Quotes – Society Consciousness & Institutions

Bureaucracy is there for sure, but the question is, “Is it operating well?” There needs to be tolerance and humility – not a lack of inspiration and false ego. Thomas Jefferson once said there should be a revolution every twenty years because power corrupts. Is what Prabhupāda wanted happening, or is big management getting in the way? Some would say it was. What a big institution requires is big Kṛṣṇa consciousness – not consciousness that cannot see past the end of it’s nose that uses rules as an excuse for failure. Ask the thousands of devotees who have been pushed out and they might agree. Institutional consciousness vs. God consciousness. There’s never any loss when we go with God. But when God isn’t there, then rules that often interfere with the spreading of God consciousness become more important.

How many rules did Prabhupāda employ when he established his institution, and how many rules are there now? Over a thousand pages and counting! And, I might add, an international society for kaniṣṭha consciousness isn’t the same as an international society for Kṛṣṇa consciousness. Rules and regulations second – Kṛṣṇa consciousness first! At least, that was the opinion of Śrīla Rūpa Gosvāmī.

Nowadays I see so many sannyāsīs and leaders in Prabhupāda’s movement talking about love, harmony, mercy etc. That’s nice. Mahāprabhu’s movement is all about love, harmony and mercy. – but where was that love, harmony and mercy when they pushed all of us out? It’s only now that they’ve surrounded themselves with yes-men, they preach about love and harmony.

It’s like Christianity – for centuries they were excommunicating people, chopping their heads off, and burning them at the stake when they disagreed with them. Then one fine day, the world suddenly changed and they figured, “Oh, I guess we can’t do that anymore!” So they began speaking about peace and “love thy neighbour” and all this stuff.

If the leaders actually believed in harmony, then why don’t they bow their heads, hold out an olive-branch and invite all their godbrothers and godsisters back to serve with them? Because they’re afraid. They don’t actually have the guts or the humility to do that. So all their talk about harmony and mercy is just that – it’s all talk!

isten, because someone grabs all the temples, the Deities, the accounts and all this stuff, doesn’t put them in the right. That’s also what happened after the time of Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta – devotees fought over the temples and the land, but there was one group that removed themselves from all that. That was Śrīla Prabhupāda, Śrīla Śrīdhara Mahārāja, Goswami Mahārāja, Mādhava Mahārāja. They just went on preaching in their own humble way, while the other group of devotees thought that they must be in the right because Kṛṣṇa had given them all the external paraphernalia. Well, all that may not have been given by Kṛṣṇa – it may have been given by Māyā! Śrīla Purī Mahārāja says that all those things may come to you as a result of aparādha! Now you’re too busy with all that stuff to be Kṛṣṇa conscious! So we shouldn’t become bewildered because we’re small, they’re big, or they have all the temples, the samādhi, the Deities, and we don’t. In one sense you can say that’s all external. Let them crack their heads maintaining all that! Remember, Prabhupāda started on his own with nothing…literally nothing!

Once, in a discussion with Śrīpāda Tamāla Kṛṣṇa Goswami, he remarked that the difference between he and I was that he would follow the GBC even if they were wrong, but that I would not. I agreed with him on that point 100%.

The GBC holds a relative position – not an absolute position. If they give Kṛṣṇa conscious direction we are ready to follow that, but if they give the wrong siddhānta, the wrong philosophy, or if they give direction to commit Vaiṣṇava aparādha (spiritual suicide) should we blindly follow that? Apparently, some devotees think that we should follow the GBC under any circumstances. But being true to my creed of what I believe means following Śrīla Prabhupāda, I cannot follow what I understand to be deviant instructions.

Āśrama life is all about learning to be submissive. Living in a community is tough. It is very hard on people. We share so many things in common. Communal life is very, very difficult. But communal life also has great value because it’s many working for the one – the one being Kṛṣṇa. So it has an advantage. But when we’re independent, even as a sannyāsī or as an independent brahmacārī or a householder, a little scope of danger enters there. Therefore, only those who are very established in Kṛṣṇa consciousness should have what we call independence – living independently, independent activity. Otherwise, we will go off.

When the WVA (World Vaiṣṇava Association) began at my āśrama in Vṛndāvana, I was one of three persons to start the program – Paramādvaiti Mahārāja., Tripurāri Mahārāja, and myself. Our hopes were for a dignified program that would first unite the devotees from the western world (north and south) and then later extend itself to the Gauḍīya Maṭha sections etc, then possibly even to other Vaiṣṇava sampradāyas. But there was no mistake about it — the WVA was to first try and unite the Vaiṣṇavas who had spun-out, fallen-out, split-off, or whatever, from Śrīla Prabhupāda’s movement. The WVA was to be dignified in all matters – conduct, philosophy, etc. and was to show an all-round better standard of Vaiṣṇavism. That’s how it started. But _____took the lead and from then until now, the WVA has gone the way in which he does all things – big, but with little attention to details. ‘Details’ means quality and quality leads to dignity. Without quality, there is no dignity and that is what WVA lacks the most – dignity.

