General News

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Around the middle of the 19th Century the seed of change was planted. As with all planting of seeds there is a passing of time before the plant fructifies. The seed of change was Capitalism. In the UK in 2012 there was a spectacular opening of the 2012 Olympics that pictured the story of Great Britain, which illustrated that seed of change. The whole arena of that stadium was a picture of “green and pleasant” land. And then the transformation took place right in front of your eyes from that picturesque green and pleasant land to the industrialised heartlands that we here in the UK still suffer from today.
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Capitalism was borne and it spread firstly to the western worlds and now it’s covering the globe with its exploitative sinister influence. One of the very most hard-hitting concepts of Capitalism is the idea that if you work hard enough your dream is realisable. Now I know that in the USA this is practically a second nature. It’s the American Dream. And at the heart of that concept is the dream that you can build your own home, work hard, marry a beautiful woman and pay for it for the rest of your life. It’s the “have it now” and pay later tag, and have we paid for it, with mortgages coming out of our ears, and unfortunately for capitalists, it nearly brought the whole system down. The belief system of Capitalism, because that’s exactly what Capitalism is, was brought to its knees and it cripples the masses and the poor.
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That’s why as devotees we don’t believe in Capitalism, nor should we be a part of it, because it’s inherently not a fair system and it’s an exploitative abusive way of life. Our social system for devotees is the Varnashrama-dharma because it follows one’s natural gunas and propensities for social and economic lifestyles. By following Krishna Consciousness we naturally uplift society by materially living a most harmonious lifestyle. Going from the mode of darkness and mode of passion the living entity is progressively associating in the social system with the higher modes of nature. After some time the mode of goodness is achievable for all men, no one is excluded. (This is not a gender exclusive article by using the word “men”.)
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What Really Happened in 1977-78, interview with Gurukrpa Prabhu, by Bhakta das
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“There is no new blood in this organization, things have become stagnated and dry, not dynamic and the offense of neglecting all their godbrothers by excluding them from their spiritual birthright, they will have to answer to Srila Prabhupada for this aparadha”
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Dear Prabhus, Gurukrpa is here with me and on his behalf I am writing here.
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Question: What happened the final months of Srila Prabhupada’s appearance in connection with the process of initiating new devotees?
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Gurukrpa: Nothing happened. In the beginning Srila Prabhupada did the diksa, the yajna and the name giving. As the numbers increased, he authorized GBC, and senior sannyasis to pick names and chant on the beads, etc. In 1977 during the months of May, June, July 1977 I was in Vrindaban with Srila Prabhupada, giving him his massage in his bed between 1 AM and mangala aratik. During the day, many letters would arrive. Satsvarupa Swami was the secretary and we decided that only letters that would give joy to Srila Prabhupada would be read. Like numbers of books sold, etc. A maximum of five letters daily were read to Srila Prabhupada.
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After some weeks like this, there were stacks and stacks of letters, all relating to initiation. Hundreds of people were panicking that Srila Prabhupada would leave the planet before they were given initiation. At this time, this situation was brought before Srila Prabhupada in his room by Satsvarupa, Tamal, myself, and maybe some others.
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Up until this time it was a very simple matter that we were doing the initiations, but we first had to ask permission. Srila Prabhupada NEVER refused any recommendation from his senior men. And personally, I would sometimes argue with some GBC that they were giving it too easily.
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At this meeting, Srila Prabhupada basically said, “From here on, if you feel they are ready, then you may give the initiation on my behalf.” I understood this for what it was, simply extending the authority a little further than it had been. Tamal Krsna Swami, began to say, “But who will do it?. Which devotees will do this?” Srila Prabhupada said, “The nearest one will do it. Whoever is closest.” Tamal said, “Can Bhavananda do? Can Jayapataka do?” Thus these eleven names came out.
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A Krishna Conscious person is never tired of working and the symptoms I can see in you as you want to be overloaded with work. This is the test of how one is advancing in Krishna Consciousness. Nobody becomes tired but wants to work more and more.
 
I was so much happy to receive your letter Nov. 21, 1967, on my arrival. I hope in the meantime you have received my letter from Calcutta. I also hope you might have received some pictures which were sent from Calcutta. If you can, send one offset copy of the horses and chariot of Arjuna. Govinda dasi may draw a small picture of the same chariot for printing on the front page of Back to Godhead.
 
When I left your country on the 22nd of July, I had very little hope to come back again. But Krishna informed me that I’m not going to die immediately; therefore, I have come back again to get inspiration of Krishna Consciousness from you all good souls.
 
Although officially I am your Spiritual Master, I consider you all students as my Spiritual Master because your love for Krishna and service for Krishna teach me how to become a sincere Krishna Conscious person.
 

