Rocana dasa picturing Srila Prabhupada dead
After seeing and revealing the hoax Rocana dasa was trying to perpetuate with his DOR, I rarely read anything that Rocana writes anymore. As I have some lingering affection for him, left over from my bhramacari days when we served together for some time in Seattle, I check up on him from time to time, hoping to see that’s grown tired of his own bull crap and finally come up for air.
Sadly to say, after reading one of his recent articles I came away shaking my head, concluding just the opposite, for from the reading of it, it appeared that Rocana dasa had only sunk even deeper, that tormented by whatever demons drive him, that he has gone from only picturing himself a the great destroyer of the Rtviks, but into picturing Srila Prabhupada dead.
ROCANA: “Those devotees who like to adamantly state that Srila Prabhupada is ‘still alive’, and ISKCON should just go along as if that were the assumption, are fools. This is just one of innumerable circumstances where Srila Prabhupada stepped in and saved not only the money, but the movement. It was his ability to function in the real world and his perception about who was a devotee and who was basically a demon that saved the day, and was a great contributing factor in the amazing expansion of Krsna consciousness during that period, when Srila Prabhupada was directly overseeing of the movement. Of course, he is still with us in his vani legacy, but there is no replacing his actual physical presence with us to guide and solve problems, hands-on.
Rocana dasa, posted on the Sampraday Sun on April 10th, Deconstructing the Lilamrta – Part 55\
He reasons ill who tells that Vaishnavs die
When thou art living still in sound.
The Vaishnavs die to live and living try
To spread the holy life around!
Bhaktivinode Thakur
I am sorry for Rocana that he sees his spiritual master as being dead, sorry for anyone who has ever lost someone that they loved, but the spiritual master is not a normal man, so I am sorrier still for those who are taken in by those who him as being one, as Rocana dasa is.
In the above noted article Rocana dasa tries to present Srila Prabhupada as being indispensable for his expertise is material affairs, such things as business and real estate dealings, etc. The possession of business acumen or expertise, while characteristic of a pure devotee of Krsna, who is, after all; the “sum total of all the powers of the demigods”, are not what qualify him as a spiritual master and are not essential to such a function (although he may display them for a time).
The idea however, that Srila Prabhupada still needs to be physically present to help us with our real estate deals and other business fumbling’s even just in itself, what to speak of as being essential to his qualification as a spiritual master is so patently ridiculous that that one has to laugh at it and cry for the silly ass that accepts it. For those who try to perpetrate it though, such actions carry their own reward.
The problem I had Rocanas argument initially, was that I could not believe that I was reading such an argument from him. Why? Because he knows better. Everyone (or at least everyone who was in the movement then), as both Rocana das and I were, knows that Srila Prabhupada was training us to take over such material affairs in order to free him to do what he himself considered to be most essential to his task of being our spiritual master, which was to write more books, more Krsna conscious transcendental literature to guide, not just us, but all the world.
That Rocana dasa would or even possibly could ever forget this defied imagination, it could not happen, it could not have happened… and therefore (a light dawned on me), it hadn’t happened and yet here was Rocana dasa, writing as if he, or rather the audience that he was writing for, were completely unaware of this fact.
The understanding that every old devotee, including Rocana dasa himself, was aware of what I was aware of helped me to understand that Rocana dasa really wasn’t writing for the fewer and fewer of us who are left every day, but for the more and more people coming to the Krsna consciousness movement every Sunday, none of them having any clue of this or quite a number of things and all dependent upon whoever it is being presented as being a figure of authority, for “the truth”.
Undoubtedly Rocana dasa has a few readers who see him as being different than ISKCON or the GBC for his repeated harping on things done by them that most everybody knows of already and do not see him as being one of them, just one who is presently using his abilities to make himself a big enough pain in the ass to them that they will “negotiate” with him. To be returned just to a position of being in good standing is not however what I believe that Rocana is after, rather he is hoping to be given a position closer to the top.