They say the average mentality of the mob is that of a three-year old. The mass opinion. We have two slogans, “No amount of darkness produces light and no amount of ignorance produces knowledge.” So you can have so many ignorant fellows together, when you put all their ignorance together it still comes to ignorance. You cannot add one madman after another and finally come up with sanity. Madness produces madness. Darkness produces darkness. So we do not care much for the opinion of that section, but rather the criterion of our knowledge, the criterion of the standard of our humility and other such things, is drawn from the higher thinkers, the sages, the ṛṣis, the sādhus, and the Vedas. We should try to understand the standard of all things from their viewpoint, the higher viewpoint, the realised viewpoint, the higher standard.

In all the talks and lectures I have given, how many times have I mentioned my society – the answer is none! Our devotees don’t even know the name of the society they belong to. But they know that they belong to a line of Prabhupāda’s disciple, and they know they belong in Mahāprabhu’s movement. I’m not trying to build another worldwide society. You know who makes you have a society? Who made Prabhupāda register Iskcon? The government! The ‘society’ you belong to is the paramparā. You belong to the Brahma Madhva Gauḍīya sampradāya. So why do we have all these societies? Just so we can open a bank account, so we can be tax-exempt. The bottom line is that it’s all about money. This is the requirement of the government – not the spiritual world! These things didn’t exist until around 1920.

At the same time, Śrīla Prabhupāda also mentions that a sannyāsī must have a spiritual institution. There should be a framework, a foundation, because we want to preach in a systematic way. There shouldn’t be chaos where we are overrunning some turf, totally neglecting another turf etc. That is not intelligent. Some organised missionary activity is the calling of the last century and this century, and that won’t change in our lifetime. But what I am pointing out is that I don’t have ’society consciousness’ as part of my agenda.

People become conditioned, and that conditioning goes everywhere. We’ve joined a movement to be liberated, free-thinkers – but within ten years, we’re conditioned to think that free-thinking only exists in our institution! “You have to join our institution to go back to Godhead.” The Christians say, “You must be a Catholic.” The Protestants say, “No, you must be baptized by us!” All of this is going on. What is this? That is the material thinking. So when you see devotees saying the same thing, but instead of ‘Jesus’ they are saying ‘Kṛṣṇa’, and instead of ‘Catholic’ they are saying ‘Iskcon’, then we should realise this is just the conditioning of the material world. We have to have some sort of revolution. We have to revive. We have to cast off all of these things.

My belief is that we should have a proper attitude and a proper understanding. The attitude of other institutions is quite different. Theirs is all about numbers and exclusivity. “Only us! You can only go back to Godhead in our group! You can only find a guru in our group!” The more mundane you are in this material world, the more successful you’re going to be. And the more spiritual you are, the less success you will have. That’s pretty much how it goes. It’s very rare that one can be spiritual and greatly successful at the same time in this material world. Prabhupāda was very rare. But imitating Prabhupāda with big chairs, big Vyāsa Pūjās, all this big, big show – that works in this world. If you imitate, people will come…but what type of people?

Look, throwing people out isn’t a solution. M__ made a stupid mistake, and now R___’s telling everyone we should throw him out. So now that becomes the standard. A person makes a mistake – so you immediately kick him out! You can’t tolerate this person or that person, so now they have to go! You start going down that road and eventually you’re left with no one! We used to joke about making a cartoon where the GBCs are all meeting and they get into an argument. Then, one by one, they excommunicate each other, and as they get excommunicated, they suddenly vanish in a puff of smoke, until there’s only one GBC left and he ends up excommunicating himself!

Just throwing people out is not a Kṛṣṇa conscious solution – rectification is. I remember when one of the leaders in Nairobi wasn’t following the principles, Prabhupāda sent three sannyāsīs there to rectify him. That’s the word Prabhupāda used – ‘rectify.’ “Go and help the man, rectify him.” Not – “Go there and chuck him out! Drive him back into the material world!” But R_’s coming from that world. Iskcon has managed to kick out almost every Prabhupāda disciple, or at least make them feel unwelcome, uncomfortable, and that’s what R___ ’s used to. That’s how Iskcon deals with problems generally – “Throw ‘em out!” It’s a heartless solution…it’s not even a solution!! It just creates more problems in the end because it affects everyone – not just the person you kick out.

