[PADA NOTE: Yes, you are right prabhu, it was Hrdayananda swami who also said that the GBC is suffering from M.A.D. = Mad Acharya's Disease. So yes, all of these people, whether the bogus GBC, Sridhara Maharaja, Hrdayananda swami, Paramadvaiti swami, Tripurari swami etc. ... they are all agreeing with the main deviation of Sridhara Maharaja -- when he says gurus might be madmen, or they might become madmen.
Yes, there is no real difference between these camps. Agreed. And since their acharyas might be madmen, or they might become madmen, then there is no line of authority in their system since, "madness" is not a line of authority anywhere in any religious system, or even in a mundane system like a government. You got it! ys pd]
Letter from B.A. Paramadvaiti
BY: H.H. B.A. PARAMADVAITI SWAMI (formerly Alanath das ACBS)
SOUTH AMERICA (SUN) — Dear Hridayananda Maharaj and GBC body:
Dandavats pranams.
I have just come to know that you, Hridayananda dasa Goswami my God brother and sannyas guru, has been put into quarantine due to your westernized style of preaching. It sounds almost amusing to me that this is happening now, 25 years after I was put in quarantine by you and other God-brothers, for speaking about some disgraces ISKCON was experiencing at that time and for proposing solutions to these problems.
[PADA: Right, its very hypocritical of Hrdayananda swami to complain of being quarantined, when he and his GBC group have quarantined thousands of other devotees from ISKCON for the past 35 years.]
PS: Let me help you and others remember what actually took place 25 years ago. I still live in a quarantine which was never lifted, examined, or investigated.
[PADA: Correct, many of the devotees who were banned and exiled from ISKCON have never been re-contacted to find out -- what is the reason they are exiled? Do the reasons for their original exile still apply now -- and so forth. For example, I was exiled for challenging Jayatirtha, Kirtanananda and others. Later on, even many on the GBC themselves agreed -- I was right to challenge these deviants posing as gurus.
Do we ever get any explanation, never mind any apology? Nope. Do we get any message from the higher ups about any of this? Nope. Instead, the higher ups just buried Kirtanananda's carcass in the holy dham, STILL making pretend Kirtanananda is their messiah -- even up to the present time.
There is no consistent policy here except "we GBC can do no wrong." Even when they are proven wrong, as in the case of Kirtanananda, they still have to have "the last word" and bury their deviant messiahs carcass' in the holy land anyway, knowing how this upsets all their victims.]
PS: It is neither my intention to write a book here, nor do I want to bore anybody. I just think it is good moment to compare, reflect and rejoice on how things are happening by the grace of the Lord. I have a positive attitude. I am grateful. I love all of you. I ask you to forgive my mistakes. I thank you all for the beautiful experiences in Srila Prabhupada's family.
[PADA: Pretty much what we feel, we are feeling overall good, and we wish others the same. There is no point in holding a grudge here since -- many of these GBC gurus who opposed us in the past subsequently have had their own major problems. For example, some got very sick, Satsvarupa is one giant headache, Jayaptaka is suffering like a dog etc. Many others fell down, however the list of "fallen away messiahs" here is too extensive to detail.
And some have died like Jayatirtha, Tamal Krishna, Gaura Govinda maharaja, Suhotra, Swarupa Damodar and others. And there is clearly a lot of suffering in the remaining party. Some of these gurus are not very popular with various people who are clamoring to remove Mahanidhi, to censure Ravindra swarupa, to clean up the Harivilas program, and to quarantine Hrdayananda etc. In sum, their karma is catching up to them, and its not looking very pretty.]
PS: Being in quarantine now, even for other reasons, you may understand to some extent how it feels when others are judging you, without understanding your position and motivations. I am still waiting for the last 25 years for a clarification call. We are one family. Nobody can change that fact. The reason we can call ourselves one family is because of Srila Prabhupada and not because of the GBC.
[PADA: Correct. The GBC thinks by banning people from a temple, they can ban that person from being a devotee of Krishna, or ban that person from the family of Krishna. That's just not the way it has worked out for the GBC? Many of the people who "stayed on" with their GBC guru process ended up having spectacular fall downs, implications in illicit sex, drugs, criminal actions, if not in orchestrating assassinations of dissenters. Thus, many (or most) of the GBC "who remained loyal to the GBC of ISKCON" have no credibility at the present time for participating in their process of making bogus acharyas. Meanwhile, many of our independent people who were kicked out of the official ISKCON -- still have their faith in Krishna intact and they are making progress etc.]
PS: I was the regional secretary of Colombia back in 1982. Some of my prominent misgivings in ISKCON were caused for defending you.
[PADA: Very ironic, Paramadvaita swami was harassed for defending Hrdayananda, who was getting a lot of criticism even way back in 1982. Yep, a lot of people fail to recall that Hrdayananda was being attacked for excessive association with women, for ruining Berkeley temple, and for many other reasons, way back at the start of all this.]
PS: Pancadravida Swami insisted at that time that he should be the zonal guru of Colombia instead of you.
[PADA: Pancadravida swami was, and still is, a follower of Sridhara Maharaja -- who said that there is "a guru for the zone." Sridhara maharaja is one of the "founder fathers" of the original 1978 zonal guru deviation. Srila Prabhupada says the direct opposite, he says the guru does not have any geographical zone or area rather the guru is -- the guru for the entire universe -- or jagat guru. Of course Sridhara Maharaja also says that acharyas "go mad after money, women and followers." In other words, these people have no idea what an acharya is, and Pancadravida is still a prominent leader in the Santa Cruz Sridhara Maharaja / Govinda Maharaja "acharyas become mad fools" program.
Anyway, this is the first problem we had with Sridhara Maharaja, the GBC declared that they now have "geographical zonal acharyas" and Sridhara Maharaja backed up that bogus claim because he does not know that the Lord and His acharyas do not have "zones." And thus SM agreed with this bogus principle. Even later when the GBC's "acharyas" started to manifest illicit sex, drugs and other problems, Sridhara maharaja defended them and he said -- these deviants need to stay in the post of acharya, because he thinks acharyas are sometimes fallen and engaged in illicit behaviors. In fact Sridhara's book "Sri Guru And His Grace," says that acharyas may in fact fall into illicit behaviors.
And the result of following Sridhara's bogus zonal guru misconception was, Pancadravida, the GBC -- and in sum most of the ISKCON people -- began to discuss how this bogus zonal guru system would work and "who" would be the guru for the various concocted zones and areas, while fully not understanding the position of the guru at all, i.e. that the guru has no "zonal area."
In other words, under Sridhara Maharaja's bogus idea that there is "a guru for the zone," Pancadravida thought that he should be "the guru for the zone" because he listened to Sridhara Maharaja and not us. And Sridhara's idea created a sort of competition among these "acharyas" to control various areas and zones.
At that time, we were saying this zonal acharya idea is a total farce, its not found in our teachings. Pancadravida is reported to be -- even to this day --- following one of the founder fathers of this bogus zonal guru idea, namely Sridhara Maharaja, that means he has never understood that this "advisor" to the GBC is wrong. Paramadvaita follows Sridhara Maharaja as well, so they are still in illusion that the supporters of the process of zonal acharyas / acharyas go mad after mundane enjoyment / etc. are bona fide.
It seems the Sridhara Maharaja people think along the lines of the "village guru" system in India, there is a local geographical guru for a village or area. This is simply another result of the chaos created by Sridhara Maharaja when he declared the the zonal guru system is bona fide in 1978. Of course in 1936 Sridhara maharaja created a bi-sexual deviant guru program, which created chaos in his guru's mission, including murders of dissenters.
Why are people following the person who burned down the Gaudiya Matha?
Sorry, there is no such thing as an appointed guru, zonal guru, and the fact these people have been fighting over this issue shows how they never understood the post of guru in the first place, and how Sridhara Maharaja's village guru idea cannot be applied to worldwide Vaishnavism and to ISKCON. Worse, Sridhara Maharaja incited the GBC to "vote in more gurus."
Hence Pancadravida was one of the first to get voted in. Sridhara Maharaja thinks Gaudiya Vaishnavism is something like the Vatican, where the Pope or acharya is voted in. Then Paramadvaita began fighting with a guru voted under Sridhara's idea, and yet he still thinks Sridhara is bona fide, never mind the chaos his voted in guru caused Paramadvaita so much trouble for himself. The people who cause mayhem and trouble for the Vaishnavas, are the people to follow? The people who think the acharya is a puppet of an ecclessiastical body is our source of knowledge?
When Sridhara Maharaja was once challenged -- why his guru system was creating murders after 1936, he said that people getting killed is common, its what happened in the Bhagavad Gita. In other words, Sridhara Maharaja thinks he is authorized to promote homosexuals, deviants and criminals as acharyas, and when protesters are killed, that's an example of the fighting of Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita.
In other words, SM thinks he is authorized to orchestrate murders by supporting false gurus, and he is using Krishna's Kurukshetra as his excuse for the mis-behavior of his violent bogus guru's cults. Problem is, Bhagavad Gita has nothing to do with Sridhara Maharaja's promoting of violent illicit sex messiah's cults? Rather, Bhagavad Gita says that false religionists, i.e. people who promote false acharyas, are cast into hell. The Bhagavad Gita does not support making mad fools into messiahs and having dissenters assassinated.]
PS: I objected to this change of gurus like light bulbs. We have seen what happens then taking the example of Chile, Peru and some other places. Jayapataka Maharaj had taken from you the guru post for these countries.
