BY: ANANDA DEVI DASI, Apr 20, 2010 — UK (SUN) — The recent posting by the Sastric Advisory Council (SAC) of their paper, “Balancing the Roles of the GBC and the Disciple in Guru Selection“, has got to be one of the most ridiculous endeavours going. It cannot be serious. Under the heading, “The Responsibility of the Disciple to Test the Spiritual Master”, we find this peach of a quote:
“Therefore, if someone is attracted to a guru who is functioning outside of ISKCON, the best arrangement is that he or she goes outside ISKCON to associate with that guru in the kind of environment the guru has created. Thus ISKCON members are limited to choose as guru only qualified devotees serving in ISKCON.”
The devotees that are mentioned in this piece are called “someone” and ISKCON “members”. The members of ISKCON are all devotees who exist within the ISKCON organization, including the “gurus”. What has not been addressed is what about the ISKCON “gurus” who associate with gurus outside of ISKCON. How come the ISKCON “gurus” who have been openly associating with all sorts of gurus outside of ISKCON are still operating within ISKCON? Here we have a massive contradiction going on.
The idea of this posting from the GBC and SAC is to try and keep ISKCON clear of the influence of other gurus. Clearly this has not worked, because all the ISKCON “gurus” associate with gurus outside ISKCON. This has been well documented.
According to their own guidelines then, the ISKCON gurus should go outside ISKCON and associate with that guru in their own environment. Any ISKCON guru who has associated in this way, and there are many of them, cannot be chosen as a pure ISKCON guru according to the SAC’s own definition in this paper.
The testing of the Bona Fide ISKCON Guru is along the lines of, “Is this Guru representing Srila Prabhupada and the previous Acaryas in the best way? Am I capable of accepting instruction from this guru?”
Seems as though even the GBC are moving ever closer to the ‘Representative of the Acarya’ system. From the system of the grandiose uttama-adhikari Zonal Acaryas, who were gurus in their own right – the next link in Disciplic Succession, not representatives – to now the meek and mild representing Srila Prabhupada in the best way. And what is the best way?
For prospective disciples to be able to answer this question objectively, they would have to associate with Srila Prabhupada to determine that. It would certainly take longer than just one year. Who represents Srila Prabhupada in the best way that we know about since 1977? Certainly not any past guru that has operated in ISKCON, otherwise why is ISKCON so splintered, and why would we be receiving this type of posting in 2010 if we all already knew who represents Srila Prabhupada in the best way? It’s a self-destructive paradigm. If the most senior of gurus, sannyasis, temple presidents and devotees haven’t been able to define and represent the best way of Srila Prabhupada, then why on earth are we asking this question of the most neophyte of devotees?
And the next part concerns the poor little neophyte accepting a big big Guru in the future: Will he write back to my letters? Will he be able to personally serve his Guru? Will the Guru deal with me personally?
How do you expect to know what is going to happen in the future? Can the same be said about Kirtanananda’s future, Bhagavan’s future, Jayatirtha’s future, Satsvarupa’s future, Bhavananda’s future? Even the senior devotees did not know what was going to happen to them. Just read the senior devotees’ Vyasa Puja offerings to those “uttamas”. They were all wrong.
The devotees on the Sastric Advisory Council who wrote this must be ill-advised. This will be digested, mulled over and regurgitated. I am sure the Rtviks will pull this to pieces in no time, and have fun doing it. The GBC and SAC have made the blunder so many times now of putting their thoughts into writing, having had to have change their position from the last position, modifying their last position based on the behaviour of the last crop of gurus.
This new SAC paper is nine pages of serious humour.
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