To this end Rocana das appears to me to be doing the best he can to make himself appear valuable to the most powerful people in ISKCON, functioning perhaps as their hatchet man, for we see how he is always going after the self same people or groups that they consider to be their own very worst enemies, other powerful factions or groups such as Narayana Maharaja ‘s math was formerly and of course, the Rtviks, who continue to be, I think the greatest threat to the GBC’s gurus and thus to ISKCON.
I realized that the only persons who might not be aware that Rocana dasa was misrepresenting the truth would be the people who had not been around there at the time and who were therefore not Srila Prabhupadas initiated disicples, and probably not the disciples of anyone, as yet, just people who had wandered into some local temple and then perhaps gone up to the web and found Rocana, an “alternate voice” or devils advocate if you will. Innocents in other words who hadn’t had time enough to examine Rocanas' writings critically enough to see that in many cases that far from proposing a different view than the GBC is, that with but a little re-arranging to accommodate his own pet theories that Rocana dasa is saying the same thing (as the GBC).
Once I had seen this it seemed all to obvious that Rocana dasa target audience were those who had not, as yet, accepted a spiritual master, either through ISKCON’s or one of the other sub-groups offerings, or through the Rtvik method by which a person is initiated by a Rtvik priest upon Srila Prabhupada’s behalf and then becomes Srila Prabhupada’s disciple, and that these were the people who’se decision he was trying to influence. Rocana dasa argument was therefore aimed at discouraging anyone who might be, or might be in the future considering accepting the Rtvik offering and by by so doing of not only being lost as a possible resource to ISKCON but also by accepting and becoming one of Srila Prabhupadas disciples, equal to Rocana dasa.
Within the body of Rocanas article I found something else that suggested strongly to me that Rocana was being disingenuous, that he did not in reality think that the things that he was claiming that it was so important for a spiritual master to be, were in actuality very important, if at all. This related to Rocana's second indispensable quality of a spiritual master, his ability to “see” who was a demon and appraise us of this fearful thing. What appraised me of this was something that no one else would be aware of for it was something that Rocana had said to me privately in an e-mail several years ago, something that revealed what he really thought about not only demons, but also devotees. Here it is:
“You’ve gone so far as to suggest that *********** is demoniac.
Yes, we are all demons here in Kali Yuga, but really prabhu, I think it’s an over-reaction.”
Rocana dasa 4/26/2011 to Bhakta George
What made me recall this conversation was an old friendship with the only person who had ever received a degree on demonology from an accredited university. Isaac Bonewits, from U.C. Berkeley. Sigh, like many of friends who I haven’t heard from for ages when I looked him up I found that he had passed away. The point germane to this however is that the ability to see who is and who is not a demon is far from a necessary ability for even an ordinary person to possess, much less an essential ability of a spiritual master that can only be found in one who is still living if all the demons are already known, as they would be, if what Rocana dasa is saying here is correct and everyone is demoniac, including all of the devotees.
For the record I do not agree with Rocana dasa that everyone, including all of the devotees are demoniac, but I’d certainly be willing to entertain the consideration that he is, but suffice to say from this little blurb we can see that Rocanas entire claim to considering the ability to see whether or not a person is or is not demoniac as an indispensable quality that a living spiritual master must possess is either complete b.s., or that it is written from the perspective of one who however snakeily already thinks that he possesses it and thus that he himself fills the bill by half at least of being a qualified living spiritual master.
This went into my file as one of the “couple of things” that I intended to bring up, and then I went back over he article again in order to determine what other tricks Rocana dasa was, to my way of thinking, attempting to employ to steer the devotees into accepting his view. Over the years my skills have gotten a bit rusty or my brain has addelled a bit more, perhaps a bit of both. The point is that I do not still always see what in my younger days would have been glaringly obvious upon a first or initial reading of an article.
As I read Rocana's words again I saw how Rocana had been employing one of the oldest rhetorical or dishonest reasoning tools in the book in an attempt to confuse his audience, by employing the fallacious reasoning technique referred to as muddying the waters -- so as to confuse his audience as to what the essential qualities of a spiritual master were -- so as to get them to accept non-essential qualities in their stead and by so doing agree with his conclusion that anyone who is presently serving as a spiritual master must possess them (and because Srila Prabhupada was no longer present, that they must dismiss him from any possible consideration of their acceptance of him as their guru through Rtvik initiation).