Some years ago, back in the 90s, some devotees tried to get me blacklisted – they were going to do some politics, go to their contacts in the government and get me thrown out of India. Anyhow, I found out about it from a godbrother – he came to South India and warned me. So I wrote to those people and asked them why they were trying to stop my service to Prabhupāda and get me kicked out of India.

“No, no, Mahārāja – we’re not doing that. We’d never do that!” They denied it completely, but I knew they were lying…they’re such a bunch of cowards! As soon as I went public and told the devotee community what they were planning, they went silent.

These people are not devotees actually. They claim to be followers of Prabhupāda, but if they went in front of Śrīla Prabhupāda and told him, “Well, there’s this sannyāsī we don’t like, so we’re planning to get him thrown out of India!” What do you think Prabhupāda’s response would be?

“Oh yes, very good idea!”

No – Prabhupāda would be disgusted. He’d be disgusted! He’d torch those devotees – he’d burn them to ashes! He’d call them all nonsense rascals and chastise them till they pissed themselves and crawled out on their hands and knees. I saw him do that once to a devotee in Māyāpura – that devotee was a GBC. Prabhupāda severely chastised him and he was in tears and he crawled out of Prabhupāda’s room. And when Prabhupāda saw that, he told Brahmānanda, “Where is he? Bring that rascal back in here!” And Brahmānanda dragged him back in and Prabhupāda carried on chastising him.

To date, they’ve sent me several death-threats, sent people to beat me up, tried to blacklist me from India, tried to stop me from building an āśrama, tried to stop me from distributing Prabhupāda’s books, tried to stop me printing Prabhupāda’s books. Now you tell me – did you ever, ever hear in the history of our whole sampradāya any devotee doing this? This isn’t the behaviour of devotees – this is the behaviour of guṇḍas! These people are an embarrassment to the paramparā and to Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism.

You can see what happens when you start mucking around with what the guru has given. When he passes from this world, his disciples start mucking around with his books for what they will say are “very valid reasons” and then they are afraid to give credit to a senior disciple because he’s no longer in their institution – so they edit him out of the whole history…many devotees have been edited out of their guru’s legacy.

It just so happens that everything Prabhupāda ever said wasn’t in English. He wrote in Bengali, he wrote in Hindi, he spoke in Bengali, he spoke in Hindi. And in India many of these things are recorded. Most of these things are in the Bhaktivedānta Archives in the US, which is more or less an Iskcon project. But almost none of those things have ever been translated. In other words, the mentality of the gringo is, “Well, if Prabhupāda didn’t say it in English, it isn’t important.”

Ask yourself – where are all the 5000 disciples of Śrīla Prabhupāda? Where did so many of them go? After Prabhupāda, the leaders kicked out so many devotees from the movement in a matter of years – sometimes a hundred devotees were kicked out in one day for not following the leaders, or disagreeing with them. In many cases, there was no discussion, no attempt to harmonise, just BAM! Thrown out! And after throwing them out, what did they say? “They were not serious! They were offenders!”

I’ve seen the same thing happen in other missions also – the guru passes away and the new guru, or the leaders make some decisions, and anyone who disagrees – they’re out! After years of service to their guru, in just one day they’re thrown out and demonized. “The king is dead! Long live the king!” There’s a saying like that, right? “The guru’s gone, now we’re in charge!” And years later, decades later, some of the leaders might feel bad and show some humility and say, “Oh, that was a mistake. Perhaps we shouldn’t have done that.” Yeah, but too little, too late.

And there’s other leaders who are so puffed up, they just won’t budge. They’ll go to their graves convinced that they did the right thing. Or they’ll say, “No,no, we never kicked anyone out – they just decided to leave.” Yeah, that’s right – because you made it hell for them, so they couldn’t stay!

I sometimes wonder how some of these people sleep at night?

The ‘powers that be’ like to use this word ‘excommunicate.’ You see it a lot in their meetings – “So-and-so isn’t following our laws. He is excommunicated!” It’s a very papal word. They use it in the Catholic Church. It means you didn’t follow the Pope, so now you’re removed from God’s grace. Even God can’t save you!

So in their eyes, because your didn’t play by their rules, they excommunicate you and you’re severed from God (Kṛṣṇa) and guru.

So my question is this – who gave you the power to come in-between me and my guru, or me and Kṛṣṇa? What makes you think you’re so powerful that They have to follow your resolutions? And if you look back in history, every decision you guys ever made was a bad one – and that goes way back to Prabhupāda’s time when he had to dissolve the GBC on more than one occasion!

