Back To Prabhupada, Issue 76, Vol. 1, 2023, Interactive
This is a column in which we answer articles or statements which have been forwarded to us by our readers for rebutting. (All emphases have been added.)
The quotes in the shaded boxes are from a talk dated 23/9/22, posted on social media by Mayesvara Dasa ("MD"), which he states "was requested by Bhakti Vikasa Swami". The purpose of the talk was to attack our position which GBC voted-in guru HH Bhakti Vikasa Swami ("BVKS") calls "rtvikism". Thus, two days later, BVKS further endorsed this talk:
"it's rtvikism, but that's imagination and speculation, as Mayesvara Prabhu, if anyone had any doubts, he cleared them."
(BVKS Lecture, 25/9/22)
However, this BVKS sponsored talk simply attacks Srila Prabhupada as follows:
1) Srila Prabhupada is like a paralysed patient with a neurological disorder:
"Prabhupada has what is referred to in the medical industry as ‘locked in syndrome' [...] It's a medical condition that's so severe that the person is in a body, they have no way to communicate [...] they're basically paralyzed"
2) Falsely claims that rtvik means Srila Prabhupada is "just a picture on the wall":
"Spiritual master's the coach. And the rtviks are saying, ‘Well, we have a wonderful coach, he listens and we, he listens and he doesn't tell us anything. He never talks back. He's just a picture on the wall.'"
3) Stating that Srila Prabhupada is "obviously right" is "twisted" and believed by "crazies":
"they [IRM] think [...] all three, the guru, the sastra, and the sadhu are always in line and therefore one does not need to independently verify Srila Prabhupada's statements [...] saying that Prabhupada's obviously right because the sadhus and the scriptures agree with it, is such a twisted inverted statement that I can't believe people follow that kind of stuff. But then again, remember Prabhupada said, "no crazies and no lazies"."
4) Srila Prabhupada is compared to a crazy cult leader from whom we must be protected:
"the rtviks say [...] Oh, we follow that, because anything Prabhupada says has to be agreed upon what's inside scriptures and what other sadhus say. [...] So they got it backwards. The whole purpose of this guru-sastra-sadhu system is to protect us from, you know, a leader, and this is actually where the New Age movement, and for those of you who may be familiar and who know who David Koresh was"
5) Just following Srila Prabhupada is like following the US President, who can "say all sorts of things":
"the rtviks say [...] Oh, we follow that, because anything Prabhupada says has to be agreed upon what's inside scriptures and what other sadhus say. [...] But that's like saying, you know, whatever the President says, we follow that, and everybody agrees to that, but it's not, it doesn't, the President can say all sorts of things"
So above we have listed 1) to 5) the attacks that were made on Srila Prabhupada. That the crass attack 1) should come from a BVKS organised talk should not be surprising because he himself made a similar attack on Srila Prabhupada, by comparing him to a skeleton from a horror movie (please see "Attacking Srila Prabhupada's Transcendence", BTP 71). The attacks 1) and 2) were made to argue that we cannot accept Srila Prabhupada as our guru and coach since he is someone who cannot "communicate" with the disciple and thus we need a "living" physically present GBC guru. However, these attacks are self-defeating, since both BVKS and MD are in exactly the same position as the "rtviks", as BVKS and MD also accept Srila Prabhupada as their "coach" today. Thus, they themselves are the proof that one can accept Srila Prabhupada as one's spiritual master "coach" to guide one, and that his physical absence is not relevant. Otherwise, they would also be incorrectly situated and would need to renounce Srila Prabhupada as their spiritual master "coach" for a "living" (physically present) one.
Attacks 3-5 are all based on claiming that if we only rely on what Srila Prabhupada states without also getting verification from sadhu and sastra, then we are somehow violating "guru, sadhu and sastra". But Srila Prabhupada himself states that anything the bona fide spiritual master teaches will automatically already be in line with sadhu and sastra:
"And guru is bona fide spiritual master who follows sadhu and sastra."
(Srila Prabhupada Lecture, 17/3/71)
Hence, one does not need to "verify" the bona fide spiritual master's words with sadhu and sastra, since by definition, according to the quote above, they are already verified. Rather, such verification is only needed in order to determine whether or not a person claiming to be the guru is actually the bona fide spiritual master:
"spiritual master is to be tested whether he is holy man, and whether there is corroboration in the statement of the scripture. Sadhu sastra guru vakya tinete koriya aikya. [...] The scripture should be consulted, and we should have to see whether it is corroborated. So we should not accept any man as spiritual master or holy man if he does not corroborate with the statement of the scripture. He's at once rejected."
(Srila Prabhupada, Room Conversation, 11/5/69)
But since Srila Prabhupada is a bona fide spiritual master who has already been accepted, there is no question of "testing" him using "guru, sadhu and sastra" to see if he should be accepted or rejected. Nor is he like the US President who may "say anything", nor do we need "guru, sadhu and sastra" to "protect" us from him just in case he could be a crazy cult leader.
If MD and BVKS are still not sure that Srila Prabhupada is a bona fide spiritual master that they should accept, then they have no business even being his disciples.
MD claims that a successor diksa guru order was given by Srila Prabhupada as follows:
"And the rtviks are saying [...] They want an order. Lord Caitanya gave the order. Prabhupada said, "We follow Lord Caitanya""
The order from Lord Caitanya referred to is from Cc., Madhya-lila, 7.128, where He says "become a spiritual master", which MD claims Srila Prabhupada applied as follows:
"Well, we've got about 100 quotes, so let's look at that a little bit. The concept is, is that Prabhupada, the system that Prabhupada actually gave was the traditional classic system of once the spiritual master passes and goes on to his next service, his disciples, the ones who are inspired to take, to give initiation, and I believe that applies to anybody, any one of Prabhupada's disciples, has that right."
Thus, MD claims that this supposed diksa guru order from Srila Prabhupada was given for all of his disciples, which means it was also an order given to all of his female disciples.
However, as we have pointed out before, BVKS is one of the leaders opposing female diksa gurus, and thus vehemently disagrees that Srila Prabhupada gave such a diksa guru order for all his disciples as proposed by MD here (please see "Bewildered by Guru Lust", BTP 71), and also see the article on page 5 regarding male-diksa-guru-only proponents rejecting this order of Lord Caitanya as an order for diksa gurus. Thus, MD's argument that Srila Prabhupada gave such an order for everyone to become successor diksa gurus is denied by BVKS himself. Thus, we can simply rely on the sponsor of MD's talk, BVKS, to defeat this point of MD's!
Conclusion: We have frequently exposed BVKS's inability to answer BTP's arguments and have shown that he simply gets humiliated whenever he tries. BVKS has thus tried to "subcontract" this task to MD. However, though BVKS organised MD's talk to try to defeat our position, key points that MD made are either self-defeated or defeated by BVKS himself. Thus, far from defeating the IRM, all they have managed to do is defeat themselves, whilst also making offensive attacks against Srila Prabhupada. Such is BVKS's foolishness. BVKS has a history of this. In 2013, due to a mixture of illiteracy and desperation, he endorsed a paper titled "Defeat of Rtvik-Vada", which not only ended up conceding all the key conclusions of the IRM's foundational document, The Final Order, but also stated that BVKS is an unauthorised deviant! (Our exposé of this, titled "ISKCON's Illiteracy: A Stunning Case Study", can be read here).
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