ISKCON History #3 "Guru Reform"

Co-Master Mind of the Guru Reform (with Satsvarupa das Goswami)

Ravindra Svarupa Das

PADA: The "guru voting" system we have today in ISKCON is the result of the "guru reform movement" spearheaded in 1984 by Satsvarupa Das Goswami and "His Grace Ravindra Svarupa Das" (RSD). A few gurus had already been voted in before 1984, like Gopal Krishna swami and Svarupa Damodar swami, who complained that there were no "India bodied gurus." The large scale voting only happened after the 1986 guru reform was implemented at the March Mayapura meeting.

In 1984 Satsvarupa das Goswami and RSD made the first copy of "The Guru Reform Notebook" -- made "in consultation" with BV Narayana Maharaja, where they concluded that more gurus needed to be voted in, to replace the ones who kept falling down. Rather oddly, a number of Narayan Maharaja folks now claim he was never consulted on this issue, but his name is mentioned in the actual Guru Reform Notebook itself, and it was well known Narayan Maharaja was sitting around with all these people all the time in this era and he was being advertised as the GBC's "shiksha guru." 

Satsvarupa Das Goswami: Author of "Guru Reform Notebook" with his crazy art 

And thus, when your guru falls down into illicit affairs, no problem, you will then need to be "re-initiated" by the next wave of gurus (who were voted in by the now fallen ones). And that means -- some people were "re-initiated" three or four times as each successive wave of their "voted in" gurus crashed on the beach of maya. Of interest, after Ravindra Swarupa (William Deadwhyler) became "voted in" as a GBC guru, he became highly unpopular with the Philadelphia congregation and was reputed to have let the temple's physical condition severely deteriorate, with some reports of horrendous problems like beg bugs and even rat infestations. 

He was also reported to have started having "anger issues" including kicking a woman, and he was alleged to be bringing a much younger woman along with him on his "holy travels," despite he was already married, and so on. Later on the Philadelphia congregation ordered the GBC to have him removed as an authority due to his neglect of the temple's maintenance, increasingly volatile rants, various offenses and generally "being a tyrant." Yep, the second wave of gurus were sometimes worse than the first wave. 

Of course Sridhara Maharaja had ALSO ordered that the GBC should "vote in" more gurus all along, starting in 1978. And thus RSD was first in line to be voted in as the next wave of gurus, along with his fellow "reformers" like Prahladananda swami (he says neophytes can give diksha), Hari Sauri aka "Srila Prabhupada Kripa Maharaja," Rupanuga das, Mukunda swami, Trivrikrama swami, Prithu das, Bir Krishna swami, Jayadvaita swami, Jananananda swami, Mahavishnu swami, Gaura Govinda maharaja, Suhotra swami and many similar other acharya wanna be's. Yep, all sorts of people were standing in line to be certified as the next "link in the chain from Krishna." Sign me up for the messiah's post!   

Hrdayananda joked at the time, "the guru disease has become an epidemic." Other "reformers" were people like Rocana, Bahudak, Atreya Rsi and others, they did not get a guru certificate, but they did support the idea that acharyas deviate and have to be reformed. 

This begs the question, if the successors to God need to be reformed, who can perform that reform? And there has been no shortage of volunteers who wanted to be "the advisors" to God's successors. Since God is dictating to the guru, if someone is able to reform God's living spokesman on earth, would that not make the advisor a superior "dictation" than God's? Yep, they never worked out the bugs in their system. 

The biggest problem right away with "the reformers" is that in March of 1986 they reinstated Bhavananda, declared that Kirtanananda is the greatest devotee in ISKCON because he has done more service than anyone else, and they excommunicated Sulochana, which lead to Sulochana's being assassinated for "offending the greatest devotee Kirtanananda." In short, the reformers then became the biggest defenders of the self appointed guru program. The defenders of the sheep suddenly became the wolves who started to gobble up the sheep, starting with Sulochana.   

