Judging Spiritual Empowerment

Krishnakant, editor Back to Prabhupada, IRM, at, Mar 20, 2010 at 11:54 AM: As usual the article below has been first published in the IRM’s official magazine Back To Prabhupada. BTP is being distributed for free to ISKCON devotees and people interested in Srila Prabhupada’s teachings worldwide. If you would like to receive BTP as well, simply send us your full name and street address via yahoo or the following email address: irm@iskconirm. com.

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Judging spiritual empowerment

Devotees, regardless of their philosophical standpoint, sometimes complain that the IRM’s method of determining the bona fide path to follow via philosophy and the examination of Srila Prabhupada’s instructions, to be too “lawyerly” or “intellectual”. Instead, they advocate a much more “practical” approach to determining who is on the right path. And this is via showing one’s “success” through one’s “preaching” efforts. Preaching success in turn is usually demonstrated by acquiring or constructing real estate in the form of temples and also, sometimes, by the number of prasadam plates and books distributed.

This, it is argued, shows not only that they are “successful”, but more importantly their success “proves” that they are “right” philosophically, and by extension “blessed” and “empowered” by the Lord.

This practical demonstration of “superiority” will settle all issues it is claimed, as it will then be clear on whose side Krishna stands. After all, they argue, we must “judge by the result”, and Srila Prabhupada himself is considered successful precisely because he preached all over the world, established many temples, and had many millions of books distributed etc. In this way, we see various gurus trying to demonstrate their “spiritual power” by, for example, attempting to write more books than Srila Prabhupada did or by initiating more disciples than he did. However, this approach can be proven to be incorrect:

1) Those of our older readers who lived through the “zonal acarya” years from 1978-1986 (“The Great Guru Hoax, Part 1”), will immediately recognise the above reasoning, for it was used by the zonal acaryas themselves to “prove” they were bona fide. Because, as hard as it may be for some newer devotees to imagine given ISKCON’s weakened state today, during that period, many more books were being distributed than today, and in the West particularly, many devotees were still joining the temples in large numbers. Consequently the zonal acaryas would use these external results as evidence of their divinity. A good example was Harikesa. Due to the massive book distribution he arranged throughout Eastern Europe, and the consequent large amounts of funds he was able to donate to the Mayapur project, he was hailed as truly blessed by Krishna, and Srila Prabhupada’s “successor”. And yet history has proven, that despite all the external “success”, these “acaryas” were anything but blessed by Krishna, with Harikesa showing how advanced he actually was by leaving his ISKCON guruship behind and even advocating a philosophy which has been, at least in part, opposed to the teachings of Srila Prabhupada.

2) Srila Prabhupada’s empowerment came from the fact that he followed his spiritual master’s order without deviation. And it’s not that he only began to do this when he was hugely “successful” in the West after 1966. No, he was doing it for many years prior to this, starting Back To Godhead magazine in 1944 for example, even whilst running a business and maintaining his family. Yet the above reasoning would have wrongly concluded that during this period Srila Prabhupada was not “empowered” since he did nothing other than run one magazine. Indeed, we can see that one of the guru hoaxers, His Holiness Bhakti Charu Swami, thinks Srila Prabhupada was not even preaching at this time:

“And look at Srila Prabhupada: He became involved in preaching after he got out of householder life.”
(Text PAMHO 6457480, Fri, 31 Jan 2003 04:32 +0200)

3) Even if we accept external output as the method by which to determine empowerment, since all devotees are actually being “made” by reading Srila Prabhupada’s books and the process and system he gave us, it would only tell us that Srila Prabhupada himself, and not someone else, is empowered. Because no one has even really attempted to establish his own movement, and through his own strength achieve anything. Rather, they simply take the credit for Srila Prabhupada’s work.

Spiritual empowerment comes solely by following the order of the spiritual master with a view to pleasing him, and this may or may not result in something external, as we saw in the life of Srila Prabhupada (pre- and post- 1966). And, as we have documented without challenge, such following has not been occurring at all in ISKCON since Srila Prabhupada’s departure, and hence it was for this reason that the IRM was needed in the first place. Such disobedience will continue unless devotees begin to adopt the methodology of the IRM in reading and relating what Srila Prabhupada stressed in his writings, rather than following the current practice of substituting this for “big projects” to falsely convince oneself that one is receiving Krishna’s “blessings”!

Please feel free to write to me at the following address with any comments whatsoever:

irm@iskconirm.com.

Thank you and Hare Krishna.

Yours in the service of Srila Prabhupada,

Krishnakant