[PADA: Yes, Sridhara Maharaja insisted on instituting the policy of "changing" the guru. He said the guru process is dynamic and its always "adding and eliminating." Nope, Srila Prabhupada says adding and eliminating are a material process. Worse, Sridhara Maharaja says we should add deviants to the parampara, and then eliminate them when their deviations are too far gone, and exposed.
Fine, except what about all the people who were banned, beat, molested and killed meanwhile? Well they do not matter, Sridhara Maharaja's empire works best when his acharyas are standing on a pile of crushed skulls under the jackboots of his bogus acharyas. Sridhara Maharaja has a plan to enable, empower and enforce false acharyas, but he never seems to have a plan for what happens to the victims of his bogus "mad messiah" policy?
Thus, when the first wave of bogus gurus rubber stamped by Sridhara Maharaja started to fall down after 1978, he said, no problem -- the GBC should have a "voting for guru" system to create more and more waves of gurus. He said the GBC should "vote in more gurus" to replace the ones who failed. Thus, the Pancadravida wave was being voted in when the Jayatirtha wave was crashing on the beach, under Sridhara's order to vote in more people. So Paramadvaita was having problems with the fools that Sridhara Maharaja was getting voted in as acharyas.
So when Sridhara's first wave of bogus gurus crashed on the beach, he had another wave of bogus people coming forward by his "voting for gurus" concoction, thus the waves of bogus gurus would never end under Sridhara Maharaja's scheme, which also happened with his self appointed gurus after 1936. As the first wave fell, then another wave of false acharyas came forward. Sridhara Maharaja would supply an endless chain of bogus messiahs into his debauchee for gurus program. AGAIN NOTICE! That is also what happened after 1936, Sridhara's first guru was exposed as a bi-sexual deviant, and Sridhara made himself and others into gurus.
Srila Prabhupada said that Sridhara Maharaja is qualified to cause great harm to ISKCON and he is not qualified to be an acharya. Yet Paramadvaita swami, Tripurari swami, Jagat guru swami, Sudheera Krishna swami, Pancadravida, and all of them, they still insist that Sridhara Maharaja, the founder father of the post 1936 homosexual guru deviation in the Gaudiya Matha, and huge supporter of the GBC gurus, is bona fide and an acharya.
Srila Prabhupada said -- another man comes, another man comes -- to become guru, and in some camps the guru is being changed in less than a year. ISKCON has fully adopted the Sridhara Maharaja program of changing the guru.]
PS: It was caused by the schemes of Jagad Jivan prabhu. I saw how many of your disciples became disenfranchised in the new situation. I did not want this to happen to the devotees I was working with and in the area where I was preaching. This was my only motivation for defending you. There were no other personal reasons, not in favor of someone nor against someone.
[PADA: OK so it was well known all along that the GBC and Sridhara's "zonal guru system" was not working and it was "disenfranchsing people." Gurus were being moved, if not removed. And the disciples were not being trained to be loyal to ISKCON proper, rather the new disciples were being trained under the Sridhara Maharaja idea "keep the sraddha of the disciples" to be loyal to the GBC's guru, not to ISKCON. So when their guru left, blooped, was removed, was kicked out, then most of the manpower fled from the temples.
This was -- and still is -- creating a massive manpower exodus from ISKCON. Therefore, the temples were first of all being emptied of Srila Prabhupada disciples, and now the temples were being emptied of the disciples of the new gurus endorsed by Sridhara Maharaja. That explains why the temples are empty today. Paramadvaita was trying to "work with" that system, thinking it could be fixed, but it could not because their whole zonal guru system was a deviation form square one. Neither has Paramadvaita ever explained why he and Sridhara maharaja thought these 11 GBC were gurus in the first place, since Srila Prabhupada had said that gurus are not appointed?]
PS: I appreciate you and Pancadravida Swami, believe it or not and it was not different at that time.
[PADA: Sridhara Mahajara had advised the GBC to start voting in gurus, and Pancadravida was one of the first to be voted in (from the 1982 GBC report):
That all GBC be nominated as candidates to become initiating Gurus with the requirement that they receive the blessings of 3/4 (three fourths) of the GBC members present to begin their initiating role. There after the individual GBC men who are initiating will be responsible for recommending new candidates for initiating Guru from the godbrothers within their zone. These names must then receive the blessings of 3/4 (three fourths) of the majority of the GBC present at the annual meeting for them to begin their initiating roles. The GBC shall prepare a paper elaborating this proposal
The following GBC members will take on the responsibilities of initiating Guru :
1. His Holiness Pancadravida Swami.
2. His Holiness Bhakti Swarup Damodar Swami.
3. His Holiness Gopal Krsna Goswami.
(1982, February 27th, GBC Resolutions 1 & 2)
So, the whole problem Paramadvaita swami was having with Pancadravida being the "guru for the zone" was being done under Sridhara's advice. Despite Sridhara's advice causing havoc for all the members of ISKCON, not only Paramadvaita swami, ... they still think Sridhara Maharaja is bona fide. Sridhara Maharaja told the GBC to vote in gurus, hello, gurus are not voted in. The people Sridhara Maharaja selected as his gurus were bogus, the people Sridhara Maharaja selected as his guru voters were bogus, the people being voted in as gurus were bogus, exactly what Sridhara Maharaja master minded after 1936 etc. Why doesn't Paramadvaita know this is bogus and wrong?]
PS: As a result of the actions I took to defend you as the guru, I was kicked out from my service by Pancadravida Swami. Afterwards, you helped me to get back to my service in Colombia after a GBC meeting in Miami.
[PADA: Right, after Sridhara Maharaja helped the guru by rubber stamp system, all kinds of people were getting "kicked out" left, right and center. Sridhara Maharaja also rubber stamped gurus after 1936, some dissenters were murdered then as well ... and people like Paramadvaita still think this was the right idea?]
PS: All these personal experiences, as well as some obvious misbehavior of prominent ISKCON gurus and authorities, helped me understand the difficulties of the zonal guruship.
[PADA: If the "zonal guru program" that Sridhara Maharaja supported was causing so many troubles, why are people like Paramadvaita swami still supporting the biggest advocate for the zonal guru program, Sridhara Maharaja? We also know that Sridhara Maharaja's false gurus after 1936 caused similar mayhem, including murders. Why would people continue to support Sridhara Maharaja (one of the founder supporters of the GBC's zonal guru deviation) as bona fide, knowing that his "support of false gurus" policy created banning, beating, and murders in post 1936 and post 1977?]
PS: I wrote about all this, including how you had been guilty of the banning of Srila Prabhupada's movement in Guatemala. This document was never sent out by me. Daru Krishna prabhu from Lima saw it and made a copy which he sent to Jayapataka Maharaja. Maharaja then sent it out to others. Bhagavan prabhu called this paper "The Scandal Purana". My proposal at the end of this paper was to set up a kind of ritvik system to save Srila Prabhupada's movement from all those situations.
[PADA: Right, the ritvik idea is the right idea, but Sridhara Maharaja opposed that idea, saying we need to have the GBC's "living gurus."]
PS: I myself was not happy with this proposal, but it seemed to be a step into a better direction. I asked also for the opinion of other senior members of the gaudiya vaishnava community. One of them was Srila B.V. Narayana Maharaja. He told me that there is no such a thing as ritvik in our tradition after the departure of a great devotee.
[PADA: Right, Narayan Maharaja was a huge supporter of the GBC gurus such as Tamal Krishna swami. Paramadvaita has thus been "taking advice" from Sridhara Maharaja, a co-founder of the zonal guru system, a person who says acharyas are going mad after money, women and followers, .... and then to top it all off, Paramadvaita takes advice from the a main pillar supporter of the GBC guru system, Narayana Maharaja.]
PS: In some way I was left without a clue.
[PADA: Yes, to support the people who promoted zonal gurus, gurus who are going mad after money women and followers, and so on, is clueless.]
PS: Then I arrived at the San Francisco airport one day. Atreya Rsi prabhu received me and gave me the book "Sri Guru and His Grace" by Srila B.R. Sridhara Maharaja. His comment was: "Alanath Swami, here you will find all the answers to our problems." I absorbed this book in one night. And really, I found the answers there. But there was only one problem. The author, Srila B.R. Sridhara Maharaja was already disgraced and on the ISKCON blacklist.
[PADA: "Sri Guru and His Grace" is the book that says acharyas may become "mad" chasing money, women and followers. That means, Sridhara Maharaja is saying acharyas are more degraded than the regular man on the street, who is not going mad to attain money, women and followers. As for Atreya Rsi, he later on left ISKCON and he told me he was shocked to see that I was still interested in Krishna at all. What kind of authority is that?]
PS: We could see at that time how the double standard applied to Srila Sridhara Maharaja around that Jayatirtha had created a great confusion.
[PADA: Sridhara Maharaja created great confusion by saying that we need to keep his illicit sex and drugs acharyas in the Vyasasana, that is correct. He also caused Jayatirtha to be murdered by keeping him in the guru post artificially, this is what lead to Jayatirtha's later on having his head chopped off for having sex with the wife of a follower. Sridhara Maharaja is the direct cause of Jayatirtha's death. Sridhara Maharaja also caused me to be kicked out of ISKCON by Jayatirtha by saying we were bogus to protest, in other words, the list of victims of Sridhara's interference is in the thousands. Paramadvaita is correct, this confusion was caused when Sridhara said we need to worship illicit sex and drugs in the Vyasasana as acharyas.]
