The following is a response to the above Podcast from His Holiness Sivarama Maharaja (SRS), and as usual statements from SRS shall be enclosed in speech marks “ “ thus, with our comments following underneath:
“We have many examples of devotees who in ISKCON were deemed to be very advanced devotees, pure devotees and then they left Krishna Consciousness, gave up their service as guru and sannyasi and so as they were being advertised as being uttama adhikaris, they turned out they were just barely kanistha adhikaris.”
And at the forefront of this false advertising was of course SRS himself. From 1978-1986 we had many fallen gurus as SRS himself admits:
“I was seeing deviations in ISKCON and this one was really a major deviation. Fallen sannyasis, drugs-induced ecstasy, illicit sex, and needless to say that it was clear that the gurus were fallible.”
(SRS, Podcast, 3/10/06)
Two such examples were Jayatirtha and Bhagavan, whom SRS falsely advertised as uttama adhkiaris, right up until they actually fell down and left ISKCON. And from 1986 right up to the present day, SRS actively promoted two more bogus gurus, both of whom left ISKCON after displaying similar fallen behaviour: Vipramukhya Swami and Balabhadra Das, a.k.a. Bhakti Ballabh Puri Goswami. Of the latter, SRS himself admitted that he was ultimately responsible for promoting this bogus guru!
“Anyway I prefaced my talk at that meeting by apologising to the devotees, as I had done to devotees in Scotland, that being GBC I was ultimately responsible for what happened, or at least the direction in which Balabhadra was going in.”
(SRS podcast, 27.9.07)
“And people may say so many things, sometimes that saying is wishful thinking, sometimes it shows a lack of one's own spiritual acumen. People may say so many things, ‘this person's this advanced, that person's that advanced’, but if he doesn't behave like a really advanced, advanced devotee then we should understand that, ‘well he may be advanced, but he's not that advanced as what people make out to be’.”
But as we have just seen above, the one person who has consistently shown this lack of “spiritual acumen” is SRS, having incorrectly promoted one notorious fallen person after another. Hence, should he not first perfect applying this advice for himself, before trying to teach others?
“Srila Prabhupada in the Upadesamrta purport in verse 5, verse 8, points out that it's the responsibility of devotees, verse 5 excuse me, for devotees to actually understand the level of spiritual advancement of a Vaisnava. […] And it's the duty of devotees to accept people on the basis of laksana. Yad laksanam proktam. We should judge things according to their qualities. And that really is what Krishna Consciousness is about. We're meant to be about anything other than blind faith even within our own followers.”
But hypocritically SRS does not allow his own followers to do this, if his own position is threatened, forbidding them to read BTP, lest their blind faith in SRS be disturbed:
“I am writing to you in regard to the magazine “Back to Prabhupada,” which many of you may have received and seen […] Therefore ritviks and their literature should be ignored […] This same instruction is reflected in the direction of the GBC Body, the ultimate authority for ISKCON, in their 1990 law regarding ritviks and their doctrine: […] The tone of the above law makes it quite clear that persons who are in breach of it can expect to be the object of serious sanctions.”
(SRS Letter to all devotees, 17/7/08)
“Those who receive it should say ‘Please don’t send me any more, because I don’t need it.’ Please give some feedback. Or just send it back saying that ‘such a person isn’t living here’. I would just like to request devotees who receive such magazines to bring it in to the temple, give it to me I’ll collect it, it shouldn’t be around in the devotee community.”
(His Holiness Sivarama Swami, Istagosthi, Budapest, 17/7/08)
SRS makes it clear that no one should read BTP, lest there will be “serious sanctions”, and so desperate is he to make sure that no one does read BTP, he even offers to act as the personal ‘collection man’ for the magazines! In addition, following the sending out of these warnings, SRS dispatched devotees to visit devotees’ homes and ask them to return BTP. Hence, its all very well telling devotees they must use their intelligence to judge and not be blind followers, but at the same time SRS insists on such blind following! This hypocritical contradictory double-talk is common in mind-control brainwashed cults, where on the one hand, to engender a false feeling of freedom, cult members may be told to think for themselves, but on the other, the actual actions taken by the cult ensure that blind following is ruthlessly enforced.
“If someone transgresses Vaisnava etiquette, if someone is angry, revengeful, critical and so on, then we can see that no, he doesn't really show the qualities and the behaviour of a real Maha-bhagavata uttama Adhikari. […] That is what Srila Prabhupada called spiritual science, and we should go on the basis of spiritual science, rather than just hearsay, speculation, wishful thinking and and so on. Unfortunately, that's been the situation within our own movement. Disciples, of course they always want to see their spiritual masters as being on the highest level, but at the same time we see that the conduct of intimate exchange with members of the opposite sex, just not proper behavior, being envious or critical of others, sometimes even violent. Not knowing siddhanta. So these are qualities that reveal that someone isn't actually situated on the transcendental platform.”
SRS states that we should go on the basis of “spiritual science”, and not anything else. Yet, as we have just demonstrated, in practice, rather than his weasel words, SRS insists that we go not on the basis of “spiritual science”, but the GBC resolutions, quoting them to force devotees to not read Srila Prabhupada’s teachings presented in BTP. SRS also states that one way on detecting if ISKCON “gurus” are not qualified is if they are “not knowing siddhanta”. Yet, we have proven numerous times, that SRS is an example of a person who does “not know siddhanta”, constantly contradicting Srila Prabhupada. We have set up whole websites, both in English and Hungarian, demonstrating this fact. Therefore we have SRS’s own authority for his followers to vigorously read our websites, and judge for themselves SRS’s own level of advancement, in light of his constant contradiction of Srila Prabhupada’s teachings. So this is a challenge for SRS to once practice his own teachings, and allow his followers to judge his own level of advancement, instead of threatening them with “serious sanctions” if they dare to do so!
