KCD’s Monthly Podcast – May 2024

Podcast transcription:

Ever-Changing “ISKCON” Paradigms:
(Institutional Elitism Replaces Zonal Megalomania)

First of a Two-Part Series

by Kailäsa Candra däsa

HARIÙ OÀ NAMAÙ

When His Divine Grace Çréla Prabhupäda left physical manifestation in late 1977, what was his wish for the management of his branch of the Hare Kåñëa movement? It seems only logical that something strongly akin to the managerial style and form that he first inaugurated in the mid-Sixties should remain how he wanted management to be continued. For the eleven years he was here, despite the formation of the Governing Body Commission in the early Seventies (an expansion), his management paradigm did not ACTUALLY change in either essence or its practical day-to-day implementation.

His management paradigm was prescriptive. The prescription was the rite: It included the äcära, vicära, and pracära which he authorized for his disciples. It was meant to purify his initiated disciples, including those who he recognized as managers or sannyäsés. It was meant for each and every one of his disciples to become a perfect Vaiñëava, which would mean that they were meant to become gurus in their own right via the rite:

“Everyone will take, all my disciples. If you want, you can take also, but if you follow. They are prepared to sacrifice everything, so they’ll take the leadership. I may, one, go away, but there will be hundreds, and they’ll preach. If you want, you can also become a leader. . . Everyone, all my disciples, they are leaders. As purely as they follow, they become leader. If you want to follow, you can become a leader. . . Leader means one who has become first-class disciple. He is leader. Evaà paramparä-präpta: One who is perfectly following.”

The guru must be a very perfect man. Following means following the prescription, and after that, you can be guru. The real leader gives the prescription for spiritual perfection, and the conditioned disciples following him accept the prescription.

As such, Prabhupäda’s paradigm was prescriptive. Analogously, he was the perfect, head physician. His appointed and recognized servants were the authorized internsin training meant to help treat the rest of his disciples as they entered various treatment centers, whether already initiated or in the process of qualifying for initiation.

Here are three excerpts demonstrating this:

“. . . reading of the literature and hearing of the chanting is the medicine, and prasädam is the diet. So, if diet and medicine are properly administered, the disease of mäyä will be cured. But the physician must be always healthy. People may not say, physician is ill thyself. That means the preachers must be of highly elevated character, following strictly the rules and regulations and chanting regularly . . .”

“Those who come to learn must admit that they do not know who they are, or do they know Who is God, and they must be prepared to take to this process. If I go to the physician and ask him will you please tell me all about medicine and I will write it down is that possible? No. You must take to the process. You must enter the medical school, take your internship and do so many things. Like this: If you want spiritual knowledge, you must take to the process and follow the principles.”

“Spiritual life means to become pure, and chanting Hare Krishna will automatically make you pure. But just as when a physician prescribes a certain medicine, he also describes the conditions under which the medicine will be most effective. . . the chanting will have the most effect if you can abide by the principles of purified living.”

His bhakti yoga process entails following the yogic principles demanded by Prabhupäda, which are herein compared to the prescription of the expert physician. Prabhupäda was that expert physician. The process he gave was PRESCRIPTIVE. It was a set process of actions and principles. The managers also had to follow the prescriptions, but they were authorized to treat devotees who were inferior to them.

The process Prabhupäda gave was NOT an enterprise. The centers were never meant to be enterprises. The temple presidents, sannyäsés, and commissioners were not authorized to concoct their own ways and means in order to treat or train anyone in his movement.

The expert Äcärya, the Founder-Äcärya, the Sampradäya Äcärya, was meant to sit upon his own divine throne, kept in the center, and to be known as always superior to the managers who worked under him according to his directions. Those men, even if they became regular gurus (which none officially did), were to keep the Founder-Äcärya as the only man to be worshiped. This was the prescriptive formula.

One side note: As per what was introduced last month, quotes from purports and excerpts from letters will not be attributed in the podcast itself. Their sources are found in the Endnotes. Aside from this, another innovation introduced this month is sub-headers, which will be read as they are, i.e., never as complete sentences.

