Back To Prabhupada, Issue 72, Vol 1, 2022
In last issue's back page article, "Attacking Srila Prabhupada's Transcendence", we reported the shocking attack on Srila Prabhupada by GBC voted-in guru HH Bhakti Vikasa Swami ("BVKS"), wherein he compared Srila Prabhupada to a dead horror-film character from an Alfred Hitchcock movie titled "Psycho". This has now resulted in ISKCON India leader Basu Ghosh Dasa alerting BVKS to our exposé. In a lecture given on 20/1/22, BVKS stated that: "Yesterday Basu Ghosh Prabhu sent me a photo of a page from the Back To Prabhupada magazine", referring to the article in question, after which BVKS attempted to respond to our article.
From this we can understand two things:
1) That ISKCON leaders are reading BTP.
2) That even they felt that our exposé of BVKS's attack on Srila Prabhupada was serious enough that BVKS needed to address it.
The quotes in the shaded boxes are from the same BVKS lecture mentioned above. All emphases added.
"I'd given a talk in which I'd compared that rtvikism, in one sense, it's not seeing any difference between the prakata and aprakata, the two different phases. Srila Prabhupada, he opened one lecture in, it was on the disappearance day of Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura, so Srila Prabhupada said there are two phases, prakata and aprakata, when the spiritual master is present, and when he's not present, but they don't want to make any difference whatsoever."
BVKS refers back to the lecture in which he used the dead horror character comparison to Srila Prabhupada, which we exposed in the last BTP issue, and claims that it was appropriate because the IRM (whom BVKS calls "rtvikism") sees no difference between Srila Prabhupada's physical appearance and disappearance. And, indeed, we stated in the BTP 71 exposé in question, and before that, that there is no difference, spiritually, between the spiritual master's physical appearance and disappearance. To try to support his point that there is a difference, BVKS refers to a lecture from Srila Prabhupada talking about "prakata and aprakata". However, in this lecture, Srila Prabhupada states:
"Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura passed away from this material world on 31st December, 1936. [...] So there are two phases: prakata and aprakata, appearance and disappearance. [...] So spiritually, appearance and disappearance, there is no difference. [...] Suppose you get a son born, you become very happy. The same son, when passes away, you become very unhappy. This is material. And spiritually, there is no such difference, appearance or disappearance. [...] spiritually, there is no difference between appearance and disappearance."
(Srila Prabhupada Lecture on Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura's disappearance day, 13/12/73)
Srila Prabhupada states at least three times in this short lecture that there is no difference spiritually between a spiritual master's physical appearance or disappearance, which is exactly what the IRM states. Thus, although BVKS quoted this lecture to rebut the IRM, it actually fully supports us!
BVKS then offers two further arguments, which we have numbered "(1)" and "(2)" below, to try to support his claim that Srila Prabhupada's physical departure means "there is a difference":
"we don't make a samadhi of the guru before he passes away, for instance, and we do after he passes away (1) [...] You can prepare food to offer to him [...] but it's not exactly the same, that he'll, directly, as we see, eat it (2)"
1) Regarding point 1, Srila Prabhupada never stated that a spiritual master entering samadhi means he suddenly becomes spiritually impotent. Rather, as shown in the previous section, BVKS himself just quoted Srila Prabhupada stating the opposite. Thus, BVKS's argument does not rebut the fact that there is no difference spiritually between the spiritual master's appearance and disappearance.
2) Neither does point 2 – not being able to witness Srila Prabhupada's physical ‘eating pastimes' – have any bearing on the spiritual relationship one can have with Srila Prabhupada after his physical disappearance. BVKS himself admits this is a fact by giving his own personal example:
"we access Srila Prabhupada through his servants, I also access Srila Prabhupada through his servants, through his disciples. I didn't have personal interactions with Srila Prabhupada, very limited what I had, but I learned from other of my Godbrothers, so that process is going on. [...] Srila Prabhupada passed away in 1977, [...] but it's an eternal relationship, it goes on forever."
(BVKS Lecture, 8/11/21)
Thus, again, BVKS's "argument" does not support that Srila Prabhupada's physical disappearance changes anything spiritually, and, on the contrary, we have quoted BVKS himself stating that it does not!
The BTP 71 article that Basu Ghosh Dasa sent BVKS made it abundantly clear that there is no spiritual difference between Srila Prabhupada's physical appearance and disappearance. Yet, instead of apologising for his mistake, BVKS offensively continues to defend his Hitchcockian ‘Psycho' attack on Srila Prabhupada:
"I pointed it out with a rather grotesque analogy of an Alfred Hitchcock film [...] the man is talking to his mother [...] it's a skeleton – she's dead. So, he didn't accept the fact that she had passed away. So it's a grotesque example, and I'll probably get quoted again in their Back To Prabhupada, [...] but I'm just making the point that he didn't accept, he didn't recognize the fact that there is a difference"
BVKS even admits twice that it is a "grotesque" example, yet he still shamelessly attacks Srila Prabhupada with it again, even though there is no parallel between the dead corpse in the Hitchcock film, and Srila Prabhupada's spiritual status after having physically disappeared.
In the last issue, we also featured an article titled "Bewildered by Guru Lust", in which we showed that BVKS has lost his mind due to his lust to be a guru. BVKS continuing to persist with comparing Srila Prabhupada to a Hitchcockian horror character is just further evidence of the madness that has gripped BVKS due to this guru lust.
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