So you may want to think twice before you say, “He’s not in our society any more.” What does that even mean? How did you become the society? Because you grabbed all the land, the assets, the Deities? That’s fine – you can keep them! That’s all external. But you don’t have any jurisdiction over my connection with guru and Kṛṣṇa. You may think you do, but that’s just in your head…

Once, we went to Caitanya Maṭha in Māyāpura and met with one old sannyāsī there, and when he saw us and asked who were were, we introduced ourselves as disciples of A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami, and he immediately went off on how only Caitanya Maṭha was following Bhaktisiddhānta, and how none of the other Gauḍīya Maṭhas were bona fide or authorised. “They all left Prabhupāda! They didn’t follow the GBC! They had no right to start their own temples and become gurus!” Seriously, you could have drawn a curtain between us and just heard his voice and he would have sounded exactly like an Iskcon GBC! We just paid our obeisances and left, and later, I was thinking, “If all the disciples of Sarasvatī Ṭhākura had not started their own missions, including our Prabhupāda, Kṛṣṇa consciousness would never have spread so widely!”

So you can see Kṛṣṇa’s hand in these things. We think that cooperation and unity is so important, and to a certain extent it is. We’re all thinking that getting along and working together under one roof, under one guru, under the same management is the best thing, but Kṛṣṇa may not think so. He may have another idea. Sometimes ‘unity’ comes with a price – and the price is that things stagnate, so Kṛṣṇa “stirs the pot” and there’s some disharmony among the devotees. But from that situation, which at the time may be difficult and painful and unharmonious, something wonderful comes out. Real harmony means that we all have the same goal of spreading Kṛṣṇa consciousness, but that doesn’t always mean we have to be in the same group, the same āśrama, or the same mission…

So many of our godbrothers and godsisters were driven out of our Guru Mahārāja’s movement, and if you ask any member of the GBC about that, they always say, “Well actually, I didn’t agree with that – that was the GBC.” You ARE the GBC!!!! They all point to the GBC. The GBC is made up of individuals, but none of those individuals want to take any personal responsibility. If you take up a position of authority, you’re responsible – Śrīla Prabhupāda taught us that. When something good happens – so many books are distributed, new temples and preaching centres are opened – Oh, you’re more than happy to take the credit for that. But when something bad happens? “No, that wasn’t me, that was the GBC. That other group of guys made the decision, not me. I didn’t agree, but…”

Yeah, you didn’t agree, but you also didn’t speak out against their decision either! You just sat there and sucked it up!

So what does that tell you? Well, first it tells you that they can’t own up to their mistakes. They just keep quiet, hoping the mistakes will just go away, or they lie to cover their tracks – they make up their own version of what happened. God forbid if they actually did something Kṛṣna conscious, like admitting their faults or they did something proactive like reach out to the godbrothers they threw out and try to rectify the situation! But they can’t do that. It’s like the Catholic Church – the pope is infallible. They can’t be seen to make a mistake in the eyes of all their members, so they keep quiet about it. They have no humility, no courage, no Kṛṣṇa consciousness! They talk so much about unity and working together, but they don’t really want that because it has to be unity on their terms.

In his book ‘Śrī Caitanya, His Life and Precepts,’ Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura said that party spirit and sectarianism were the two great enemies of progress. In other words, society consciousness is the enemy of self-realisation. It can be there with seven-thousand devotees or even just seven devotees. It doesn’t matter how many devotees there are. It spreads like a disease…

Some people think, “Just be in the institution and you’re connected!” They compare the institution to a boat – “Just stay on the boat!” We call them the ‘Boat People.’ The institution is just an arrangement in this world. We should not fault any institution because it’s the people IN the institution that make it what it is, or what it isn’t. It doesn’t matter who made the institution 500 years ago, or 100 years ago, or 10 years ago, or yesterday! If there’s no Kṛṣṇa consciousness there, then there’s nothing. It’s just a name. Kṛṣṇa is not simply waiting in that institution for something to happen – He is wherever something IS happening!

Democratic vote? That means mob rule! ‘Vox populi’ (the voice of the people) is not the Vaiṣṇava system. It is the words of realised souls that should be listened to – not the mob, and certainly not a group of conditioned souls. Manuṣyāṇāṁ sahasreṣu – one man out of thousands. It should be the one self-realised man who should be heard – not the ‘sahasreṣu’ (thousands of ordinary people).

The truth is not the property of an institution or any group of people. The truth is the prisoner of a free heart, of the pure devotee. They have Kṛṣṇa – the rest of us are just begging for maybe a glimpse, or a drop. No amount of association of those who don’t have Kṛṣṇa can help you gain Kṛṣṇa at all. Only Kṛṣṇa gives Kṛṣṇa. Only one who has Kṛṣṇa consciousness can give Kṛṣṇa consciousness.

