[PD: “It does not matter how many times a bogus Jesus falls down, once is enough to prove he is bogus.]
Noelene: And once is enough to prove he is a debaucher?
[PD: I simply do not find shastra supporting that members of our parampara are subject to failure. Krishna says “acharyam mam vijnaniyam,” the acharya is as pure as ME. So if someone says they are a continuation of the parampara, when they fail, it proves they are not part of the parampara.]
** N: That is my point. As long as you and ISKCON engage in inimical activities then feelings will be hurt, and you will both stay on your opposite sides of the fence, barking like dogs at each other.
[PD: This barking has gone on since the beginning of time, some people always say the successors to God are deviants, and some say the successors to God are pure. If we are to attain the eternal plane, we need to be connected to the eternal, whereas you keep implying that we need to connect to relative truth, that is not absolute truth.]
** N: You will also not listen to reason, so you have proved my original hypothesis that people leave ISKCON and go to the ritviks not because your doctrine is convincing, but because they have been hurt.
[PD: No, we argue that there is a standard for guru — acharya, and the falling down are not on that platform. This is not about personal issues, it is a matter of siddhanta. How can we attain the eternal plane — by connection to the relativised plane?]
** N: They have had gurus who had no time for them, hardly knew their names, they were one among thousands, felt used and unvalued, estranged and alone, and an increasing sense of letdown and bitterness, but to abandon one’s guru, even if he has never acted as a guru — only a ceremony performer and daksina acceptor, is socially unacceptable in ISKCON.
[PD: OK, now we are making progress, you are worried about socially acceptable standards and we frankly have no concern for these things. Of course, if ISKCON was even slightly concerned with social acceptable ideas, they would never say that God’s successors are illicit sex, and they would have listened to us and curbed the molesting problem?
The idea that God’s successor gurus are deviants is not acceptable in human society. There is no bona fide religion that teaches we should worship the fallible link.]
** N: When however, a socially acceptable reason is there for them to renounce their discipleship — the falldown of their guru — the bitterness is given vent, and they damn the whole business and turn ritvik.
[PD: OK, so my challenge is, show us who the living guru is then? If you have one, tell us who is that person and lets examine that person and his writings, position papers and so on. I never said that there is no living person, I said you have failed to tell us who this person is?]
** N: It is my belief, Tim, that if you were once to experience a guru whose only priority was your advancement, your understanding, your clearing of doubts, your advancement in vaisnava qualities, your ability to separate reality from illusion, and to that end, who had all the time in the world for you, you could not give him up, even if he afterwards fell a million times.
[PD: If someone has given me help, and he falls down into illusion, I would accept him as a shiksha guide (preacher or ritvik) and not the diksha guide. Many devotees have helped me, then blooped and even became atheists in some cases. What you are describing is the ritvik system, they “helped us on the path” but are not necessarily completing the path to the finish, so a preacher may help us, and that is the ritvik idea.]
** N: You would be so indebted, there would be no condition under which you felt yourself not his eternal servant.
[PD: OK, now you are placing forward our idea. Yes, a person who helps us on the path is like a preacher or priest, he connects us to eternal guru / messiah. Yes, the preacher or priest helps us, but they are not the eternal connection because — they may fall off the path. You are giving the essence of the ritvik idea, yes a preacher or ritvik helps us, but he is not the eternal messiah link because he may fail. That means he is “pointing the way,” but he may not stay on the path himself. OK, that means he is a representative of the link (a ritvik), he is not the link. You are now preaching our idea?]
** N: The appropriate proof is Bilvamanagala Thakura. The siksa is so powerful and so transformatory, that it transcends human conditioning, provided that the conditioning does not impose upon the siksa itself.
[PD: Bilvamangala’s guru had to enter the body of a prostitute to preach to him. OK, and this proves what exactly?]
** N: or example, professional Bhagavatam reciters are not gurus, because their goal is money, not the enlightenment of the audience. But if the reciter were to still have a desire for money, meet it in other ways, and then recite the Bhagavatam for the purification of the audience — it would be very powerful, and isn’t that what all our great householder acaryas have done?