By attempting to substitute material qualities of temporary manifestation for spiritual essentials of eternal duration, the real things that are essential to the function of a spiritual master and things that Srila Prabhupada continues to possess and give to us the benefit of, Rocana dasa was indeed attempting to muddy the waters by substituting non-essential for essentials in order to try to get us to accept his conclusion that we could not accept Srila Prabhupada as our Srila Prabhupada as a spiritual master, but had to accept someone else, such as Rocana dasa himself perhaps who possessed at least one if not both of the essential qualities of a spiritual master according at least to himself.
Once Rocana had convinced his target audience that such material qualities such as business acumen and the ability to judge a person as being demonic were indispensable to us in the person of another (and in this case in the person of a spiritual master and in this case again in the person of Srila Prabhupada), that due to his not being physically present and in such close proximity as to be able to display such abilities, Johnny on the spot, to step in and save our asses, each and every time, then following the acceptance of such a conclusion the rejection of anyone, including Srila Prabhupada for his not being physically present in order to display such abilities follows automatically.
Rocanas argument, besides being what appears to me to be use logical fallacy in a deliberate attempt to convince you of something untruthful, is silly on the other hand for the simple fact that even Superman cannot be everywhere at once, that sad to say, that while he’s off somewhere saving the planet that there is some poor cat stuck up in a tree that someone is going to have to call the fire department in order to get down. Srila Prabhupada was there for us many times but what Rocana suggests is basically that the Spiritual master must be present always to make up for our lack in each and every case, that Krsna, in fact must depend exclusively upon his pure devotees to serve Him or come down and serve Himself because we’re never going to be ready, willing or able to do it.
Just another absurd argument from Rocana but his manner of presentation is sophisticated enough to allay the suspicions of any hen wandering into the hen house that had never seen a fox. That is at least, what I think of Rocana and Rocanas article.
YS George A. Smith
After seeing and revealing the hoax Rocana dasa was trying to perpetuate with his DOR, I rarely read anything that Rocana writes anymore. As I have some lingering affection for him, left over from my bhramacari days when we served together for some time in Seattle, I check up on him from time to time, hoping to see that’s grown tired of his own bull crap and finally come up for air.
Sadly to say, after reading one of his recent articles I came away shaking my head, concluding just the opposite, for from the reading of it, it appeared that Rocana dasa had only sunk even deeper, that tormented by whatever demons drive him, that he has gone from only picturing himself a the great destroyer of the Rtviks, but into picturing Srila Prabhupada dead.
ROCANA: “Those devotees who like to adamantly state that Srila Prabhupada is ‘still alive’, and ISKCON should just go along as if that were the assumption, are fools. This is just one of innumerable circumstances where Srila Prabhupada stepped in and saved not only the money, but the movement. It was his ability to function in the real world and his perception about who was a devotee and who was basically a demon that saved the day, and was a great contributing factor in the amazing expansion of Krsna consciousness during that period, when Srila Prabhupada was directly overseeing of the movement. Of course, he is still with us in his vani legacy, but there is no replacing his actual physical presence with us to guide and solve problems, hands-on.
Rocana dasa, posted on the Sampraday Sun on April 10th, Deconstructing the Lilamrta – Part 55\
He reasons ill who tells that Vaishnavs die
When thou art living still in sound.
The Vaishnavs die to live and living try
To spread the holy life around!
Bhaktivinode Thakur
I am sorry for Rocana that he sees his spiritual master as being dead, sorry for anyone who has ever lost someone that they loved, but the spiritual master is not a normal man, so I am sorrier still for those who are taken in by those who him as being one, as Rocana dasa is.
In the above noted article Rocana dasa tries to present Srila Prabhupada as being indispensable for his expertise is material affairs, such things as business and real estate dealings, etc. The possession of business acumen or expertise, while characteristic of a pure devotee of Krsna, who is, after all; the “sum total of all the powers of the demigods”, are not what qualify him as a spiritual master and are not essential to such a function (although he may display them for a time).
