Sverige 5000 år

 

Hur gammalt är Sverige *egentligen*?

Sverige 1053 år

 

"Ursäkta, men det är faktiskt jag som är Sveriges förste konung. Inte den där Gustaf Eriksson eller vad fan han heter, men okej, jag gillar hur han drog i viking mot danskarne, men varför i allsin dar dyrkade han Vite Krist?"  

Sverige 500 år

 

Nedräkningen har börjat... 

Yrr vad tråkigt

Credit: Martin Kraft

Kollade just andra avsnittet av "The Swarm" på TV3. Eeeeh, typ tråkigaste science fiction någonsin??? 

A visit from planet Vulcan

For six days in January, the city of Newark in New Jersey had a friendship agreement with the planet of Vulcan. 

OK, maybe not, it was the United States of Kailasa, but point still stands. Kailasa doesn´t exist (at all). It´s a fictitious "nation" set up by an international fugitive, one Swami Nithyananda, an Indian national currently hiding somewhere in Latin America to avoid facing charges of rape and child abduction in his homeland. "Kailasa" is his front, still going strong (kind of) despite the rogue guru going rogue (pun intended). 

The audio in the clip above is inaudiable, and the Newark politicians look exactly like I imagine a certain kind (not the best kind) of US officials to look like. The "Kailasa" delegation look even worse, almost as if they are deliberately emulating the Star Trek T´Pau stereotype. 

The implications of this happening in 2023 is up to the reader to ponder...

Wtf

Credit: Roman Harak

Is this true?

Juche calendar

Sister city

Swami Nithyananda is an international fugitive and cult leader. Once very popular in India, his star began to dim when accusations surfaced of illicit sexual relationships, bisexuality, rape, child abduction and even murder. His fanaticized followers once beat up the man in the clip above, Canadian national Henri Jolicoeur, when he asked impertinent questions to their "avatar". The incident was even reported in the Indian press.

And speaking of incidents... 

The article linked to below tells the bizarre story (which broke earlier this year) about how the city of Newark in New Jersey was scammed by Nithyananda´s dwindling band of faithful. They have also tried to infiltrate UN conferences, always under the cover of the fictitious nation of Kailasa (evidently named after Shiva´s holy mountain Kailash). 

Newark mayor signs deal with Hindu nation that does not exist

Deconstructing Tulsi Gabbard

 

Tulsi Gabbard is a controversial American politician and political commentator whose main claim to fame is probably her 2019-2020 primary election campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. Gabbard destroyed Kamala Harris´ presidential bid before the voting even started, but as we all know, Harris staged a comeback later. Still, it *is* intriguing that Harris´ attempt to become POTUS in her own right was upset by a “fringe” candidate like Gabbard!

Supposedly a progressive leftist, Gabbard veered rather strongly towards the populist right, eventually leaving the Democratic Party altogether in 2022 for unknown pastures. Judging by the presentations linked above, Gabbard may never have been a leftist at all, and perhaps deliberately prettified her past.

It´s been known for a long time that Gabbard had contacts with Hindu nationalists (she even met Modi). Her Hindu beliefs are derived from a breakaway group from the Hare Krishna movement, known as Science of Identity. Both her parents (not just her mother) are members of Science of Identity, and so is Gabbard herself. The group is based on Hawaii, where the Gabbards live. The founder-leader of this group, Chris Butler, is a really raving homophobe. So is Mark Gabbard, Tulsi´s father, who claims to be a Catholic but is actually a member of Butler´s organization. While it´s not super-secret that Gabbard is somehow connected to Butler´s people, she has tried to downplay both the connection and essentially denied her guru´s homophobia.

The narrator of the videos linked above is a Canadian counter-cultist with somewhat eclectic spiritual beliefs, Henri Jolicoeur. As a very young man, Jolicoeur was a member of the Hare Krishna movement (the ISKCON) and worked closely with none other than Shrila Prabhupada himself. Indeed, he was tasked with spying on Chris Butler´s ISKCON temple in Hawaii! It seems Butler was creating his very own, shall we say, cult following already back then. Yes, Jolicoeur regards Science of Identity as a dangerous cult, prompting Butler´s lawyers to sue him for libel in both Hawaii and Quebec as a result (the present status of the lawsuit is unclear to me). 

The videos are interesting, not just for what they may reveal about Gabbard or Butler, but also due to the narrator´s reminiscences. Judging by other uploads on his channel, Jolicouer knows all of the ISKCON “fallen gurus” who took over the Hare Krishna after Prabhupada´s death…and he despises all of them (or almost all). There is some other interesting info of a counter-cultist nature on the channel too, so stay tuned for more links!

As for Tulsi Gabbard, she did have an intriguing ability to politically attract a rather motley crew of people. Among people who had positive things to say about her were Alt Right cyber-demon and citizen´s reporter Mike Cernovich, pro-populist leftist Jimmy Dore and perennial kind-of-liberal gadfly Michael Tracey (who even endorsed her for president). I was interested in her politics, too, but things change and so on.

Presented her for all it may be worth. 

