Why We Left You, 1984
BY: GIRIRAJA DASA
Feb 14, USA (SUN) — Here is a letter written by Alanath Swami to the GBC in the year 1984. It is printed in his book, "Search for Purity". Maharaj has collected there many historical facts, which shed some more light on what happened in those years.
Trying to serve,
Giriraja dasa
Why We Left You, 1984
All Glories to Sri Sri Guru and Gouranga!
All Glories to Srila Prabhupada our lord and saviour!
TO ALL GBCs and to whomever else it concerns.
Bogota 14-4-84
Beloved Godbrothers,
Please accept my prostrated obeisances at your feet. May Lord Chaitanya be merciful upon us all, so that we may help to push on with His mission to every town and village in the world.
The subject of this communication is one more sad news item after the disappearance of Srila Prabhupada. I feel it is my duty to inform you of the detailed reasons why the majority of the devotees including myself have (hopefully temporarily) renounced the connection with the GBC. (ISKCON's supreme spiritual authority).
The reasons are many, and if I try to give them all it would fill hundreds of pages. Let me stick to those essential ones which will show to all of you that we, just as thousands of Srila Prabhupada's beloved disciples, have been practically pushed out of the spiritual family founded by our Guru Maharaj for all of us. If I use harsh words to denounce the reality it is not meant to offend anybody. It shall be by the Lord's grace for the benefit of all of us and all those to come for shelter in this Krishna Consciousness movement.
Those who want to condemn us as demons and snakes please reflect on two subjects:
A. All our "contamination" is nothing more than a closely experienced agony of current ISKCON guru misconceptions as well as the clear knowledge of actual corruption going on within the leadership of this society.
B. Although all this information was made available to me from the very mouths of ISKCON gurus and GBCs, they are not even willing to discuss the sufferings of those who live under their so called shelter.
Also, I'd like to make one issue very clear from the beginning. We have neither been persuaded, nor did we join the movement of Srila Sridhar Maharaj. Driven to the point of almost hopeless despair (the so called privilege committee suggested suicide to me in Mayapur), we have lost our faith in the seriousness of the GBC body and therefore we took shelter of Srila Prabhupada's clear instruction to take advice from his godbrother Sridhar Maharaj. It will be noted in history that it was he who offered shelter to Srila Prabhupada's disciples when they were on the way to the material world. This was not for name and fame as over-ambitious persons will naturally conclude, but rather to do some service to his beloved godbrother. GBCs are expert and famous for badmouthing anybody who dares to criticize their megalomaniac life and governing style. So similarly they made everybody in ISKCON feel that Srila Sridhar Maharaj is our enemy, unworthy to be called by Srila Prabhupada his siksa-guru, even after the long time since the letter he wrote about their differences.
Srila Prabhupada lived with Srila Sridhar Maharaj in one house for years and years. He invited him to stay with him in ISKCON permanently. He was the only person to share Srila Prabhupada's Vyasasana. He said many wonderful things about him and above all he entrusted us into his loving hands for guidance after his disappearance, which the GBC took for five years in all their big failures like Tamal Krishna Maharaj, Jayatirtha, Hansadutta, and many more. Only after Srila Sridhar Maharaj could not tolerate anymore to see the exodus of Srila Prabhupada's beloved sons who frequently came to him in total despair, he started to pronounce strongly the immature nonsense many gurus were subjecting every-body to. The GBC turned around and condemned their very well-wisher.
We don't want to substitute Srila Prabhupada with anybody, but much less with one of the current zonal gurus. Those who claim we have left Srila Prabhupada's movement, please note that rather we have abandoned those who want to make Srila Prabhupada a mummy by deviating from his essential instructions about management (see letter to Karandhar 1972). They try to occupy his post regardless of the protests of the entire vaisnava community - Srila Prabhupada's godbrothers, virtually all ISKCON sannyasis (1984 Mayapur meet-ing), many of the newcomers after reading Srila Prabhu-pada's books, and his disciples (except a few who still dream that by licking somebody's boots they will be able to resolve problems or at least get to do some nice service for Srila Prabhupada). I have presented to the GBC body a paper studying the situation and proposing solutions at Mayapur 84. Though I had warned them that many devotees were on the verge of leaving ISKCON, they refused to discuss it.
If anybody who reads this letter has not yet received this paper which I presented to the GBC, please write to me in Bogota and I will send you a copy.
After reading this paper I received the following feedback:
"ISKCON needs immediately 30 to 50 more initiated gurus to be saved."
"I would not work personally with any of these GBCs or gurus."
Hridayananda Goswami
"I thank you very much for writing this paper. It has helped me very much and must be discussed in Mayapur."
Tamal Krishna Goswami
"ISKCON is very very contaminated. If the GBC is not willing to change that situation Srila Sridhar Maharaj's men are not that bad."
Panchadravida Swami
And also in my discussions on a personal basis I got amazing feedback!
"I am tired of this guru game. I want to gracefully back out of it."
Rupanuga das A.
"They are not ready to listen."
Balavanta das A.
