ISKCON's Pedophile Guru Crisis: Two Choices

[PADA: Correct LD: The GBC decided to make illicit sex with men, women and children and criminal behaviors their de facto "lesser etiquette standard" for ISKCON's gurus in 1978, and then they had one scandal after the next as their gurus crashed and burned. Instead of realizing, we cannot keep rubber stamping gurus artificially, they just kept adding more and more gurus to their pile of scandal making gurus, and their pile of crashed and burned ex-messiahs on the garbage heap. 

So I agree, the Lokanath thing is turning into a movement in itself. It is not really Lokanath himself, it is the whole issue of making deviants into gurus and messiahs artificially. I also agree this is a historical event, will ISKCON decide to finally declare that pedophiles are not EVER God's successors, or not? 

Will they bury their pedophile guru idea, or will they continue to bury ISKCON in one guru scandal after another? You are also right, this Lokanath thing has turned into a cause celebre on its own, because it shows the corruption of the GBC has not changed one iota since 1978. 

They wanted to make pedophiles into their acharyas in 1978, and they still do, they have learned zero in all this time. That is why many people are finally rebelling, enough is enough! So they will either change, or lose thousands more people, and lose ISKCON in the end, because ISKCON will be simply seen as laughingstock bogus pedophile worshipers process with zero credibility, as it already is seen by many people currently. So, you either clean out your toilet sewage spill, and clean your place up, or people will avoid going to your residence, it is that simple.

So you are right, ISKCON is at the cross roads, clean up the sewer, or keep the stink. Either way, history will see what they do for centuries to come. This is truly a moment in history. Agreed.

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K Dasa: Yes, the pedestal thing is a problem. Why do the GBC insist on imparting such institutional charisma to a select band of individuals? New devotees are funnelled toward them for diksha in their hundreds and thousands, naturally thinking that they are special in some way due to the GBC endorsement, a misapprehension compounded further by their ever increasing number of followers and hence apparent external success through the medium of such acolytes. All this only further convinces the GBC that they have to impose rigid controls on who can give diksha, which only exacerbates a problem of their own making.

Imagine if they had just let diksha occur naturally according to genuine siksha relationships. How many disciples would gurus accumulate? Traditionally gurus would have a handful that they could personally guide. Now, thanks to the GBC controls, they amass thousands and in the end become uncontrollable. How many more times must this be thrust into our faces before it changes?

GS: Child abuse is not even human behavior.

PADA: Lokanath became "a diksha guru" because the GBC made a "Guru Reform" where they legislated that in future -- more ISKCON gurus would be "2/3 show of hands voted in" as gurus. Narayan Maharaja, Satsvarupa, Jayadvaita, Jagadish and others were all working together to pen Satsvarupa's "Guru Reform Notebook," although original drafts were being circulated way before it was officially published. And so they "2/3 show of hands" voted in a bunch more gurus, most of whom also fell by the wayside and created scandals. 

Even Hrdayananda said "the Mad Acharya's Disease has become an epidemic." In other words, as the first wave of false gurus was crashing on the beach, they voted in another wave, which was later on also crashing on the beach. And that is why Srila Prabhupada said -- gurus are not subordinated to the votes of mundane people. Giving Lokanath the false nomenclature of diksha guru is the fault of the combined GBC, and their advisors, and we should understand that false guru designations are at the root of all these "guru scandal" problems. If he is having a scandal now, he never was a guru. ys pd