They say that the average mentality of the mob is that of a three-year old – the mass opinion. We have a slogan, “No amount of darkness produces light, and no amount of ignorance produces knowledge.” You can have so many ignorant fellows together, but when you put all their ignorance together it still comes to ignorance. You cannot add one madman after the other and finally come up with sanity. Madness produces madness. Darkness produces darkness. We do not care much for the opinion for that section, but rather the criterion of our knowledge, the criterion of the standard of our humility and other such things is drawn from the higher thinkers.

We cannot all live under the same anything. Individuality and group consciousness, to a certain extent, is inherent in any living being here in this world even right down to the insects, because in the spiritual world everyone is an individual and there are groups. So when this is reflected, the groups will also be here even in Kṛṣṇa consciousness. What do you call that? Spiritual competition! There is spiritual competition, but spiritual competition means devoid of envy.

So many of our godbrothers and godsisters left – most were pushed out or simply left because they could not tolerate any longer what was happening. Once they were outside the gate the simplest thing for the leaders to do was to demonize these devotees. Propaganda has always been their strong point but unfortunately that expertise has been turned against its own members and well-wishers….the only reason we don’t hear about senior godbrothers and godsisters being ousted these days is because there are only a handful left — most were thrown out ages ago by foolish leaders.

Those who are lazy to understand proper siddhānta (philosophical conclusions) or who maintain improper philosophical understandings (apa-siddhānta) can never be free from anarthas and thus can never progress properly in Kṛṣṇa consciousness. Such persons often think that simply by serving the institution of the guru that they are serving Kṛṣṇa and thus will automatically go back to home, back to Godhead. They judge the success of their endeavors simply by measuring size, material opulence, temples, Deities, devotees, and members with no concern for proper philosophical understanding.

Overall, we are to concern ourselves with the substance of everything. There is Kṛṣṇa consciousness and there is the society. The society is a vehicle. Our business is to always follow the thread of the spiritual conception. Our business is to follow Kṛṣṇa consciousness, not society consciousness. But if the two come into conflict, and we follow the truth of Kṛṣṇa consciousness, definitely that will give birth again to some form, some other vehicle – because that is where the vehicle came from to begin with. But if you depart from the truth and simply go with the vehicle, it may go with the speed of mind for eternity, but there’s no guarantee whatsoever that it will ever produce the truth again. Depending on the degree of separation from the truth, you may not even be able to glimpse even an aspect of the truth. If it goes far enough away, all is lost…

There is a difference between a society whose business it is to spread Kṛṣṇa consciousness and a society that tries to make a monopoly of Kṛṣṇa consciousness. And therein lies the problem – the emphasis is too much on the ‘society’ aspect and not enough on the ‘Kṛṣṇa conscious’ aspect.

We have become a “feel-good society’ that prides itself in the number of devotees, big buildings, big festivals, numbers of books distributed…all external achievements. Basically the movement is led by the sentiments, feelings and desires of neophytes.

We were researching narcissism a few days ago and _____ found an article which was about how a bona-fide religious institution or community can become a cult. It was a very interesting read. It mentioned many points, but a few really stuck out. One was that the leaders become elitists. They create this idea that they knew their founder better than anyone else so that makes them superior. They may not have even met him, or they had little association with him, or they just didn’t understand what he was really about – but they knew him! They figured him out! So when they speak, its as good as him speaking.

Then the next point was that they make the founder to be like some cold, heartless statue. He becomes this inaccessible thing. Basically they just recreate him in their own image. Then another point was that they have to paint anyone who disagrees with them as black as possible – that’s how they manage to keep control of the rest of their members. Then they stop listening to any voice of reason and they start to believe in their own propaganda. And that’s the biggest danger! But it’s not that they are just some evil asuras or rakṣāsas who want to destroy the movement – they hoodwink themselves into actually believing that they are doing the right thing, It’s like self-hypnosis.

So basically what started off as being something very pure and innocent eventually becomes an institution run by a few guys who want to be in power and are extremely insecure. This is exactly what happened in early Christianity at the time of Constantine, and it also happened in the Hare Kṛṣṇa movement.

When you are riddled with society consciousness, you have trouble accepting those who are real Vaiṣṇavas outside your group as any kind of authority. You don’t consider them to be Vaiṣṇavas. If you do consider anyone outside of your group as a Vaiṣṇava, then we’d have to ask, “So what is a Vaiṣṇava? A Vaiṣṇava is a representative, an agent of the Supreme Lord. They are the shelter-giving agency of the Lord for the fallen souls. So why can’t we associate and be with them?” Because they think that “Vaiṣṇavas are only in our society! A spiritual authority can only be in our society!” And they refuse to recognise a real Vaiṣṇava.