"I am fighting these guys for years."
Atreya Rsi das A.
"They are just like old cardinals who don't want to move to make room for others until they die."
Kirtanananda Swami
"They are just like unripe mangos, but you have to be expert to recognize the ripe one."
Bhagavan Goswami
(Question: What about if the mango is rotten and is presented as the only zonal
savior?)
So much for elevated witnesses. But what will you hear when you ask those who have had to suffer? You won't believe it but you may cry anyway. Some astrologers in Navadwip announced that one guru would die this year.
"That is a good way to get rid of them." - ISKCON sannyasi temple president in good standing
"I hope they will fall down and I hope I will fall down." - One sannyasi regional secretary
It is a line without end, and most of the comments we never had to hear because the speaker had already fallen back to the material world. Also Panchadravida Maharaj, after speaking about the difficulties, had a dangerous attack of honesty and compassion which moved him to write his famous paper. This won applause from almost everyone and curses from the exposed gurus. Of course he saved himself in Mayapur by condemning all his newly earned friends as envious snakes which had contaminated our poor gurudevji. North American Temple Presidents in their meeting in 1982 analyzed the situation by the suggestion to publish a magazine with all the GBCs sitting in a circle, one scratching the back of the next. A title was suggested - WHO THE HELL DO THEY THINK THEY ARE?
Please don't laugh. The most outspoken presidents in the meeting were threatened to be kicked out right after the meeting by ISKCON's famous morality defender B...... Swami.
Now let us come to the serious philosophical misinterpretations of our Siddhanta (final conclusions) by GBC standards:
1. They teach (or sometimes only practice) that the guru is the body of the diksa-guru instead of the inspiring divine principle which may be delivered by so many persons (siksa-gurus). Thus they have destroyed in uncountable cases the faith of their own initiated, and also have destroyed the enthusiasm in the experienced preacher to inspire new devotees to take shelter of Krishna. (Very frequently older devotees say: I still work for ISKCON, but I would not preach for any of those gurus).
To truly understand this point I recommend to you to read in the Chaitanya Charitamrita everything that is said about siksa and diksa-gurus (Use the index). Or if you want to be bold, read the book Sri Guru And His Grace, which describes the initial talks held between the ISKCON GBCs and Srila Sridhar Maharaj after Srila Prabhupada's disappearance (available from Guardian of Devotion Press, San Jose).
2. They use mundane "divide and conquer" techniques and thus instead of inspiring love and trust and the mood of Lord Chaitanya, they contaminate the preaching field with worldly desires, untruthfulness and total insecurity, which is only counteracted by daily japas and reading Srila Prabhupada's books.
3. They have changed the position of the temple president into a zombie-like job, whereas during Srila Prabhupada's time and in his instructions it is confirmed, the temple president is supposed to be a full scaled leader with only advisers above him in case of emergency.
4. They have invented the regional secretary, most times another zombie job, to be able to centralize all power, 100% against Srila Prabhupada's instructions.
5. They have castrated the complaint system. The so called privilege committee doesn't deal with problems, or if they ever do, nobody cares for their decisions. The temple president body has to struggle to avoid being suspended and if they do complain, even unanimously (such as their rejection in 1983 to limit the GBC to only 25 members), the GBC does not care a fig for it. All this results in such a crazy situation that unless you can present a photo plus GBC witnesses of some guru or GBC having sex or injecting heroine on the vyasasana he will remain always perfect, pure and absolute even if the oldest preachers have to flee from his zone or bite the dust in hopelessness. Hansadutta and Jayatirtha are the disasters of the past, but today we still have living examples and it will be a sad scene when these abuses come to light.
6. The BBT divisions are placed against Srila Prabhupada's order in the hand and control of INDIVIDUALS, of whom some cheat and abuse this power. By simply auditing their departments you will find 100% evidence. They are talking of increasing book distribution, but nobody wants to sell their collections to them. No BBT trustee wants to expose the other, so that they will not lose their own powerful position of the control of millions of dollars, which give them all prestige and influence by buying new zones or showing opulent results on their private "loans". Note on the other side the conditions in the zones of GBCs without BBT pocket. First of all they generally have to abide to the wishes of their powerful BBT "friends" to get any help at all, and on the other side they just collect money almost all the time so that they can show photos next Mayapur. This nonsense has destroyed book distribution in so many places and the devotees suffer without even knowing the cause of this misery.
7. They allow people to remain amongst them who are proven to be dishonest in their dealings. Krishna has to kick out some of them Himself. Otherwise they cover up for each other and never get their 75% vote to remove fallen members. And with such a fine crew they expect everybody to be happy if they vote on your life without even giving you a chance to defend yourself. They think that nobody else deserves the same trust. Thus they discourage their leaders and endanger the sacred mission.