PS: I myself and other temple presidents of ISKCON had insisted not to ban Srila Sridhara Maharaja or to send their own men to him to help. The GBC reacted very violently to this request and gave Jayatirtha and all his disciples an ultimatum. Either they will leave the ashram of Srila Sridhara Maharaja and come back to ISKCON or they will be disconnected from the mission of Srila Prabhupada. In case Jayatirtha decided to stay, his disciples were given the chance to accept another bona fide ISKCON GBC approved guru.
[PADA: Correct, Sridhara Maharaja first helped the GBC gurus set up their worship of bogus gurus program, and when the GBC decided to remove Jayatirtha, then Sridhara Maharaja (correctly?) pointed out -- you cannot remove the acharya from his own mission. There is no historical example of people removing the acharya from his own mission? Sridhara Maharaja said that we need to keep people's faith in the acharya, and the acharya is Jayatirtha.
Of course Sridhara Maharaja had also been told that Jayatirtha was having illicit sex and was taking drugs, but Sridhara still insisted that the GBC keep Jayatirtha in the acharya's seat. That means, Sridhara Maharaja thinks people who are taking drugs and are engaged in illicit sex need to sit on the acharya's seat. In any case, this mess was created by Sridhara Maharaja, he said the GBC needs to keep up the worship of illicit sex and drugs in the Vyasasana seat, and this caused Jayatirtha to be empowered as an acharya despite all his deviations.]
PS: As I myself had previously visited Srila Sridhara Maharaja with Dhira Krishna prabhu, I was very sad about the outcome of affairs. Reading his book about guru-tattva (Sri Guru and His Grace) I could understand that we made a big mistake.
[PADA: The book "Sri Guru and His Grace" says that acharyas are and / or can become mad fools and debauchees, and in sum, the acharya may become so much mad after power they have people assassinated (as occurs in fact with some of Sridhara's "acharyas." That is the solution? To declare that acharyas are mad fools who chase money, women and followers, and may also orchestrate murders of dissenters?
The solution of Sridhara Maharaja is to declare that acharyas are, or they become, criminally insane madmen tyrants? And the GBC adopted SM's idea, they also say acharyas become mad fools and etc. The acharya is, or may be, another mad person like Charles Manson? And so, the solution to all the problems of the Krishna religion is to claim, acharyas sometimes are, or could be, another Charles Manson? Yep, that is sure to fix everything!]
PS: So I set out on my difficult mission: "How to convince my god-brothers that they can get help from Srila Sridhara Maharaja?"
[PADA: No, the GBC already absorbed Sridhara Maharaja's idea that acharya are often mad debauchees. They are now saying acharyas are sometimes "engaged in illicit sex with men, women and children."]
PS: I went to Colombia and worked for many days together with my dear friend Dina Bandhu prabhu. We produced a 14 page analysis of the solutions given by Srila Sridhara Maharaja without quoting him. Rather we searched in Srila Prabhupada's books to find support for Srila Sridhara Maharaja's relevant instructions. We did this for the approaching GBC meeting in 1984 in Mayapur.
[PADA: The problem is that Srila Prabhupada does not agree with the Sridhara Maharaja's idea that acharyas are, or become, mad tyrants who orchestrate murders? The entire basis of Sridhara Maharaja's teachings is that we need to accept that the acharyas are, or can be, mad people who are chasing mundane enjoyment, which is never how the Vedas describe the acharyas.]
PS: Then a big surprise came. After two years of absence from Colombia and of your disciples there, you arrived in Bogota for an unannounced visit. You stormed at mangal artik time accompanied by Arkamitra prabhu and some others. Pancadravida Swami joined later in the same style. You went straight to the vyasasana and announced that you came to stop the revolution.
[PADA: Fine, we need to stop the Sridhara Maharaja revolution, which was started by Hrdayannanda when he endorsed the GBC going there in 1978. Hrdayananda started the fire, then acted like he was the fire brigade later on. No one would have been going to SM, except for the fact that Hrdayananda and his GBC started a big program of visiting him and declaring that he is the GBC's shiksha guru.]
PS: You were probably thinking that all the devotees in our mandir had been reading "The Scandal Purana" and that they were trained by me against ISKCON. The truth is: They had no idea of the all the difficulties. I kept all my doubts to myself and discussed it only with a few friends like Dina Bandhu, with whom I wrote the 14 pages paper on the guru tattva teachings of Srila Sridhara Maharaja, expressed with quotes from Srila Prabhupada's book. You were the guru for my area at that time and I wanted you to be the first to read this paper.
[PADA: Paramadvaita and Sridhara Maharaja never understood the first problem, we cannot work with the GBC's appointed gurus because, there never was any guru appointment. They kept trying to accomodate the appointed gurus, meeting them, writing to them, pacifying them, compromising with them, because they never understood the first point, there never was any guru appointment. None of these 11 were ever gurus because they had never been appointed as such.]
PS: As you were there already, I gave you this paper and asked you if you could please defeat the points there and show me where the mistakes were. You agreed, most probably thinking that you had "The Scandal Purana" in your hands. You started to read our paper seating in the vyasasana. Everything you read was perfectly reasonable. After giving some positive comments, you set a time during the day to hold an istagosthi with all devotees to read the whole paper.
During this istagosthi you were supportive of the points you read in the paper. You promised to go to India to make some changes in ISKCON based on these points. Pancadravida Swami agreed with you. You left Colombia after two days. Passing trough the security you looked back to us and said "ISKCON reform, ki jay."
[PADA: Right, this was yet another concoction, that the guru can be "reformed." Narayana Maharaja was helping Satsvarupa write "The Guru Reform Notebook," where they were proposing that gurus are deviants who need correction, reform, rectification, ... this means they think they guru is in illusion and its their job to chastise the guru. That means they think they are superior to the guru. In any case, saying that the guru is a deviant who needs reform and correction means, there is no longer any authority to the Vedic system. When the guru is defective, then the whole system collapses, as Sridhara Maharaja orchestrated after 1936.]
PS: I never wanted to leave ISKCON. ISKCON is my cradle and Prabhupada is my lord and master. The history I am telling you here is told for the first time, since in my book "In search of purity"-- I only wanted to set the record straight that Srila Sridhara Maharaj was not guilty for any of the problems within ISKCON.
[PADA: Sridhara Maharaja backed the bogus GBC gurus, he also said "none should protest." Thus the protesters were being shunned, banned, beaten and killed. What do you mean he had nothing to do with this policy? He helped the GBC form this policy. He said we should not protest these bogus messiahs. He said they should vote in more acharyas, and they did, they voted in Pancadravida, which even Paramadvaita says caused total mayhem. You have not set the record straight, you are still saying we need to agree to Sridhara's bogus policies of: zonal gurus, voted in gurus, mad men gurus, homosexual gurus and so forth. We do not agree.]
PS: Our relationship was already troubled from the time when you unjustly removed me from my service to Srila Prabhupada in Brazil. Just to remind you. You wanted to spend 10.000 dollars for your room, I guess following the example of Bhagavan dasa from France. It was the money we had collected with the devotees for the Ratha Yatra. So naturally, I objected.
I was removed then for disobedience from my successful service In Brazil. I had to tolerate this injustice and some others, like most of our god-brothers. We had to tolerate it, because there was no other choice if we wanted to stay in ISKCON. We are talking about a time, where staying in ISKCON meant for the most of us, staying in the mission of Prabhupada and Mahaprabhu. In other words leaving ISKCON meant leaving Krishna Consciousness. This unfortunately happened to many of our god-brothers.
[PADA: Right, Sridhara Maharaja creates mad cults of worship of deviants, thats the result of what he did in 1936 as well.]
PS: So to stay in ISKCON, we had to go along with many crazy ideas coming from your authority. For some reason or another, I ended up in Colombia, where there was no leader at that time. I was given a "village" by "your grace". After the meeting in Bogota, I was very hopeful to go to India and to help bring about certain reforms necessary in ISKCON. You and Pancadravida Swami promised also to help with the reforms after reading and commenting on my document. Then when I arrived in India I found a few great surprises:
- Pancadravida Swami called me to tell me that he was the new zonal for my region. You resigned because of that and he in exchange did not denounce you for closing ISKCON Guatemala
- When I objected this, you told me that you also did not agree, but that Pancadravida Swami insisted that you do it.
- I decided then to take the case to the GBC again, as I already did before in Miami, when you came to rescue me from Pancadravida Swami's decision to kick me out from Colombia. I had already distributed the 14 page analysis of ISKCON misconceptions to all the GBCs.
[PADA: Paramadvaita proposes that we follow Sridhara's idea that acharyas are mad fools, and debauchees, that is not a solution, that is the problem in the first place ...]
PS: Upon entering the meeting hall, I was immediately expelled. Then I was taken into a separate room where a group of GBCs informed me about their judgment upon me. I am not sure if they meant it as punishment or as a blessing, but I was told to travel with Jayapataka Maharaja for six months to recover, in this way, my understanding of what it means to be an ISKCON guru.
- Then I was called into another meeting with Jagadisa dasa and Satsvarupa Maharaja. They commented on my 14 page document: "Alanatha Swami you should rather have committed suicide than to dare say that you may leave ISKCON if nothing changes in the zonal guru situation".
[PADA: And Sridhara Maharaja is a founder father of the zonal guru situation ...]
PS: I was dismissed with this. I informed the devotees in Colombia by telegram that I was not allowed to return to Colombia. Previously to that meeting, a letter by Pancadravida Swami was sent to all the devotees. He showed his wish to support the changes in the zonal guru system. But now a new situation arose. He himself became a zonal guru and I was removed from his zone.
