Older and Newer Devotee's Reactions

PADA: An old Prabhupada disciple that I have not talked to for decades called me and he told me he made a big mistake going along with the GBC's gurus for quite some time after 1977. He said he should have done a lot more to oppose them. He laments "I helped let the false guru cancer grow to fatal stage." And now he feels, ISKCON is mortally ill. 

And he says he finds that most of the devotees, new or older, "just do not care" whether ISKCON worships the pure devotee Srila Prabhupada, or worships bogus pure devotees -- or even worships debauchees posing as pure devotees. The Prabhupada disciples mostly had no real discrimination, and so they trained others to lack discrimination.

"It has become a social club." 

Anyway, he really likes PADA. And he said that PADA has at least presented some light in a cave full of darkness and ignorance. I don't want to give his name right now -- because I don't want him to face any form of persecution for "not going along to get along." 

This was nice however, a sort of confirmation that our Prabhupadanuga idea is -- and should have been all along -- the process ISKCON followed. He does preach to some ISKCON people "here and there on the side" and he does what he can to rectify people's misconceptions. Good! ys pd

BEFORE AND AFTER

by Haripada dasa

"Before" -- it means when Srila Prabhupada was in his physical form preaching Krishna consciousness, and "after" -- it means after Srila Prabhupada disincarnated or entered his lila samadhi, I have the 23 DVDs from the ITV collection on Srila Prabhupada, there you see the very happy and bright faced devotees in Krishna consciousness. There we see Srila Prabhupada was the center and the founding Acharya -- and everyone was very united to please Srila Prabhupada. 

Srila Prabhupada’s wish and Krishna’s -- is that when Srila Prabhupada entered his samadhi lila, everything would continue the same as before. That is why Srila Prabhupada ordered his disciples to initiate in his name, and he would continue to be the center and the spiritual master of all, that is called Jagat guru, the guru of the whole universe.

Unfortunately, Srila Prabhupada’s disciples made changes -- to Srila Prabhupada’s books -- and they did not obey the order to initiate in his name. And in an artificial way -- that is by the GBC program of guru selection, election and voting (Srila Prabhupada says in Chaitanya Charitamrita, Madhya Lila, 1, 220, that the choice of a guru is not made by votes), they became gurus artificially because they are thinking that they are at the same level as Srila Prabhupada. 

And then they artificially adorned themselves with big Prabhupada styled acharya's titles like -- Acharyapada, Bhaktipada, Gurupada, Tirthapada, Vishnupada, even -- Krishnapada. This was all done whimsically and artificially and not under the authorized orders of the acharya. And shortly after that -- everything began to deteriorate rapidly -- because the whole foundation was false.

When Srila Prabhupada’s Gurudeva entered his lila samadhi in 1936 a very similar thing happened. There is a letter that Srila Prabhupada sent to Rupaguna explaining what happened. Srila Prabhupada says that his Gurudeva openly said to create a GBC and to all work together. And if they see someone who is self-effulgent -- they will naturally accept him as my successor. 

They did not obey these orders in 1936 -- and the result is that now they all claim to be Acharyas, although they may be kanistha adhikary with no ability to preach. Therefore, we may NOT make the same mistake in our ISKCON. Actually, among my godbrothers no one is qualified to become Acharya. So it is better not to mix with my godbrothers too intimately because instead of inspiring our students and disciples they can sometimes contaminate them. This attempt was previously made by them, especially Madhava Maharaja, Tirtha Maharaja and Bon Maharaja, but one way or another I saved the situation. 

Even worse, the ISKCON leaders all went to Sridhara Maharaja in 1978 to make him their "senior advisor." We accept that Srila Prabhupada is that self-effulgent person, but Gaudiya Matha does not recognize that. We should not mix with Gaudiya Matha. We ALSO do not mix with Srila Prabhupada’s disciples who are betraying and offending Srila Prabhupada by following these Gaudiya Matha false acharyas and their idea to make kanistha acharyas. 

These disciples live in unconsciousness, not Krishna consciousness, and that is the reason why they do not want to obey Srila Prabhupada. They did not follow Srila Prabhupada and Krishna, with tragic results for all concerned. And yet everyone would like it if Iskcon was led by people who obey and love Srila Prabhupada. 

It is always better to pray for others than to criticize, we pray to Srila Prabhupada and Krishna so that these people obey Srila Prabhupada and thus we would all be together and happy and bright in the Krishna consciousness, just as we see in the 1970s DVD videos.

I have served in Iskcon from 1984-2008. Krishna has distributed through me more than a quarter of a million books of Srila Prabhupada and from my collection I have given them more than 500,000 dollars to ISKCON. Even though the leaders have deceived me, I do not bear any grudge. They already have a bad enough misfortune and a huge burden of bad karma just being the way they are already. Now I feel happy and free in Krishna consciousness.