Back To Prabhupada, Issue 2, Winter 2003/4
Welcome to the second issue of Back To Prabhupada magazine (BTP).
Since the launch of our inaugural issue, so much has happened! If anyone thought the magazine was going to just slowly sail into obscurity, they were sadly mistaken. We have had more bannings from the temple, threats of legal action, hordes of letters, requests for the magazine still coming in every day, and to cap it all-we ran out of our first print run of 5000, and hence another 5000 were printed at the beginning of December!
This issue will bring you some of these developments. On page 3 please find a small selection of the many letters we have received. On pages 4, 5, 15 and 16 we bring you more evidence of the 'Great Guru Hoax' we highlighted in the first issue. What our readers are appreciating more than anything, and which makes what we say irrefutable, is that we present our case regarding the Guru hoax by using evidence from the mouths of the Guru hoaxers themselves! This issue will continue this tradition. Pages 8 and 9 have a new feature - 'Coming To Prabhupada' - where devotees give their life story about how they came to realise that Srila Prabhupada is their eternal Diksa Guru after being misled for so long. We invite devotees to send in their stories also for publication. Pages 12 and 13 document the bannings and legal threats that have been issued to try and silence Back To Prabhupada magazine, after only one issue. But please rest assured, we will not be silenced, the truth will 'out', and we will continue publishing the facts, come what may.
One thing I want to address is a point which is in the minds of many devotees, and that is whether or not it is correct to publicise the 'negative' side of ISKCON. Some say they agree that BTP is giving the truth, but will it not just put people off ISKCON? Why should we be washing our 'dirty laundry' in public? Firstly, please note the following statement from Srila Prabhupada in Bhagavad-gita As It Is:
"According to social conventions, it is said that one can speak the truth only when it is palatable to others. But that is not truthfulness. The truth should be spoken in a straightforward way, so that others will understand actually what the facts are. If a man is a thief and if people are warned that he is a thief, that is truth. Although sometimes the truth is unpalatable, one should not refrain from speaking it."
(Bhagavad-gita As It Is, 10.4-5, purport, emphasis added)
Secondly, please consider the following verse from Sri Isopanisad:
"Only one who can learn the process of nescience and that of transcendental knowledge side by side can transcend the influence of repeated birth and death and enjoy the full blessings of immortality."
(Sri Isopanisad, Mantra 11)
So the full truth, both what is right and what is wrong, must be spoken for everyone's benefit. And finally, consider the following from one of the 80 Guru hoaxers themselves, who has launched a campaign to remove one of the other Guru hoaxers (as detailed on page 15). He says:
"As the GBC cannot be expected to take needed action to stop deviations before they become disasters, it seems the only recourse for responsible members of ISKCON is to take the matter to gutter level, i.e. the internet. Painful and undignified as such public laundry-washing may be, it might at least create an awareness of deviations and warn devotees not to get sidelined into weird cults going on in the name of ISKCON."
(Bhakti Vikash Swami, 23/03/03, PAMHO Text: 7160561)
I think the above sums up our position perfectly. Remember what I said earlier about making our arguments against the Guru hoaxers irrefutable, by using the words from their own mouths! (It is, of course, another matter entirely that the author of the above message is himself a leader of one such "weird cult"- the "take Srila Prabhupada's position bogus Guru cult"!)
Please enjoy this second issue. Hare Krishna and all glories to Srila Prabhupada!
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