Friday, March 15, 2019

On Accepting the GBC as Spiritual Authority (Nitya Krsna Dasa)

Perfect Discretion: 
On Accepting the GBC as Spiritual Authority

BY: NITYA KRSNA DASA

Institutional Religion

Sadly and most regrettably, all the traumas and more are in progress or have played out in what was once Srila Prabhupada's movement. After his departure in 1977, the eleven zonal acaryas caused all manner of the disappointment and cynicism described previously, but this was not limited to them. 


Many of the ISKCON institutional apparent gurus that were later approved by its Governing Body Commission (GBC) caused much the same for their apparent disciples. The numerical scale of those who have come and gone from the "approved" list is well known. 

Since 1978 the bad conduct and philosophical deviance of the scandalized has been so regular that the positions of even those remaining in good standing have come under serious doubt. This has caused the GBC to slowly evolve into what has been called the "ultimate spiritual authority" for the institution. This is also the default understanding one takes away from the recent official Founder-Acarya document written by one of the institution's chief apparent scholars, Ravindra-Svarupa dasa. In addition, institutional leaders have sometimes written or described that the GBC is Srila Prabhupada's "successor."

This transformation could be considered natural, at least if one is familiar with the institution's managerial difficulties and priorities. It is however a complete contradiction of any idea of absolute or sanatana dharma (eternal religion), the way the movement's teachings were always described by that founder-acarya, Srila Prabhupada.

"So in the parampara system in that disciplic succession, you will find no change. You cannot change anything." (Lecture on Sri Caitanya Caritamrta, December 1, 1966, New York)

[PADA: Correct. For starters, we said offering bhogha to the 11 GBC's gurus was a big deviation that started in 1978. Then, they started offering the disciples, the money, the buildings etc. to the GBC's gurus, making them the proprietors and not Srila Prabhupada, and so on and so forth. Jayatirtha even said to our associate "its my disciples, 
my money and my buildings."

As Srila Prabhupada says of the Gaudiya Matha -- they were fighting over the assets of the mission. This was largely a property, manpower and wealth "power grab" in 1936, and the post-1977 GBC guru process was basically the same idea. The problem is, as soon as we say deviants are the successors to Krishna, its undermining the whole principle of Vedic authority.] 

Clearly and despite the institution's official statements, the real reason the GBC has assumed any role as spiritual authority, wherein it approves, disciplines, and even "fires" apparent gurus, is because the characters of those selections have been so undependable and regularly deplorable. 


[PADA: Yep, the guru is the sum total of the demigods, a resident of Krishna loka etc. Therefore he is approved, monitored, suspended, censured, excommunicated and "fired." And now a certain clique in the GBC wants to appoint some of their pet female associates as their co-diksha gurus, and this is turning into a big battle. In any case, voting in / suspending / firing gurus is not something that we find in the Krishna religion's tradition.] 

They have shown that they simply could not be trusted with the traditional ultimate spiritual authority that Vaishnava scripture and practice invest in the genuine spiritual master, someone who is depicted as having absolutely no need to be disciplined. This abandonment of tradition and sanatana dharma is admitted by previous GBC chairmen.

"The other issue it raises is the issue of authority, devotees serving as guru in ISKCON are not the ultimate authority as would be the case in the traditional vedic setting. This of course is something that not only the gurus have to embrace but also something the disciples have to understand as well." 


(Pragosa dasa, ex-GBC chairman, GBC member, Vaisnava Culture of Respect and Honour, Dandavats.com, September 22, 2015)

[PADA: Yep, I am NOT really a Vaikuntha resident / acharya / another Jesus etc., I am just "doing the service" of being worshiped as the "good as God" messiah. "I am usually only the hospital janitor, but I should grab a scalpel and skull saw and start doing the service of brain surgery." What could go wrong here? Hee hee! How can one "do the service" of usurping one's guru's Vyasa seat? 

