Суд над Бхагавад-гитой / Attempt to ban Bhagavad-gita

Note: This letter is very clear and difficult to misinterpret. The important thing is understanding the philosophy and acting on it. All these people who are hearing the philosophy and dancing and chanting have good opportunity to go back to Godhead, not those who took "initiation" but change the instructions. In an old Back to Godhead article Prabhupada says: "Initiation is a formality. If you are serious, that is real initiation. If you have understood this Krsna philosophy and if you have decided that you will take Krsna consciousness seriously and preach the philosophy to others, that is your initiation. My touch is simply a formality. It is your determination. That is initiation."

"The problem that your followers want to accept you as guide in spiritual matters is not objectionable if they are sincere. If they have sincere faith in you, it may not be disturbed, rather it can be fully utilized. My main purpose is to propagate the teachings of Lord Caitanya or Krsna consciousness. I am not after recruiting some disciples; but for preaching work we want some assistants and if somebody offers voluntarily his service it is welcome. So the best thing will be that you become a regular disciple of me and you can teach your followers in the same principles." (Sai Siddha Svarupananda, 1/8/71)

Note: This letter farther qualifies the last one. It is not initiating people that matters but getting people to follow the instructions, whether coming directly from Prabhupada, from his books, or from a disciple who is preaching the exact same thing. Guru, Sastra, Sadhu. Here Prabhupada is recommending that Siddha Svarupa become a fixed-up disciple. As long as he preaches the exact same thing, then his followers will go back to Godhead, if they are sincere. Prabhupada was not interested in owning many temples and controlling millions of disciples in order to enjoy "nice eating and sleeping" like so many of his Godbrothers were doing. His vision was very broad. He wanted to preach to the whole world with everyone chanting Hare Krsna and living like human beings. As explained in Rohini Kumar Swami's paper (consult Appendix 8), Prabhupada was a great acarya, like Ramanujacarya or Madhavacarya. He appeared to set the devotional standards for the entire age, according to time and circumstances. Pure devotees of the caliber of Srila Prabhupada are very rare. We cannot overestimate the gravity of offending Prabhupada as ISKCON is now doing.

"The eternal bond between disciple and spiritual master begins from the first day he hears. just like my Spiritual Master. In 1922 he said in our first meeting, 'You are educated boys, why don't you preach this cult.' That was the beginning, now it is coming to fact. Therefore the relationship began from that day.

"If you think of me and work for me, then I am in your heart. If you love somebody he is in your heart. It is common thing, everyone understands it. If I hate somebody or if I love somebody he is also in my heart..." (Jadurani, 9/4/72)

Note: The spiritual master accepts the sinful reactions of the sincere disciple. If one is not sincere, then he is not a disciple. Sincere disciple means strictly and humbly following the instructions of the spiritual master. As Prabhupada said earlier, "It is not simply a formality." The spiritual master accepts the sincere and humble service of the disciple. Out of compassion, he absorbs the disciple's sinful reactions. This is not a cheap trick or something one can buy, but a natural occurrence when one humbly serves another. Chanakya Pandit says: "The king suffers the sins of the state, the priest suffers the sins of the king, the guru suffers the sins of his wife." So if one humbly serves Prabhupada's instructions, always praying for Krsna's mercy to descend in the form of His bona fide representative, then he is creating a situation whereby Krsna will send the pure devotee to help that sincere soul. It's the intense prayer of the aspiring devotee that forces Krsna to send a bona fide guru. Nothing else. This is the formula.

A neophyte can accept service and bad kanna for awhile. His hmits are very restricted. If he goes beyond them, he will fall down. He simply doesn't have the purity to absorb unlimited sinful reactions. When this "guru" fags down, the disciple is back on his own. AH that time and service becomes wasted and he has to start over again, except that he may be clouded with so many misconceptions and bad experiences picked up during his entanglement in the bogus spiritual master/disciple business. lf we are sincere, but need help, we should best approach a pure devotee who can really help us. In the meantime, we should take instruction from any senior devotee who is strictly following. Krsna will send the spiritual master at just the right moment. Read how He sent Narada Muni to Dhruva Maharaja in the forest.

"Yes, I want that you give me that facility to write my books, but I can attend some meetings of important people and elites. You have taken the right view of the importance of my books. Books will always remain. That was the view of my Guru Maharaja, and I also have taken it. Therefore I started my movement with my books. And we shall be able to maintain everything with the sales of the books. The temples will be maintained by the book sales, and if there are no more temples, then the books shall remain." (Hamsadutta, 11/8/73)

Note: Here also it is clear that whether or not "ISKCON" remains as we know it, or if it takes an unmanifest form for some time, that doesn't matter. As long as the books remain, people will be able to go back to Godhead by reading and following them. But this will not take place if the books are changed in the form of additions, and unauthorized editing. And, alarmingly, this process has also been put into gear by the current conspirators.

