Back To Prabhupada, Issue 54, Winter 2016/17
e have shown many times in previous BTP issues how ISKCON's leadership has followed the lead set by the IRM. For example, please see BTP 33, "ISKCON Guru Follows BTP's Lead", or even the last issue, "GBC Admits IRM Guidance Required". Below are statements from HH Hridayananda Dasa Goswami ("HD"), a current ISKCON diksa guru, ex-GBC chairman, and one of the original 11 "zonal acaryas" (The Great Guru Hoax, Part 1). All emphases added.
"ISKCON reinvented itself as a kanistha-adhikari movement where it's the opposite of what Prabhupada taught. [...] So in all these different ways, Prabhupada's teachings have been inverted [...] I mean there are so many superficial hypocritical religions in the world -- I don't think we're supposed to add to the number. You could preach the opposite of what Prabhupada said, and yet if you're wearing a dhoti, you're his real follower. It's come to that."
(HD Lecture, 12/10/16)
"our Western movement has now collapsed [...] ISKCON is in a crisis"
(HD Lecture, 12/10/16)
HD states that ISKCON is deviating in a wholesale manner, is in crisis, and is a "superficial hypocritical religion", where only your status, rather than what you actually state, matters. This is exactly what the IRM has been saying for many years, and has continually presented evidence for in every BTP issue.
"They did the opposite of what Prabhupada said, they turned his teachings upside-down, and just went for the money."
(HD Lecture, 12/10/16)
"I can frankly tell you that since Prabhupada left, ISKCON is not what it was. [...] you can do car pujas [...] in Australia they had a Ratha-yatra and right in front of the Lord Jagannatha deities they had Bollywood dancers doing an extremely erotic dance"
(HD Lecture, 28/3/16)
A common theme we have highlighted in BTP has been ISKCON's lurch into commercialisation and Indianisation. HD not only fully agrees with this, but to illustrate this he even gives the same examples that were featured in BTP, such as "car pujas" (please see BTP 11), and Bollywood dancers at Ratha-yatra in Australia (please see BTP 40).
"Ironically, what I'm doing with Krishna West [...] is in a sense civil disobedience within ISKCON -- and very consciously so. [...] So I'm trying to revive the real Prabhupada Hare Krishna movement"
(HD Lecture, 10/1/17)
Due to these problems that exist in ISKCON, HD states he must take the same course of action as the ISKCON Revival Movement (IRM). Which is to vigorously challenge the situation in ISKCON, and in this way revive the real ISKCON given by Srila Prabhupada.
"The movement has been declining in the West for 40 years. What does it take before people open their eyes? [...] I mean, the amount of irrationality and a-historicity is just... this is supposed to be a spiritual science. We're supposed to be the brahmanas, the learned scholars. [...] I was a GBC for 30 years, I was Chairman of the GBC, I supported the GBC's system"
(HD Lecture, 12/10/16)
1) HD admits that the problems of ISKCON's decline which he is highlighting now, began straight after Srila Prabhupada's departure and have been going on ever since. Indeed, the phenomena of commercialisation, Indianisation, and so on, has been going on in ISKCON for decades.
2) However, it is a fact that HD has only recognised and spoken out against these problems very recently. Because, as he admits, he himself was a loyal member of the GBC for most of the time these problems were occurring. Therefore, instead of recognising these problems, he supported and was part of the management that presided over and directly caused these very problems!
3) He now berates the ISKCON management that "what does it take before people open their eyes?", stating that ISKCON's leaders are supposed to be brahmanas and scholars, rather than dealing in irrationality. Yet, he could very well ask himself the same question as he was also not only blind to the same problems for decades, but actually party to causing them!
"Tyranny threatens the GBC [...] It wasn't until I had to suffer all this injustice that I finally got it, because you know, if you're a big leader in ISKCON, everything always goes well and you're always on top [...] Before this happened to me, you know, you can go your whole life not realizing what you're doing until someone does it to you and then you understand it. [...] Because if they do this to me, God only knows what they do to regular devotees."
(HD Lecture, 12/10/16)
HD admits he woke up to the problems regarding the behaviour of the GBC, and how he may also have behaved, only due to him personally experiencing this behaviour. Otherwise he would have remained forever oblivious to it. Being able to learn that something is wrong only from personal experience, rather than knowledge, is explained by Srila Prabhupada as evidence of being less intelligent:
"When an intelligent person hears from the lawbooks and sastras, or scriptures, that stealing is not good and hears that a thief is punished when arrested, he refrains from theft. A less intelligent person may first have to be arrested and punished for stealing to learn to stop stealing."
(The Nectar of Instruction, Verse 1)
This lack of intelligence would no doubt have played a key role in his also taking so long to "open his eyes" to ISKCON's problems, as we detailed in the previous section.
It is good that HD has finally woken up to some of the problems with ISKCON and the GBC which were highlighted a long time ago by the IRM. Of course, as an unauthorised diksa guru successor to Srila Prabhupada, HD is still part of the problems, and it would be good if he also recognised this major problem of unauthorised diksa guru successors that afflicts ISKCON.
He is supposed to have been a ‘good as God' diksa guru ever since 1978. Yet, before his current vocal criticism, he was a loyal ISKCON company man like the rest of the GBC management, as he admits. "Guru" means "heavy with knowledge" (Teachings of Lord Kapila, Verse 4). But most of his career as a diksa guru has been "heavy" with deep ignorance, rather than knowledge, regarding the problems in ISKCON, which only now he is belatedly recognising. Besides his being unauthorised, this ignorance in itself is evidence that he is not a ‘good as God' diksa guru.
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