by Krishnakant

Introduction
The Beginning
Sour Grapes
Two Wrongs Make a Right
Substance Abuse
Best Not to Accept Any Nonsense
Pomposity
Wrong End Of Every Stick
The End Game    

Recently VNN posted a letter from Mayesvara in defence of Triparari Maharaja in which he makes the following claim:  

The IRM has answered Mayesvara’s points several times before. Generally he just ignored our refutations and carried on repeating arguments we had already defeated. In this article we shall once more take a detailed look at Mayesvara’s stated position on the guru/ritvik controversy.  In the process we shall be highlighting the bizarre and contradictory statements found in his large and growing body of writings- what we term the M files. Has Mayesvara found the truth, or is he just ‘out there’? The reader can judge for himself. 

As Mayesvara himself admits, he was initially impressed with The Final Order (TFO).  For some time he was thought of as largely sympathetic to the ritvik cause:  

But he had his own ideas, and at a fringe meeting held after the first official IRG (now IRM) conference in LA on Jan 16^th 1999, he took the opportunity to publicly unleash his own special philosophical variant. He was disappointed with the response:  

Much of Mayesvara’s writing consists of attacking the style with which he claims ritviks make their case, rather than the content itself. His case is that when arguing with other devotees…  

… and that ritviks are the worst for this. Leaving aside whether or not he is correct, does Mayesvara himself follow his own advice?

The same conference at which Mayesvara’s new theories were greeted indifferently, the TFO received a unanimous vote of approval.  After brooding for a few days, Mayesvara’s tone soured considerably. Gone entirely was the conciliatory idea that there was much to be sympathetic with in the ritvik position. He wrote an article on the IRG conference that many delegates found ‘belittling’ ‘insulting’ and indeed ‘obnoxious’: 

The fact that Mayesvara himself used the conference to pontificate on his own theories does not count of course. As we shall see, in the world of the ‘M files’ the rules only apply to others:  

 Such sarcasm and vitriol are fine as long as they are employed by Mayesvara against the ‘enemy’:  

And Mayesvara feels fully qualified to identify just who these dull headed rascals are, even though he criticises others for being so presumptuous and judgmental. Such self-contradiction is a commonplace feature in the world of the ‘M files’:  

So much for following his own advice. When we started answering his papers he came up with the absurd argument (which became the gloriously self-defeating title of an entire paper) that the mere fact we were disputing his theories somehow proved we were wrong:  

‘He Who Knows Has No Need To Shout’  
(shouted Mayesvara on VNN March 2^nd 1999)

The fact that Mayesvara has tried to refute The Final Order must, by his own logic, prove   he is the biggest fool of all. It seems that as far as absurdity and self-contradiction go, Mayesvara deserves to be taken very seriously indeed. But what is Mayesvara’s objection to TFO, and what does he himself propose? Let us dig deeper into the ‘M files’ to find out.  

Although Mayesvara has written pages and pages on the subject, in essence his position is that the ritvik system should not have continued within ISKCON, and that the current guru system is seriously flawed:

Or to put it more bluntly:

His solution is to be practical and pragmatic and have both systems running in ISKCON at the same time. This Mayesvara calls AIM, or Alternative Initiation Method. In a nutshell this is what all Mayesvara’s reams of writing add up to. As anyone can see his position is utterly absurd, for how can there be any positive or practical result from combining two bogus systems? The very things Mayesvara takes objection to, namely gurus prancing around and vigilante ritviks, he suggests be permanently embedded into the very fabric of ISKCON. In the wacky world of the ‘M files’ two wrongs do indeed make a right, or at least a practical step in the right direction. 

The idea of running two systems concurrently within ISKCON was not originally Mayesvara’s anyway. The concept was first proposed in ‘The Final Order’ in 1996. But this was only to be a temporary arrangement to allow the correct system, the ritvik one, to be eased in more gently. Clearly if, as Mayesvara contests, the ritvik system is completely bogus, then it should not be imposed on ISKCON in any manner whatsoever. So what are Mayesvara’s specific objections to ‘The Final Order’ and the ritvik system its title promotes. 