When Prabhupäda’s paradigm was changed, his movement deviated. In the Spring of 1978, so-called gurus divided up the world into guru zones after he departed, and those radicals were then on their own. They wanted their enterprises, and they were able to manipulate them into effect. They were never authorized to take exalted worship from their godbrothers, their godsisters, or newcomers, but they did so.

As soon as the zonal äcärya debacle was imposed, the medicine of Prabhupäda’s prescriptive paradigm was converted into an invalid prescription. It was then nothing more than a show-bottle, viz., colored water in a glass which looks like medicine, but, when you take it, it does not work. Worse than that, it was counter-productive to spiritual health and transformed the movement. Thus, the zonal disaster, which was implemented in a kind of pseudo-spiritual smash-and-grab, was the resultant, and it soon enough crashed and burned.

When those eleven pretenders, assisted by co-conspirators and hatchet men, received G.B.C. imprimatur, they were very ruthless in how they kept everyone under their thumbs. In effect, they gave the double-barrel middle finger to all of their godbrothers and godsisters, practically daring any of them to oppose those new god-men in their zones, which were imitations of G.B.C. zones, of course.

After an eight-year run, they couldn’t pull it off. They went way too far. They were not even regular gurus, yet they had the audacity to pretend to be mahä-bhägavats. In actuality, they were nothing more than imitation Prabhupädas, and the whole make-show was ludicrous. This became apparent to everyone in due course of time, but some (let us say, a handful) of Prabhupäda’s initiated disciples spotted the new paradigm for what it actually was right from the gate.

Prabhupäda had only authorized regular gurus:

“When I order, ‘You become guru,’ he becomes regular guru,
that’s all. He becomes disciple of my disciple. That’s it.”

This statement was from early in 1977, although approaching the halfway mark of that final year. Did he recognize any regular gurus? Did he appoint any of them? Actually, he did not. There is still so much false propaganda being bandied about—even on Joe Rogan’s podcast, recently—to the effect that Prabhupäda appointed eleven gurus to carry on his mission after he departed.

That is a false pre-supposition. It is a false reading of that all-important May, 1977 room conversation with his governing body commissioners, the vast majority of whom showed up. Most importantly, it was never a part of the prescriptive paradigm that Prabhupäda authorized.

He was asked two questions during that meeting. He was asked what to do in terms of initiating newcomers then, as a lot of them had remained uninitiated for months, because the leaders of the movement stopped the initiation process worldwide. They did so for a valid reason: They did not want Prabhupäda to have to absorb the saïchita-karma of these people in his very debilitated physical condition. The curtailment was a right decision by the movement’s leaders.

Yet, since that huge group was building even on a daily basis, Prabhupäda was asked by one of his sannyäsés (who was also a G.B.C.) what was to be done about it? His answer was to reinstate the rittvik process of initiation. It had been going on for about seven years, then it was stopped during this awkward interlude when His Divine Grace was extremely ill.

The process was known as initiation from Prabhupäda via a rittvik representative. It began in 1970, and it dominated thereafter until it became THE initiation system, even when Prabhupäda was on his Vyäsasan during initiation ceremonies. For example, your host speaker received both formal initiations from Prabhupäda via rittviks, but Prabhupäda was present at them and was the chief witness. He also spoke to me in 1972 when giving me my first japa beads at the Moundsville compound.

At my second initiation in 1974 (one day prior to the ceremony), Prabhupäda draped the brahminical thread around me and showed me how to chant the Gäyätri mantra on the fingers. I was alone with him at that time. Perhaps that was the initiation itself, but there was a large, formal ceremony in the temple room the next day.

In 1977, all initiations were stopped for some months. Then, as per Prabhupäda’s authorization in late May, the rittvik system was re-instated, but rittviks were not named until the second week of July of that year. As such, the first half of 1977 also demarcated a time stamp in which there were no new initiations by Prabhupäda in his branch of the Hare Kåñëa movement of Kåñëa consciousness.