Thus, the first wave of 1978 "acharyas," the same folks who were well known to be DEVIATING and who needed to be REFORMED were now going to VOTE IN the next wave of acharyas. The MAFIA is going to vote in the next Pope! Does this make any sense? We -- the first wave of gurus -- who are not qualified to be gurus ourselves, and we admit we need to be reformed, are now going to "vote in" the next wave of gurus -- i.e. more neophyte folks just like us, who are ALSO unqualified to be gurus, in order to fix the problem! No, they simply spread the problem around! 

This "reform movement" sought to convince the world that although ISKCON’s GBC (Governing Body Commission) had made a huge error with their unauthorized "appointing of 11 pure devotee zonal guru successors" in 1978, they had now become “enlightened” with the actual truth; namely, that Srila Prabhupada had left an open field for any or ALL of his disciples to succeed him as a diksa (initiating) guru - so long as the GBC gives its voting approval. Never mind that Srila Prabhupada never mentions this guru voting system?

This has resulted today in perhaps over 100 post-1977 unauthorized "gurus." However, we should keep in mind that Ravindra was working closely with Satsvarupa Das Goswami, who was always complaining of having severe headaches, and the fact that he had become "the guru of pills" to try to cure his headaches. 

One of SDG's diciples told me he was taking "the best (psychotropic) medicine money can buy" -- ok these gurus were apparently getting loaded on psychotropics, much like Jim Jones and other false messiahs. The SDG diciples started saying this is because "our guru has absorbed too many sins, so he is getting sick." 

Yep, apparently the next Jesus has to take medications to be able to take sins. It really never ends with these folks, its like a Banyan tree of deviations going in every direction. How this team became the leaders of the entire 1986 guru reform shows how badly the rest of the GBC was going, since they had to surrender to these folks. 

The pure devotee (reformed)

It is said in shastra that people who imitate the pure devotee are destined for the lowest regions of hell, and it seems Satsvarupa's art works seems to show us that he knows his exact future destination, and it means his hellish reactions and consciousness will continue in his next life. As a number of devotees have commented, this art is straight from hell. It reflects a person whose consciousness is in hell, etc. I'd agree! This begs the question, why does the GBC promote SDG and his books and art all over ISKCON? 

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Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati caused all the ISKCON problems:

RSD: "The real revolutionary, and the person who really has caused many of our problems today, is Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura."

(Ravindra Svarupa Das, Issues in ISKCON Reform lecture, June 29th - July 3rd, 1999)

Here RSD tries to blame the mess which ISKCON is in, on the spiritual master of Srila Prabhupada, Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur! Why does the GBC promote a person they know is making these offenses to the parampara, as their acharya?

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Srila Prabhupada is like a mafia manager?

RSD: "This is the fact, this is the Mafia style, it wasn’t criminal, this is inherited from an old Roman style of management, it is just pre-industrial that is all. This is an old fashioned pre-industrial style of social organisation. That somehow or other survived in Palermo and places like that.

I will tell you something, just to show you how intuitively recognizable that style is. There was a period of time when Ramesvara (one of the original 11 ‘hoaxer gurus’) was having his assistants either read the book or see the movie ‘The Godfather’, so they could learn about management.

It wasn’t because it was criminal, but it was the relationship of the interchange between the leaders and the followers that was actually the essence of that style of management. And this guru (Ramesvara) ... as the zonal acharya, that is how; Prabhupada was also a manager like that.”

(Ravindra Svarupa Das, Issues in ISKCON Reform lecture, June 29th-July 3rd, 1999)

[PADA: Srila Prabhupada managed the same way as Ramesvara's program, by declaring that deviants are acharyas, by dating a young female student, and then having dissenters banned, beat and assassinated? And Jesus approved of the inquisition? In short, RSD compares the management style of both Srila Prabhupada and the zonal acharya system to that of the Mafia.