The idea however, that Srila Prabhupada still needs to be physically present to help us with our real estate deals and other business fumbling’s even just in itself, what to speak of as being essential to his qualification as a spiritual master is so patently ridiculous that that one has to laugh at it and cry for the silly ass that accepts it. For those who try to perpetrate it though, such actions carry their own reward.
The problem I had Rocanas argument initially, was that I could not believe that I was reading such an argument from him. Why? Because he knows better. Everyone (or at least everyone who was in the movement then), as both Rocana das and I were, knows that Srila Prabhupada was training us to take over such material affairs in order to free him to do what he himself considered to be most essential to his task of being our spiritual master, which was to write more books, more Krsna conscious transcendental literature to guide, not just us, but all the world.
That Rocana dasa would or even possibly could ever forget this defied imagination, it could not happen, it could not have happened… and therefore (a light dawned on me), it hadn’t happened and yet here was Rocana dasa, writing as if he, or rather the audience that he was writing for, were completely unaware of this fact.
The understanding that every old devotee, including Rocana dasa himself, was aware of what I was aware of helped me to understand that Rocana dasa really wasn’t writing for the fewer and fewer of us who are left every day, but for the more and more people coming to the Krsna consciousness movement every Sunday, none of them having any clue of this or quite a number of things and all dependent upon whoever it is being presented as being a figure of authority, for “the truth”.
Undoubtedly Rocana dasa has a few readers who see him as being different than ISKCON or the GBC for his repeated harping on things done by them that most everybody knows of already and do not see him as being one of them, just one who is presently using his abilities to make himself a big enough pain in the ass to them that they will “negotiate” with him. To be returned just to a position of being in good standing is not however what I believe that Rocana is after, rather he is hoping to be given a position closer to the top.
To this end Rocana das appears to me to be doing the best he can to make himself appear valuable to the most powerful people in ISKCON, functioning perhaps as their hatchet man, for we see how he is always going after the self same people or groups that they consider to be their own very worst enemies, other powerful factions or groups such as Narayana Maharaja ‘s math was formerly and of course, the Rtviks, who continue to be, I think the greatest threat to the GBC’s gurus and thus to ISKCON.
I realized that the only persons who might not be aware that Rocana dasa was misrepresenting the truth would be the people who had not been around there at the time and who were therefore not Srila Prabhupadas initiated disicples, and probably not the disciples of anyone, as yet, just people who had wandered into some local temple and then perhaps gone up to the web and found Rocana, an “alternate voice” or devils advocate if you will. Innocents in other words who hadn’t had time enough to examine Rocanas' writings critically enough to see that in many cases that far from proposing a different view than the GBC is, that with but a little re-arranging to accommodate his own pet theories that Rocana dasa is saying the same thing (as the GBC).
Once I had seen this it seemed all to obvious that Rocana dasa target audience were those who had not, as yet, accepted a spiritual master, either through ISKCON’s or one of the other sub-groups offerings, or through the Rtvik method by which a person is initiated by a Rtvik priest upon Srila Prabhupada’s behalf and then becomes Srila Prabhupada’s disciple, and that these were the people who’se decision he was trying to influence. Rocana dasa argument was therefore aimed at discouraging anyone who might be, or might be in the future considering accepting the Rtvik offering and by by so doing of not only being lost as a possible resource to ISKCON but also by accepting and becoming one of Srila Prabhupadas disciples, equal to Rocana dasa.
Within the body of Rocanas article I found something else that suggested strongly to me that Rocana was being disingenuous, that he did not in reality think that the things that he was claiming that it was so important for a spiritual master to be, were in actuality very important, if at all. This related to Rocana's second indispensable quality of a spiritual master, his ability to “see” who was a demon and appraise us of this fearful thing. What appraised me of this was something that no one else would be aware of for it was something that Rocana had said to me privately in an e-mail several years ago, something that revealed what he really thought about not only demons, but also devotees. Here it is:
“You’ve gone so far as to suggest that *********** is demoniac.