As just mentioned, there was also a second question. This one was very touchy, and everyone can understand why such was the case. Prabhupäda was asked how initiations were to be conducted after he “was no longer with us.” That’s when he said that they were to be conducted by qualified gurus. He introduced the term “regular guru” at that time, but, although the term itself was new, the concept was not at all new:

“The statements of Thakura Bhaktivinode are as good as scriptures because he is liberated person. Generally the spiritual master comes from the group of such eternal associates of the Lord; but anyone who follows the principles of such ever liberated persons is as good as one in the above mentioned group. The gurus from nature’s study are accepted as such on the principle that . . . A person who is liberated acharya and guru cannot commit any mistake, but there are persons who are less qualified or not liberated, but still can act as guru and acharya by strictly following the disciplic succession.”

“13. He must not take on unlimited disciples. This means that a candidate who has successfully followed the first twelve items can also become a spiritual master himself, just as a student becomes a monitor in class with a limited number of disciples.

14. He must not pose himself as a vastly learned man simply by quoting statements in books. He must have solid knowledge of the necessary books without superfluous knowledge in others.”

Clearly, by these two self-evident references, an initiated disciple of a bona fide spiritual master—particularly if that spiritual master is actually a mahä-bhägavat—can accept disciples and initiate them, creating a connection to the guru-paramparä, despite not being liberated. The reference in Easy Journey is in relation to a devotee who is not yet liberated. This is proven when the six more advanced qualifications (from 15 through 20) reveal future levels of purified consciousness that must be attained by the monitor guru.

As such, whether you choose to call this advanced devotee a madhyam guru (meaning, a madhyam-adhikäré who is initiating disciples and taking their saïchita-karma) or a monitor guru or a regular guru, he is not at all limited to being a rittvik-äcärya.

The rittvik initiates newcomers on behalf of an established guru. The disciple is not an initiated disciple of the rittvik. The rittvik performs the ceremony. It is really no big thing. This system was essential to the prescriptive paradigm that Prabhupäda implemented when his movement was growing exponentially.

In May of 1977, he re-instated the rittvik system. New rittviks required to be named by him at that time (or very soon thereafter) for it to be immediately re-implemented, but they were not. This naming of the rittviks was delayed until July, although all of those eleven men had previously served in authorized capacities as rittviks.

Those services had been curtailed, but now eleven of them (there were far more than eleven rittviks previously active before the curtailment) were recognized and formally named to initiate newcomers as DISCIPLES OF HIS DIVINE GRACE Prabhupäda. That all the new disciples were initiated disciples of Prabhupäda was clearly stated in the document which named the rittviks of July of 1977.

The newcomers were not the initiated disciples of any of those eleven rittvik-äcäryas. As far as Prabhupäda actually naming any regular gurus officially, HE NEVER DID THIS! There is no record of it. He only named rittviks. It is mistaken knowledge to believe that rittviks become regular gurus after the spiritual master leaves physical manifestation . . . what to speak of any of them becoming maha-bhägavats or successors!

From Prescriptive Managers to Pretender Maha-bhägavats

There is no question that the transition from prescriptive management of Prabhupäda’s ISKCON movement (during the period in which it functioned properly) to what followed was both a transformation and a paradigm shift. It was a major, egregious, and completely negative deviation. Although it had an abrupt element, from the more accurate perspective, it was gradual. The paradigm shift that was part of The First Transformation of the Spring of 1978 was the resultant of a malefic weed that had been growing since the mid-Seventies.

Keeping Prabhupäda in the center as the real Äcärya (in the true sense of the term) was at the fulcrum of his prescriptive management system. All the centers (or temples) only worshiped the Supreme Lord and His perfect representative, the Sampradäya Äcärya, Çréla Prabhupäda. Keeping Prabhupäda in the center was integral to his management system operating in the right way:

“I wish that each and every branch shall keep their independent identity and cooperate keeping the Acharya in the center. On this principle, we can open any number of branches all over the world. The Ramakrishna Mission works on this principle and thus, as (an) organization, they have done wonderfully.”

This was the essence of Prabhupäda’s prescription, but it was completely busted down and converted in the Spring and Summer of 1978. Still, the centrifugal energy underlying that transformation had been tearing the movement apart previously. The First Transformation brought in the imitation of G.B.C. zones in the form of guru zones. This Prabhupäda never wanted nor authorized. Each of its eleven zonal äcäryas (as they came to be known) set up his own brand in his zone, and it never centered around Prabhupäda. As could only be expected, it centered around each guru in each specific zone that he controlled.