Very soon I got a call from Colombia. The devotees held an istagosthi after receiving my telegram and they decided that they wanted to continue working with me. They did not want to accept the GBC decision of removing me arbitrarily. So, I went back to Colombia and informed the GBC that we are requesting an independent investigation. We wanted to have the right to stay in ISKCON. We agreed that Satsvarupa Maharaja, Tripurari Maharaja and Atreya Rsi would be the impartial observers of this situation.
[PADA: Satsvarupa was a huge supporter of Kirtanananda at this time, he has never really recovered from supporting these deviants as acharyas. As for Tripurari swami, he was trying to get voted in as a GBC guru, and he told them that if they would not vote him in he would go to Sridhara, which he did.]
PS: Our efforts and desires were to remain in ISKCON, but to be accepted as we were, resulted in another intent of cheating and manipulation by the authorities. Instead of an impartial observation, we received a visit which was more like a CIA undercover operation. Jayapataka Swami, Pancadravida Swami, Prahladananda Swami and several other senior devotees arrived in Bogota. Their main goal was to discredit Srila Sridhara Maharaja, but we were already inspired to follow the advice of this saint, even if the GBCs would prohibit us to do so.
Even after being cheated again I remember telling to Satsvarupa Maharaja on the phone: "We will give the GBC a six month time to evaluate the situation and recognize our right so serve the mission of Prabhupada. Otherwise, we will start our spiritual life all over with a new connection and within a new frame."
I met Satsvarupa Maharaja 25 years later in Puri. He remembered the last words we spoke to each other in this phone call. He begged for forgiveness for what had happened, telling me: "I hope you know it was not my plan. I was dragged into all this." I told him: "I know Maharaja; I trusted you and I wanted you to be an independent observer."
[PADA: Satsvarupa was a ring leader because he was writing papers for the GBC, he also said that we need to consult with Sridhara Maharaja, he was not the victim, he was the master mind writer.]
PS: You see my dear Hridayananda Maharaja, even then, after so many difficulties, injustices and attempts of cheating and discredit, we still kept the desire to work with you and Pancadravida Swami for the mission of Prabhupada. We waited, as announced, for six months. There was no further communication from the GBC, or from you, or anyone else. There was not even a TWO MINUTE CALL, dear brother. We were ousted due to our rebellion against obvious GBC mistakes and because we wanted to associate with a saint, who in no way interfered with our service to Prabhupada. We felt he cleared our doubts, gave us hope and faith in purity and connected us with the greater family of Srila Prabhupada. He inspired us to continue in the mission of Mahaprabhu.
We then held a meeting with all the devotees from the yatra. Everyone could decide for himself how to proceed. Those who desired to stay within ISKCON and work with the GBC could have one or more temples according to their number. Four devotees decided to stay in ISKCON and requested the temple in Medellin as their place.
The rest of us kept our connection with Srila Sridhara Maharaja, most of the rest is known history, maybe except:
- I was denounced by the GBC representative and put in jail by the authorities of Colombia as a monk with a fake worker's visa. After explaining the situation to the authorities and presenting them the work we were doing, inspired by the teachings of Srila Prabhupada, I was released from jail and I immediately received the first religious visa which was given to someone who was not from the Catholic Church.
- I was sent to jail for a second time. The GBC representative accused me of smuggling and kidnapping minors. I went out on bail and after a two year investigation it was proved that I was innocent and that all the accusations were made up by Libardo Lozano, the GBC representative.
[PADA: Wow, the GBC made up allegations to have Paramadvaita jailed? Why does Sridhara think these people are acharyas?]
PS: - I was called on numerous occasions by the guerilla group "Ricardo Franco". The GBC told them that I am a German exploiting the religious sentiments of the Colombian people. The guerilla offered me two options: to leave Colombia or DIE. I ignored the threats, considering them GBC tactics to scare me.
This same guerilla group bombed three targets in Medellin in 1988. One of them was the ISKCON temple. The other two were the Mormon Church and the City Bank. I received a phone call again the next morning. They told me: "How did you like our gift in Medellin? We will put the next one right into your hands." As nothing bad happens without a good reason, I took these threats seriously and started travelling and preaching outside of Colombia.
A branch of Prabhupada's mission known today as VRINDA started expanding at that time. Then I published the real story of the events in a major daily newspaper. I informed the guerilla that they were working for an international GBC and that the Colombians were happy in the temples. Only few insiders know that ISKCON bombed their own temple by mistake. Fortunately there were no devotees inside the temple at the time of explosion.
[PADA: ISKCON bombed their own temple by mistake? And this is the behavior of Sridhara's gurus?]
PS: We still keep the same name "ISKCON Colombia", which I registered and still hope that the GBC understands one day that we do not belong in a quarantine, that we still love them and Srila Prabhupada and all other Vaishnavas as well, and that our deep friendship with many Gaudiya Math saints and the World Vaishnava Association is a chance to have an umbrella platform to deal with issues which may concern everyone.
We have our own style of preaching, more indigenous than western, and like to sing our bhajans in the local languages as well. But we really feel all devotees deserve to be given the benefit of the doubt, much more than the two minute calls that you ask for. Honest inquiry is necessary, speaking heart to heart. We need less ecclesiastical concerns and more love and welfare for all.
[PADA: Agreed, the problem with the Sridhara Maharaja program is his over-emphasis on these ecclesiastical institutional gurus. He wants zonal gurus, gurus who are voted in, gurus who are voted out, gurus who are censured, "wait and see" as gurus deviate (with no plan how to remove bogus gurus), "none should protest" while "the committee decides" when the guru is having illicit sex and so forth. He concocted all these bogus systems for gurus, its made a huge institutional guru imbroglio.]
PS: Yes, my dear Hridayananda Maharaj. It is nice to meet you in the quarantine department. How many things have our brothers gone through here and have lost their hope? Have we done enough to bring them back? I am waiting since 1984 for any GBC member to come to speak sense and vision to me. But unfortunately no one has come.
[PADA: Yep, these gurus are now being quarantined, people are finally recognizing they are the disease that is attacking ISKCON. That's great.]
PS: I meet some of them on some occasions and visit others regularly. It happens more or less unnoticed. Jayadvaita Maharaja, Radhanath Maharaja, Lokanath Maharaja, Satsvarupa Maharaja, Bir Krishna Maharaja. They nod and smile. Sometimes they say: "Paramadvaiti Maharaja, we agree with almost everything you say." But they never come back to me with any progressive ideas. I know that they are all busy gurus. It's good for them. But I guess they do not know how it feels to be unjustly called and treated as a traitor to Srila Prabhupada during all these years.
[PADA: Yep, the all agree with Sridhara Maharaja, gurus are often mad fools who carry machine guns and shoot out liquor stores. The idea that conditioned souls can become gurus, and sit in the seat of the guru, is betraying Srila Prabhupada. Sridhara Maharaja made the same error in 1936, he promoted contitoned souls as acharyas.]
PS: I am an insignificant little soul, not even a devotee, a newcomer to this path of divine love and mercy. I just cannot swallow that two plus two should be five.
[PADA: Except that Sridhara maharaja told all of us not to protest when Jayatirtha was deviating, because he wanted people to worship a deviant. That does not work, ever. Worse he did not learn that after his first conditioned guru experiment failed in 1936.]
PS: I humbly beg all of you to consider that Gaudiya Math, ISKCON, Bhaktivedanta Charity Trust, etc. are only names and that we are the living members. It is more important to care of the soul and not bricks and to accommodate everyone in this great family of Krishna Consciousness. Include, include and do not exclude unless there is no other choice. And even then try the rescue who ever can be rescued. Mercy is above justice. Is this not what Nityananda prabhu and Vasudeva Datta have taught us with their example?
We got our intelligence to apply it properly and for that we need some guidelines but most of all we need freedom. You, Hridayananda Maharaja, claimed this freedom by creating Krishna West. Svarupa Damodara Maharaja claimed it organizing international science meetings and a Manipuri Dance Tour, or others did it by going back to universities. There are so many examples.
Let us do what is needed to make ISKCON and the whole Gaudiya family a house where everyone can live happily. Are you ready? If so, then let us talk about it. Maybe the last GBC mistake is the starting point for a new reflection. I love you all anyway. It is up to you at what distance that love of mine will be situated. I am a strong speaker sometimes and write terrible English. Forgive me please. Many of you know me better. I wish I could hug you all.
Hare Krishna.
Dasanudasah
B.A. Paramadvaiti
[PADA: Hrdayananda says that mundane scholars have defeated Srila Prabhupada, why do you want to work with this person at all? ys pd]
Yes, there is no real difference between these camps. Agreed. And since their acharyas might be madmen, or they might become madmen, then there is no line of authority in their system since, "madness" is not a line of authority anywhere in any religious system, or even in a mundane system like a government. You got it! ys pd]
Letter from B.A. Paramadvaiti
BY: H.H. B.A. PARAMADVAITI SWAMI (formerly Alanath das ACBS)
SOUTH AMERICA (SUN) — Dear Hridayananda Maharaj and GBC body:
Dandavats pranams.
I have just come to know that you, Hridayananda dasa Goswami my God brother and sannyas guru, has been put into quarantine due to your westernized style of preaching. It sounds almost amusing to me that this is happening now, 25 years after I was put in quarantine by you and other God-brothers, for speaking about some disgraces ISKCON was experiencing at that time and for proposing solutions to these problems.
