Early life [edit]Kirtanananda was born Keith Gordon Ham in Peekskill, New York, in 1937, the son of a Conservative Baptist minister. Keith Ham inherited his father's missionary spirit and attempted to convert classmates to his family's faith. Despite an acute case of poliomyelitis which he contracted around his 17th birthday, he graduated with honors from high school in 1955. He received a Bachelor of Arts in History from Maryville College in Maryville, Tennessee on May 20, 1959, and graduated magna cum laude, first in his class of 117.
He received a Woodrow Wilson fellowship to study American history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he remained for three years. There he met Howard Morton Wheeler (1940–1989), an undergraduate English major from Mobile, Alabama who became his lover and lifelong friend. Later Kirtanananda acknowledged that, before becoming a Hare Krishna, he had had a homosexual relationship with Wheeler for many years, which was documented in the film Holy Cow Swami, a 1996 documentary byJacob Young.[3]
The two resigned from the university on February 3, 1961, and left Chapel Hill after being threatened with an investigation over a "sex scandal", and moved to New York City. Ham promoted LSD use and became an LSD guru. He worked as an unemployment claims reviewer. He enrolled at Columbia University in 1961, where he received a Waddell fellowship to study religious history with Whitney Cross, but he quit academic life after several years when he and Wheeler travelled to India in October 1965 in search of a guru. Unsuccessful, they returned to New York after six months
As Kirtanananda[edit] Swami Prabhupada and Kirtanananda, undated In June 1966, after returning from India, Ham met the BengaliGaudiya Vaishnava guru A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (then known simply as "Swamiji" to his disciples), the founder-acharya of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), morepopularly known in the West as the Hare Krishnas. After attending Bhagavad-gita classes at the modest storefront temple at 26 Second Avenue in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, Ham accepted Swamiji as his spiritual master, receiving initiation as "Kirtanananda Dasa" ("the servant of one who takes pleasure in kirtan") on September 23, 1966. Swamiji sometimes called him "Kitchen-ananda" because of his cooking expertise. Howard Wheeler was initiated two weeks earlier on September 9, 1966 and received the name "Hayagriva Dasa".[5]
Kirtanananda was among the first of Swamiji's western disciples to shave his head (apart from the sikha), don robes (traditional BengaliVaishnava clothing consists of dhoti and kurta), and move into the temple. In March 1967, on the order of Swamiji, Kirtanananda and Janus Dambergs (Janardana Dasa), a French-speaking university student, established the Montreal Hare Krishna temple. On August 28, 1967, while travelling with Swamiji in India, Kirtanananda Dasa became Prabhupada's first disciple to be initiated into the Vaishnava order of renunciation (sannyasa: a lifelong vow of celibacy in mind, word and body), and received the name Kirtanananda Swami. Within weeks, however, he returned to New York City against Prabhupada's wishes and attempted to add esoteric cultural elements of Christianity to Prabhupada's devotional bhakti system. Other disciples of Prabhupada saw this as a takeover attempt. In letters from India, Prabhupada soundly chastised him and banned him from preaching in ISKCON temples.
The New Vrindaban community Kirtanananda, Vamanadev, Hrishikesh, Hayagriva and Pradyumna, at New Vrindaban (late summer, 1968) Kirtanananda moved in with Wheeler, by then known as Hayagriva Dasa, who was teaching English at a community college in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania. In the San Francisco Oracle (an underground newspaper), Kirtanananda saw a letter from Richard Rose, Jr., who wanted to form an ashram on his land in Marshall County, West Virginia. "The conception is one of a non-profit, non-interfering, non-denominational retreat or refuge, where philosophers might come to work communally together, or independently, where a library and other facilities might be developed."
On a weekend free of classes (March 30–31, 1968), Kirtanananda and Hayagriva visited the two properties owned by Rose. After Hayagriva returned to Wilkes Barre, Kirtanananda stayed on in Rose's backwoods farmhouse. In July 1968, after a few months of Kirtanananda's living in isolation, he and Hayagriva visited Prabhupada in Montreal. Prabhupada “forgave his renegade disciples inMontreal with a garland of roses and a shower of tears”. When the pair returned to West Virginia, Richard Rose, Jr. and his wife Phyllis gave Hayagriva a 99-year lease on the 132.77-acre property for $4,000, with an option to purchase for $10 when the lease expired. Hayagriva put down a $1,500 deposit.
Kirtanananda Swami and NewVrindaban Community president Kuladri das, c. mid-1970s Prabhupada established the purpose and guided the development of the community in dozens of letters and four personal visits (1969, 1972, 1974 and 1976). New Vrindaban would fulfill four major functions for ISKCONestablish and promote the simple, agrarian Krishna conscious lifestyle, including cow protection,establish a place of pilgrimage in the West by building seven temples on seven hills,
train up a class of brahmin teachers by training boys at the gurukula (school of the guru), and
Kirtanananda eventually established himself as leader and sole authority over the community. In New Vrindaban publications he was honored as "Founder-Acharya" of New Vrindaban, in imitation of Prabhupada's title of Founder-Acharya of ISKCON. Over time the community expanded, devotees from other ISKCON centers moved in, and cows and land were acquired until New Vrindaban properties consisted of nearly 5,000 acres. New Vrindaban became a favorite ISKCON place of pilgrimage and many ISKCON devotees attended the annual Krishna Janmashtami festivals. For some, Kirtanananda's previous offenses were forgiven. Many devotees admired him for his austere lifestyle (for a time he lived in an abandoned chicken coop), his preaching skills[10] and devotion to the presiding deities of New Vrindaban: Sri Sri Radha Vrindaban Chandra.[11] For other devotees who had challenged him and thereby encountered his wrath, he was a source of fear.
Palace of Gold[edit]Late in 1972 Kirtanananda and sculptor-architect Bhagavatananda Dasa decided to build a home for Prabhupada. In time, the plans for the house developed into an ornate memorial shrine of marble, gold and carved teakwood, dedicated posthumously during Labor Day weekend, on Sunday, September 2, 1979. The completion of the Palace of Gold catapulted New Vrindaban into mainstream respectability as tens (and eventually hundreds) of thousands of tourists began visiting the Palace each year. A "Land of Krishna" theme park and a granite "Temple of Understanding" inclassical South Indian style were designed to make New Vrindaban a "Spiritual Disneyland". The ground-breaking ceremony of the proposed temple on May 31, 1985, was attended by dozens of dignitaries, including a United States congressman from West Virginia. One publication called it "the most significant and memorable day in the history of New Vrindaban."[12]
Upon Prabhupada's death on November 14, 1977, Kirtanananda and ten other high-ranking ISKCON leaders assumed the position of initiating gurus to succeed him. In March 1979, he accepted the honorific title "Bhaktipada."
Kirtanananda Swami authored two dozen published books, some of which were translated and published in Gujarati, German, French and Spanish editions. Some books attributed to him and published in his name were actually written by volunteer ghostwriters.[25]