And the inmates came to both want it and love it.

In his zone, T.K.G. went so far as to order his disciples (along with the few Prabhupäda initiates) not to read any of Prabhupäda’s books but to read only T.K.G.’s books. As far as the governing commissioners were concerned, if they were not part of the pretender guru club, they had no power whatsoever, although their zones continued to exist. No temple president was going to listen to a G.B.C., because his advice might slightly (or even could wrongly be interpreted to) deviate from what the zonal äcärya wanted and was preaching to his zonal disciples.

A new orthodoxy emerged in 1978; actually, eleven new ones emerged. Each so-called orthodoxy was not meant to create perfect men but instead was meant to create—and did create—slaves and serfs. The guru zones functioned like Machiavellian kingdoms during the Renaissance, with the zonal äcärya as the prince of his principality. However, unlike the Renaissance, a bureaucracy did not emerge at this time.

That would come later, and it will be described in detail next month. Reading Prabhupäda’s books? You’ve got to be kidding me! No one was interested in that. That is not how you made “spiritual advancement” in the zonal äcärya’s principality. You made “advancement” by pleasing him with the pick, no longer measured in terms of book distribution. This was not only because book distribution was not emphasized (which was the case in every guru zone); it was more the fact that books were not even used anymore in order to collect from the public at large.

Recognition from the guru was both the means and the end. You were not for a moment considered advanced in anything unless you were pleasing him. The presidents became placeholders assigned to operate the centers for the purpose of the pick. Yes, this was going on to a significant extent prior to Prabhupäda’s disappearance, and that, at least in general, has already been mentioned in this podcast. However, the operation exploded to blatant and egregious proportions after the eleven gurus set up shop in their demarcated principalities throughout the world.

TATTVAMASI

Training in “ISKCON”? Forget about it! What came to pass in The First Transformation was a paradigm that was anything but training a transcendentalist in brahminical culture and spiritual life. Instead, it encompassed a kind of fever and covert pandemonium.

It provided a great deal of opportunity for sense gratification, which was integral to holding that scheme together. Any specific zone was under some limited control, but mostly because the inmates had to surrender what they collected out in the field to the hatchet man running theirplatoon on behalf of his commander in chief. A kind of “best of both worlds” ethic not only took hold but was preached.

The president operated his center with a skeleton crew of mostly misfits, space cadets, chelas, kick-mees, and pedophiles, all of whom could not get jacked up enough to hit it out in the malls or the parking lots. The only “training” was in collection (read, rip-off) techniques, except for basic ceremonial routines required to keep Deity worship going. That was mandatory in order to maintain the pretense that the centers were functioning according to the previous paradigm.

The real ISKCON tradition (notice, no quotation marks around the acronym) was already mentioned: Reading literature and hearing and chanting as the medicine. If the diet and medicine were properly administered, then the disease of mäyä would be cured. However, if improperly initiated disciples of bogus zonal äcäryas were up on the altar making offerings, how was that producing prasädam?

The real system required the chief physician to be always healthy. In terms of another analogy, this would also move down-line to include the temple presidents and the sannyäsés, who guided the rest under them. In the beginning (1966-77), they were genuine, and thus the movement was functioning according to its true tradition.

Prabhupäda’s movement was certainly not as strict as what Siddhänta Sarasväté’s tradition had established, but it was nevertheless bona fide. The head physician was the Founder-Äcärya, of course. In terms of the analogy, he was always perfectly healthy. Problems developed over time, especially in relation to the G.B.C. There was the first attempt at creating a centralization scheme. If the G.B.C. had fully followed through with it in early 1972, that centralization would have killed the movement:

“Do not centralize anything. Each temple must remain independent and self-sufficient. That was my plan from the very beginning, why you are thinking otherwise? Once before you wanted to do something centralizing with your G.B.C. meeting, and, if I did not interfere, the whole thing would have been killed. Do not think in this way of big corporation, big credits, centralization—these are all nonsense proposals. . . management, everything, should be done locally by local men. Accounts must be kept, things must be in order and lawfully done, but that should be each temple’s concern, not yours. Krishna Consciousness Movement is for training men to be independently thoughtful and competent in all types of departments of knowledge and action, not for making bureaucracy. Once there is bureaucracy, the whole thing will be spoiled.”