[PADA: Right, its very hypocritical of Hrdayananda swami to complain of being quarantined, when he and his GBC group have quarantined thousands of other devotees from ISKCON for the past 35 years.]
PS: Let me help you and others remember what actually took place 25 years ago. I still live in a quarantine which was never lifted, examined, or investigated.
[PADA: Correct, many of the devotees who were banned and exiled from ISKCON have never been re-contacted to find out -- what is the reason they are exiled? Do the reasons for their original exile still apply now -- and so forth. For example, I was exiled for challenging Jayatirtha, Kirtanananda and others. Later on, even many on the GBC themselves agreed -- I was right to challenge these deviants posing as gurus.
Do we ever get any explanation, never mind any apology? Nope. Do we get any message from the higher ups about any of this? Nope. Instead, the higher ups just buried Kirtanananda's carcass in the holy dham, STILL making pretend Kirtanananda is their messiah -- even up to the present time.
There is no consistent policy here except "we GBC can do no wrong." Even when they are proven wrong, as in the case of Kirtanananda, they still have to have "the last word" and bury their deviant messiahs carcass' in the holy land anyway, knowing how this upsets all their victims.]
PS: It is neither my intention to write a book here, nor do I want to bore anybody. I just think it is good moment to compare, reflect and rejoice on how things are happening by the grace of the Lord. I have a positive attitude. I am grateful. I love all of you. I ask you to forgive my mistakes. I thank you all for the beautiful experiences in Srila Prabhupada's family.
[PADA: Pretty much what we feel, we are feeling overall good, and we wish others the same. There is no point in holding a grudge here since -- many of these GBC gurus who opposed us in the past subsequently have had their own major problems. For example, some got very sick, Satsvarupa is one giant headache, Jayaptaka is suffering like a dog etc. Many others fell down, however the list of "fallen away messiahs" here is too extensive to detail.
And some have died like Jayatirtha, Tamal Krishna, Gaura Govinda maharaja, Suhotra, Swarupa Damodar and others. And there is clearly a lot of suffering in the remaining party. Some of these gurus are not very popular with various people who are clamoring to remove Mahanidhi, to censure Ravindra swarupa, to clean up the Harivilas program, and to quarantine Hrdayananda etc. In sum, their karma is catching up to them, and its not looking very pretty.]
PS: Being in quarantine now, even for other reasons, you may understand to some extent how it feels when others are judging you, without understanding your position and motivations. I am still waiting for the last 25 years for a clarification call. We are one family. Nobody can change that fact. The reason we can call ourselves one family is because of Srila Prabhupada and not because of the GBC.
[PADA: Correct. The GBC thinks by banning people from a temple, they can ban that person from being a devotee of Krishna, or ban that person from the family of Krishna. That's just not the way it has worked out for the GBC? Many of the people who "stayed on" with their GBC guru process ended up having spectacular fall downs, implications in illicit sex, drugs, criminal actions, if not in orchestrating assassinations of dissenters. Thus, many (or most) of the GBC "who remained loyal to the GBC of ISKCON" have no credibility at the present time for participating in their process of making bogus acharyas. Meanwhile, many of our independent people who were kicked out of the official ISKCON -- still have their faith in Krishna intact and they are making progress etc.]
PS: I was the regional secretary of Colombia back in 1982. Some of my prominent misgivings in ISKCON were caused for defending you.
[PADA: Very ironic, Paramadvaita swami was harassed for defending Hrdayananda, who was getting a lot of criticism even way back in 1982. Yep, a lot of people fail to recall that Hrdayananda was being attacked for excessive association with women, for ruining Berkeley temple, and for many other reasons, way back at the start of all this.]
PS: Pancadravida Swami insisted at that time that he should be the zonal guru of Colombia instead of you.
[PADA: Pancadravida swami was, and still is, a follower of Sridhara Maharaja -- who said that there is "a guru for the zone." Sridhara maharaja is one of the "founder fathers" of the original 1978 zonal guru deviation. Srila Prabhupada says the direct opposite, he says the guru does not have any geographical zone or area rather the guru is -- the guru for the entire universe -- or jagat guru. Of course Sridhara Maharaja also says that acharyas "go mad after money, women and followers." In other words, these people have no idea what an acharya is, and Pancadravida is still a prominent leader in the Santa Cruz Sridhara Maharaja / Govinda Maharaja "acharyas become mad fools" program.
Anyway, this is the first problem we had with Sridhara Maharaja, the GBC declared that they now have "geographical zonal acharyas" and Sridhara Maharaja backed up that bogus claim because he does not know that the Lord and His acharyas do not have "zones." And thus SM agreed with this bogus principle. Even later when the GBC's "acharyas" started to manifest illicit sex, drugs and other problems, Sridhara maharaja defended them and he said -- these deviants need to stay in the post of acharya, because he thinks acharyas are sometimes fallen and engaged in illicit behaviors. In fact Sridhara's book "Sri Guru And His Grace," says that acharyas may in fact fall into illicit behaviors.
And the result of following Sridhara's bogus zonal guru misconception was, Pancadravida, the GBC -- and in sum most of the ISKCON people -- began to discuss how this bogus zonal guru system would work and "who" would be the guru for the various concocted zones and areas, while fully not understanding the position of the guru at all, i.e. that the guru has no "zonal area."
In other words, under Sridhara Maharaja's bogus idea that there is "a guru for the zone," Pancadravida thought that he should be "the guru for the zone" because he listened to Sridhara Maharaja and not us. And Sridhara's idea created a sort of competition among these "acharyas" to control various areas and zones.
At that time, we were saying this zonal acharya idea is a total farce, its not found in our teachings. Pancadravida is reported to be -- even to this day --- following one of the founder fathers of this bogus zonal guru idea, namely Sridhara Maharaja, that means he has never understood that this "advisor" to the GBC is wrong. Paramadvaita follows Sridhara Maharaja as well, so they are still in illusion that the supporters of the process of zonal acharyas / acharyas go mad after mundane enjoyment / etc. are bona fide.
It seems the Sridhara Maharaja people think along the lines of the "village guru" system in India, there is a local geographical guru for a village or area. This is simply another result of the chaos created by Sridhara Maharaja when he declared the the zonal guru system is bona fide in 1978. Of course in 1936 Sridhara maharaja created a bi-sexual deviant guru program, which created chaos in his guru's mission, including murders of dissenters.
Why are people following the person who burned down the Gaudiya Matha?
Sorry, there is no such thing as an appointed guru, zonal guru, and the fact these people have been fighting over this issue shows how they never understood the post of guru in the first place, and how Sridhara Maharaja's village guru idea cannot be applied to worldwide Vaishnavism and to ISKCON. Worse, Sridhara Maharaja incited the GBC to "vote in more gurus."
Hence Pancadravida was one of the first to get voted in. Sridhara Maharaja thinks Gaudiya Vaishnavism is something like the Vatican, where the Pope or acharya is voted in. Then Paramadvaita began fighting with a guru voted under Sridhara's idea, and yet he still thinks Sridhara is bona fide, never mind the chaos his voted in guru caused Paramadvaita so much trouble for himself. The people who cause mayhem and trouble for the Vaishnavas, are the people to follow? The people who think the acharya is a puppet of an ecclessiastical body is our source of knowledge?
When Sridhara Maharaja was once challenged -- why his guru system was creating murders after 1936, he said that people getting killed is common, its what happened in the Bhagavad Gita. In other words, Sridhara Maharaja thinks he is authorized to promote homosexuals, deviants and criminals as acharyas, and when protesters are killed, that's an example of the fighting of Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita.
In other words, SM thinks he is authorized to orchestrate murders by supporting false gurus, and he is using Krishna's Kurukshetra as his excuse for the mis-behavior of his violent bogus guru's cults. Problem is, Bhagavad Gita has nothing to do with Sridhara Maharaja's promoting of violent illicit sex messiah's cults? Rather, Bhagavad Gita says that false religionists, i.e. people who promote false acharyas, are cast into hell. The Bhagavad Gita does not support making mad fools into messiahs and having dissenters assassinated.]
PS: I objected to this change of gurus like light bulbs. We have seen what happens then taking the example of Chile, Peru and some other places. Jayapataka Maharaj had taken from you the guru post for these countries.
[PADA: Yes, Sridhara Maharaja insisted on instituting the policy of "changing" the guru. He said the guru process is dynamic and its always "adding and eliminating." Nope, Srila Prabhupada says adding and eliminating are a material process. Worse, Sridhara Maharaja says we should add deviants to the parampara, and then eliminate them when their deviations are too far gone, and exposed.
Fine, except what about all the people who were banned, beat, molested and killed meanwhile? Well they do not matter, Sridhara Maharaja's empire works best when his acharyas are standing on a pile of crushed skulls under the jackboots of his bogus acharyas. Sridhara Maharaja has a plan to enable, empower and enforce false acharyas, but he never seems to have a plan for what happens to the victims of his bogus "mad messiah" policy?
Thus, when the first wave of bogus gurus rubber stamped by Sridhara Maharaja started to fall down after 1978, he said, no problem -- the GBC should have a "voting for guru" system to create more and more waves of gurus. He said the GBC should "vote in more gurus" to replace the ones who failed. Thus, the Pancadravida wave was being voted in when the Jayatirtha wave was crashing on the beach, under Sridhara's order to vote in more people. So Paramadvaita was having problems with the fools that Sridhara Maharaja was getting voted in as acharyas.
