Martin Luther's Ritvik System to the Rescue?

Need for an ISKCON Constitution

BY: CAITANYA DAS MANCHESTER, ENGLAND —

It is seen repeatedly so many complaints and criticism of various aspects of ISKCON by sincere devotees. My sympathy to all, but the real solution looking at these things intelligently will be helped only by getting behind the wishes of Srila Prabhupada to form the ISKCON constitution. We see that devotees are rightly concerned with unwarranted changes to the books of His Divine Grace, but just as important will be the changes in direction of his society -- a direction That Prabhupada sets out in his books, tapes, letters and numerous conversations. In these things we can capture Prabhupada's transcendental intelligence, directly inspired by Krishna from within his heart, and see his intentions for the whole of our society as well as society at large.

Our history shows some devotees who think perhaps they have know better than Srila Prabhupada. Even when Srila Prabhupada walked amongst us some unfortunate misguided souls thought they knew better, what to speak of years later, either in the form of zonal "acaryas" from the past or today's extremists, the successor GBCs, who so far have said little about the importance of the constitution. It could be said that the Zonals were preaching more, i.e., a devotee making and book distribution process, targeting local people and which seemed much more proactive in the past compared to today.

Until the constitution is fixed and in place there will continue to be disturbance in one form or another, as much as a society at large without laws, with uninformed heads leading everyone in one direction or another, like some kind of banana republic that is too reliant on one form of business, with little respect, interest or care of the long term outcome of the citizens. 

[PADA: Hee hee, well that is a good description of the -- Gaudiya Math / Gaura Govinda Maharaja / GBC / Rocana / Ajit Krishna / Torben Neilsen / Kailash Chandra et al. program -- of rubber stamping and making artificial "living" gurus, who are not authorized. Their gurus make cheesy little Banana Republic dictatorships and rule by tyranny. Correct! And then we have all sorts of deviations and perhaps crimes ...

Also correct, there has certainly been little concern for the citizens, especially the children of the citizens who were mistreated wholesale, nor much apparent concern for the name of the society -- or even much concern for maligning God's name itself, nor much concern for the problem they made of bankrupting the society, and so on and so forth. 

A number of devotees have told PADA these leaders did everything the could to ruin the name of the society, ruin the lives of the citizens, and to bankrupt the whole institution. That is the impression many people have had for the most part, including some karmi media friends of PADA who agree that these leaders seemed to have wanted to create a sexual predator and criminal enterprise in the name of Vedic religion.]   

Of course, some might say this is some kind of Utopian dream, but no, this is the wishes of His Divine Grace and with faith this must be carried out. I am in no illusion that even with a constitution all problems will cease, but at least we will have firm directives to work from.

Forming and recognizing the constitution will bring us properly in line and we will be able at least to have the basis of practicing daivi-varnashram with the correct leadership and direction we all crave, namely to follow the divine intelligence of Srila Prabhupada which, when it comes to forming, managing and directing a spiritual society, is unparallelled. The constitution is paramount and means we are following and being directed by him. 

I am not a Ritvik in the slightest, but when it comes to these matters we are, and should be solely in the hands of Srila Prabhupada.

[PADA: OK if you are not posing as a GBC guru then you are acting as a brahmana aka ritvik. If the society is going to be solely in the hands of Srila Prabhupada and his directives, that is the ritvik idea.]

Nothing else, and nothing short of that will help much, no matter how well intentioned. I did not know of these things previously but thanks to Rocana prabhu and his team, I begin to see the urgency of this. We should all press our GBC to take up this truth and get started. That will be the most progressive thing for ISKCON. One has to wonder about the motives of current leaders of who do not see the importance of this or treat it as a priority.

[PADA: What GBC? There are people who formed the acharya board in 1978, and it seems ISKCON is still managed by a bunch of people who consider themselves to be such types of gurus. Where is the GBC? Hansadutta said that as soon as someone is a guru, that person is no longer under the control of the GBC, rather the guru is superior to the GBC. So the whole idea that these people are gurus undermines the GBC principle.]  

In my home town of Manchester there is a place called Martin Luther House, named after Martin Luther King. I can arrange for a hundred current leading devotees to come and spend a week there and begin opening discussions on the constitution. It's a wonderful place with good accommodation, and like Martin Luther King we can put our dream and Srila Prabhupada's wishes into practise.

[PADA: Good idea. Instead of making a hokey constitution to "manage" the messiahs and acharyas, maybe we should make a constitution to manage the priests, which is what the followers of Martin Luther are doing. In the church of Martin Luther -- they have church councils and managerial boards that supervise the actions of the priests, and when priests deviate they are censured, removed and so on. 

Unfortunately the -- Gaudiya Math / Gaura Govinda Maharaja / GBC / Rocana / Ajit Krishna / Torben Neilsen / Kailash Chandra et al. program thinks that a managerial body of conditioned souls manages Krishna and His acharyas, and these acharyas are subject to the rules of such management / governing bodies. Where does Krishna says He and His acharyas are managed by a body of conditioned souls?

OK these folks think that acharyas are mundane people who need to follow the regulations of a management body. Martin Luther had the right idea, the elected gurus and popes are not factual gurus and messiahs but -- conditioned souls, so we should simply have priests who are acting as agents of the acharya -- and have them represent the actual acharya Lord Jesus -- in the capacity of priests, and not try to pose themselves as absolute artificially. 

Of course the good news is that Srila Prabhupada says that when these conditioned soul acts as diksha gurus, they will be taking sins and this will make them fall down, get sick, and thus there is an epidemic of these false messiahs getting sick, falling down and dying, so its a lot easier for us to clean this mess up since most of them has already fallen, got sick, or died from the reactions of taking sins. So Krishna is sort of mopping them up in His own way without our effort.

Anyway good idea, lets get back on track with the Martin Luther plan, the acharyas are represented by priests. The priests cannot have the same role and function as the acharya. Of course Srila Prabhupada said that the false gurus of the Gaudiya Matha are cock roaches who thought they were Garuda Birds, and there is thus always a class of fools like these Gaudiya Math deviants / Gaura Govinda Maharaja / GBC / Rocana / Ajit Krishna / Torben Neilsen / Kailash Chandra et al. who want to see their favorite cock roaches being worshiped as Garuda Birds. We need to end this bogus idea and go back to the Martin Luther idea, worship the actual Garuda Bird and not fools who think they are like him. ys pd