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Steven J. Gelberg (Subhananda das) was
a member of ISKCON for seventeen years
(1970-1987), serving as the organization's principal liaison to the international
academic community, as well as its Director for Interreligious Affairs.
In 1983 Grove Press published his book of interviews with scholars:
Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna: Five
Distinguished Scholars on the Krishna
Movement in the West. (See the book at Amazon.com
click here.)
After leaving ISKCON he went on to earn his M.T.S. degree in Comparative Religion at Harvard Divinity School (1990). He now lives near San Francisco with his wife, and is an accomplished fine-art photographer (StevenGelberg.com). |
Read two essays by this author:
Some Things I Learned During My Seventeen Years
in the Hare Krishna Movement
Presented at the 2007 conference of the International Cultic Studies Association (ICSA), in Brussels, Belgium. Click here.
On Leaving ISKCON
Gelberg wrote this essay in 1992 in order to share his reasons for leaving the organization - providing, in effect, a wide-ranging critique of the failings of ISKCON:
When Prabhupada predicted, once, that ninety percent of his disciples would eventually leave his movement, we, his disciples, were shocked that such a thing could be possible. In time, the overwhelming majority of his followers did indeed leave ISKCON, and it now appears the same will hold true for his grand-disciples. The effect of this on-going exodus is that the number of ex-members of ISKCON vastly exceeds that of current members, and the gap will only widen as the years pass. There exists, therefore, a substantial and growing body of people who share what can only be described as a traumatic experience. . . .
Click here to read the full article.
Espanol - chasque aqui
[Editor's Note: "On Leaving ISKCON" was published in the 2004 Columbia University Press book, Hare Krishna: The Post-charismatic Fate of a Religious Transplant, by Edwin Bryant, Ph.D., and Maria Ekstrand, Ph.D., eds.]