So when Sridhara's first wave of bogus gurus crashed on the beach, he had another wave of bogus people coming forward by his "voting for gurus" concoction, thus the waves of bogus gurus would never end under Sridhara Maharaja's scheme, which also happened with his self appointed gurus after 1936. As the first wave fell, then another wave of false acharyas came forward. Sridhara Maharaja would supply an endless chain of bogus messiahs into his debauchee for gurus program. AGAIN NOTICE! That is also what happened after 1936, Sridhara's first guru was exposed as a bi-sexual deviant, and Sridhara made himself and others into gurus.
Srila Prabhupada said that Sridhara Maharaja is qualified to cause great harm to ISKCON and he is not qualified to be an acharya. Yet Paramadvaita swami, Tripurari swami, Jagat guru swami, Sudheera Krishna swami, Pancadravida, and all of them, they still insist that Sridhara Maharaja, the founder father of the post 1936 homosexual guru deviation in the Gaudiya Matha, and huge supporter of the GBC gurus, is bona fide and an acharya.
Srila Prabhupada said -- another man comes, another man comes -- to become guru, and in some camps the guru is being changed in less than a year. ISKCON has fully adopted the Sridhara Maharaja program of changing the guru.]
PS: It was caused by the schemes of Jagad Jivan prabhu. I saw how many of your disciples became disenfranchised in the new situation. I did not want this to happen to the devotees I was working with and in the area where I was preaching. This was my only motivation for defending you. There were no other personal reasons, not in favor of someone nor against someone.
[PADA: OK so it was well known all along that the GBC and Sridhara's "zonal guru system" was not working and it was "disenfranchsing people." Gurus were being moved, if not removed. And the disciples were not being trained to be loyal to ISKCON proper, rather the new disciples were being trained under the Sridhara Maharaja idea "keep the sraddha of the disciples" to be loyal to the GBC's guru, not to ISKCON. So when their guru left, blooped, was removed, was kicked out, then most of the manpower fled from the temples.
This was -- and still is -- creating a massive manpower exodus from ISKCON. Therefore, the temples were first of all being emptied of Srila Prabhupada disciples, and now the temples were being emptied of the disciples of the new gurus endorsed by Sridhara Maharaja. That explains why the temples are empty today. Paramadvaita was trying to "work with" that system, thinking it could be fixed, but it could not because their whole zonal guru system was a deviation form square one. Neither has Paramadvaita ever explained why he and Sridhara maharaja thought these 11 GBC were gurus in the first place, since Srila Prabhupada had said that gurus are not appointed?]
PS: I appreciate you and Pancadravida Swami, believe it or not and it was not different at that time.
[PADA: Sridhara Mahajara had advised the GBC to start voting in gurus, and Pancadravida was one of the first to be voted in (from the 1982 GBC report):
That all GBC be nominated as candidates to become initiating Gurus with the requirement that they receive the blessings of 3/4 (three fourths) of the GBC members present to begin their initiating role. There after the individual GBC men who are initiating will be responsible for recommending new candidates for initiating Guru from the godbrothers within their zone. These names must then receive the blessings of 3/4 (three fourths) of the majority of the GBC present at the annual meeting for them to begin their initiating roles. The GBC shall prepare a paper elaborating this proposal
The following GBC members will take on the responsibilities of initiating Guru :
1. His Holiness Pancadravida Swami.
2. His Holiness Bhakti Swarup Damodar Swami.
3. His Holiness Gopal Krsna Goswami.
(1982, February 27th, GBC Resolutions 1 & 2)
So, the whole problem Paramadvaita swami was having with Pancadravida being the "guru for the zone" was being done under Sridhara's advice. Despite Sridhara's advice causing havoc for all the members of ISKCON, not only Paramadvaita swami, ... they still think Sridhara Maharaja is bona fide. Sridhara Maharaja told the GBC to vote in gurus, hello, gurus are not voted in. The people Sridhara Maharaja selected as his gurus were bogus, the people Sridhara Maharaja selected as his guru voters were bogus, the people being voted in as gurus were bogus, exactly what Sridhara Maharaja master minded after 1936 etc. Why doesn't Paramadvaita know this is bogus and wrong?]
PS: As a result of the actions I took to defend you as the guru, I was kicked out from my service by Pancadravida Swami. Afterwards, you helped me to get back to my service in Colombia after a GBC meeting in Miami.
[PADA: Right, after Sridhara Maharaja helped the guru by rubber stamp system, all kinds of people were getting "kicked out" left, right and center. Sridhara Maharaja also rubber stamped gurus after 1936, some dissenters were murdered then as well ... and people like Paramadvaita still think this was the right idea?]
PS: All these personal experiences, as well as some obvious misbehavior of prominent ISKCON gurus and authorities, helped me understand the difficulties of the zonal guruship.
[PADA: If the "zonal guru program" that Sridhara Maharaja supported was causing so many troubles, why are people like Paramadvaita swami still supporting the biggest advocate for the zonal guru program, Sridhara Maharaja? We also know that Sridhara Maharaja's false gurus after 1936 caused similar mayhem, including murders. Why would people continue to support Sridhara Maharaja (one of the founder supporters of the GBC's zonal guru deviation) as bona fide, knowing that his "support of false gurus" policy created banning, beating, and murders in post 1936 and post 1977?]
PS: I wrote about all this, including how you had been guilty of the banning of Srila Prabhupada's movement in Guatemala. This document was never sent out by me. Daru Krishna prabhu from Lima saw it and made a copy which he sent to Jayapataka Maharaja. Maharaja then sent it out to others. Bhagavan prabhu called this paper "The Scandal Purana". My proposal at the end of this paper was to set up a kind of ritvik system to save Srila Prabhupada's movement from all those situations.
[PADA: Right, the ritvik idea is the right idea, but Sridhara Maharaja opposed that idea, saying we need to have the GBC's "living gurus."]
PS: I myself was not happy with this proposal, but it seemed to be a step into a better direction. I asked also for the opinion of other senior members of the gaudiya vaishnava community. One of them was Srila B.V. Narayana Maharaja. He told me that there is no such a thing as ritvik in our tradition after the departure of a great devotee.
[PADA: Right, Narayan Maharaja was a huge supporter of the GBC gurus such as Tamal Krishna swami. Paramadvaita has thus been "taking advice" from Sridhara Maharaja, a co-founder of the zonal guru system, a person who says acharyas are going mad after money, women and followers, .... and then to top it all off, Paramadvaita takes advice from the a main pillar supporter of the GBC guru system, Narayana Maharaja.]
PS: In some way I was left without a clue.
[PADA: Yes, to support the people who promoted zonal gurus, gurus who are going mad after money women and followers, and so on, is clueless.]
PS: Then I arrived at the San Francisco airport one day. Atreya Rsi prabhu received me and gave me the book "Sri Guru and His Grace" by Srila B.R. Sridhara Maharaja. His comment was: "Alanath Swami, here you will find all the answers to our problems." I absorbed this book in one night. And really, I found the answers there. But there was only one problem. The author, Srila B.R. Sridhara Maharaja was already disgraced and on the ISKCON blacklist.
[PADA: "Sri Guru and His Grace" is the book that says acharyas may become "mad" chasing money, women and followers. That means, Sridhara Maharaja is saying acharyas are more degraded than the regular man on the street, who is not going mad to attain money, women and followers. As for Atreya Rsi, he later on left ISKCON and he told me he was shocked to see that I was still interested in Krishna at all. What kind of authority is that?]
PS: We could see at that time how the double standard applied to Srila Sridhara Maharaja around that Jayatirtha had created a great confusion.
[PADA: Sridhara Maharaja created great confusion by saying that we need to keep his illicit sex and drugs acharyas in the Vyasasana, that is correct. He also caused Jayatirtha to be murdered by keeping him in the guru post artificially, this is what lead to Jayatirtha's later on having his head chopped off for having sex with the wife of a follower. Sridhara Maharaja is the direct cause of Jayatirtha's death. Sridhara Maharaja also caused me to be kicked out of ISKCON by Jayatirtha by saying we were bogus to protest, in other words, the list of victims of Sridhara's interference is in the thousands. Paramadvaita is correct, this confusion was caused when Sridhara said we need to worship illicit sex and drugs in the Vyasasana as acharyas.]
PS: I myself and other temple presidents of ISKCON had insisted not to ban Srila Sridhara Maharaja or to send their own men to him to help. The GBC reacted very violently to this request and gave Jayatirtha and all his disciples an ultimatum. Either they will leave the ashram of Srila Sridhara Maharaja and come back to ISKCON or they will be disconnected from the mission of Srila Prabhupada. In case Jayatirtha decided to stay, his disciples were given the chance to accept another bona fide ISKCON GBC approved guru.
[PADA: Correct, Sridhara Maharaja first helped the GBC gurus set up their worship of bogus gurus program, and when the GBC decided to remove Jayatirtha, then Sridhara Maharaja (correctly?) pointed out -- you cannot remove the acharya from his own mission. There is no historical example of people removing the acharya from his own mission? Sridhara Maharaja said that we need to keep people's faith in the acharya, and the acharya is Jayatirtha.
Of course Sridhara Maharaja had also been told that Jayatirtha was having illicit sex and was taking drugs, but Sridhara still insisted that the GBC keep Jayatirtha in the acharya's seat. That means, Sridhara Maharaja thinks people who are taking drugs and are engaged in illicit sex need to sit on the acharya's seat. In any case, this mess was created by Sridhara Maharaja, he said the GBC needs to keep up the worship of illicit sex and drugs in the Vyasasana seat, and this caused Jayatirtha to be empowered as an acharya despite all his deviations.]