We shall return to this later in our presentation. The first fact here, as just mentioned, is that, if Prabhupäda had not interfered with the centralization scheme, the movement would have been murdered.

The movement had been run, and continued to be run, on a paradigm that was prescriptive. It was simple, even as it expanded. It was to think and act locally for the purpose of the center, which was part of an international mosaic benefiting its members and the world at large. This was the tradition established, but it was crushed in the late Seventies.

Again, what wound up as The First Transformation of the zonal äcärya debacle was already active in the movement in the mid-Seventies before Prabhupäda disappeared. Reading and studying, as a congregation and individually, were continually minimized. Bhagavad-gétä classes at night were disappearing almost everywhere by 1975.

The pick was everything. As a result, sankértan chanting on the streets was becoming almost non-existent, whereas it had been a daily affair at all U.S. centers in the early Seventies. Grains were eaten on ekädaçé, allegedly for energy for the pick. Personality cults were forming (especially for Kértanänanda, T.K.G., and Hansadutta), and these would morph into the eleven pretender mahä-bhägavat worship in 1978.

The prescriptive tradition was being replaced, but it was completely trashed by the Spring and Summer of 1978. A new “traditional society” was established as it replacement. One guru morphed into eleven so-called gurus. One movement, running via localized management at over one hundred centers worldwide, was converted into eleven movements run in different ways despite some prosaic similarities here and there.

There was carryover into this new so-called orthodoxy, but that, as could only be expected, waned over time. The First Transformation was a new paradigm. The ideas, values, and its belief system were adapted to pleasing each guru in his zone. The basic beliefs remained, but, after that, others on the margin were subject to transformation–rarely in totality but, more often, subtly and covertly. Few cared either way.

Eleven commissioners became the incumbent elites, the older elites, the “grand bourgeoisie” in effect. However, massive bureaucracy did not emerge in the first replacement paradigm. This is important to know and realize. Everything remained small scale and zonal. It was a non-technical, basic paradigm, not caught up in any sophisticated modernization from the outside world—at least, not initially.

The pick is what it mostly operated, as had been the case in the later stage of the declining prescriptive model. The businesses that emerged—for the purpose of revenue to the guru, of course—were small scale. They were not centralized. None of those gurus, their presidents, or enforcers were long-term oriented or group oriented. There was little vision. Everyone was programmed to seek ever-increasing, immediate results.

The techno-structure remained fundamental and particular. The guru represented his zone, not the movement. The leftovers (read, his godbrothers and godsisters) departed over time, and they were replaced by his own devotees, all improperly initiated. It was a new paradigm, no doubt, but it was also still semi-classical in terms of the Vedic matrix—at least, mostly so. It was one guru and one zone competing with the other gurus and the other zones, but those competitors, spiritually speaking, were all knuckle-draggers in terms of bureaucracy.

Individualism was allowed to stalwart followers in each zone under the guru. As far as training was concerned, like before, that almost all centered upon inculcating techniques to be used by collectors out on the pick. The First Transformation was utilitarian, and, from one perspective, it functioned in a kind of Protestant ethic—although certainly it had no relation to any Abrahamic religion, obviously.

In other words, the accrued personal wealth of the autocrat of the zone, the prince of his principality, could be compared to the personal wealth of a regional business owner. Another way of saying this is that what the oligarch’s devotees accrued for his glorification was the proof (allegedly) of the legitimacy of his system, his character, and his legitimacy.

There was a kind of eccentric but quasi-aristocratic idealization present in The First Transformation. This was never the case during the previous paradigm of the prescriptive method (until the weed gained momentum here and there near the end of it). Aristocracy would not have been the case, either, if the powerful men (after Prabhupäda departed manifestation) had acted as regular gurus. Of course, we all know well that they did not follow his prescription, in no small part because they were all budding sahajiyäs and never gurus in the first place.