 

Mad as a god

 

So I´ve been a bad boy and read the craziest chapters of the Chaitanya-Charitamrita by Krishnadasa Kaviraja, while completely disregarding all the others. But then, I only read the rasa-lila chapters of the Shrimad Bhagavatam, so what´s the surprise?

The 16^th century Indian mystic and ecstatic Krishna Chaitanya, Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu or simply Chaitanya (also spelled Caitanya) was the founder of the so-called Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition. Today, this particular form of Hinduism is most famously (and notoriously) represented by the ISKCON, better known as the Hare Krishna movement. It recently struck me that the term “Krishna Consciousness” might be a kind of pun, referring to the name Krishna Chaitanya! My Sanskrit is a bit rusty, but I think the name actually means something like…well, Krishna Consciousness. Note also the letters “KC” in the abbreviation, hmmm, I wonder what other puns or secret codes might be in there?

Krishnadasa Kaviraja never met Chaitanya, but he was on a first name basis with some of his disciples. For some reason, the ISKCON considers his hagiographical work Chaitanya-Charitamrita to be the most important and canonical of the various Chaitanya biographies in existence. My guess is that the work has a theological slant which is perhaps lacking in earlier expositions. One thing that struck me when “reading” it (well, a couple of chapters anyway) is that it´s borderline heterodox. It emphasizes the absolutely unique character of Chaitanya, who is said to be a double incarnation of Krishna and Radha in one body. God has entered the world as his own best devotee, not just to teach fallen humanity how to worship Him, but literally to taste the sweet love of the devotees, something God somehow cannot do otherwise! There are also verses explicitly saying that some of Chaitanya´s “pastimes”, in this case his ecstatic trances, were so extreme that not even the Vedas or dharma-shastras mention such things. A remarkable statement (I think) in a Hindu context, but here presumably being further evidence that Chaitanya really is a divine incarnation.

And yes, about those ecstasies…

At one point, Chaitanya disappeared from a bolted and locked room. His disciples found him laying on the ground motionless a bit further away, but his body had been unnaturally elongated. At another point, the disciples found him being eagerly licked by cows, once again motionless, with his limbs withdrawn into the body, like the limbs of a tortoise?! Which is, of course, quite impossible – unless we are talking about a miracle. At yet another point, he laid unconscious in the water for hours. Angry critics claim that Chaitanya must have been an epileptic, and that his divine madness were really seizures. Never heard of no epileptic elongating his body, though…

During his fits of divine ecstasy, Chaitanya directly experienced Krishna´s amorous pastimes with Radha and the gopis, but also the intense sorrow of Radha when she parts with the Lord, the mad desire of the gopis at hearing Krishna´s flute, and so on. (Yes, that flute is described in pretty wild terms!) The mysticism of Gaudiya Vaishnavism has a strong erotic flavor. It´s not really “conjugal love” (as the ISKCON translators has it) but precisely *not* conjugal love, rather being the illicit love of the human soul for God. Since Chaitanya is really Krishna, the above means that Krishna is experiencing the devotees´ longing, desire and love for Himself in the body of a human. An intriguing idea, to be sure!

Another peculiar story told is about Kalidasa, a future disciple of Chaitanya, who ate leftover food of “all the Vaishnavas in Bengal”, presumably all high-ranking Vaishnavas (i.e. worshippers of Vishnu – Krishna and Vishnu are believed to be two forms of the same god). Leftovers should be interpreted quite literally here. Kalidasa licked the leaves used by Vaishnavas as dishes after they had eaten their food. After Kalidasa had visited the house of Jhadu Thakura, a prominent Vaishnava who was a shudra (low caste), he hid outside the master´s house and patiently waited until Thakura´s wife threw out the peels from mangoes stealthily offered by Kalidasa to Thakura at an earlier point. He would then grab the peels and lick them! This antinomian behavior is pregnant with meaning: sharing food is an important social ritual in Hindu culture, which means that Brahmins aren´t supposed to share food with low-caste people. Indeed, shudras aren´t even allowed to study the Vedas. Yet, here a disciple of Chaitanya eats the literal leftovers of food offered to a shudra who evidently does study the Vedas. (I assume both Chaitanya and Kalidasa were Brahmins.) Not sure if the secret way in which Kalidasa offers the mangoes and then eat the leftovers has some symbolic significance, since Thakura warned Kalidasa not to share food with him (because Thakura was a mere shudra).

A curious aspect of the Chaitanya-Charitamrita is that it never mentions the death (or disappearance) of Chaitanya. I´m not even sure whether the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition has an official version of what happened to their founder. Perhaps it isn´t even important, since Chaitanya was God rather than an ordinary mortal?

Thus ends my completely disjointed reflections on this work.

The people are retarded

 

The first clip is the classic in which crazy quilt cult commander Osho calls democracy "rule by the people, for the people, of the people...but the people are retarded". 

The second clip is supposedly an AI-generated commercial for orange juice narrated by a deep fake "Donald Trump"...

Not sure what these clips have in common, and if so why I´m posting them here, but there you go.

PS. The AI account also posted a fake commercial for ice cream featuring Joe Biden!