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| “They Might Have Made Some Changes” |
|
“Fortunate
means everyone has got his discretion. So one who has the
We are also
enjoined to render service to As we hear
the The
question may be raised: If an institution is deviating or preaching something
contrary to the pure devotee, does such an institution have some kind of
automatic self-correcting mechanism? If not, where is the point where the disciplic
succession becomes broken? The discriminating devotee will
never allow his intelligence to be deviated from the standard put forward by
the pure devotee. If something is introduced which contradicts the siddhanta, he will reject it. It does not matter if the
person preaching something deviant is a vikarmi, a mayavadi, or someone
initiated by a bona fide guru and leading an institution originally founded by the
acharya. We should want our service to be
conducted to It is a common saying that "absolute power corrupts absolutely." The leaders of spiritual institutions (so-called) are especially prone to such corruption, because of the absolute level of submission demanded of the followers. The leader may remain renounced to external vision, but those who surreptitiously put forward their own self-interest in the form of controlling an institution are engaged in a very pernicious form of sense gratification. They have great facility to institutionalize their contradictions and deviations, and demand, under threat of ostracization or excommunication, that the followers accept them as absolute. It has been said therefore, that “hypocrisy is the greatest luxury.” One may be abstaining from sex pleasure and material wealth, yet be caught up in the perversity of being able to tell others that something black is white. Such men have superior intelligence (in the material sense) and can twist the statements of the pure devotees and scriptures in order to convince simple and innocent followers. In this way, such leaders or ”gurus” demand that their followers pollute their
intelligence in such a way that the leader’s whims, oversights, and contradictions
are somehow seen as spiritual. This is how the pure intelligence required to
progress to the higher levels of devotional service becomes corrupted. Similarly,
when the proper use of intelligence prompts others to point out those same
contradictions as indications of deviation from the original acharya’s guidance, the leaders demand their followers
avoid such “poisonous” influence. “That
understanding which considers irreligion to be religion and religion to be
irreligion, under the spell of illusion and darkness, and strives always in the
wrong direction, O Partha, is in the mode of ignorance.” Bhagavad-gita
18.32 Life in such an institution is
not It is not a stretch to consider
that it is just this sort of hypocritical kaitava dharma that Here we have a situation where foolish
seekers of spiritual enlightenment and liberation are being wrongly
trained in order to make foot soldiers in the ranks of such leader’s or "guru’s’"
institutions. Vaishnava principles, such as submissiveness and avoiding
faultfinding, are being misused to create a slavish bondage to the whims of the
deviant leader or "guru." Similarly, the misled are being told
that recognizing the contradictions of their so-called guru is
"hellish," and the cause of immediate falldown. Innocent
followers are thus being encouraged to put on the blinders for the sake of
their so-called spiritual advancement. Such indoctrination does not get a very
good reception from Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Gosvami Maharaja Prabhupada: “It is these worldly expectants who become the patrons of the mischievous
race of the pseudo-teachers of religion, the Putanas,
whose congenial function is to stifle the theistic disposition at the very
moment of its suspected appearance.” Organized
Religion Srila Bhaktivinode Thakura also
cautions us about such guidance: “However, those who
propagate bhagavad-bhakti as the highest dharma--yet
behave against the principles of suddha-bhakti--can
be especially harmful to us. In the name of bhakti, they instruct us against
the actual principles of bhakti. This ultimately leads us to a path that is
diametrically opposed to bhagavad-bhakti. Therefore,
with great endeavor, our previous acaryas have defined the svarupa
or intrinsic nature of bhakti, repeatedly cautioning us to keep away from
polluted and mixed concepts.” Bhakti
Viveka Tattva Finally, there is this remark by Srila Prabhupada: Pushta-Krishna: Some of them will say some things that The problem with serving a
so-called guru is that, in the name of serving The
transcendental benefits that such a person can receive are, at best, minimized.