Then again this begs the question, why is "the guru" going to see mundane movies like "Star Wars," "The God Father," while some of their other gurus are watching football games, gambling in Reno, buying schnops at the liquor store -- so on and so forth? 

Which previous acharyas engaged in these mundane entertainment programs? Why does the GBC promote a person who says acharyas are Mafioso style? Of course if Krishna's acharyas are Mafia Dons, that would make Krishna the ultimate leader of the Mafia. Why does the GBC allow this idea to be promoted?]

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Lord Krishna’s actions are defective:

"Krishna says in this world, any endeavor is covered with fault. Just as a fire is covered with smoke. So anything that you do in this world, it is always going to have its defects or its downside, even if it is done by Krishna himself. Lord Chaitanya released confidential information into the world about Krishna’s pastimes that were maybe not very well spread around so much. What was the result ? A sahajiya movement, and you can say well look what Lord Chaitanya did you know, He put this whole sahajiya movement here, He shouldn’t have done that, it was a big mistake."

(Ravindra Svarupa Das, Issues in ISKCON Reform lecture, June 29th-July 3rd, 1999)

[PADA: Krishna is blamed by the atheists for all the troubles in the world. Does Krishna cause people to deviate, or do they desire to deviate, and He simply facilitates that by creating the material world? If deviant people mis-use the teachings of God, why is God to blame for that? 

RSD extends Lord Krishna’s statement in the Bhagavad-gita that “every endeavor is covered by some sort of fault” (Bg. 18.48), to the activities of Lord Krishna Himself, even though in the purport to this verse, Srila Prabhupada clearly states such faulty activities only apply to conditioned souls:

“In conditioned life, all work is contaminated by the material modes of nature.”

(Bhagavad-gita As It Is, 18.48, purport)

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Srila Prabhupada is ‘dead’

“I simply wish that these people (ritvik advocates) would settle this issue by writing Prabhupada a letter and letting us know what he says when he answers back.”

(Ravindra Svarupa Das, San Diego Ritvik Debate, 1990)

[PADA: Fine except if we write a letter to Ravindra Swarupa he is going to tell us acharyas are busy watching The Godfather movies?]

Ritvik appoinment = Guru appointment

“Yes, Prabhupada accepted him (Kirtanananda) back and went and gave him a position of leadership. He was on the GBC, and New Vrindavan was a very important place of pilgrimage, and you know, he was one of the people whose name was on the list when Prabhupada appointed ritviks, and in the context, everybody understood that these were the people who would be the first initiating spiritual masters. Of course everyone’s big doubt about that is how that Prabhupada named these people expecting them to be spiritual masters when he knew all these things about them.”

(Ravindra Svarupa Das, Issues in ISKCON Reform lecture, June 29th-July 3rd, 1999)

RSD’s “guru reform” was predicated on arguing that the first 11 “gurus” were not “appointed” as such:

“There was no hand-picking of successors”

(Ravindra Svarupa Das, ISKCON Communications Journal, Vol. 2, No.1, January 1994)

Yet at the same time he claims that Srila Prabhupada hand-picking and appointing 11 ritviks was the equivalent to naming 11 diksa gurus, as we see above. As if such an ambivalent fudge was not bad enough, he simultaneously tries to fudge this fudge with other nonsensical claims:

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RSD’s problem (October 1984)

“I was asked to be in charge of a committee to research matters and find out what went wrong. What went wrong in ISKCON and what to do about it. What was wrong with the guru position and what to do about it.”

(Ravindra Svarupa Das, Issues in ISKCON Reform lecture, June 29th-July 3rd, 1999)

RSD’s solution – (September 1985)

“So anyway that was this meeting, then people, that is when I started initiating and became an initiating guru by the way. Our little group of people we got together and the GBC said we need three signatures, we got to have some people, so they looked at me and this the first time I really thought about this. So I got three, few signatures as they wanted in fact, Satsvarupa, Tamal Krishna Goswami and Hridayananda Maharaja, those were the signatures. So I was then an officially approved initiating guru.”