Yes, we are all demons here in Kali Yuga, but really prabhu, I think it’s an over-reaction.”
Rocana dasa 4/26/2011 to Bhakta George
What made me recall this conversation was an old friendship with the only person who had ever received a degree on demonology from an accredited university. Isaac Bonewits, from U.C. Berkeley. Sigh, like many of friends who I haven’t heard from for ages when I looked him up I found that he had passed away. The point germane to this however is that the ability to see who is and who is not a demon is far from a necessary ability for even an ordinary person to possess, much less an essential ability of a spiritual master that can only be found in one who is still living if all the demons are already known, as they would be, if what Rocana dasa is saying here is correct and everyone is demoniac, including all of the devotees.
For the record I do not agree with Rocana dasa that everyone, including all of the devotees are demoniac, but I’d certainly be willing to entertain the consideration that he is, but suffice to say from this little blurb we can see that Rocanas entire claim to considering the ability to see whether or not a person is or is not demoniac as an indispensable quality that a living spiritual master must possess is either complete b.s., or that it is written from the perspective of one who however snakeily already thinks that he possesses it and thus that he himself fills the bill by half at least of being a qualified living spiritual master.
This went into my file as one of the “couple of things” that I intended to bring up, and then I went back over he article again in order to determine what other tricks Rocana dasa was, to my way of thinking, attempting to employ to steer the devotees into accepting his view. Over the years my skills have gotten a bit rusty or my brain has addelled a bit more, perhaps a bit of both. The point is that I do not still always see what in my younger days would have been glaringly obvious upon a first or initial reading of an article.
As I read Rocana's words again I saw how Rocana had been employing one of the oldest rhetorical or dishonest reasoning tools in the book in an attempt to confuse his audience, by employing the fallacious reasoning technique referred to as muddying the waters -- so as to confuse his audience as to what the essential qualities of a spiritual master were -- so as to get them to accept non-essential qualities in their stead and by so doing agree with his conclusion that anyone who is presently serving as a spiritual master must possess them (and because Srila Prabhupada was no longer present, that they must dismiss him from any possible consideration of their acceptance of him as their guru through Rtvik initiation).
By attempting to substitute material qualities of temporary manifestation for spiritual essentials of eternal duration, the real things that are essential to the function of a spiritual master and things that Srila Prabhupada continues to possess and give to us the benefit of, Rocana dasa was indeed attempting to muddy the waters by substituting non-essential for essentials in order to try to get us to accept his conclusion that we could not accept Srila Prabhupada as our Srila Prabhupada as a spiritual master, but had to accept someone else, such as Rocana dasa himself perhaps who possessed at least one if not both of the essential qualities of a spiritual master according at least to himself.
Once Rocana had convinced his target audience that such material qualities such as business acumen and the ability to judge a person as being demonic were indispensable to us in the person of another (and in this case in the person of a spiritual master and in this case again in the person of Srila Prabhupada), that due to his not being physically present and in such close proximity as to be able to display such abilities, Johnny on the spot, to step in and save our asses, each and every time, then following the acceptance of such a conclusion the rejection of anyone, including Srila Prabhupada for his not being physically present in order to display such abilities follows automatically.
Rocanas argument, besides being what appears to me to be use logical fallacy in a deliberate attempt to convince you of something untruthful, is silly on the other hand for the simple fact that even Superman cannot be everywhere at once, that sad to say, that while he’s off somewhere saving the planet that there is some poor cat stuck up in a tree that someone is going to have to call the fire department in order to get down. Srila Prabhupada was there for us many times but what Rocana suggests is basically that the Spiritual master must be present always to make up for our lack in each and every case, that Krsna, in fact must depend exclusively upon his pure devotees to serve Him or come down and serve Himself because we’re never going to be ready, willing or able to do it.
Just another absurd argument from Rocana but his manner of presentation is sophisticated enough to allay the suspicions of any hen wandering into the hen house that had never seen a fox. That is at least, what I think of Rocana and Rocanas article.
YS George A. Smith
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