Prabhupada has recently said, "I know those that are sane, they will accept. No one is distributing so much quantity of religious books. Therefore I challenge all these fools and rascals...... After eighty years no one can expect to live long. My life is almost ended, it is ended. So you have to carry on. And these books will do everything...... Simply by bluffing words, these bogus gurus and yogis are nothing. But when the people read our books, then they will get good opinion." (2/18/76)

Note: It is the books that will save this movement, not the bluff of the GBC. The fact is that these men have not yet presented an authorized and logical philosophical basis for their "guru" imposition. So the above letter ironically included them.

"Regarding the Sannyasis, they should be independent. Why they should take help from you? They are strong men, so they should manage on their own strength. That is the test of their effective preaching work." (Rupanuga, 11/13/70)

Note: What is the test of one's preaching work? These ISKCON "gurus" have built very little on their own. They simply exploited Srila Prabhupada's legacy and unauthorizedly usurped his properties and temples. They tried, with mixed success, to usurp his devotees too. They didn't establish it all on their own. They had some ability to imitate and cut profile. They should have gone out on their own, independently, and preached. They could have attempted to establish their own centers on the power of their own charisma. If they were actually pure, they would have attracted a following. Not that everyone else sets them up on a throne and says, "Look, there is a pure devotee. Can't you see by his opulence. He must be pure! Right?"

We were in Bombay right after the "appointment," and personally noticed how Tamala couldn't attract the Indians to follow him. Yet he managed to spend a lot of Prabhupada's money fixing up a luxury suite for himself in Prabhupada's established temple.

"I am very sorry to inform you that the London management is not going on nicely. I have received so many unfavorable reports and the most astonishing report is that our small van which you had purchased in my presence has been taken away by the proprietor on account of payments not being made properly. So we have lost all the money that we have already paid." (Mukunda, 3/17/71)

Note: This concept has a relevance to today's catastrophe. We are an very sorry to see that the management has not been going on nicely. The most astonishing report is that almost an of Srila Prabhupada's disciples have left in disgust. The nasty managers, the GBC, have appointed "gurus" even after Prabhupada directly told them not to do this (see next letter). So now we have lost practically all of the disciples on account of this offensive behavior.

"I do not wish to discuss about activities of my Godbrothers but it is a fact they have no life for preaching work. All are satisfied with a place for residence in the name of a temple, they engage disciples to get foodstuff by transcendental devices and eat and sleep. They have no idea or brain how to broadcast the cult of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu. My Guru Maharaja used to lament many times for this reason and he thought if one man at least had understood the principle of preaching then his mission would achieve success. In the later days of my Guru Maharaja he was very disgusted. Actually he left this world earlier, otherwise he would have continued to live for more years. Still he requested his disciples to form a strong governing body for preaching the cult of Caitanya Mahaprabhu. He never recommended anyone to be acarya of the Gaudiya Math. But Sridhar Maharaja is responsible for disobeying this order of Guru Maharaja, and he and two others who are already dead, unnecessarily thought that there must be one acarya. If Guru Maharaja could have seen someone who was qualified at that time to be acarya he would have mentioned. Because on the night before he passed away he talked of so many things, but never mentioned an acarya. His idea was acarya was not to be nominated amongst the governing body. He said openly you make a GBC and conduct the mission. So his idea was amongst the members of GBC, who would come out successful and self-effulgent acarya would be automatically selected. So Sridhar Maharaja and his two associate gentlemen unauthorizedly selected one acarya and later it proved a failure. The result is now everyone is claiming to be acarya even though they may be kanistha-adhikari with no ability to preach. In some of the camps the acarya is being changed three times in a year. Therefore we may not commit the same mistake in our ISKCON camp. Actually amongst my Godbrothers no one is qualified to become acarya. So it is better not to mix with my Godbrothers very intimately because instead of inspiring our students and disciples they may sometimes pollute them. This attempt was made previously by them, especially Madhava Maharaja and Tirtha Maharaja and Bon Maharaja but somehow or other I saved the situation. This is going on. We must be very careful about them and not mix with them. This is my instruction to you all. They cannot help us in our movement, but they are very competent to harm our natural progress. So we must be very careful about them." (Rupanuga, 4/28/74)

Note: The Gaudiya Math deviated by centralizing all the authority on the shoulders of the great scholar named Vasudeva. They appointed one acarya who later fell down badly in Vmdavana. They were utterly embarrassed and exposed. ISKCON claims not to have done this. But actually they did the exact same thing, only in a different, roundabout way. They selected eleven "acaryas" instead of one and gave each of them a sovereign territory to rule over. Actually, the Gaudiya Math's Vasudeva was far more advanced intellectually than all these eleven men put together. ISKCON claims that they have not made the same mistake as the Gaudiya Math. They claim this is so because they have kept everything under the control of the GBC. That is a complete hoax. The only difference between ISKCON and the Gaudiya Math is that these men deviated in eleven ways instead of one. They divided up the whole world into eleven territories and they each exercise absolute control in their zones with an iron fist. The only time the GBC exercises its "authority" over them is when a "guru" gets so far out of hand that his behavior cannot be covered up anymore. Even then the GBC's power to remove him is limited as is clearly evidenced by how long Hamsadutta remained on his throne after his debauchery was exposed.