Iskcon and the Guru Issue Part 17 – Iskcon’s Eleven Bogus “Successor Acaryas”

THE ENIGMATIC “APPOINTMENT OF ELEVEN SO CALLED GURU SUCCESSORS”  — by Puranjana das 

In late 1977, just after Srila Prabhupada’s ( untimely departure? ), the Governing Body Commission of ISKCON declared that eleven GBC had been “appointed by Srila Prabhupada as his guru successors.”

However, many of us (the rank and file members of ISKCON) doubted this “guru appointment” from the outset, since Srila Prabhupada had said that “guru by appointment” was a bogus misconception found in the 1930s Gaudiya Matha. He also said that guru cannot be made by “rubber stamping” a defective person, and so on and so forth.

One of the original 1977 ” contentious questions ” was, for example: ” Where is the specific evidence that eleven GBCs have been appointed as gurus “? We were told, quite vociferously and militantly at that time, that the eleven gurus had been appointed on May 28th, 1977. However, to date no one from the GBC has ever even shown where any gurus had ever been ” appointed ,” nor has the GBC answered this question with a solid document of proof in thirty three years.
(Photos of the eleven bogus “successor acharyas” here) >>   

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Iskcon’s eleven bogus “successor acharyas“

The Senior Deviators: Where are they now?

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KEY FACTS:

1. The above 11 bogus gurus inaugurated the great Iskcon hoax by pretending to act as Gurus even though they were only appointed as representatives. As seen, their unauthorised behaviour has led to grat fiasco and devastation in ISKCON.

2. Srila Prabhupada’s final signed directive on initiations to the movement keeps him as the sole Guru for ISKCON.

3. No directive appointing or authorising any individual or individuals as Guru was ever issued.

4. Currently there are over 250 new IskCon “Gurus” who have all either been self-elected, appointed or voted in by other self-elected or voted-in “Gurus”. Most of these new “Gurus” allready fell down, or have serious problems of keeping their spiritual practices following the 4 regulative principles.

Srila Prabhupada: “There are many jealous people in the dress of Vaishnavas in this Krishna Consciousness movement, and they should be completely neglected. A false acarya may try to override a vaishnava by a high-court decision, (2/3 hand vote) but Bhaktivinoda Thakura says that he is nothing but a disciple of Kali-yuga.” (CC.Madhy., Ch.1, Text 218 / 220, purport)

Iskcons 2/3 voted in gurus is a total concoction and anauthorized by Srila Prabhupada, who says that this process is bogus rubber stamp idea from the Gaudiya Matha.

Srila Prabhupada: “Why this Gaudiya Matha failed? Because they tried to become more than Guru. […] They declared some unfit person to become acarya. Then another man came, then another acarya, another acarya.” (Srila Prabhupada Room Conversation, 16/8/76)

Srila Prabhupada: “The result is now everyone is claiming to be acarya even though they may be kanistha adhikari with no ability to preach. In some of the camps the acarya is being changed three times a year.” (Srila Prabhupada Letter to Rupanuga, 28/4/74)

Many GBCs and even some of the eleven so-called ” appointed gurus ” have subsequently admitted that the ” May 28th appointment of eleven gurus ” announcement in November 1977, was and is a fraud and a hoax . The GBC has thus never shown how ” the eleven ” were meant to to become recognized as gurus in the first place? In short, the original ” appointment of gurus ” formula was simply a ” big lie. ”

Tamal Krishna, the master mind of that bogus guru system , admitted in the Topanga Canyon conversations that Srila Prabhupada never appointed any gurus, only ritviks. And worse, many other subsequent GBC lies have been discovered such as: that Sridhara Maharaja had been appointed as ISKCON’s instructing guru, that the GBC was supposed to take shelter of the founder of the homosexual and dissident murdering mayhem of the Gaudiya Matha, and so on and so forth.

