Back To Prabhupada, Issue 19, Spring 2008, Quotes, Notes & News
In the editorial for BTP 15, it was stated that:
“the original deviation of perpetrating the Great Guru Hoax has expanded into other deviations of commercialisation, secularisation, Hinduisation, demigod worship”
Now an in toto confirmation of this has come from ISKCON itself, as the following excerpt from a talk given by HH Jayadvaita Swami, a GBC voted-in guru, BBT trustee and senior leader in ISKCON, shows:
“By the late 1970s ISKCON, formally not a religion but something more: a radical movement for the re–spiritualization of human society was vigorously seeking acceptance as a bona fide religion and seeking to prove its religious status by such acts as giving out food to the poor. A sect on the church road well traversed by other groups. I think ISKCON can expect to see itself making further adjustments and accommodations for the sake of public acceptance and access to greater resources. […] Another area of reinterpretation concerns ISKCON’s relationship with Hinduism. ISKCON has gone from being beyond Hinduism to being – very much Hindu! Temples have become centres for making cultural and social events, priests earn a livelihood doing weddings and hair cutting ceremonies, congregational members are encouraged to send their donations and get the blessings of the Lord and their names on plaques. Temples once the exclusive hold of Gaura-Nitai and Radha-Krishna now are dominated by murtis of demigods. In some quarters ISKCON has undergone considerable Indianisation.”
(HH Jayadvaita Swami, ISKCON Studies Conference, Italy, July 28th, 2007)
In other words, a movement set up by Srila Prabhupada for the “re-spiritualisation of the entire human society” has now turned into a mundane church like all other religions, interested in simply making money and surviving, regardless of the cost to its purity. This is the natural outcome when a movement becomes disconnected from the parampara (disciplic succession), having disobeyed the order of the spiritual master, principally by first usurping his position as spiritual master.
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