  The King had always been fond of hunting. It was a passion with him. He had reached the banks of the Ganga and it was there he saw her. She was like a vision, there she stood, her skin glowing like gold. Her eyes were large and lustrous and her hair which she combed … Read more

 
Dear Devotees,
 
Please accept my most humble obeisances. This Vaishnava assembly consists of some very highly qualified devotees, and certainly Bhagavan Prabhu and Bhakta das Prabhu are amongst them. Bhakta das’ comments are very mature and insightful, and I also appreciate much of what Bhagavan has said in his short discussion. It is true you cannot wake a person who is pretending to be asleep, and the argumentative self-righteousness is self-defeating. However, the last paragraph, the short discussion on the guru, troubles me. It reminds me of discussions that I had so many years ago with my former husband Goursundar.
 
Since I am not really a part of any of the various “camps” of today, either ritvik or non-ritvik, I really don’t claim to know what Krishna has in mind for His movement, other than the absolute certainty that it will go on as predicted by Sri Chaitanya Dev. Just as we could not foresee everything 35 years back, so also we can’t foresee everything now. How it will all unfold is beyond our ability to foresee. I think we should remain open to possibilities, and faithful to our guru.
 
What concerns me is the great similarity between this perspective on the guru with that of my former husband’s view. With all due respect to Bhagavan Prabhu, who has done much to spread Lord Chaitanya’s movement and who we all know was one of the “chosen eleven”, still I feel uncomfortable with this perspective on the guru. 
 
My former husband Goursundar was also as charismatic and as brilliant as Bhagavan Prabhu. He wrote books, had a following, devotees adored him as a “pure devotee” long before the days of Iskcon gurus. No doubt if he had stayed around, he would have been one of the “chosen.” Of course, he did not actually take disciples, as Prabhupada was still very present, and he did not misuse his power in many of the ways that later gurus did. But the potential was there.
 
Fortunately for him, he left the movement some years before Srila Prabhupada left this world, and gave up his GBC and leadership roles. He didn’t want it. It was burdensome to him, and he also foresaw much of what was going to happen. He was a brilliant scholar and a mystic as well. Srila Prabhupada often said “he suffered from the disease of too much intelligence”, the flaw that led to his falldown, “thinking he knows more than his guru.”
 
What I find troubling here is that the last few sentences of Bhagavan Prabhu’s article sound very much like the philosophy espoused by Goursundar so many years ago. The focus is on the connection with Supersoul in the heart, rather than on the guru; truly this connection does exist, and it sounds really good. But please let me tell you my personal experience with this.
 
Prabhupada was the only Guru at that time, so it was more about focusing on Supersoul rather than on Prabhupada as a person directly. Not making a guru cult in other words. So because Goursundar was so brilliant, and such an excellent speaker, (and my former husband as well), I became very confused by what he was speaking. I was quite attached to Prabhupada, the person Prabhupada, like a father, a master, my guru, all of the above. So I felt frightened, for my simple love for Prabhupada as the personality he was, felt threatened. I believed my relationship with him was eternal and I did not wish to believe otherwise. Mine was a perspective of utmost simplicity, and since Goursundar was my husband of many years, though estranged at the time (he had recently left Prabhupada, left Iskcon and me as well), I was very susceptible to whatever he spoke. In a sense, he was like a guru to me.
 
So when Srila Prabhupada came to Hawaii soon after, I went to his quarters at the Honolulu temple and privately asked him about this exact same philosophy. I told him what Goursundar was saying, that we should connect with Supersoul, that the eternal guru was Supersoul, that making a guru with a personality cult was not as it should be, and so forth. It was a very good argument. But Prabhupada’s response shocked me.
 

When a campus doctor from Sheffield was treating one of its students for a minor ailment, he noticed that his head was slightly larger than normal. The doctor referred the student to Emeritus Professor of neurology, Dr John Lorber, for further examination. The student in question was academically bright, he had an IQ of 126 … Read more

  Balbir Mathur was born and raised in Prayaga, India, in a Hindu home. His father was in the army and he attended a British school where he was taught by Catholic missionaries. Like so many of his generation, he grew up with an inferiority complex about his mother culture. “I was led to believe … Read more

  “O Ganga, Yamuna, Sarasvati, Sutlej, Ravi, follow my praise. O Chenab, Jhelum, with Haro and Sohan, listen” The above verse written over 5000 years ago comes from the Nadistuti Sukta portion of the Rigveda. In chronological order the Rigveda names the rivers which once formed the geography of the ancient Vedic civilisation. The British … Read more