Back To Prabhupada, Issue 25, Autumn 2009
n the Back to Prabhupada Special Issue No. 2, we documented over 100 statements from ISKCON’s gurus and leaders all agreeing with the IRM’s stance on Srila Prabhupada’s position as ISKCON’s diksa (initiating) guru. Following this, BTP has recently highlighted a series of climbdowns by various ISKCON GBC (Governing Body Commission) members, again all agreeing with the IRM. As if this was not enough to establish the truth and supremacy of the IRM’s philosophy, we now document a U-turn by one of the GBC’s most prominent gurus, HH Sivarama Swami (“SRS”).
At the heart of the GBC’s rejection of Srila Prabhupada’s position as ISKCON’s diksa guru have been arguments based on the guru’s physicality:
a) That acting as diksa guru requires the guru to be physically present.
b) That this physicality in turn is required in order for the guru to accept disciples and initiate them.
Based on these two points, which the GBC have further argued is what Srila Prabhupada taught, the GBC have confidently concluded that it is not possible for Srila Prabhupada to continue to act as ISKCON’s diksa guru following his physical departure. And this “physical guru” doctrine is so firmly embedded in the average ISKCON member’s brain that they will robotically parrot this “physical” doctrine as soon as the fact of Srila Prabhupada being ISKCON’s diksa guru is ever brought up.
In 1994, SRS published a paper entitled “Continuing the Parampara”, where he attempted to refute the “ritvik” philosophy that Srila Prabhupada is the diksa guru of ISKCON. In a section of the paper dedicated to the “physical presence” of the guru, SRS argues the following point:
"To act as siksa and diksa guru a spiritual master generally must be physically present."
(SRS, Continuing the Parampara, 1994, emphasis added)
However, now in a recent U-turn, he states the following:
“The spiritual master, by dint of this principle of empowerment by Krishna, can reciprocate with the devotion of a disciple, which a disciple can necessarily experience, although that spiritual master will not physically be present in one place, in that place, but he may be in a far distant place, or he may not even be physically present on the planet at all.”
(SRS Podcast, August 4th, 2009, emphases added)
a) Contrary to his earlier assertion that a diksa guru must generally be physically present, SRS now accepts that the diksa guru may not be physically present before the disciple or on the planet.
b) He also states that the diksa guru has the ability to reciprocate with the disciple even when he is not on the planet. Clearly, if he has this ability of reciprocation with a disciple without being on the planet, he can just as easily reciprocate with an aspiring disciple and accept him without being on the planet as well. The lack of physicality is no bar*.
Back in 1994, SRS also argued that the diksa guru meant a physically embodied guru:
"Therefore in speaking of "external manifestation of the Supersoul" the guru is being referred to as that form of the Lord that is manifest to our eyes. The embodied guru."
(SRS, Continuing the Parampara, 1994, emphasis added)
And now in 2009, SRS again takes a U-turn and adopts the IRM’s position that the spiritual master’s manifestation does not need to be “embodied” before us in order for him to act as the current spiritual master:
“Prabhupada says that that same principle of expansion applies to the spiritual master. He is not limited to his body [...] So I understand this spiritual master is a principle, to be the principle of being a representative of Krishna in which he’s not limited in the way that the body, the vapuh that he inhabits, is limited [...]”
(SRS Podcast, August 4th, 2009, emphases added)
Clearly, if the spiritual master is able to act via expansion and not limited in acting by the body he inhabits, then that same spiritual master is available to any aspiring disciple without his lack of vapuh acting as a hindering factor*.
*(If a spiritual master has been succeeded by another guru whom he has authorised, then regardless of whether or not he was on the planet, this would be a reason for him to stop accepting new disciples - but not just the lack of physicality itself).
Although it has taken SRS until 2009 to understand the falseness of the physicality doctrine which he has been preaching for many years, it should have been obvious to him from the day he himself got initiated, as he was initiated without physically meeting Srila Prabhupada:
“For almost five years I had seen and known Prabhupada visually from photos [...] But I had never seen Prabhupada in person […] That was the first personal contact with his Divine Grace, although I had been an initiated devotee for two years.”
(SRS, Meeting Srila Prabhupada)
And, yet hypocritically, he has asserted that no one else can do the same.
In our “GBC climbdown” series in BTP 23, we showed SRS effectively agreeing with the IRM that Srila Prabhupada is the diksa guru who initiates disciples in ISKCON. Now we have presented further evidence of the same. This philosophical volte-face is solely due to the widespread distribution of the IRM’s foundational paper The Final Order, in which we extensively document Srila Prabhupada’s statements on the immateriality of the spiritual master’s physical body to the process of initiation. It must now be clear to anyone interested in the truth that the GBC’s guru roadshow has hit one IRM roadblock after another, forcing them to take one U-turn after another. Hopefully, it is only a matter of time until they and the entire ISKCON movement stop their hypocrisy and actually practice what they claim in words, and are re-directed on to the correct route – the road back to Prabhupada.
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