In this late Seventies replacement paradigm—which, please note, completely and quickly wiped out the prescriptive paradigm—the centers then acted as individualized institutions dedicated to the guru of the zone. There was not actually a zonal consciousness: There was zonal äcärya consciousness with the individualized temple president’s personal values representing how his center was run.

The gurus remained eleven only for about five years of their eight-year truncated reign. They had many servants, yet they could not be bothered to take care of them, what to speak of training them. They instead imitated Prabhupäda, because the whole transformation was based upon eleven great pretenders being imitation Prabhupädas.

Everything remained quite decentralized. The G.B.C. had much less power than it had in the mid-Seventies–just before the pseudo-spiritual smash and grab which constituted the horrific and illicit takeover of Prabhupäda’s movement by the “äcäryas of the zone.”

Concerning the Sole Äcärya Model

In and around 1984, the zonal äcärya imposition was trending downhill badly, and it then began to be called The Sole Äcärya Model, initially by Professor Blueblood. That designation would certainly be appropriate for back in the day when Prabhupäda was the lone initiator in his movement worldwide. However, there are many reasons why the Sole Äcärya moniker should not have been applied to The First Transformation after Prabhupäda departed physical manifestation.

There was some carryover in 1978, and that was to be expected. However, in both formation and process, the zonal äcärya imposition was a different paradigm from what it replaced and destroyed. The following evidence of this comprises just some of those reasons.

First, there were eleven of them instead of one. Secondly, there were also eleven guru zones. Most importantly, the zonal äcärya scam was unauthorized, whereas what Prabhupäda established was completely authorized, along with his adjustments.

Next, none of those eleven were supposed to be anything but regular gurus. They did not act as regular gurus, however, as they imitated Prabhupäda. They should never have been called sole äcäryas, because they were all sahajiyäs and neveräcäryas at any time. Nor were they regular gurus, which is all that Prabhupäda authorized, although he did not specifically designate—at least, not officially—any of his disciples to having attained the status of regular guru.

Returning to process, when one zonal guru visited another one, both of those bogus gurus’ pictures were desecrating the altar worshiped by the local püjarés for that center. Prabhupäda only allowed departed, God-realized spiritual masters in his line of disciplic succession to have their pictures on the altar, and that never included any of his godbrothers. What “ISKCON” concocted was not the Sole Äcärya model.

The zonal debacle only carried over a few remnants from the previous Sole Äcärya model. Is there a record of any of those eleven men employing rittviks they appointed to chant on the japa beads or pour ghee at initiation ceremonies? However, back in the day, for all practical purposes, rittvik was the only process of initiation in Prabhupäda’s movement for all of the Seventies. Thus, proper application of a rittvik system for one guru is evidence of a Sole Äcärya model. Did it ever go down? If it did, was it widespread? Not much evidence of it, if so.

Because the zonal äcärya paradigm was empowered by both Swämi B. R. Çrédhar and the vitiated G.B.C., each of those entities could work to dis-empower it, which is exactly what transpired, especially in the Eighties. The Sole Äcärya Model of Prabhupäda had no such dependencies. The chief reason for this is that, for his movement, he always remained the only guru. As such, it could only be destroyed from within by his leading secretaries after he left.

In other words, those eleven men were not sole gurus on the strength of their own learning and personal charisma. In order to convert their actual (and temporary) status as rittviks into that of alleged maha-bhägavats, they took help (read, depended upon) an elderly godbrother of Prabhupäda and imprimatur from the vitiated Governing Body Commission.

As far as carryover is concerned, any and all of that was nothing more than perverted reflections of the actual Sole Äcärya paradigm. There can be no doubt that the paradigm established by those eleven great rogues was different from what was actuated by Prabhupäda.

Due to those two aforementioned dependencies, the zonal imposition had the seeds of its own destruction embedded in it. However, it could have—and you could argue, should have—lasted longer than it did. It had many enemies, but it also was making dedicated devotees (read, fanatics) who could have (and would have) upheld it if not for egregious personal transgessions that became known to everyone.