W e are in the camp of Śrīmatī Rādhārāṇī, and Prabhupāda is in that camp, Śrīla Purī Mahārāja is in that camp, Mādhava Mahārāja is in that camp, Śrīla Śrīdhara Mahārāja is in that camp, Keśava Mahārāja is in that camp, Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura is in that camp – that camp is not ISKCON, it’s not Gauḍīya Maṭha, it is not any of these things. It is a serving aptitude, a serving mentality, it is a quality if love for Kṛṣṇa.

P reviously (when I was in Iskcon) I thought that the institution was your ‘camp.’ You have your institution in the spiritual world. But that’s not our camp! That doesn’t even exist! In fact, you know why any of these societies exist? Because ‘Uncle Sam’ says they have to exist – if you want to rent a house, open a bank account and be tax-exempt! Otherwise they don’t have to exist. And you know who started it in India? The British! You had to register all your activities and the Gauḍīya Maṭha became registered. And before that, there is no “registered” – there’s a paramparā! Institutions are just part of a modern thing. Our camp is not institutional and its not that we should always find our sādhu-saṅga within the institution.

I f we only consider the guru’s mission externally, thinking it is just a piece of land with a signpost, a bunch of buildings, a temple with Deities, or a government registered society, then we haven’t caught the essence of what he came to give. We are just like bees licking the outside of a jar of honey.

S elfishness and fear are both connected. They’re born out of a sense of false proprietorship. Everyone in the world lives under this illusion. They have fear about their land, their property, their family, their friends, their community, their country – even their mission. Mine, mine, mine! So even devotees are not free from this mentality either – we also have to be careful about cultivating that mood, that sense of selfishness. “Our” mission, “our” āśrama, “our” society. Actually, there’s only one mission – the mission of Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu. All these other missions, societies, institutions that we’ve created are just there for government recognition. But all Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavas belong to one society – the society of Mahāprabhu. That’s why all this fighting about who belongs to which society, who left which mission and started this one, that one – its all ridiculous. You think Kṛṣṇa really cares? “Oh, you’re from that mission? Sorry dude, you’re banned! You can’t enter Goloka!” That sounds crazy, right? That’s because it IS crazy! Who are we to judge who goes back to Godhead?

But our main concern should be the siddhānta – who is preaching the right siddhānta according to our gurus, our Guardians. That’s the real benchmark. That will determine which devotees we will associate with. Everything else is just management and that’s all temporary. That’s all connected to this world. But when we stress management and society consciousness over proper siddhānta, we’re gonna get into deep trouble.

I skcon, Gauḍīya Maṭha, my mission, or anyone else’s mission – these are not eternal principles. All these societies are created to facilitate service. Like everything else in this world, they all have an expiry date. The only eternal principle is Kṛṣṇa consciousness. That’s why all this ‘society consciousness’ is so ridiculous – “Oh, our mission is the best! Anyone not under us, not following us, is bogus!” Kṛṣṇa’s not looking at which mission you’re in – He’s looking at what service you are doing, how surrendered you are. He’s looking at the heart – not what it says on your signboard outside your āśrama or temple!

F irst the leaders threw out whoever didn’t agree with them. Then, when other devotees saw that and questioned it, the leaders lied, bullied and threatened them – “You have to listen to us! Only we represent Prabhupāda! If you leave the society, you’re leaving Śrīla Prabhupāda!”

Well, any so-called ‘leader’ that has to resort to lying, bullying and threatening Vaiṣṇavas isn’t a leader! And now, years later…? Where did all those leaders go? Look around – most of them are gone. You think that’s just a coincidence?

When they threw us out, I lost every ‘friend’ I had overnight. Not one person called me or wrote me a letter – nada! As I told someone recently, “Those sort of friendships are like how the non-devotees use toilet-paper – totally dispensable!” Its better to surround yourself with people you can really rely upon, even if its just one or two friends.

R ecently, I had some email exchange with our godsister, _____ about the Rādhā-Dāmodara case. So I gave her an example of something Prabhupāda said to make a point, and she wrote back and said, “You can’t say that! You are USING Śrīla Prabhupāda!” Well, I almost fell off my chair laughing! USING???? I thought that was what we did – we quote guru, sādhu, śāstra, right? I was trying to make a philosophical point and quoting my guru, but she couldn’t hear it from me because I am not in her society. Anyhow, I never responded – what can you say? Some people are like that – small-minded. If you’re not in their society, you’re not allowed to quote your own guru! And if you do, you must have some evil ulterior motive…

O ur Guru Mahārāja requested, “Don’t be self-decievers! Don’t cheat yourself!” In the name of a lifestyle and society consciousness, you will just reproduce the very things that you walked away from. You have to keep the ideal in mind. You left the world. You didn’t care what anybody thought – you just left it! So every once in a while, everybody has to redo that again, because things like that cling onto us as we go along, and it happens many times.

