A Krishna returns to fold, says deprogramming failed
This article, "A Krishna returns to fold, says deprogramming failed" was published in The Boston Globe, September 3, 1974, in Boston, Massachusetts.
By Robert J. Rosenthal
Globe Staff
With a touch of indignation showing through his normally anxiety-free Krishna consciousness, Edward Shapiro yesterday discussed his attempted deprogramming by anticult crusader Ted Patrick.
Shapiro, 20, has been a member of the Boston Hare Krishna Movement for 18 months. On Aug. 6, he went to his parents' home on Commonwealth Avenue, Newton, and found about 20 persons, mostly relatives and friends, along with Patrick and some of his aids.
According to Shapiro, a sturdy 6-footer, he was subjected to "intense psychological torture" during the next few days. He spent three days at his parents' home, then traveled to Albany, Montreal and Toronto with Patrick and his aids for further deprogramming.
"They broke me down after a certain point," Shapiro said, as he sat cross-legged on the immaculate wooden floor of the Boston Krishna Center on North Beacon street, Allston. He wore a long loose-fitting orange garment called a dhodi, and occasionally rubbed his hands over his shaven skull.
A short stump of hair at the rear of his skull was all that remained of his sikah, a topknot of long hair that male followers of Krishna wear to show their devotion.
Shapiro said that his sikah had been cut off during his deprogramming period. The deprogramming had worked for a while, Shapiro said, but it failed after he realized that he was slipping back into a "material, false life of glitter that I had chosen to leave before."
The deprogramming, according to Shapiro, included being locked in rooms, and constant verbal pressure, telling him that he had been brainwashed by phony followers of Hare Krishna. Shapiro said he was never physically assaulted but that he was violent on more than one occasion.
Nine days ago, Shapiro said, he was allowed to travel alone for the first time. He was flying from Toronto to visit his parents in North Carolina and had to transfer planes in Washington. While waiting for a flight, he met a Hare Krishna brother and decided to come back to Boston.
Soft-spoken Shapiro says he hopes to be a preacher of the Krishna faith and finds it incredible that he could be taken from the life he was trying to lead, a life he describes as "holy and moral."
"Those people psychologically tortured me," he said. "They kept me confined. Finally I just cracked and went along with them. In Canada they would take me out to bars for intoxicants and I would smoke cigarettes. They had me breaking my vows."
There is some anger toward his family, who could not be reached for an interview.
He said that he had long talks with his 18-year-old brother. "I asked him the purpose of life and he couldn't tell me. I'm interested in his welfare, but he is not following a worthwhile existence," Shapiro said.
Shapiro, who dropped out of Brandeis University after a year, says: "We are here to spiritually inquire why things are happening. Why is there birth and death? By questioning life one can get the impetus to get out of the entanglement of the world."
The Krishna center has 32 residents who share food and raise money by selling flowers and incense, which they make. Men and women live in separate quarters.
The only decorations in the Victorian style house are paintings and tapestries depicting Krishna's activities and the glorification of other Indian gods.
Shapiro said: "I wasn't satisifed with my education and college situation. What I wanted to know was the purpose of life, and no one could tell me that. This is the first thing I've found that I've been wholeheartedly involved in. There is no anxiety here, no disharmony, no rivalry, only goodness."
Photo: Basu Copal, formerly Edward Shapiro, poses in the Boston Krishna Center on North Beacon street in Allston. (Globe photo by George Kizer)