(Ravindra Svarupa Das, Issues in ISKCON Reform lecture, June 29th-July 3rd, 1999)

Here we see how the so-called “guru reform” deal was made  -- the “guru reform” led by RSD from 1984 had to find the solution to what went wrong with the horrendous zonal acharya system in place at the time. So -- he gets a share of the guru pie himself and he gets "a zone"! Who signs his ‘guru papers’ for him? 3 of the original 11 “zonal gurus” he was supposedly challenging and reforming. What was reformed here? 

1992: RSD promotes occult astrologer

“Panditji, the astrologer and seer, had by his occult art pierced the veil of the future and seen a wonder arise, a marvel born from—of all things (I feel compelled to add)—the 1990 meeting of the Governing Body Commission of ISKCON […] the Hare Krsna movement would manifest world-transforming power. Panditji went so far as to specify an exact date, March 7, for the completion of the dharma-cakra. A marvel, a world-historical marvel, would be born.”

(Ravindra Svarupa Das, ‘ISKCON’s Dharma Cakra’, Back to Godhead, #26-02, 1992)

2000: RSD admits occult prophesy fails

“Therefore the question remains: What, then, will we do? How will we deal with our polarized and disintegrating society? […]

If we ask why ISKCON now finds itself in such an impossible position, we can only conclude that it must be due to the continuing reactions to our own sins and offenses. […]

So I have been baffled and in much distress […]

trying to pray continuously and earnestly for forgiveness for all our offenses to Srila Prabhupada, to Vaishnavas, and to dependents like women and children. Of course, now our offenses and sins against our children are foremost in mind, but these are just part of a larger pattern of offenses, ultimately to Prabhupada.”

(Ravindra Svarupa Das, then GBC Chairman, May 2000)

2005: RSD encourages worship of himself

[PADA: Right, in the year 2000 all sorts of people finally began to address the child abuse issue, albeit a day late and a dollar short. And its seems at least, that all of the leaders who caused this problem retained their posts as authorities?] 

“He (Bhakti Caru Swami) told us that he had recently attended the Vyasa Puja celebration of his dear friend Ravindra Svarupa Prabhu in Philadelphia. He recalled that as they were having lunch, Ravindra Svarupa Prabhu, speaking about his own Vyasa Puja celebration, said, “Actually, disciples NEED this.””

(Text PAMHO:10411392, “Vyasa Puja /Prabhupada festival”, 19 September 2005)

Ritvik is traditional

“Two deviations from Prabhupada’s order - the “zonal acarya” system and the “posthumous ritvik” system - rest on adherence to the traditional idea of leadership. […]

In the event, the Gaudiya Matha leaders disregarded this order, and instead they reverted to the traditional single-acarya rule to which they were, after all, culturally habituated.”

(Ravindra Svarupa Das, Allegiance to Guru, to ISKCON and to Prabhupada, 1998)

Current ISKCON guru system not traditional

”What we were trying to do now you have to understand had never been done. It had just never been done and to me it’s entirely natural that in this case when you’re doing something that had never been done; when you’re going to have a single institution with many different spiritual masters and there are many different disciples who are going to have to work together in a cooperative and unified way. Just hadn’t been done.”

(Ravindra Svarupa Das, Issues in ISKCON Reform lecture, June 29th-July 3rd, 1999)

Current ISKCON guru system based on trial and error

“How to do it? And to me the only the way you can do it is to try this and if that doesn’t work try this….. until you finally find what works out. So I think it was very difficult for anyone to foresee, so it seems that the only way to do this is by trying to do it. And see what works and what doesn’t work and Prabhupada himself said that he used the trial and error method, so I’d don’t think it is not bona-fide.”

(Ravindra Svarupa Das, Issues in ISKCON Reform lecture, June 29th-July 3rd, 1999)

GBC not traditional

“But he was trying to change something, and set up a GBC, but we learn that Bhaktisiddhanta had wanted the same thing to happen and it did not happen, because the idea of this GBC is not exactly traditional.”