The “causeless knowledge and detachment” and “higher taste” of genuine bhakti
yoga do not make themselves available to such a
devotee, regardless of what he may subjectively imagine. He is now in a
psychological cul-de-sac, and it can only get worse. “...because of the instructions of a foolish guru one
remains perpetually in material existence and suffers its tribulations.” - Srimad-Bhagavatam
8.24.51, Purport Due to the
misuse of Vaishnava teachings, the disciple is regularly exhorted to advance
through service to his so-called spiritual master. However, this disciple knows
that, despite his efforts, he has not made any tangible advancement. Therefore,
he feels that he has not tried hard enough to satisfy his “guru”; that he is
not sufficiently surrendered. The so-called guru encourages this syndrome in
his chelas. In this way, compulsion, and not transcendence, takes over the life
of these disciples. This
becomes further compounded because, inevitably, the chela
has doubts about the conduct of his leader. Also, the chela’s actual separation
from the disciplic succession is doing nothing to mitigate his material desires.
Fear of degradation, of becoming a vikarmi again, combines with the fear he
already has of not satisfying his object of worship, his “guru.” In this
way, the follower’s consciousness is completely taken over by a compulsive mentality.
In the name of constant engagement in devotional service, he rushes fearfully
here and there to do this or that. This unfortunate person gives up material
happiness, but because of his lack of discretion in choosing a spiritual master,
he does not get any spiritual happiness, either. Srimad-Bhagavatam compares such a disciple to someone
who jumps into a shallow river (the bogus spiritual master) to avoid the
temperature on a hot day (his sufferings in material life). He still has no
relief from the heat, yet now he has even more pain due to hitting the bottom
of the river. “Cheaters are always there to
manufacture their own way of spiritual realization. To get some material
benefit, the conditioned soul approaches these pseudo sannyasis and yogis for
cheap blessings, but he does not receive any benefit from them, either
spiritual or material. . . One cannot become happy by accepting a false guru. A
guru should be accepted as advised in Srimad-Bhagavatam (11.3.21). Tasmad gurum prapadyeta jijnasuh sreya uttamam: One should
approach a bona fide guru to inquire about the highest benefit of life. . . .
If one is able to obtain the dust of the lotus feet of such a guru, his life
becomes successful. Otherwise he is baffled both in this life and in the next.”
“In Srimad-Bhagavatam, a
distinction between real religion and pretentious religion has been clearly
made. According to this original and genuine commentation on the Vedanta-sutra,
there are numerous pretentious faiths that pass as religion but neglect the
real essence of religion. The real religion of a living being is his natural
inborn quality, whereas pretentious religion is a form of nescience that
artificially covers a living entity's pure consciousness under certain
unfavorable conditions. Real religion lies dormant when artificial religion
dominates from the mental plane.” In the mid-Seventies,
one would have liked to think that descriptions such as the above would never come
to have applications in the movement of Srila Prabhupada. Unfortunately, the
history of the movement after his departure from externally manifest presence
is filled with no shortage of these. Just a few
years after his departure, in the mid-Eighties, a psychological study was
performed on Hare Krishna devotees by a Dr. Arnie
Weiss. Weiss reported, “My study had some interesting results. The most
prominent was that on the Comrey Personality Scales,
both male and female devotees showed a hallmark personality trait. On the
average, devotees scored way above the normal range in compulsivity. I don’t
know of any other group . . . that has been studied, that has such a pronounced
measure of compulsivity. Devotees were close to the norm on all other measures.”
Institutions
of the material world are not ruled by sastra, or the instructions of the pure
devotees. They are ruled by the most powerful men on their governing board.
There is the relatively famous quote by Emerson in this regard: “An institution is the lengthened
shadow of one man. . . . “ In the case
of so-called spiritual institutions, such men generally have no difficulty
using the scriptures to justify what best suits their purposes. Just one
month after the departure of Srila Prabhupada from externally manifest presence
in 1977, the most powerful racketeer without authorization set himself up in
the temple of his rural compound and began initiating disciples as if he was an
uttama adhikari and Srila Prabhupada’s successor. Rather than exercise the
mandate given to them by Srila Prabhupada to stop or discipline such audacious
actions, the other men on the governing board allowed this man to continue.