8. They demand total surrender to the GBC from everybody though they themselves in many cases don't accept the GBC, and often pull dirty tricks with their absolute control over their disciples to force their will. (Such as Hridayananda who told the GBC that they have to give him Florida as his zone and remove Balavanta or he would leave with his disciples, or Bhavananda in Vrindavana, etc., etc.) And they disregard inconvenient GBC decisions such as NO KARMI RECORD DISTRIBUTION, staying for the Mayapur festival, buying BTGs (even while ISKCON's backbone is already broken), registering properties in ISKCON's name, allowing to be audited, no double marriages, two spiritual programs daily in the temples, etc. Whatever gurudeva wants, any means are justified. Those who complain are black snakes, demons, karmis, etc.
We still trust in Krishna and Srimati Radharani, but we reject corruption and preaching destruction.
9. They present themselves as highly self-realized, empowered world saviors, riding high on the achievements of their godbrothers, and everybody else is "schmuck". Shame on our sampradaya, where humility and kindness are an order even for the beginners. In which book can they justify such manners? And if they would be kind and humble, how happy we would be to serve them. What actually happened in Columbia and Latin America in the last six years cannot be explained in a few pages. No one knows where the old devotees are and what happened in Chile, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Panama, Venezuela, Mexico, and now Columbia. How many newsletters have to be written before you understand? I was kicked out twice from my service though I never disobeyed my GBC. You build up a zone, you love your service and the devotees and then his divine grace comes to disgrace you. He is afraid you might be loved too much, that he might have to live up to standard, or he may lose his absolute power which he is attached to more than he is attached to Krishna.
...Our Guru Maharaj Srila Prabhupada ...humble as a blade of grass, tolerant as a tree. Now you will say I am the greatest contradiction, but please my brothers, I am speaking on behalf of my suffering godbrothers and if I must be punished, let it be so. Krishna knows my heart. Only in such a mood can we reunite again in the biggest kirtan of all time. I am sure Narada Muni would be there to bless all of us with Krishna Bhakti. If we have no taste for chanting and hearing, no desire to share with our brothers, children, uncles, and all the vaisnavas or those aspiring, then what is wrong? Is the world too small for more inspired preachers? If you do not give then you will not get the higher taste for loving, spontaneous devotional service, free from adulterated speculation or fruitive desires. Are you not preaching that every day? Where is this spontaneous (raganuga) devotional service going to come from? Political gurus worried about their influence, fame, bank accounts, enemies and friends, are they going to substitute the humble sadhus (of which we have in ISKCON quite a few), who only want to give and get Sri Krishna, sold out to Srila Prabhupada, who wonder about looking for those who want to hear the latest news of Lord Chaitanya's ecstatic preaching pastimes?
Dear Brothers, we have not left you to join the Baul Sampradaya or any other concoction. We have taken shelter in Srila Prabhupada's instructions and we are waiting for you. We love you and want to be with you. We want to remember Srila Prabhupada and work for him bigger and bigger and bigger, while we become smaller and smaller right at his lotus feet. And please take care, even if you condemn us, there are many of us right with you, attached to their services and to the devotees they made by Krishna's mercy. That is what keeps us. We cannot allow what we are doing all together. The brainwashing was more complete there. Nobody trusts anybody. All will leave eventually if you don't understand our plea. We don't want your US$ 50,000.00 bathroom, or to have everyone chant our name all day either. We don't want to copy your mistakes to share some of your anarthas. IT IS THE GBC'S DUTY TO BRING ALL TOGETHER AGAIN.
If you think that can be accomplished by screaming surrender into all directions then you are in a big illusion. As a matter of fact, in the meantime, while you may research the subject, we want to preach undisturbed the movement of Lord Chaitanya. There is no more need for proof for any intelligent, honest persons, though if you are not receptive you may force Krishna to embarrass this sampradaya even more by publicly exposing more and more gurus to come down. Hansadutta Swami said:
"The lie I was living was so big that I could only maintain myself in the vyasasana every day by getting drunk first."
Two years you kept him there drunk in his vyasasana. What more is there? What more do you want to see until you understand that Krishna is displeased? Srimati Radharani disappeared from Sridham Mayapur. Why do you think that happened? You all know, come to your senses. We are not the OWNERS OF ANYTHING. WE ARE THE TRUSTEES ONLY ON BEHALF OF SRILA PRABHUPADA. Trustees don't fear to share the trust because they know that they are not the owners anyway. You are not the owners of your zones, nor godbrothers, nor disciples, nor bank accounts. If you are not willing to share the full trust with others then you have fallen to the level of a thief. Everything is allowed except consulting with Srila Sridhar Maharaj. Then you are no longer a member of ISKCON, but an outcast.
You push us out, one by one, group by group. You may as well stay alone. Twelve gurus and their disciples; the others, where are they? What are you going to say when you meet Srila Prabhupada again? (however long that may take) "All your disciples were envious of us but it does not matter. Here, look at my disciples." No, you are going to be smart. You'll tell him, "Your godbrother Sridhar Maharaj, he destroyed your mission."
But don't worry as long as you can explain to Srila Prabhupada this unfortunate letter. I wish you all the best on your journey back home. Please pray for me. The mercy of the vaisnavas is all that can save me.
Your worthless servant,
Alanath Swami