(Ravindra Svarupa Das, Issues in ISKCON Reform lecture, June 29th-July 3rd, 1999)

PADA: Here RSD uses the common argument against the ritvik system set up by Srila Prabhupada, that it is unprecedented and un-traditional. Rather, RSD states that it is his guru system which ISKCON now follows which is unprecedented, created as it was through a system of “trial and error”, and further the whole system by which ISKCON is run via a GBC, is also not traditional. But the ritvik system which has a single acarya, Srila Prabhupada, is based on the traditional idea of leadership.

Clearly, according to RSD, if “tradition” is to be any yard-stick, it is his guru system which runs today in ISKCON which should be ditched, rather than the ritvik system. This was part of the first set of problems we had with the reform group in 1984, when Satsvarupa was writing his book "The Guru Reform Notebook." In that book he explained that many deviations were going on within the ISKCON gurus, as such they needed to be reformed. However, there is no "tradition" of gurus needing to be reformed? 

As soon as SDG announced the "Guru Reform," then immediately people began to ask -- why does the guru need to reformed for deviations? So this guru reform was a scam right out of the gate, instead of admitting that gurus are not defective, the guru reformers began to say that gurus DEVIATE on a regular basis, and then they need to be reformed, censured, monitored, repaired, policed etc. 

So once again -- as soon as we began to make progress by pointing out that gurus are not defective -- then the GBC would come out with some sort of position paper saying that gurus often deviate and it's quite common in the Guru chaine to have deviated gurus. Actually this idea of "defective acharyas" started much earlier when Sridhara Maharaja said that acharyas can become "mad" after money, woman and followers. 

This contrasts with Srila Prabhupada's teaching that gurus must be free from defects. 

Anyway! This is the type of problem we have had all along -- as soon as we say the acharya cannot be a defective being, then the GBC comes back saying acharyas are commonly found to be defective, therefore there is no standard for guru since he may be deviating and maybe in need of reform. Thus we cannot expect that the guru is pure at any point. 

Some of the people who objected to the Guru reform idea were folks like Jayapataka. He argued that as soon as we begin to have all sorts of legislative controls over the Guru, then this is more or less the ritvik's idea coming in through the back door. It means the guru is on the relative plane and not absolute plane, and actually he is right. The guru reform was a means of sneaking some of the ritvik ideas in through the back door, now everyone knew that the GBC acharyas were on the relative platform, they were more like priests than gurus, they were not self realized beings. 

Satsvarupa's book "Sanatorium" was banned even by other GBC, since its a book that basically describes his affair with his "therapist." The art pretty much describes his mental state. As one devotee said, while we were being banished, shunned, harassed, beaten up, and our children were being abused -- SDG was meanwhile promoting people like Kirtanananda as acharyas, in sum while ISKCON was going to hell SDG was sitting around writing about his lusty affairs and making the world's most horrible hellish art. 

And the GBC has his books being sold all over ISKCON even today. Anyway there is more history around this issue, this gives a brief overview. Bottom line, to say that Krishna's successors are deviants and debauchees who need reform means, the acharya are ordinary men or worse. This is one of the ten offenses, to say the acharyas are conditioned souls. And the GBC's entire guru tattva rests on the idea that acharyas are often fallen souls, often much worse than the materialists. This is a direct insult to Krishna and His acharyas, which is why, they are destined for the most obnoxious regions, and their art seems to reflect that already. ys pd

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When were these people appointed as gurus?

Satsvarupa: Then our next question concerns initiations in the future, particularly at that time when you are no longer with us. We want to know how first and second initiations would be conducted.

Srila Prabhupada: Yes. I shall recommend some of you. After this is settled up. I shall recommend some of you to act as officiating acarya.

Tamal Krsna: Is that called ritvik acarya?

Srila Prabhupada: Ritvik . Yes.

They were never appointed as acharyas, period.

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