Apparently the threat of losing this man, and the thousand or so followers he
commanded, was more important than deliberately trying to understand and apply the
instructions Srila Prabhupada had given in regard to his succession. In this
way the colossal pretence of the zonal acaryas was formally birthed in Mayapur just a few month’s later. “Unfortunately, when the acarya
disappears, rogues and nondevotees take advantage and immediately begin to
introduce unauthorized principles ......The acarya, the authorized
representative of the Supreme Lord, establishes these principles, but WHEN HE DISAPPEARS, THINGS ONCE AGAIN BECOME
DISORDERED.” “And I am surprised that none of the
GBC members detected the defects in the procedure. It was detected only when it
came to me. What will happen when I am not here, SHALL EVERYTHING BE SPOILED BY GBC?” - Letter to Hansadutta, In this way the completely
transcendental nature of the movement of Srila Prabhupada was diverted. The zonal
acaryas were not following, and all those who accepted their directions weren’t
following. Any devotee can make a strong argument that the zonal acaryas
destroyed Srila Prabhupada’s movement and that those who acted under them were
rendering service to something far different from “However, one should not imitate the behavior of an advanced
devotee or maha-bhagavata without being
self-realized, for by such imitation one
will eventually become degraded..... The devotee should also know his
own position and should not try to imitate a devotee situated on a higher
platform.” “And without hearing and following the instructions, the
show of devotional service becomes worthless and therefore a sort of
disturbance in the path of devotional service. Unless, therefore, devotional
service is established on the principles of sruti, smriti, purana or pancharatra authorities, the makeshow of devotional service
should at once be rejected. An unauthorized devotee should never be recognized
as a pure devotee.” On the surface, the abuses
of the zonal acaryas were remedied around 1987. But is this so? Several of the
zonal acaryas are still very powerful men in the institution. They have never
stopped being what is considered guru in the institution. The disciples that
they acquired during the period of their pretence are still considered genuinely
initiated. When we consider the standard of the disciplic succession, however,
none of the zonal acaryas was any kind of real guru at any time. “A bona fide spiritual master is in the disciplic succession
from time eternal, and he does not deviate at all from the instructions of the
Supreme Lord as they were imparted millions of years ago to the sun-god, from
whom the instructions of Bhagavad-Gita have come down to the earthly
kingdom. One should, therefore, follow the path of Bhagavad-Gita as it
is expressed in the Gita itself and beware of self-interested people
after personal aggrandizement who deviate others from
the actual path.” Reporter: But the bad gurus... The initial audacity that
created the zonal acarya concoction in the first
place therefore continued, but only to a slightly lesser degree. As evidence,
one of the former zonal acaryas even wrote a book entitled “Guru Reform
Notebook.” According to the above-mentioned quotes by Srila Prabhupada, this
concept has no place in our parampara. Only a dull person will accept that
someone was a fake mahabhagavat guru, admitted his
pretense, but still went on continuing being guru. What was once the
transcendental movement of Srila Prabhupada, that did not mislead anyone, became
a kind of Hindu papacy, an organized religion in every sense of the word. The
idea of uplifting every conditioned soul to complete self-realization,
spiritual knowledge, and liberation became, at best, a euphemism. Phalena parichate: judge by the
results. Individual followers are
still instructed to strictly follow and repeat the instructions of the sastras
and previous acaryas in the manner of the real disciplic succession. However,
the mentality that is being encouraged is more like the “good Germans” of World
War II than that of genuine bhakti yogis. It is when one begins to exercise
real discretion -- in order to understand if his leaders are actually following
-- that he is accused of falling prey to “politics” and is said to have fallen
down. In the name of avoiding faultfinding, the intelligence of the truly
qualified brahmana is considered to be a type of poison. Followers can be “good
devotees” only if they simply continue to turn a blind eye to the hypocrisy of
the leadership. The same thing can be said of the new better-behaved “gurus” --
someone who accepts that any of the offenses and pretence of former zonal acaryas were corrected simply by their being “humble”
enough to accept a lower position. The previous abuses have
not actually been eradicated; they are subtly still present and being
perpetuated. They have been mostly eliminated only on the gross or physical plane.
