One ISKCON's Rayal Nitai's analysis pt.1

By Raya Nitai Dasa Vanacari

RND: The Parallel Lines Committee, of which I have great respect for, released their final draft of new legislation, supposedly aimed at dealing with rouge gurus who fall outside the acceptability of the GBC. It was published on dandavats.com. After three weeks in print and 1300 views, it has 7 facebook "likes."

[PADA: A few questions: Which previous gurus (acharyas) were subordinated to a Governing Body (GBC) aka "a paralell line of authority"? Why were rogues voted in as the GBC's acharyas in the first place? Which previous gurus acted "unacceptably"? Which previous acharyas were rogues? RND is getting into these root issues, very nice. Bravo! This original 1977 problem is now emerging as self-evident, the GBC does not know what a guru actually is, hence they keep appointing, voting for, and rubber stamping defective and rogue gurus.]

RND: The recent Governing Body Commision's legislation entitled "Understanding ISKCON’s Lines of Authority" is supposed to be a document addressing "the tension created when spiritual masters sometimes act as an independent line of authorty in ISKCON." However, this legislation does much more than ease the tension created by disagreements among leading Vaisnavas. What this legislation actually does is to help further implement a centralized authoritarian control system over EVERY member of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness.

[PADA: There is "tension and disagreement" between the acharyas and the people creating and administering the acharyas? Dr. Frankenstein cannot control his (voted in) creations? And these acharyas are sometime rogues? Where has this "guru policy" ever been done in the history of Vaishnavism -- i.e. there is a "governing board" that is "2/3 show of hands voting in" many acharyas? And then the board is disagreeing with the acharyas it has just made? Is this not the policy of "rubber stamping gurus" that Srila Prabhupada disagrees with?

And RND says their system is dictator's style "authoritarian." And RND admits that means: all of the members of the entire ISKCON society are now being forced, coerced and fully obligated to accept the authority of these voted in gurus, or else face being excommunicated from ISKCON (as I was) even if those gurus are rogues. RND hits it right on the nail, the GBC is "legislating" the post of guru. That is exactly what Aindra was complaining about as well. Sorry, the guru is "administered" by Krishna, or else he is not a guru. The guru speaks as Krishna dicates, not as some governing panel dictates.]

RND: This is being done in defiance of the explicit instructions given by His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada; that the GBC is to have a very limited jurisdiction in regards to the detailed operations of the society and the activities of it’s members.

[PADA: Right, "limited powers" is the actual mandate of GBC operations, whereas voting in over one hundred new "acharyas" is making the GBC act on the unlimited spiritual plane. The actual pure devotees are operating on the unlimited and eternally liberated plane, how can the pure devotees be subject to the authority of the very teeny minded, limited and still conditioned plane of the GBC's managers? Very good point here, the idea of voting for conditioned souls as gurus, and even rogues for gurus, and then forcing ISKCON's temples to accept these false gurus, makes normal managing impossible. Why? Because, when these rogue gurus take over a temple, they usually malefically affect the worship, the finances, the delegation of manpower, and so on.

In point of fact, these GBC gurus collectively bankrupted ISKCON by mis-managing and sometimes even starving the school children of the society, while they lived like mini-emperors in fancy and opulent facilities. This happened because there are no checks and balances, good progress! The idea of checks and balances for gurus is a contradiction. Lets face it -- they are not gurus, they are managers who need "checks and balances."]

RND: The legislation also aims at minimizing or completely doing away with any kind of checks and balance systems which would prevent the decay of the ability of the management of ISKCON to uphold the desires of Srila Prabhupada, based on guru, sadhu and shastra.

[PADA: First of all, there are no checks and balances needed for God and His "shaksat" (direct) successor gurus? This is absurd. Next, there are no guru, sadhu and shastra supports for the idea that God's direct successor's lineage, i.e. God's guru chain and God's parampara of gurus -- either -- are, were, or could have been rogues? How can God's "pure chain of successors" contain even one rogue? Next point, if the GBC is managing, how can they manage gurus, who are supposed be -- beyond the authority of managers? And notice, there are no checks and balances systems in place, ok that means their whole program is rogue, maverick, lawless, and what Dr. Stilson judah told us is: antinomianism (lawless in the name of religion). How can rogue gurus be controlled if there is no system of checks and balances, never mind gurus are never subordinated to a system of checks and balances "management" in the first place? RND is really getting it. Their whole process is full of major defects and giant pot-holes.]