Followers of GBC's gurus write this all along, "we should pray for our guru maharaja to succeed because he is doing the service of diksha guru." OK that would be like saying we should pray that the hospital janitor should succeed at being the hospital brain surgeon. That's not going to work, a person who is not qualified to be a guru or brain surgeon simply should not artificially take up that post. And then, we should pray that these fools taking false posts should succeed? Why does Krishna have to make charlatans succeed?]

"Stating that he (Srila Prabhupada) wanted there to be 'hundreds and thousands of spiritual masters' within ISKCON, he implied that the normative guru-disciple relationship would be perpetuated within the unified institution under the direction of the GBC. In such an organization, many gurus would be able to act with concerted force, operating together with other leaders and managers in collegial accord." 

(Ravindra Svarupa dasa, Founder-Acarya p. 23 (our parentheses), ex-GBC chairman)

[PADA: No, Srila Prabhupada did not say that the GBC would vote in acharyas, then control these acharyas by votes, rules, suspensions, removals and etc.]

From these remarks, one is led to wonder where the statements of guru, sadhu and sastra lend support to an ecclesiastical body assuming such so-called spiritual authority. 


[PADA: Yes, the question all along, how is the guru subordinated to an ecclesiastical body? And what happens when these gurus become mavericks and they do not accept the GBC's authority, as happens all the time with this group?]

Srila Prabhupada's Will certainly endows the governing body with "ultimate managing authority" over the movement. However, managing practical material affairs is a far cry from the body placing itself over the Vaishnava spiritual master's sastrically enjoined absolute spiritual authority. One is hard pressed to find where the scriptures recommend or cite a managing body acting as absolute spiritual authority. 

At least apparent scholar Ravindra Svarupa failed to provide such in the institution's Founder-Acarya "sastra,". After all, the chain of disciplic succession and authority is one of individuals - gurus and disciples, not managing bodies. The sadhus and the guru, Srila Prabhupada, also fail to recommend such a structure. In fact, they condemn it:

"It is imperative that a serious person accept a bona fide spiritual master in terms of the sastric injunctions. Sri Jiva Goswami advises that one not accept a spiritual master in terms of hereditary or customary social and ecclesiastical conventions. One should simply try to find a genuinely qualified spiritual master for actual advancement in spiritual understanding." (Sri Chaitanya Charitamrita, Adi 1.35, purport)

These obvious contradictions may be why this level of disregard for traditional Vaishnava authority took years to evolve. 


[PADA: Not exactly, the GBC right out of the gate started "managing" their failed acharyas like Jayatirtha (fell down), Ramesvara (resigned from guru post), Hansadutta (busted by police raids) and Tamal (who was saying he had the guru shakti and none of the other gurus did). Its only become more and more apparent that this "guru management" is a deviation as the years evolved. And later on Kirtanananda was another example of their maverick gurus when he said, the GBC cannot advise me, I am the guru.]

Although the institution's official presentations may lead one to believe that their arrangement of "GBC over apparent gurus" has always been, this is historically not the case. Institutions of the material world regularly make such adjustments due to changing managerial necessity, but when such hocus-pocus is presented as eternal truth, there is a galling aftertaste. Such is institutional religion.

Immediately after Srila Prabhupada's departure in 1978 the eleven zonal acaryas, themselves a near majority of the 23 person GBC, forced themselves on the rest of the movement by claiming that they were Srila Prabhupada's appointed successors and gurus. They all imitated his topmost worship standard, mandated worship from their peers and took on "Srila" titles announcing each as a pure devotee on the highest standard. They also individually demanded to be treated as the highest spiritual authority in traditional Vaishnavism, just as Srila Prabhupada had been.

Yet after only a couple of years, the cracks in this façade began becoming public. Not just one, but two of them, Tamal Krishna Swami and Hamsadutta Swami, were subjected to a disciplinary exile in India away from their temples and disciples. This "purification" was said to be the order of the GBC, and their followers were told that the GBC was their ultimate authority, not their personal apparent guru.

However the traditional honoring of the authority of guru largely returned when they and their followers were informed that Srila Prabhupada's godbrother, Sridhara Maharaja, had said that coming between the supposed guru and his disciples in this way was a "death blow" to the relationship. Sridhara Maharaja had previously been touted as a "senior authority" by the GBC, supposedly to be consulted on such matters after Srila Prabhupada's physical departure.