[PD: So this is all as Aindra says “watered down truth,” why would we be interested in this when we can have the absolute truth?]
** N: Similarly, Cintamani had a desire for sex, or she could not have been a prostitute.
[PD: Yes, so Srila Prabhupada says do not fall off the path so your guru has to enter the body of a prostitute to preach to you?]
** N: But she did not allow that material desire to hamper her siksa to Bilvamangala, which shook him out of the same attachment. This proves that if one only has a desire to enlighten, and one has learnt the transcendental science, then whatever other desires are there, does not hamper one’s ability to be a guru.
[PD: Neither did Cintamani accept pooja as a diksha guru, nor is she listed in the chain of parampara gurus, so this is good, why don’t the falling down GBC gurus just admit they are not diksha gurus but they are merely giving shiksha (are ritviks).]
** N: Cintamani, when she was instructing Bilvamangala, was a guru. Quite likely, by the time she met her next customer, she was no longer a guru. Bipina Bihari, up to the time he offended Raghunatha Dasa Goswami, was a guru, and was accepted as such by Bhaktivinode, and later rejected by him. Did he give up his search for a bonafide representative, and take initiation directly off Raghunatha, or Rupa, via a ritvik priest?
[PD: Bipin Bihari was a special circumstance and not something we should do.]
** N: The Lord will always send you a guru provided you are sincere, provided you need one. Prabhupada said about false gurus, they are like false currency- one should not give up on the idea of currency simply because there are bogus imitations. Even if you could prove that every single one of the present ISKCON diksa gurus is bogus, it would not prove ritvik theory, that the only possible diksa guru is Prabhupada.
[PD: Yet you are basically agreeing with us, let someone who might fall (a preacher or priest) connect us to the eternal person. You are preaching our idea now!]
** N: When SP said that he wanted all of his disciples to be gurus, he certainly knew their conditioning, and that therefore, they could fall at any time. But “as soon as I am not following, I am no longer a guru” means that when one decides to take up a service of guru, one cannot predict in the future one will never fall down.
Only a nitya siddha can be sure of that. So as soon as a guru falls, he is no longer a guru, and as soon as he again follows the requirements of a guru, again he is a guru. A guru cannot be fallen. But he does not have to be a nitya siddha, either.
[PD: Right, when a person is not free from contamination he acts as a shiskha guru, for starters he cannot absorb the sins of others and accept worship as absolute because then he will degrade.
Srila Prabhupada says when we imitate, we will eventually become degraded (NOI). So that means, be honest, tell people we are only a preacher and not the messiah, and that is all we ask.
I think you are basically agreeing with this principle, preach, act as a representative, do not claim to be a messiah, and then you are a ritvik reprentative of the acharya, then everything is on the platform of reality.
Neither did Cintamani accept pooja as a diksha guru, nor is she listed in the chain of parampara gurus, so this is good, why don’t the falling down GBC gurus just admit they are not diksha gurus but they are merely giving shiksha (they are ritviks).]
** N: When SP said that he wanted all of his disciples to be gurus, he certainly knew their conditioning, and that therefore, they could fall at any time. But “as soon as I am not following, I am no longer a guru” means that when one decides to take up a service of guru, one cannot predict in the future one will never fall down.
Only a nitya siddha can be sure of that. So as soon as a guru falls, he is no longer a guru, and as soon as he again follows the requirements of a guru, again he is a guru. A guru cannot be fallen. But he does not have to be a nitya siddha, either.
[PD: Right, when a person is not free from contamination he acts as a shiskha guru, for starters he cannot absorb the sins of others and accept worship as absolute because then he will degrade. Srila Prabhupada says when we imitate, we will eventually become degraded (NOI).
So that means, be honest, tell people we are only a preacher and not the messiah, and that is all we ask. I think you are basically agreeing with this principle, preach, act as a representative, do not claim to be a messiah, and then you are a ritvik reprentative of the acharya, then everything is on the platform of reality. ys pd]
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