PS: As I myself had previously visited Srila Sridhara Maharaja with Dhira Krishna prabhu, I was very sad about the outcome of affairs. Reading his book about guru-tattva (Sri Guru and His Grace) I could understand that we made a big mistake.
[PADA: The book "Sri Guru and His Grace" says that acharyas are and / or can become mad fools and debauchees, and in sum, the acharya may become so much mad after power they have people assassinated (as occurs in fact with some of Sridhara's "acharyas." That is the solution? To declare that acharyas are mad fools who chase money, women and followers, and may also orchestrate murders of dissenters?
The solution of Sridhara Maharaja is to declare that acharyas are, or they become, criminally insane madmen tyrants? And the GBC adopted SM's idea, they also say acharyas become mad fools and etc. The acharya is, or may be, another mad person like Charles Manson? And so, the solution to all the problems of the Krishna religion is to claim, acharyas sometimes are, or could be, another Charles Manson? Yep, that is sure to fix everything!]
Sridhara Maharaja says acharyas go mad, ummm, really?
PS: So I set out on my difficult mission: "How to convince my god-brothers that they can get help from Srila Sridhara Maharaja?"
[PADA: No, the GBC already absorbed Sridhara Maharaja's idea that acharya are often mad debauchees. They are now saying acharyas are sometimes "engaged in illicit sex with men, women and children."]
PS: I went to Colombia and worked for many days together with my dear friend Dina Bandhu prabhu. We produced a 14 page analysis of the solutions given by Srila Sridhara Maharaja without quoting him. Rather we searched in Srila Prabhupada's books to find support for Srila Sridhara Maharaja's relevant instructions. We did this for the approaching GBC meeting in 1984 in Mayapur.
[PADA: The problem is that Srila Prabhupada does not agree with the Sridhara Maharaja's idea that acharyas are, or become, mad tyrants who orchestrate murders? The entire basis of Sridhara Maharaja's teachings is that we need to accept that the acharyas are, or can be, mad people who are chasing mundane enjoyment, which is never how the Vedas describe the acharyas.]
PS: Then a big surprise came. After two years of absence from Colombia and of your disciples there, you arrived in Bogota for an unannounced visit. You stormed at mangal artik time accompanied by Arkamitra prabhu and some others. Pancadravida Swami joined later in the same style. You went straight to the vyasasana and announced that you came to stop the revolution.
[PADA: Fine, we need to stop the Sridhara Maharaja revolution, which was started by Hrdayannanda when he endorsed the GBC going there in 1978. Hrdayananda started the fire, then acted like he was the fire brigade later on. No one would have been going to SM, except for the fact that Hrdayananda and his GBC started a big program of visiting him and declaring that he is the GBC's shiksha guru.]
PS: You were probably thinking that all the devotees in our mandir had been reading "The Scandal Purana" and that they were trained by me against ISKCON. The truth is: They had no idea of the all the difficulties. I kept all my doubts to myself and discussed it only with a few friends like Dina Bandhu, with whom I wrote the 14 pages paper on the guru tattva teachings of Srila Sridhara Maharaja, expressed with quotes from Srila Prabhupada's book. You were the guru for my area at that time and I wanted you to be the first to read this paper.
[PADA: Paramadvaita and Sridhara Maharaja never understood the first problem, we cannot work with the GBC's appointed gurus because, there never was any guru appointment. They kept trying to accomodate the appointed gurus, meeting them, writing to them, pacifying them, compromising with them, because they never understood the first point, there never was any guru appointment. None of these 11 were ever gurus because they had never been appointed as such.]
PS: As you were there already, I gave you this paper and asked you if you could please defeat the points there and show me where the mistakes were. You agreed, most probably thinking that you had "The Scandal Purana" in your hands. You started to read our paper seating in the vyasasana. Everything you read was perfectly reasonable. After giving some positive comments, you set a time during the day to hold an istagosthi with all devotees to read the whole paper.
During this istagosthi you were supportive of the points you read in the paper. You promised to go to India to make some changes in ISKCON based on these points. Pancadravida Swami agreed with you. You left Colombia after two days. Passing trough the security you looked back to us and said "ISKCON reform, ki jay."
[PADA: Right, this was yet another concoction, that the guru can be "reformed." Narayana Maharaja was helping Satsvarupa write "The Guru Reform Notebook," where they were proposing that gurus are deviants who need correction, reform, rectification, ... this means they think they guru is in illusion and its their job to chastise the guru. That means they think they are superior to the guru. In any case, saying that the guru is a deviant who needs reform and correction means, there is no longer any authority to the Vedic system. When the guru is defective, then the whole system collapses, as Sridhara Maharaja orchestrated after 1936.]
PS: I never wanted to leave ISKCON. ISKCON is my cradle and Prabhupada is my lord and master. The history I am telling you here is told for the first time, since in my book "In search of purity"-- I only wanted to set the record straight that Srila Sridhara Maharaj was not guilty for any of the problems within ISKCON.
[PADA: Sridhara Maharaja backed the bogus GBC gurus, he also said "none should protest." Thus the protesters were being shunned, banned, beaten and killed. What do you mean he had nothing to do with this policy? He helped the GBC form this policy. He said we should not protest these bogus messiahs. He said they should vote in more acharyas, and they did, they voted in Pancadravida, which even Paramadvaita says caused total mayhem. You have not set the record straight, you are still saying we need to agree to Sridhara's bogus policies of: zonal gurus, voted in gurus, mad men gurus, homosexual gurus and so forth. We do not agree.]
PS: Our relationship was already troubled from the time when you unjustly removed me from my service to Srila Prabhupada in Brazil. Just to remind you. You wanted to spend 10.000 dollars for your room, I guess following the example of Bhagavan dasa from France. It was the money we had collected with the devotees for the Ratha Yatra. So naturally, I objected.
I was removed then for disobedience from my successful service In Brazil. I had to tolerate this injustice and some others, like most of our god-brothers. We had to tolerate it, because there was no other choice if we wanted to stay in ISKCON. We are talking about a time, where staying in ISKCON meant for the most of us, staying in the mission of Prabhupada and Mahaprabhu. In other words leaving ISKCON meant leaving Krishna Consciousness. This unfortunately happened to many of our god-brothers.
[PADA: Right, Sridhara Maharaja creates mad cults of worship of deviants, thats the result of what he did in 1936 as well.]
PS: So to stay in ISKCON, we had to go along with many crazy ideas coming from your authority. For some reason or another, I ended up in Colombia, where there was no leader at that time. I was given a "village" by "your grace". After the meeting in Bogota, I was very hopeful to go to India and to help bring about certain reforms necessary in ISKCON. You and Pancadravida Swami promised also to help with the reforms after reading and commenting on my document. Then when I arrived in India I found a few great surprises:
- Pancadravida Swami called me to tell me that he was the new zonal for my region. You resigned because of that and he in exchange did not denounce you for closing ISKCON Guatemala
- When I objected this, you told me that you also did not agree, but that Pancadravida Swami insisted that you do it.
- I decided then to take the case to the GBC again, as I already did before in Miami, when you came to rescue me from Pancadravida Swami's decision to kick me out from Colombia. I had already distributed the 14 page analysis of ISKCON misconceptions to all the GBCs.
[PADA: Paramadvaita proposes that we follow Sridhara's idea that acharyas are mad fools, and debauchees, that is not a solution, that is the problem in the first place ...]
PS: Upon entering the meeting hall, I was immediately expelled. Then I was taken into a separate room where a group of GBCs informed me about their judgment upon me. I am not sure if they meant it as punishment or as a blessing, but I was told to travel with Jayapataka Maharaja for six months to recover, in this way, my understanding of what it means to be an ISKCON guru.
- Then I was called into another meeting with Jagadisa dasa and Satsvarupa Maharaja. They commented on my 14 page document: "Alanatha Swami you should rather have committed suicide than to dare say that you may leave ISKCON if nothing changes in the zonal guru situation".
[PADA: And Sridhara Maharaja is a founder father of the zonal guru situation ...]
PS: I was dismissed with this. I informed the devotees in Colombia by telegram that I was not allowed to return to Colombia. Previously to that meeting, a letter by Pancadravida Swami was sent to all the devotees. He showed his wish to support the changes in the zonal guru system. But now a new situation arose. He himself became a zonal guru and I was removed from his zone.
Very soon I got a call from Colombia. The devotees held an istagosthi after receiving my telegram and they decided that they wanted to continue working with me. They did not want to accept the GBC decision of removing me arbitrarily. So, I went back to Colombia and informed the GBC that we are requesting an independent investigation. We wanted to have the right to stay in ISKCON. We agreed that Satsvarupa Maharaja, Tripurari Maharaja and Atreya Rsi would be the impartial observers of this situation.
[PADA: Satsvarupa was a huge supporter of Kirtanananda at this time, he has never really recovered from supporting these deviants as acharyas. As for Tripurari swami, he was trying to get voted in as a GBC guru, and he told them that if they would not vote him in he would go to Sridhara, which he did.]
PS: Our efforts and desires were to remain in ISKCON, but to be accepted as we were, resulted in another intent of cheating and manipulation by the authorities. Instead of an impartial observation, we received a visit which was more like a CIA undercover operation. Jayapataka Swami, Pancadravida Swami, Prahladananda Swami and several other senior devotees arrived in Bogota. Their main goal was to discredit Srila Sridhara Maharaja, but we were already inspired to follow the advice of this saint, even if the GBCs would prohibit us to do so.
