Back To Prabhupada, Issue 35, Spring 2012
It has been claimed by guru hoax supporters that the work of the IRM in exposing false gurus is a negative activity, rather than spiritually inspiring, since all it does is destroy people's faith in anything spiritual. Now ISKCON guru has directly refuted such an objection. Whilst commenting on a film project which exposed a fake guru, he stated:
"Some have said that even making this film would have destroyed the fledgling faith of those who fell for their 'guru.' That once caught out - and caught out on film before the eyes of the world - they would be much less likely to repose their trust in anyone else. I can understand that objection, and I have decades of personal experience of it. However, I feel that the merit of this successful duping of the American public will ultimately be that western culture itself becomes more circumspect about trusting someone because of exotic appearances only. Hopefully people who want to know about gurus will turn to the source literature on the subject and become able to discern genuine manifestations of spirituality from superficial appearances."
(Kripamoya Das, "fake guru makes true movie", The Vaishnava Voice, 24/3/2012)
We completely agree that exposing false gurus will merely assist spiritual seekers to become more discerning in selecting a real guru. Thus, the work of the IRM will hopefully lead people back to the lotus feet of the genuine guru, Srila Prabhupada.
Kripamoya Das also states:
"The result is a sad indictment of our times - when the external appearances of a 'guru' coupled with the spiritual longings of under-informed and easily-pleased seekers can produce an ardent following of would-be disciples in just a short time.[…] The problem is that most people do not know the symptoms of a guru, his external and internal characteristics. They consequently tend to project their spiritual aspirations onto someone who matches their prior notions of what such a spiritual person should be."
Again, this perfectly describes the situation that we find today in ISKCON, whereby gurus are considered to be self-realised representatives of Srila Prabhupada, despite being constantly exposed by us as spouting contradictory gibberish.
Thus, we have an ISKCON guru directly endorsing the need to expose false gurus for the benefit of everyone. And this is all the IRM has ever done. To date, no one has challenged the veracity of what we have documented in BTP. Instead, we have simply been criticised that such an activity constitutes "Vaisnava aparadha" or is merely "faultfinding" etc. But, now we have an ISKCON guru going on record stating that such "fault-finding" of fake "gurus" should be done, and the IRM is happy to oblige!
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