However, as the next years brought more scandals for the eleven, and with Srila Prabhupada's initiated disciples either leaving the institution or demanding reform, it became clear that the GBC had to do something. Conveniently, by this time their relationship with Sridhara Maharaja had deteriorated to the point where they viewed him as subversive. They were thus that much freer to abandon the traditional ultimate authority of guru. Nevertheless, due to the relatively small-medium influence of the dissenters, the first reforms of 1985-6 largely preserved the dominance of the remaining zonals and the appearance of traditional guru authority.

[PADA: All of them still have zones? For example Romapada was chastised by the GBC recently for his bad property dealings, but immediately after that he was initiating people in Chicago and other places, part of his alleged "zone." Jayapataka has been in Mayapura forever, his zone, and this guy, that guy and the other all have zones. There has been no dismantling of the zonal guru system, its still existing.]  

Just like when the zonals used their numbers on the GBC to force themselves on the rest of the movement, these reforms were also largely shaped by the relative power blocs among GBC members. Since a number of zonals were still un-disgraced and on the commission, and since, by this time, their apparent disciples numbered in the thousands, they were largely able to minimize their downsizing to matters of titles and standards of worship. 


They also played politics with several reform leaders, the up-and-coming power bloc, by pressuring them to sell out their peers by joining the apparent guru club. Atreya Rsi dasa and Ravindra Svarupa dasa were both reform leaders who accepted the appointments.

[PADA: Their whole idea that gurus need reform was utter foolishness from square one. Rocana says that we need to keep making more (conditioned soul) gurus, and "reform" and correct them by having an increased regulative process to manage them. The problem is not false gurus, its that we are not managing them properly. The problem is not fake people posing as brain surgeons, we just need to manage the fake brain surgeons better? That will never work, we need to ban fake brain surgeons.] 
This "you scratch my back, I scratch yours" mundane deal making further illustrates how the GBC regularly spins management necessity as sanatana dharma, in this case who is qualified to be guru. Of course this naked power tradeoff was never described as such, just like the initial power grab of the ambitious eleven in 1978. 


Both of these sense gratification-soaked, mundane, Machiavellian devices were packaged as "Krishna and Srila Prabhupada's great mercy" on the new people who were now supposedly able to connect to the Gaudiya Vaishnava disciplic succession due to getting the eternal seed of devotional service, the aforementioned bhakti-lata-bija, from "these dutiful souls who were willing to take on the great sacrifice of accepting disciples."

Nevertheless, the most powerful zonal, Kirtanananda "Swami" Bhaktipada, didn't see any reason to downsize anything. He took his thousands of apparent disciples, Srila Prabhupada initiates and temples out of the institution. He, for one, was not buying into any idea that he was under the GBC; he was going to single-handedly continue the standard of the physical guru being the ultimate authority. 


Kirtanananda told the meeting of reformers gathered at his New Vrindavana farm in August 1985 that, "The bonafide guru cannot be limited." Indeed, although he was later revealed to be perhaps the most audacious pretender, this was completely in accord with the scriptures and Srila Prabhupada.

"It is also an offense to consider an empowered Vaishnava an object of disciplinary action. It is offensive to try to give him advice or to correct him…The spiritual master must not be subjected to the advice of a disciple, nor should a spiritual master be obliged to take instructions from those who are not his disciples. This is the sum and substance of Srila Rupa Goswami's advice in this sixth verse." (Nectar of Instruction, text 6, purport)

In this way, the initial attempt to move the ISKCON institution into the "collegial accord" described previously by Ravindra Svarupa, perhaps its main architect and defender, resulted in a significant schism. As pointed out by Kirtanananda, this was largely caused by the GBC's attempt to impose its authority on the institution's apparent gurus.