RND: This has been gradually implemented over the last decade or so in an informal way and now, with the official position paper being recently released for public presentation on some ISKCON media forums, the authors of this paper, who are the heads of management in ISKCON, have declared their official position.

[PADA: That the GBC is "in charge of" the acharyas was the original position of the GBC in 1977, not just the last decade. They were off and running right away: monitoring, correcting, chastising, suspending, reinstating, and finally excommunicating Jayatirtha. The policy of the GBC managing gurus was implemented right at the start.]

RND: I was privileged to have a small part in the process of designing this piece of legislation. I was presented with an eighth draft of the paper about a year ago and I gave some input at that time, although it appears to have been largely discarded. I was asked by the member of the Parallel Lines Committee who gave me the draft, not to share it with anyone so that there would not be different versions of the paper floating around.

[PADA: Draft number eight? Yes, this is another big problem, there are many "different versions" of "guru tattva" within the many GBC reports over the years. For example in 1978, Sridhara Maharaja was declared as the GBC's siksha guru and "higher authority." Yet by 1982 SM was declared a de facto "demon," and an official declaration was made that "no one can visit his matha" because he was "trying to take over ISKCON." Another example is that some of the GBC's gurus over the years have said that "zonal gurus" is the wrong policy, then they STILL TO THIS DAY appoint zones for their gurus every year anyway, and so on ad infinitum. And none of these contrary documents and statements have ever been resolved, they just make another pile of contrary papers to pile onto their already existing pile of contrary papers.]

RND: Therefore, I have not and will not share the draft with anyone.

[PADA: This seems to be a little absurd all by itself, there is a bunch of contrary drafts being made on the topic of guru tattva, and being made by the gurus themselves? How come the gurus cannot agree upon: what is a guru? Why do they make one draft, and the next draft contradicts their previous draft?]

RND: However, in order to show the direction the committee has adopted in regards to creating this legislation, I will provide short excerpts from the eighth draft that have been omitted from the final edition.

[PADA: Eight drafts? So that means the first seven were full of mistakes, illusion, cheating and sensory defects. How do we know version number eight is going to be the fully "free from defects" version? This is clearly mental speculation, they keep changing their documents just like the speculative scientists keep changing their theories. And the GBC has already made and published many reports that contradicted their previous reports. Srila Prabhupada says "change means rascal."]

RND: I feel that this is necessary to illustrate to the reader exactly what is in the minds of the leadership of ISKCON. When the final edition was made public, I noticed that many important points that were previously included in the eighth draft were left out, making the final edition an extremely one-sided and authoritarian piece of legislation. I also noticed that many quotes from Srila Prabhupada that were very relevant to the subject matter had been omitted.

[PADA: Oh Oh, big surprise, quotes from Srila Prabhupada were omitted? Right, Srila Prabhupada says gurus are not falling down, for starters.]

RND: In this report, I will show, in-depth, how the leadership of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness is mirroring the current secular geo-political trend of implementing authoritarian rule over the public and effectively eliminating most, if not all of every citizen’s Krishna-given liberties. 

[PADA: Now we are getting to the root issue, the current leaders are running ISKCON by a policy of tyranny and not consensus of the devotees.]

RND: This trend also bears a canny resemblance to the Zonal-Acharya system, which was allowed, by the GBC, to foster for over a decade after the disappearance of our beloved Founder-Acharya, His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada.

[PADA: Sorry, every GBC report has geographical zones for gurus even up to the current GBC reports.]

RND: The difference being the GBC acting as the sole, unified Zonal-Acharya, instead of a group of swamis and gurus, with little connection to one another, competing for supremacy.

[PADA: Oh no, the gurus, the residents of Krishna loka, are "competing for supremacy"? No, the residents of hell are competing for supremacy. The whole idea of guru is being turned upside down. Good for RND he is starting to notice the cracks in their system. This is a great start. ys pd]
========================================================