Krishna has given each and everyone of us the freedom of choice, and as in most things it is ones God given right to choose to believe and accept Srila Prabhupada as one’s diksa/only /Guru without intimidations by those who enforce the current status quo.
And in one respect this is the key to the whole debate.” Your choice”, to accept the July 9th letter as a matter of fACT, is part of the freedoms that God has given you.
The Iskcon guru policies from 1977 until today, have been policies of Harrassment, Black Mail, Intimidation, Violence, and denying converts their emotional freedom to examine the whole guru issue.
Acceptence of the July 9th letter could never be termed as radical. What is Radical is YOU the individual giving over YOUR right, to someone else, or a committee or another person, to decide for YOU, who, will be the intermediary between YOU and YOUR God. That’s Radical!
Any confusion between individual rights, acceptable group behaviour, legitimate religion and gurus is a product of woolly thinking, rather than a real problem of definition. And, the accountability of those using the process’s (eg) Iskcon GBC’s, their Temple Authorities, Websites such as Sampradaya Sun or Dandavats should be accountable to the wider community so as standards of behaviour can be enforced.
Your right as an individual to choose Srila Prabhupada as your Diksa/Intermediary is Your Choice and such a freedom that must be respected.
Kurma Das
pamho agtACBSP, dasami ki jai,
thank you for this interesting point of view!
When logic and reason fail to consider Srila Prabhupada as current link of our parampara (Prabhupada: “One should approach the current link, or spiritual master, in the chain of disciplic succession, Srimad-Bhagavatam, 2.9.7) your conclusion – freedom of choice — is surely a legitimate argument.
Throughout Prabhupada’s books we often find this: “You must approach a guru to whom you can surrender. Otherwise don’t take a guru.”
And this happens so often when a so called guru falls down, many devotees say afterwards, from begin with I didn’t want to become a disciple of such and such, but somehow was induced by others to get initiated.
When again reading ISKCON’s lawbook it is rather questionable that Srila Prabhupada would ever have spoken like this:
Strong determination to enforce nobody considers Prabhupada as spiritual master and to take every appropriate action against those who want to have Prabhupada as guru, sounds rather like emotional bullying than bona fide sastric evidence.
Rather amazing that so many devotees accept such a resolution.