Also, the enmity of some of the second echelon (Prabhupäda initiates) against it could have been handled much better. Many if not most of those who crossed the river and linked up with the Navadvipa mahant could have been kept in “ISKCON.” That migration could have been avoided if those sannyäsés (most of them being sannyäsés) were given more power and put on a course to becoming the gurus in “ISKCON.” If the eleven had been bona fide gurus, they would have done just that, but they weren’t gurus. As such, they indirectly were responsible for Neo-Mutt, which plagues “ISKCON” to this day.

If the eleven had been bona fide, then someone like Jayatértha would never have engaged in his shocking displays of sahajiyäism. However, he did, and the eleven mismanaged that situation. That also proved to be counter-productive, but bogus gurus are prone to mismanagement.

Another issue was building: A movement-wide backlash. It was kept in check through deception and intimidation, but it built up power during its incubation period. When unleashed (by all those who had been feeling it for many years), its power was a potent force. That backlash lead to the North American temple presidents rebelling, which was a death knell for the zonal äcärya imposition.

However, the real reasons why the zonal scam collapsed was two-fold: First, there was the egregious manifestations of fall down by so many of those eleven “maha-bhägavats,” many (but not all of them) in the category of illicit sex, both heterosexual and homosexual.

Second: There was vicious infighting between gurus. Not all were implicated in it, but some pairs were antagonistic to their counterparts harboring similar bad intent and loathing. Thus, inimical camps were created (usually in contiguous zones), resulting in very deleterious propaganda about the other so-called maha-bhägavat.

This caused doubt amongst the Prabhupäda disciples, who represented what was still semi-legitimate (or quasi-legitimate). That doubt led to eventual rejection and faithlessness, although not necessarily loss of faith in either Prabhupäda or the Supreme Personality of Godhead.

It did lead to loss of faith in “ISKCON,” however. By the mid-Eighties, that doubt reached a boiling point and the whole movement was on the verge of cratering. Satan is ignorance. The First Transformation was based upon ignorance, and the paradigm created by it was full of it.

It was not the Sole Äcärya Model in its actuation, however. Avidyä is integral to its own mode, obviously, and ignorance is necessarily conducive to destruction. The zonal äcärya debacle was collapsing, and Satan saw that it was a time for a change.

From Pretender Maha-bhägavats to Bureaucratic Manipulators

“Krishna Consciousness Movement is for training men to be independently thoughtful and competent in all types of departments of knowledge and action, not for making bureaucracy. Once there is bureaucracy the whole thing will be spoiled.”

The change was the collegiate compromise introduced by Professor Blueblood. He initially got his foot in the door with his new management idea via a position paper from the latter half of 1984. More position papers would follow, each expanding upon the bureaucratic idea and taking advantage of the collapse of the zonal äcärya concoction.

The colossal hoax known as the fabricated, so-called “ISKCON” confederation is a pseudo-spiritual scam. It has no authority, and it has had no spiritual authority since early 1978.

Its gurus are bogus, and the disciples they create are improperly initiated. Its current bureaucratic management scheme is a paradigm that Prabhupäda never wanted, does not want, and has never at any time authorized. Its gurus are now nothing more than institutional employees or rent-äcäryas.

They are prone to egregious fall down often, because none of them were ever gurus at all. That has always been the case in “ISKCON.” In next month’s presentation (Part Two), we shall describe the current managerial regime in “ISKCON” in detail. Did The Third Transformation of the Hindoo Hodgepodge change that paradigm? Will the coming Fourth Transformation (already kick-started) change it? These questions and more will be answered next month. Wait for it.

SAD EVA SAUMYA

ENDNOTES

1 Room conversation, 11-2-77

2 Letter to (eventual) leading secretary, 6-27-68

3 Letter to leading secretary, 2-10-73

4 Letter to Elaine, 2-1-76

5 Room conversation with GBC, 5-28-77

6 Letter to Janardan, 4-26-68

7 Easy Journey to Other Planets

8 Letter to leading secretary, 12-22-72

9 Letter to leading secretary, 12-22-72