A pseudo-guru pretending to be a mahabhagavat cannot
still remain a guru, keeping all of his disciples as supposedly still
initiated, simply by agreeing to cut a lower profile. A guru is an emblem of
honesty, and such dishonesty is completely unacceptable. Any institution that
gives its stamp of institutional sanction to such an arrangement continues to
be a representative of nescience and is not reformed in the true sense of the
term. No genuine guru would ever ignore such discrepancies, facilitate them, or
“cooperate” with any such arrangement or confederation. Referring again to the
quote by Emerson, this means that there is still an awful lot of shadow present.
Ignoring
is also a key word in describing the dynamic in place here. A genuine guru, on the
other hand, will never allow himself to become implicated in the reactions of
approving a self-interested pretender as a genuine spiritual master. Those who
are guided by a pretender, or those still linked to his ongoing legacy, end up
like the disciples described earlier. No truly bona fide devotee would give
even tacit approval for innocent people to approach such a “guru.” “On the whole, you
may know that he is not a liberated person, and therefore, he cannot initiate
any person to Krsna consciousness. It requires special
spiritual benediction from higher authorities.” - Letter to Janardana, An institution is capable
of providing spiritual shelter if its leaders strictly follow the instructions
of the pure devotee, the founder-acarya. There is
deviation and the disciplic succession becomes broken when the leaders begin to
disregard or ignore the instructions of the acaryas.
The correcting mechanism is when the leaders actually correct the deviations. To
say that there is some automatic self-correcting mechanism, without actually rectifying
the deviations, is to institutionalize the deviations. It is to demand that all
the followers become blind and serve the hypocrisy of the leaders. It is
nescience. TRANSLATION When Srila
Prabhupada was physically present to actively direct his followers, there was
only one philosophy. Those who added or subtracted from his version were severely
chastised and chastened. Now there are at least six camps competing, each one
claiming that they are implementing the real desires of His Divine Grace. What
virtually all of them have in common, however, is that they believe that they
should be controlling the movement; each pushing a questionable process of
initiation as their supposed evidence of legitimacy to do so. The real process,
however, exists independently of any kinds of factions recognized in this
material world or their utilitarian method of initiation. The institution only
has transcendental value if it serves the genuine process. Sincere devotees
will disregard and reject these unauthorized attempts to assume institutional
control. “The
idea of an organized church, in an intelligible form, indeed marks the close of
the living spiritual movement. The great ecclesiastical establishments are the
dikes and the dams to retain the current that cannot be held by any such
contrivances. They, indeed, indicate a desire on the part of the masses
to exploit a spiritual movement for their own purpose. They also unmistakably indicate the end of the absolute and
unconventional guidance of the bona fide spiritual teacher.” “ “The presentation of this knowledge in a systematic and
scientific manner will bring about universal sublime peace. Yet . . .
unauthorized cults have mushroomed into prominence and are fast expanding their
illegitimate fold with naïve disciples. What one fails to comprehend is how the
leaders of these cults . . . can suddenly rise to the position of spiritual
master themselves. The subject matter that needs to be promulgated among the
people is not some cheap, sentimental concoction meant to deceive them.” Ganesha:
Srila Prabhupada, if the knowledge was handed down by the saintly kings, evam parampara-praptam, how is it that the knowledge was lost? Quotes from the books of His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada are copyright by the Bhaktivedanta Book Trust |