Desiring to insert a ritvik system into ISKCON, one would have thought Mayesvara would try to persuade the GBC by extolling its virtues. However, in the world of the M Files the very opposite approach is taken. Mayesvara does everything he can to convince everyone that ritvik is just plain wrong. Unsurprisingly his present strategy has gained him few converts. He has thus been reduced to offering support to anyone he thinks will listen; most recently Triparari, which rather contradicts his stated aversion for people who like “prancing around imitating Srila Prabhupada.” If Mayesvara’s doubts on ritvik could only be answered, then surely his mission to INSERT it into ISKCON might be more feasible. 

So then, is there any substance to Mayesvara’s arguments that in any way justifies the abuse he has heaped on TFO and its supporters? In his first direct attack on the content of TFO he makes a huge deal out of its title: 

He goes on and on for paragraphs about this. This type of objection is common in the M Files. Poorly thought through, verbose, and all too easy to defeat. As we explained in our original response to the above in ‘Mayesvara Fails Challenge’:  

1. The word 'Order' refers to the fact that the July 9th directive, issued by Srila Prabhupada, was a directive to be followed by the whole society. When the spiritual master tells you to do something, that is, by definition, an order. The letter clearly tells his senior men how initiations were to be conducted from that time onwards. In other words, an order.

2. We have never claimed that an 'order' must have the word 'order' within it to constitute an order.

3. The word 'Final' arises from the fact that it most certainly was the last directive Srila Prabhupada issued to the society on this particular issue, not on every issue. It clearly states on the cover of TFO that it deals specifically with 'INITIATION'.

The above are just plain facts, explained in TFO, and thus our 'phrase' 'The Final Order' is an accurate description of the July 9th directive. It was an order from Srila Prabhupada to be followed by the whole society, and there was no other instruction sent subsequently that countermanded it. For most people all this would be obvious. Mayesvara goes on to give a couple of examples where the term ‘final order’ appears in Srila Prabhupada’s books:

This is an incredibly silly objection. Where is it ever stated in 'The Final Order' that Srila Prabhupada never issued any instructions after July 9th? Did he not ask for milk, or a tape recorder? Srila Prabhupada himself does not use the phrase 'final order' to imply that Lord Krishna issued no later instructions; only that of all instruction this was his final law for all conditioned souls. The July 9^th letter was Srila Prabhupada’s final order on how initiations were to run within ISKCON. As we all know Lord Krishna instructed many things after he spoke the Bhagavad Gita to Arjuna, just as Srila Prabhupada instructed many things after July 9th 1977.

Thus Mayesvara’s opening gambit fails miserably, and in his own words : 

The above dead-end arguments fill a good three pages of the M Files. Not much substance, but plenty of abuse. And in subsequent papers Mayesvara completely ignored our counter arguments, as if they did not exist. 

Mayesvara starts a new line of attack:

Wrong again. TFO never claims otherwise. Of course all his disciples were meant to become spiritual masters, that is why Srila Prabhupada set up ISKCON and trained everyone how to preach. How have we dodged this issue? And the type of spiritual master we are meant to become is very clear: ‘it is best not to accept any disciples’ (C.c Madhya, 7.130, purport). And how does Mayesvara try to get around this clear order not to take disciples? 

The above displays not even the slightest glimmer of understanding of how an analogy functions. If you have a soldier, then by definition you are already dealing with an entity who has been ordered to go onto the battlefield. For the soldier not to go would mean he might be shot for desertion. Unless the author can prove that the word 'spiritual master' must always refer to a diska guru, then the above analogy breaks down completely. 

Above Mayesvara sanctimoniously asserts that devotees may have been confused by TFO simply because they did not know the meaning of a big word. We believe that the respected professor who wrote the favorable foreword to TFO knows more about the science of hermeneutics than Mayesvara ever will.