospel. We need radical change, or we will continue to slide into irrelevance.

At that, celebrity guru Shittylama Swami could take it no longer:

That was blasphemous. We don’t care what anyone else does or thinks. This is Prabhupada’s movement and we are Prabhupada’s devotees. We live to serve his ideals because we know he was sent by God from Goloka to save the world. We care about quality, not quantity. If people are unable to give up their selfish sense gratification, and if they cannot give up their ego and be submissive servants of guru, then they are not ready for Krishna consciousness. We don’t need them, BAS, enough!

Shittylama Swami got up then and strode out of the meeting, sneering at the idea that anything would change. Once outside he whistled for his servants and they got into his limo. He told his driver to take him to the airport. They then caught a first class flight to Cancún, Mexico for the opening of a new restaurant. To fulfil his duties as a servant of the servant in pushing on Prabhupada’s movement, Shittylama Swami was not going to allow change, “I’ll make sure of that,” he thought, as he laid by the beach getting a massage later the next day. “Prabhupada’s perfect plan, it’s just so perfect” he thought, as he was lulled to sleep by the warmth of the sun and the smell of the beach as the soft hand of the young masseuse gently plied his muscles.

LARP it up guys!