Of course, this history has never been explained either? Who authorized the GBC to go to the Gaudiya Matha starting in 1978 for ” advice “? When did Srila Prabhupada say that the founder of the dissident murdering homosexual guru imbroglio , who is credited by Srila Prabhupada with destroying the Gaudiya Matha (Sridhara Maharaja), was now going to be catapulted forward as ” ISKCON’s Higher Authority “? And in so doing didn’t the GBC officially link themselves to ” guru contentions ” such as; the previous bogus 1930s guru appointment imbroglio and: the idea that homosexuals and dissident murdering orchestrartors are or were Vaishnava acharyas?

The Gaudiya Matha’s imbroglio is indeed itself a long and dark history, going back to what Srila Prabhupada says was their ” kill guru and become guru ” mentality from the 1930s –and dating back vast ages ago when false gurus first appeared. These links remain up till today, since the GBC’s main 1978 papers were created by Sridhara Maharaja of the Gaudiya Matha, and to date these papers are still considered as bona fide parts and parcels of authoritative GBC documents.

To sum, the bogus guru appointment illegally consolidated the control of the assets of ISKCON. Therefore, the post-1977 leaders, most of whom were now officially advocates of the cult enforced ritualistic worship of child molesters , were able to legally remove most of the other rank and file followers to create their molester worship enterprise. This is also a MISUSE of the charity status of ISKCON, which has no provision to create the enforced cult ritualistic worship of homosexual pedophiles in its by-laws.

At the earlier point in time the evidence for the alleged appointment, and indeed Srila Prabhupada’s poisoning, was being hidden and suppressed. As it turns out there is no evidence of any appointment of eleven successors. The GBC even refused to accept a public challenge made in the Vrindavana India newspapers, offering anyone 108,000 dollar who could provide any factual evidence of this alleged appointment.

What is also well known is that the GBC leaders had a history all along, even before 1977, of vicious internal “zonal takeover wars“; mismanagement in general; mis-citing Srila Prabhupada; embezzling funds; engaging in illicit sex among some sannyasis; what Srila Prabhupada called “plotting and scheming”; and of course some of the leaders were known to have tendencies towards homosexuality and criminality. Much of this information is detailed in Srila Prabhupada’s letters, which were mysteriously hidden from the devotees especially after 1977.

Indeed, those of us who later tried to publish “the letters” were given death threats by Governing Body Commission leaders in 1984, and our associate Steve Bryant was murdered on May 22, 1986 for publishing and distributing the letters. The Berkeley police said that I was next on the GBC deviant’s “hit list.”

What has never been exlpained by the GBC is : “Why would Srila Prabhupada insist that persons with known defects had suddenly become worshipped ‘as pure as Jesus'”?

Anyway, as has been subsequently analysed, this “guru appointment” was merely a ruse used by some deviant “Governing Body Commission” members to consolidate “legal and financial” control over the assets of ISKCON, from where they could legally remove most of the other rank and file devotees and enjoy the assets of ISKCON. Indeed, more than ninety percent of the orginal followers are no longer in the institution.

In the service of Srila Prabhupada
Puranjana das / angel108b@yahoo.com

http://blogs.myspace.com/52199499

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How we all became gurus

Two facts about the guru hoax are not in dispute:

1) That in order to become a successor diksa guru in ISKCON one must have first been authorised specifically by Srila Prabhupada to act in such a capacity:

Srila Prabhupada: “Self made Guru cannot be Guru. He must be authorised by the bona fide Guru. Then he’s Guru. This is the fact…Similarly, bona fide Guru means he must be authorised by the superior Guru.” (Srila Prabhupada Lecture, October 31st, 1972)

2) That neither was this done, nor are the GBC even claiming that this is how their gurus became gurus. We will document here how every single one of the 250-odd current GBC gurus acquired their status, and it will be patently clear that it was not via being authorised to do the same by Srila Prabhupada.

The first 11

We already saw the admission that the first 11 gurus acquired their status via authorisation as ritviks, not gurus:

Tamal Krishna: “After Prabhupada’s departure, what is the position of these eleven people? Obviously, Srila Prabhupada felt that of all the people, these people are particularly qualified. So it stands to reason that after Prabhupada’s departure, they would go on, if they so desired, to initiate.” (HH Tamala Krishna Goswami, December 3rd, 1980)

Note the phrase, “if THEY so desired”, not “if Srila Prabhupada desired”. In other words it was a SELF-authorisation.

