Kailash Chandra Das "Flaws in the Ritvik Concoction" (pt. 1)

Guru Tattva Meister of the Jagat Kailash Chandra Das

Cattle rustling-pada:

https://krishna1008.blogspot.com/2015/06/torben-ajit-krishna-kailash-chandra-das.html

From an IRM paper (with PADA comments) 

Kailasa Chandra Dasa (pictured above), has written one such paper called “Flaws in the Rittvik Concoction” (FRC), which can now be added to the long list of papers by the GBC and others, which consist of nothing more than ‘straw-man’ arguments, or challenges against a phantom position rather than that actually put forward by the Prabhupadanugas. Consequently these papers spectacularly fail in challenging the actual ritvik position. 

Another characteristic of such non-existent ‘challenges’ is that in the main they do not even attempt to substantiate their assertions by quotes from Srila Prabhupada. Rather they simply wave the magic wand of stating terms such as ‘sastra’, ‘tradition’ etc., and claim their conclusions are proven simply by the mere utterances of these words. 

[PADA: Right, the Gaudiya Matha folks, GBC, Hanuman Croatia, Kailash, Rocana, Torben, Kim Moller, Ajit Krishna, and similar others complain that because the "Prabhupadanugas" are worshiping a so-called physically departed pure devotee, they are "not following the tradition." OK, so we need to worship the "living body" of their conditioned soul acharyas and not worship the pure devotee? The "tradition" is to worship less than pure devotees as one's acharya? 

How is that working out for these folks? 

Did we forget to mention that many of the previous "living gurus" of their process -- like Jayatirtha, Kirtanananda, Suhotra, Gaura Govinda Maharaja, Narayan Maharaja and many similar other alleged "living people" eventually departed anyway? Did these people forget, no one stays on this planet for a long time in any case whether conditioned souls or acharya's souls? 

Thus, their "living body guru" will cease to exist at some point, and then they have no one to worship anymore. And then their living guru's programs tend to disintegrate and fall apart, as we have seen locally and in other places. And what about their "living gurus" who failed and / or blooped, like Gunagrahi, Ramesvara, Hansadutta, Bhagavan, Prithu and many others? 

Again this policy is creating major chaos in the lives of the ISKCON citizens when the "pure devotee" is found to be fallen. Notice that nowadays most of the living guru advocates do not even give us the name of their living guru, because then we could analyse who this person is, what positions he has supported, and who voted him in as the current acharya etc. Torben for example says he worships the principle of a living guru, and not an actual living guru? That is the tradition? We offer bhogha to the principle of a guru, and not any actual guru? Where is this found in the tradition?] 

“The order of the spiritual master is the active principle in spiritual life. Anyone who disobeys the order of the spiritual master immediately becomes useless.”
(CC, Adi, 12:10)

This means that before we act we must have an order from Srila Prabhupada to do so. Attacks on the phantom ‘ritvik’ position however involve appealing to some undefined and unquoted notion of ‘sastra’ or ‘tradition’, rather than orders from Srila Prabhupada. In the following rebuttal to Kailash Chandra’s FRC paper we will see how his paper consists basically of nothing but the use of these two techniques - the use of lazy mythical ‘ritvik straw man’ arguments, and the use of the ‘sastra / tradition’ magic wand instead of orders from Srila Prabhupada to support his assertions. Quotes from FRC will be boxed in speech marks with my responses following. Kailsh Chandra will be known as the ‘author’ throughout.

KCD: “The rittviks--although they may, for their own purposes, say that a spiritual master could emerge in the future -- in fact consider that all of Srila Prabhupada's disciples are only, at most, capable of being rittviks. Such "stand-ins" cannot be advanced devotees, obviously. In practical terms, the rittviks consider all others to be, more or less, perpetual kanishta-adhikaris, like themselves.”

So the very first statement from FRC starts with a classic ‘straw man’ argument. We state that we all should and can become pure devotees, providing we follow, rather than disobey, the orders of Srila Prabhupada, regardless of what these orders are.

“A madhyama-adhikari can be a diksa-guru or regular guru and can initiate his own disciples.”

[PADA: Amazing, after these "living guru" folks produced various illicit sex, debauchee and / or drug addict gurus, and indeed made a number of these false gurus left, right and center, now they are talking about how their alleged gurus are medium level / madhyama level devotees. Sorry, the illicit sex guru parade is not even kanistha level. Illicit sex and drugs are tamasic guna and not even kanistha. If they have produced so many madhyama or perhaps uttama gurus, who are they?]

