Back To Prabhupada, Issue 68, Vol 1, 2021
HG Ravindra Svarupa Dasa ("RSD"), a GBC voted-in guru, has previously physically attacked BTP distributors – please see video at: iskconirm.com/rsd – thus opposing BTP's message of promoting Srila Prabhupada as ISKCON's diksa guru, rather than GBC voted-in gurus such as RSD. However, as we shall show, RSD is forced to admit that BTP's message has always been 100% correct! Quotes in shaded boxes are taken from RSD's personal website. All emphases added.
"Each morning in ISKCON temples we pay homage to our Founder-Acarya Srila Prabhupada by singing Sri Guru-vandana [...] a Bengali song composed by Srila Narottama dasa Thakura. In the hymn's second stanza, that great acarya directs our attention to the words or speech (vakya) issuing from the guru's lotus-like mouth (guru-mukha-padma) [...] we should make those words one (aikya) with our hearts and minds (citta). And, he goes on to say, we should allow no other desire or longing (asa) to reside there."
RSD explains that every day, everyone in ISKCON temples exclusively worships Srila Prabhupada in guru-puja, and that during this prayer we are singing to Srila Prabhupada that we should have "no other desire" than to make his words one with our hearts and minds. This would mean that we should have no desire to take shelter of anyone, including the GBC gurus such as RSD, other than Srila Prabhupada.
"In the next stanza, Srila Narottama dasa Thakura spells out some consequences of our thus assimilating the words of the spiritual master. Those potent words then confer upon us the gift of spiritual sight (cakhu-dan). Thereupon transcendent knowledge (divya-jnan) illuminates our hearts [...]"
RSD explains that Srila Prabhupada gives us "divya jnan", and Srila Prabhupada in an explanation of this same stanza states that, as the giver of this divya-jnana, he is thus worshipped as the diksa guru:
"Divya jnana hrde prokasito. What is that divya jnana? [...] This is divya jnana. Diksa. Diksa means from this divya jnana."
(Srila Prabhupada Lecture,11/7/76)
Hence, RSD admits that everyone worships Srila Prabhupada every morning as the spiritual master and diksa guru.
"Prabhupada took especial pains to bestow his vakya through the medium of written English and to publish those writings in book form. [...] He brought boxes of these books with him [...] for their eventual distribution and reception worldwide. In this way, his guru-vakya itself gave proof to its empowerment to spread over space and time."
RSD explains that Srila Prabhupada bestowed his words upon us through his books, which are empowered to "spread over space and time". RSD further emphasises that this spreading of Srila Prabhupada's words over "space and time" and our reading them itself constitutes the transmission of divya-jnana by Srila Prabhupada:
"In the pages of the very first of these volumes we find one place that Srila Prabhupada most brilliantly elucidates for us the full process of the transmission of that divya-jnan [...] he spells out the conditions necessary for the transmission to take place [...] Since our very reading of this particular text and purport is, in itself, an occasion of such transmission, the text is implicitly self-referential, and all the more powerful for that."
And, as already explained above, this transmission of divya-jnana by Srila Prabhupada is him giving us diksa:
"Which explains the divya-jnana, transcendental, that is Diksa. Di, divya, diksanam. Diksa. So divya-jnana, transcendental knowledge..."
(Srila Prabhupada, Room Conversation, 27/1/77)
Thus, there is no barrier of "space and time" to Srila Prabhupada continuing to be everyone's diksa guru in ISKCON.
"Long ago, Suta's audience had been hearing Srimad-Bhagavatam; Srila Prabhupada's audience now is reading it. [...] the parampara idea of an unbroken lineage of sages, both illuminated and illuminating, is invoked implicitly – thereby linking Srila Prabhupada and his audience together with Suta and his own."
1) RSD makes it clear that we are today receiving the real message of the Srimad-Bhagavatam from Srila Prabhupada via his translation and commentary of the text. And, according to RSD's authority, the GBC, this will always be the case in ISKCON:
"Whereas there is the need to bequeath to future generations of ISKCON a culture of diligently reading Srila Prabhupada's books, so as to prevent speculations and concoctions".
(GBC Resolutions 2020, 303.03)
Thus, everyone in ISKCON will always be "Srila Prabhupada's audience" for receiving the message of the Srimad-Bhagavatam from him. Which means that in ISKCON Srila Prabhupada will always be the current link in the parampara, from whom one receives the real message of the Srimad-Bhagavatam and takes initiation:
"the message of Srimad-Bhagavatam is coming down by disciplic succession, and in order to receive the real message of Srimad-Bhagavatam one should approach the current link, or spiritual master in the chain of disciplic succession. After being initiated by the proper spiritual master in that chain of succession [...]"
(SB, 2.9.7, purport)
2) Indeed, RSD makes this same point by describing this act of reading Srila Prabhupada's books as linking one to the "unbroken" parampara; meaning that Srila Prabhupada is our current link to the parampara.
In BTP we feature two types of statements from ISKCON's leaders:
1) They correctly present Srila Prabhupada's teachings regarding guru-tattva and other matters, with no self-awareness that in practice they are deviating from them.
2) They present statements which deviate from Srila Prabhupada's teachings.
Above, since RSD makes it clear that Srila Prabhupada is ISKCON's only diksa guru and current link for ISKCON's duration, and as RSD has usurped Srila Prabhupada's position by acting as a GBC voted-in "successor" guru, this is a prime example of statement number 1)!
Return to Ravindra Svarupa das Index
Return to "Succession" Index
Return to IRM Homepage