Time, however, was on the side of the reformers, and this gave them and the downsized zonals all the apparent justification they needed to later proclaim collegial accord as "Krishna and Srila Prabhupada's arrangement," despite its utter lack of confirmation from either. In the above quote the best endorsement Ravindra Svarupa could attribute to Srila Prabhupada was that he "implied" that apparent gurus should be under the GBC. However, the previously cited ecclesiastical condemnation carries far more authoritative weight than Ravindra's subjective inference.

As destiny would have it, within months of Kirtanananda's departure fate intervened with the arrest of some of his followers for the murder of his most vocal critic, Sulocana dasa. This was done because of Sulocana's alleged blasphemy of this supposedly pure uttama devotee, the profile Kirtanananda would not renounce. Also after parting ways with the GBC, Kirtanananda had his followers give up a number of the externalities of Krishna conscious culture in an attempt to make his mission more acceptable to American Christians. 


Finally, in the 90's he was revealed as a pedophile, thus prompting virtually all of his followers to leave him. His gradual demise after leaving the ISKCON institution gave the GBC all the supposed justification and propaganda they needed to proclaim themselves and collegial accord triumphant.

Adding the murder to the zonals' other scandals also created the perfect storm of management necessity to mandate accountability from the institution's apparent gurus. This necessity, however, only further illuminates the base reason for all the institution's problems after Srila Prabhupada's departure – so many of the apparent gurus were obviously unqualified from the moment they began acting as such. 


According to the previous quote referencing the offense of correcting a genuine guru, there should absolutely be no need create a management mechanism to hold apparent gurus accountable. One is thus led to wonder whether any of these men was ever a bona fide spiritual master. After all, even the "good" ones were either so dull or duplicitous that they previously endorsed and honored the debauched. We have already described the two mundane power plays that led to most of the 1986 list getting the post. But perhaps the biggest part of the problem was that the GBC had "authorized" these questionable people with their official "ultimate managing authority."

Admitting these blatant abuses of authority would, however, tarnish the image the body thinks it needs to maintain the loyalty of the institution's followers. After all, after the supposed guru appointment of the zonals by Srila Prabhupada in 1978, it was always the authority or sanction of the GBC that was cited as providing the apparent gurus' spiritual legitimacy, both before and after the GBC officially took a stated position over them.

It thus follows that the GBC now thinks it has assumed the same absolute position as a pure devotee like Srila Prabhupada. At least they collectively conduct themselves that way. Somehow, "causelessly" a group of mundane managers, when their group decision has been reached, is capable of the same absolute perfection as residents of the spiritual sky. Of course, this also means they don't have to account to anyone else either. On the other hand, everyone has to account to them. This level of deception and change of Gaudiya Vaishnava practice, as well as contradiction of scripture, is however not too different from a pedophile like Kirtanananda proclaiming of himself the same purity. It would be laughable if so many lives were not affected by it.

Needless to say, even after the zonals and their fallout, the GBC hasn't shown much interest in taking everything back to where Srila Prabhupada left things in 1977. The face saving and pretence, along with managerial priorities in the service of the ever-morphing power blocs, have apparently locked in the future of the condemned "GBC over apparent guru" hierarchy. Outside observers have come to expect only damage control cosmetology and rhetoric that keeps the inmates in blinders. Besides, virtually every university had the same well-proven structure to limit licentious professors. It's a system that has proved its staying power, something Ravindra Svarupa, a PhD at Temple University, was very at home with.

"All these things are nonsense inventions. Such inventing spirit will ruin our this movement. Gradually the Krishna Consciousness idea will evaporate: another change, another change, every day another change. Stop all this." (Letter to: Sudama, Vrindaban, 5 November, 1972)

"But if we don't carry out the orders of God, this is cheating religion. That is not religion. That is condemned in the Srimad-Bhagavatam. That cheating religion are kicked out from the Srimad-Bhagavatam. So any religious system which has no conception of God and does everything--every year changes by resolution of the priests, (saying) that 'Now this is all right,'--against religious principles: that is a farce. That is not religion." (Discussions with Hayagriva dasa about the writings and philosophy of Pascal)

(To be continued...)


[PADA: Good, lets get back to 1977 standards and worship Srila Prabhupada. Agreed. ys pd]  

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