Devotees Working Together in ISKCON?
For devotees to achieve something wonderful, they must cooperate and work together under the direction of the acarya. Our leader is Srila Prabhupada. We should all be happily engaged in serving within his mission, but, alas, so many followers of His Divine Grace lament that his movement has been hijacked by leaders claiming to be ‘new gurus’ worthy of worship…
To be able to work together, devotees who now receive worship must defer to Srila Prabhupada as the exclusive worshipable guru within the institution he founded.
Srila Prabhupada was, of course, too humble to give this order. He was leaving it up to Krishna to inspire us from within to understand his extraordinary position.
The spiritual master is worshipped by accepting his instructions as our life and soul. Srila Prabhupada’s instruction with regard to initiations is very clear: those who would initiate after he left us would be acting as officiating acaryas. He never mentioned that they would be worshipped as if they were residents of the spiritual world or that they were infallible.
There appears to be no possibility of the GBC ever accepting this premise, even though it is entirely in keeping with the wishes of Srila Prabhupada. According to his teachings, the GBC was to always remain the highest authority within Iskcon, but the guru system that was introduced without his approval instead places the person who performs the formalities of initiations above and beyond the authority of the GBC. This is nothing but the flagrant disregard of the order of their guru.
The leaders of Iskcon are still devotees, no matter how bewildered they have become under the influence of this intoxicating program of worship.
Therefore, we must pray to Srila Prabhupada that they may become enlightened, but their offenses to Srila Prabhupada may be too great for our prayers to have effect. Therefore, we should also pray to Lord Caitanya who is the most munificent of all of Krishna’s incarnations and who will hear our prayers if we are sincere chanters of the Holy Name.
At this point, seeing the determination of Iskcon’s leaders to reject the set of instructions given by Srila Prabhupada concerning initiations, it might be time to consider setting up a separate world-wide organization based on his actual teachings, emphasizing the importance of participating in the sankirtana yajna, the publishing of his original books, a monthly magazine for mass distribution and initiations by officiating acaryas.
Your servant,
Locanananda dasa
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Pamho Lokanatha prabhu,
I support your idea of reviving the iskcon Prabhupada intended it to be, let me know if you get any other supporters. Personally I believe it is possible if we have faith in Prabhupada’s instructions and the power of cooperating together to carry them out. The fact is Prabhupada said your love for me will be shown by your cooperating together for my mission and what was most displeasing to Prabhupada was devotees fighting, he always said the real solution to our disagreementswas doing Harinama together.. Anyhow I don’t really know where most of Prabhupada’s initiates are right now and I’m just seeing some very nice Prabhupadanugas every week or in two weeks, you know Damaghosa. But personally to me the only gauranteed way of restablishing Prabhupada’s mission in the west is arranging things just the way Prabhupada originally set it up with communities living in and around temples working together in cooperation. But I have to admire Damaghosa for maybe twenty years holding meetings for sincere Prabhupadanugas to attend. Maybe right now its not possible to get it like it was, but I really believe it is possible by Shri Chaitanya Mahaprubus and Prabhupadas mercy the only problem really is lack of faith in Shrila Prabhupada’s all perfect legacy he left of a moverments to examplyfly simple living and high thinking, just a few really qualified devotees, a small percentage of devottees on the planet could influence in a very positive way a large percentage of the human beings on the planet with the highest benediction of life. Prabhupada showed us the way by his utter faith in his gurus instructions to him, and his surrender to them as his life and soul. He founder Gaura’s movement worldwide, just one pure devotee can save a whole universe Prabhupada said so our real problem it seems is a lack of pure devotees, becausereally where everthere is an empowered representative of Lod Chaitanya you will find many nicevaishnas being made. Thats one thought but thank you very much prabhu for speaking out like this, I just wanted to offer my support to you. I was initiated by Prabhupada in 71 and ONLY BY pRABHUPADA PRAYING FOR ME i BELIEVE i’M STILL CHANTING AND SEEING MUCH BETTER DEVOTEES THAN MYSELF and its really an ocean of bliss, but still there is so few of us and almost every week, if only we could do what your talking about.All glories to Shrila Prabhupada and your service, we are eager to have really seriouse devotees of Prabhupada like your good self joining us, always the more themerrier but were all about just studying Prabhupada’s books together, kirtan and prasadamand trying to live sufficiently and closer to devotees.Anyway these things are going on mysteriously really, I don’t know whywe don’t have moredevotees comming we have about 12 devotees regurly meeting but its amasingly sweet and ecstaic for all of us every time…