When we’re just taking to the Holy Name, then it’s a transcendental movement, but when you lose sight of the ideal for which you came, then it becomes a religion in the mundane world. It is no longer a transcendental movement or a philosophy or anything like that. Then it becomes Judaism, Christianity etc. So we have to keep the goal in mind and remember to just practice what we’ve done so far, and then continue in that way with faith in the Holy Name. The Name has taken us so far, and we see that it has been so kind to us. There are no hungry days in Kṛṣṇa consciousness actually. There are no shelterless days.

W e should always remember that Śrīla Prabhupāda said that nothing from outside could damage his movement, but from inside, everything could be destroyed. So rather than blaming others for our woes, we should learn to be more introspective, tolerant, patient and appreciative of others. After all, this life isn’t “forever” – we all have to die someday.

D uring the Dark Ages in Europe, if one crossed the Church, or voiced any type of dissent, it was as good as signing one’s own death warrant. There are similarities between the Church and the Hare Kṛṣṇas, though things are not as severe now as they were then. To criticize leadership in the Hare Kṛṣṇa Movement has always been the shortcut to being ostracized, ridiculed, isolated, even excommunicated — everything just short of being hung, drawn and quartered. You know… “Give the dog a bad name, then shoot him!”

Ś rīla Śrīdhara Mahārāja used to say that you can’t hold the Infinite in your fist. In the same way, you can’t claim ownership over your guru! He’s not your possession that you have a monopoly over. This idea that some people have that, “He’s ours! You can’t print Prabhupāda’s books, you can’t use his picture, you can’t quote him, you can’t, you can’t, you can’t…” It’s such a sick, controlling mentality! What they’re basically saying is that, “Unless you are in our society, in our club, under our thumb, you’re not really his disciple – at best you’re half a disciple!” It’s society consciousness on steroids! Who the hell are you to tell me if I’m his disciple or not? Who’s a disciple or not – ultimately that’s the guru’s decision, not yours! Do you really think Kṛṣṇa even cares which society you belong to? Whether it’s Iskcon, Gauḍīya Maṭha, Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava Society – that’s all irrelevant in His eyes. Kṛṣṇa is looking at the heart – not your signboard.

W hen Prabhupāda left this world, there were some persons who couldn’t even shed one single tear for him – not one! They literally felt nothing – totally empty! Just dry people with no hearts. And now those same people are telling me that I left Prabhupāda because I’m not in their little club. They arm themselves with a few quotes and suddenly wanna play judge, jury and executioner on behalf of Śrīla Prabhupāda, as if they’re the only ones that represent him. Just see the fun! Their ‘logic’ is that because they don’t like me, then how can my guru like me?

W hat do Prabhupāda’s books tell you to do? His books tell you to find the proper association of devotees, and particularly to find a devotee to whom you can surrender to, whom you have faith in – that this person knows Kṛṣṇa and can guide me Back to Home, Back to Godhead. If you haven’t come to that, then it doesn’t matter where you are, or what temple your in, what job you have – pack your bags and move today, because life’s clock is clicking down! If you don’t come to that wholesome shelter in your life, you human form of life has more or less been stalled. Maybe not wasted, because you chanted, you did things, you worship the Deity, and took prasāda and so many things, but if all that doesn’t culminate in that connection, then you can never surrender. Surrender can not be done, just to the object of the deity, or the general plane of service, through the guru’s institution even. Śrīla Purī Mahārāja has written, “Without surrender to the desires of the guru, simply serving His institution for lifetimes does not produce the desired result.”

God is not an institution, institutions are established to help us reach Him, understand what He is, disseminate that basic knowledge of what He is, and how to approach Him. Institutions are not just for themselves – they have a purpose.

S ometimes devotees do not understand how one can have a śikṣā-guru (instructing guru) outside the formal institution of his guru. Such disciples do not understand that the guru-tattva principle does not come under the consideration of any institutional consideration or society consciousness. Kṛṣṇa is independent of any social consideration and He sends His representative to save the fallen souls as He sees fit. Kṛṣṇa is not under the power of our voting committees.

I am not for the Unitarian Kṛṣṇa Conscious Church – I am for the church of variagatedness and difference. Based on that, I choose my association. I think that variagatedness breeds a very strong and healthy spiritual environment. We are not followers of the ‘Rodney King philosophy’ – there was a man in America called Rodney King who was beaten up and then there was a riot in Los Angeles. So he went on TV and said, “Can’t we all just get along?” Well the answer is, “No Rodney, we can’t!” We can’t because there are differences. Everyone is not the same; therefore we can’t all live the same. Why isn’t everyone wearing sannyāsa-veśa? Because everyone can’t do it. Or why is it that everyone isn’t a brahmacārī? Why doesn’t everybody become a householder? Because it is not ‘one thing for everybody’. There doesn’t have to be hatred in diversity. There should be harmony and appreciation – but there is diversity and we can’t erase that. There’s life in diversity.