The next 3

In 1982, three more persons lobbied to also be added to the guru club, and they got their way, by getting the vote of 3/4 of the GBC at the time, which at the time, which meant necessarily getting the authorisation of the first 11 gurus, who were also all GBCs at the time:

“1. That all GBC be nominated as candidates to become initiating Gurus with the requirement that they receive the blessings of 3/4 (three fourths) of the GBC members present to begin their initiating role.

2. The following GBC members will take on the responsibilities of initiating Guru:

1. His Holiness Pancadravida Swami. 2. His Holiness Bhakti Swarup Damodar Swami. 3. His Holiness Gopal Krsna Goswami.

(GBC Resolutions, February 27th, 1982)

The rest

Then the rest of the ISKCON gurus we have today were ushered in via a modified GBC voting system as follows:

“…any GBC can present a diksa guru candidate before the GBC body. […] and upon majority approval of the body, he may take up the responsibilities of an initiating guru in ISKCON.” (GBC Resolution No. 3, March 30th, 1986)

There is no mention, nor is it even claimed, that Srila Prabhupada authorised the GBC to authorise diksa gurus on his behalf. Clearly, therefore, the authorisation is coming from the votes of the GBC alone. Indeed, the GBC have accepted this point:

Jayadvaita Swami: “That Srila Prabhupada “personally detailed the procedure for increasing the number of initiating guru[s]” is something we can only wish. Or falsely tell the Society he did.” (Jayadvaita Swami, analysis of the ‘May 28th, 1977 Conversation’, December 13th, 2003, accepted by GBC)

Personal examples

That guruship is not flowing from a direct order from Srila Prabhupada, but simply from a desire to be guru, which is then rubber-stamped by the GBC, can be illustrated with some examples of how these voted-in gurus took up their role. They acted not on some order from Srila Prabhupada, but some circumstance that led them to then apply to get voted in as a guru:

Sivarama Swami: He admits he became a guru due to the prompting of a would-be girl disciple:

“At this time I also was asked to take up the role of initiating spiritual master. I didn’t consider that this would be very conducive to my personal spiritual life and I was satisfied for others to do that service and that I would stay in the role of sannyasi, a preacher, siksa guru, GBC, and probably it was at Gaurangi’s* repeated prompting that ultimately I began to think seriously of that service and took it up.” (Sivarama Swami, Podcast, October 4th, 2006) [*at the time a young female devotee, and now a disciple]

Bhakti Caru Swami: He admits he became guru only due to being pressured to do so by others to step in because other gurus fell down:

“I became a spiritual master after some of my very senior and very qualified god brothers fell down. Therefore, I didn’t have any illusion that I was a pure devotee and I was infallible. Initially I didn’t want to take up this very grave responsibility of becoming a spiritual master, but since quite a few devotees were very determined to take initiation from me and were waiting for a long time, and since there was a lot of pressure from some of my senior godbrothers also, I accepted that responsibility.” (HH Bhakti Caru Swami, PAMHO Text 5992588, February 16th, 2002).

Sankarsana Das: He claims he has been qualified and authorised to be an acharya for 37 years:

“For the last 37 years since I surrendered at the lotus feet of my eternal spiritual master, His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, I have engaged my mind, words, anger, tongue, belly, and genitals only in the Lord’s service. Thus according to his divine instructions I am qualified to act as an acharya and am duty bound to do so.” (Sankarsana Das, May 26th, 2008)

Yet despite the fact he claims he has been qualified and “duty bound” to become an acarya for 37 years, he only became one a few years back when he managed to get the requisite number of GBC votes. Thus, he became a guru not on the order of Srila Prabhupada, but only when the GBC ordered him to.

Conclusion

Hence it is no longer even claimed by the GBC that their gurus were authorised by Srila Prabhupada. They are either self-authorised, or authorised by the votes of a managing committee. Thus, by their own admission, it can be shown that all ISKCON gurus are not authorised by Srila Prabhupada and therefore their position as ISKCON initiating gurus is spiritually illegal.