Srila Prabhupada states this should NOT be done, and gives the reason why:

“One should not become a spiritual master unless he has attained the platform of uttama-adhikari. A neophyte Vaishnava or a Vaishnava situated on the intermediate platform can also accept disciples, but such disciples must be on the same platform, and it should be understood that they cannot advance very well toward the ultimate goal of life under his insufficient guidance.”
(NOI, Text 5, purport)

[PADA: Right, a madhyama should not be accepted as a spiritual master anyway.]

“Now, the rittviks obviously believe that there are no madhyama-adhikaris amongst Srila Prabhupada's remaining disciples. Or they think that madhyama-adhikari is attained at a level that is still below the threshold of diksa-guru qualification, or that it's the (so-called) madhyama-adhikari that automatically converts to a Rittvik (Rittvik-for-perpetuity?) after the mahabhagavat enters nitya-lila pravishtha.”

[PADA: Srila Prabhupada says a disciple must be careful to accept an uttama as his guru. He does not recommend madhyama devotees being gurus. Of course, since all of Srila Prabhupada's original disciples are gradually becoming very elderly and they are dying out, its a mute point what level they are at since they are not going to be here "for perpetuity" -- or even much longer. 

Whatever level they are at no longer really matters much? They are not going to be here for long, what to speak of "for perpetuity" and especially since none of them to date has displayed the qualifications of an acharya. The mass of people are still going to need to worship a mahabhagavata either now, or after all these disciples and assorted followers physically depart in any case. This is a very foolish idea from the get go, we will worship the original disciples of Prabhupada, when they are departing left, right and center. We could not worship these original disciples and followers of Srila Prabhupada in perpetuity in any case, they are leaving the planet more and more every day.]

The qualification of the disciples is not the issue. The orders they received are. They received an order to act as ritvik. But they did not receive an order to transmogrify from being ritvik into diksa Gurus, and therefore should have remained ritviks, since as quoted earlier, it is the order of the spiritual master which is the ‘active principle’ in spiritual life. Not our desires to occupy the Guru post.

[PADA: Right, what happens when a neophyte takes the post of diksha guru and absorbs sins? He falls down, gets sick, and maybe dies prematurely, as we have seen already in spades.]

KCD: “None of Srila Prabhupada's directly initiated disciples is obligated to believe that there was even one legitimate madhyama-adhikari amongst his flock after he departed. The track record strongly indicates otherwise. But, if there was one -- or even more than one -- that devotee or those devotees could become diksa-guru (and not merely a Rittvik) after Prabhupada departed. This, of course, would be contingent upon their having received the order from Srila Prabhupada to initiate new disciples, and those new disciples would then become "the disciples of my disciple."

[PADA: OK someone could become a guru if he gets the order. However he will not get the order until he is an uttama devotee.]

Finally FRC states something approaching the truth. The author admits that:

a) We do not need to accept that any of Srila Prabhupada’s disciples was qualified to act as diksa Guru.

b) That the track record indicates that none of them were thus qualified.

c) But if some rare soul did exist who was qualified, he could act as diksa Guru only provided he received the order to do the same from Srila Prabhupada.

Kailash never produces in the rest of his paper, or elsewhere, the ‘order’ from Srila Prabhupada to his disciple or disciples that they initiate new disciples, who would become ‘disciples of my disciple’, then according to the author, there was no order from Srila Prabhupada which necessitated the ritviks to change their position into diksa Gurus.

“For the many of Prabhupada's disciples who have concluded that no one was qualified to even be a regular or monitor guru, your conviction looks more accurate every passing year. […] After so many guru falldowns and "re-initiation" ceremonies, these new people have concluded that all of Srila Prabhupada's disciples must be nothing better than kanishtha-adhikaris.  Actually, that's a liberal perspective. There's very possibly any number of sahajiyas, covert impersonalists, atheists, and non-devotees in the mix as well.”

[PADA: OK, so why would we keep promoting the living guru process knowing that its not only failing, its producing deviants, sahajiyas, covert impersonalists, atheists and non-devotees in the role of ISKCON's acharyas? Why would we still promote the idea that Srila Prabhupada is not the acharya, and the people producing all this rubbish -- are the acharyas of ISKCON? 

And if Srila Prabhupada is not the acharya, who is? Notice that when we ask Rocana, Torben, Ajit Krishna, Kim Moller, Hanuman Croatia etc. -- whom  do we offer the bhogha and disciples to, they cannot answer. They do not even know how to make simple and basic bhogha offerings to Krishna, never mind more advanced items. And Kailash is not helping things by telling  folks, its not in the tradition to offer bhogha and disciples to pure devotee. ys pd] 

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We have to offer bhogha and disciples to -- conditioned souls, or worse, nobody they can name? Kailash is right, these people are mayavadas.