Even after being cheated again I remember telling to Satsvarupa Maharaja on the phone: "We will give the GBC a six month time to evaluate the situation and recognize our right so serve the mission of Prabhupada. Otherwise, we will start our spiritual life all over with a new connection and within a new frame."
I met Satsvarupa Maharaja 25 years later in Puri. He remembered the last words we spoke to each other in this phone call. He begged for forgiveness for what had happened, telling me: "I hope you know it was not my plan. I was dragged into all this." I told him: "I know Maharaja; I trusted you and I wanted you to be an independent observer."
[PADA: Satsvarupa was a ring leader because he was writing papers for the GBC, he also said that we need to consult with Sridhara Maharaja, he was not the victim, he was the master mind writer.]
PS: You see my dear Hridayananda Maharaja, even then, after so many difficulties, injustices and attempts of cheating and discredit, we still kept the desire to work with you and Pancadravida Swami for the mission of Prabhupada. We waited, as announced, for six months. There was no further communication from the GBC, or from you, or anyone else. There was not even a TWO MINUTE CALL, dear brother. We were ousted due to our rebellion against obvious GBC mistakes and because we wanted to associate with a saint, who in no way interfered with our service to Prabhupada. We felt he cleared our doubts, gave us hope and faith in purity and connected us with the greater family of Srila Prabhupada. He inspired us to continue in the mission of Mahaprabhu.
We then held a meeting with all the devotees from the yatra. Everyone could decide for himself how to proceed. Those who desired to stay within ISKCON and work with the GBC could have one or more temples according to their number. Four devotees decided to stay in ISKCON and requested the temple in Medellin as their place.
The rest of us kept our connection with Srila Sridhara Maharaja, most of the rest is known history, maybe except:
- I was denounced by the GBC representative and put in jail by the authorities of Colombia as a monk with a fake worker's visa. After explaining the situation to the authorities and presenting them the work we were doing, inspired by the teachings of Srila Prabhupada, I was released from jail and I immediately received the first religious visa which was given to someone who was not from the Catholic Church.
- I was sent to jail for a second time. The GBC representative accused me of smuggling and kidnapping minors. I went out on bail and after a two year investigation it was proved that I was innocent and that all the accusations were made up by Libardo Lozano, the GBC representative.
[PADA: Wow, the GBC made up allegations to have Paramadvaita jailed? Why does Sridhara think these people are acharyas?]
PS: - I was called on numerous occasions by the guerilla group "Ricardo Franco". The GBC told them that I am a German exploiting the religious sentiments of the Colombian people. The guerilla offered me two options: to leave Colombia or DIE. I ignored the threats, considering them GBC tactics to scare me.
This same guerilla group bombed three targets in Medellin in 1988. One of them was the ISKCON temple. The other two were the Mormon Church and the City Bank. I received a phone call again the next morning. They told me: "How did you like our gift in Medellin? We will put the next one right into your hands." As nothing bad happens without a good reason, I took these threats seriously and started travelling and preaching outside of Colombia.
A branch of Prabhupada's mission known today as VRINDA started expanding at that time. Then I published the real story of the events in a major daily newspaper. I informed the guerilla that they were working for an international GBC and that the Colombians were happy in the temples. Only few insiders know that ISKCON bombed their own temple by mistake. Fortunately there were no devotees inside the temple at the time of explosion.
[PADA: ISKCON bombed their own temple by mistake? And this is the behavior of Sridhara's gurus?]
PS: We still keep the same name "ISKCON Colombia", which I registered and still hope that the GBC understands one day that we do not belong in a quarantine, that we still love them and Srila Prabhupada and all other Vaishnavas as well, and that our deep friendship with many Gaudiya Math saints and the World Vaishnava Association is a chance to have an umbrella platform to deal with issues which may concern everyone.
We have our own style of preaching, more indigenous than western, and like to sing our bhajans in the local languages as well. But we really feel all devotees deserve to be given the benefit of the doubt, much more than the two minute calls that you ask for. Honest inquiry is necessary, speaking heart to heart. We need less ecclesiastical concerns and more love and welfare for all.
[PADA: Agreed, the problem with the Sridhara Maharaja program is his over-emphasis on these ecclesiastical institutional gurus. He wants zonal gurus, gurus who are voted in, gurus who are voted out, gurus who are censured, "wait and see" as gurus deviate (with no plan how to remove bogus gurus), "none should protest" while "the committee decides" when the guru is having illicit sex and so forth. He concocted all these bogus systems for gurus, its made a huge institutional guru imbroglio.]
PS: Yes, my dear Hridayananda Maharaj. It is nice to meet you in the quarantine department. How many things have our brothers gone through here and have lost their hope? Have we done enough to bring them back? I am waiting since 1984 for any GBC member to come to speak sense and vision to me. But unfortunately no one has come.
[PADA: Yep, these gurus are now being quarantined, people are finally recognizing they are the disease that is attacking ISKCON. That's great.]
PS: I meet some of them on some occasions and visit others regularly. It happens more or less unnoticed. Jayadvaita Maharaja, Radhanath Maharaja, Lokanath Maharaja, Satsvarupa Maharaja, Bir Krishna Maharaja. They nod and smile. Sometimes they say: "Paramadvaiti Maharaja, we agree with almost everything you say." But they never come back to me with any progressive ideas. I know that they are all busy gurus. It's good for them. But I guess they do not know how it feels to be unjustly called and treated as a traitor to Srila Prabhupada during all these years.
[PADA: Yep, the all agree with Sridhara Maharaja, gurus are often mad fools who carry machine guns and shoot out liquor stores. The idea that conditioned souls can become gurus, and sit in the seat of the guru, is betraying Srila Prabhupada. Sridhara Maharaja made the same error in 1936, he promoted contitoned souls as acharyas.]
PS: I am an insignificant little soul, not even a devotee, a newcomer to this path of divine love and mercy. I just cannot swallow that two plus two should be five.
[PADA: Except that Sridhara maharaja told all of us not to protest when Jayatirtha was deviating, because he wanted people to worship a deviant. That does not work, ever. Worse he did not learn that after his first conditioned guru experiment failed in 1936.]
PS: I humbly beg all of you to consider that Gaudiya Math, ISKCON, Bhaktivedanta Charity Trust, etc. are only names and that we are the living members. It is more important to care of the soul and not bricks and to accommodate everyone in this great family of Krishna Consciousness. Include, include and do not exclude unless there is no other choice. And even then try the rescue who ever can be rescued. Mercy is above justice. Is this not what Nityananda prabhu and Vasudeva Datta have taught us with their example?
We got our intelligence to apply it properly and for that we need some guidelines but most of all we need freedom. You, Hridayananda Maharaja, claimed this freedom by creating Krishna West. Svarupa Damodara Maharaja claimed it organizing international science meetings and a Manipuri Dance Tour, or others did it by going back to universities. There are so many examples.
Let us do what is needed to make ISKCON and the whole Gaudiya family a house where everyone can live happily. Are you ready? If so, then let us talk about it. Maybe the last GBC mistake is the starting point for a new reflection. I love you all anyway. It is up to you at what distance that love of mine will be situated. I am a strong speaker sometimes and write terrible English. Forgive me please. Many of you know me better. I wish I could hug you all.
Hare Krishna.
Dasanudasah
B.A. Paramadvaiti
[PADA: Hrdayananda says that mundane scholars have defeated Srila Prabhupada, why do you want to work with this person at all? ys pd]
B.A. Paramadvaiti tries to be reasonable. From begin his spiritual life he always had kind of a strong drive for recognition. He totally rejects Prabhupadanugas and never has a good word for them. This is the first time after 20 years he reveals his mind.
ReplyDeleteOf course he feels compensation for personal suffering - that Hridayananda Goswami is put in quarantine makes him bubble over with joy. Only problem, what does this help the cause of reforming Prabhupada's movement?
What is evident is that B.A. Paramadvaiti actually wants to be the boss, he cant accept anyone above him. Only problem, he couldnt manage to gain a foothold in higher educated circles. More or less his clientele are 3rd world nations. B.A. Paramadvaiti's narcissistic mindset caused his godbrothers to disassociate. He created his own kingdom where his godbrothers are excluded. Why he still is somewhat appreciated is that he actually started his own thing outside of ISKCON. He did not misuse Prabhupada's movement for his solo attempt. That his godbrothers are all outside of ISKCON is of no interest for BAP. He rather addresses his own interests only. If he actually is on the right track only time can tell.
[PADA: Hrdayananda says that mundane scholars have defeated Srila Prabhupada, why do you want to work with this person at all? ys pd]
ReplyDeleteI think you hit it on the head with this statement. Ultimately, the people who have caused the biggest deviations and abuses are just bad association. One time
I asked Ravindra Svarupa why dont they record the GBC meetings like shareholders demand that they do at CEO meetings. His actual reply was, "because if you heard what come out of some of these guys mouths you wouldn't have any faith in them." So I said "then everyone should know and we shouldn't have any faith in them". He just shrugged and laughed. Yeah, I don't want to go near any of these guys, just bad people. And the hammer of justice is falling on them now and I certainly don't want to be anywhere near the fallout! Real mean and nasty people, hardly a shred of decency or positivity left in that group, just look at their GBC group photos?. Really its as simple as that. Thanks Prabhu!