The main thing is self-realisation – not this institutional BS that goes down! “We do this because of the institution!” Where’s the self-realisation? To hell with the institution! Self-realisation will birth a million institutions. And you know what? An institution will not birth one child of self-realisation EVER! Think about it! The institution could burn to the ground, but if we can save the knowledge and the devotees, a glorious thing will continue to grow and will rise from the ashes like a phoenix. But if you destroy the siddhānta, the institution can never reproduce pure devotion. It doesn’t exist.

How many of our godbrothers and godsisters like you and _____ have been kicked out by the “powers that be” for the ‘good of the society’? Hundreds? Thousands? The leaders can’t tolerate any type of dissension – they can’t even talk to the people they kick out – they’re afraid to. They’re even afraid to forgive them because they’re afraid it will make them look weak! Instead they’ll send some official letter telling them how they “really appreciate all your service over the years, but we can no longer accommodate you.” Sometimes, not even a letter – they just get the boot! Its impersonal, its deplorable, and Śrīla Prabhupāda would be disgusted and heartbroken. So many valuable devotees with something to contribute. Everyone could be working together, serving Prabhupāda and making a difference in the world – but there’s too many people on top with an agenda who are on a power trip – so its the usual, “my way or the highway” mentality, and all in the name of Śrīla Prabhupāda, thinking that they are “saving the society!” Very sad…

The leaders blamed Śrīla Śrīdhara Mahārāja for so many problems that they created. They blamed him for the zonal ācārya system and they blamed him for so many devotees leaving Iskcon. “Oh, just see! If it wasn’t for Śrīdhara Mahārāja, these devotees would never have left and would still be serving in Iskcon.” What they can’t understand is that the reason why those devotees left in the first place was because the leaders were weak. They wanted to control everyone under them. And they’ll argue, “Would Prabhupāda be happy that you left Iskcon?” Well, would Prabhupāda be happy that you created such a hell that those devotees couldn’t stay in Iskcon?

Prabhupāda saw the fighting in his Guru Mahārāja’s mission and he left! And sometimes that’s necessary – when the society that the guru created becomes a shadow of what it was in his lifetime, some devotees go elsewhere to find spiritual substance. But the leaders can’t see that. In their minds, that’s like treason. They think that everything is great! “Everyone should be united – but under us! Just stay on the boat and you’ll be fine!” They can’t see their own mistakes, and if they can, they don’t have even a drop of humility to admit to them. So instead they play the ‘blame game’ and point the finger at Śrīla Śrīdhara Mahārāja. That’s a sign of a serious weakness and its an offence.

Śrīla Śrīdhara Mahāraja said, “No amount of darkness produces light, and no amount of ignorance produces knowledge.” So you can’t get conditioned souls all getting together and the culmination of that is divinity. That is not divinity. That’s not a philosophy – that’s a power-move!

What is it to be ‘in’ Iskcon? I’m in – and I’ve always been in and I never left. These are only terminologies. Our guru is Iskcon, his teaching is Iskcon, our love for him and his love for us – that is Iskcon. I’m in – I’m in for the duration, never to leave! The buildings…anyway, somebody owns it, somebody else owns it, somebody’s in charge and you get your walking-papers, you’re in charge, you give him his walking-papers…so what is Iskcon?

Overall, we are to concern ourselves with the substance of everything. There is Kṛṣṇa consciousness and there is the society. The society is a vehicle. Our business is to always follow the thread of the spiritual conception. Our business is to follow Kṛṣṇa consciousness, not society consciousness. But if the two come into conflict, and we follow the truth of Kṛṣṇa consciousness, definitely that will give birth again to some form, some other vehicle – because that is where the vehicle came from to begin with. But if you depart from the truth and simply go with the vehicle, it may go with the speed of mind for eternity, but there’s no guarantee whatsoever that it will ever produce the truth again. Depending on the degree of separation from the truth, you may not even be able to glimpse even an aspect of the truth. If it goes far enough away, all is lost…

I read something in a BTG article recently where the author wrote that, “Previously it was an individual concern, but now we all go back to Godhead together, or we don’t go back at all!” I was like, “What the heck are you talking about? We’ll all go together or we won’t go at all? Since when? Then I guess we’re not going – because there’s always a party-pooper who doesn’t wanna go!” This is a foolish philosophy.

B eing in some Vaiṣṇava missions is like running with jackals – when you don’t keep up with them, they turn on you!