Author’s Preface to the Full Edition
These essays were written around 2018-2019 and were published as articles in the Sampradaya Sun whose editor is Rochan dasa. I have wanted to see this collection somehow formed into a book, and then distributed to the computer screens of devotees who are sincere about Prabhupada’s personalist teachings of Vaishnava dharma. Now a couple of very enthusiastic Vaishnavas, a model devotees intent upon seeing that Prabhupada’s actual tradition is kept alive in ISKCON and elsewhere, have fulfilled my wish. I am very grateful for this opportunity that the truth behind the most spurious of pseudo-yoga crap ever, The Journey Home, should be told to all the addle-pated sleeping zombies with tilaka who have gone somnambulistic whether in their old age or in the New Age.
The Supreme Personality of Godhead is Krishna, and we—each and every one of us—are His eternal servants. This knowledge and realization is the gift of Shrila Prabhupada, the Supreme Lord’s pure devotee who is none other than His empowered incarnation or shaktyavesha avatara. As stated in Shri Chaitanya Charitamrita (Antya.7.11):
kali-kālera dharma--kṛṣṇa-nāma-saṅkīrtana
kṛṣṇa-śakti vinā nahe tāra pravartana
“The fundamental religious system in the age of Kali is the chanting of the holy name of Kṛṣṇa. Unless empowered by Kṛṣṇa, one cannot propagate the saṅkirtana movement.”
Krishna consciousness is the greatest blessing that anyone can receive ever because these teachings comprise the essence of philosophy and the goal of yoga: pure love for Krishna. Our relationship with Krishna is eternal. The pure science of bhakti was inaugurated in the Gaudiya tradition by Krishna Himself in full His avatara-lila as Lord Shri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. The dance of ecstasy in the sankirtana dust of His lotus feet is not only liberating from the endless pangs of samsara, but it imparts us fully with understanding eternity, knowledge and bliss in the highest sense. And that is the sense of being always sheltered by the Supreme Lord Shri Krishna in His eternal domain of Vrindavana.
The New Age Mayavadic Invasion
There is a great need for understanding the dilemma of the New Age Mayavadic Invasion into ISKCON. This phenomenon that has seen the rise of the motivational guru, the gymnastic yogi, and the pretended yoga master hawking his books at the Tantrik Fest. Many imposters have jumped into the forefront from the ranks of ISKCON, led by the ghost of a bogus Vrindavana Babaji. Some of what is often found on book tables where Prabhupada’s books are distributed is a far cry from any sort of genuine spiritual teachings within any sort of genuine dharma whatsoever.
Mayavada comes in many crooked and deceitful packages and incarnations. The hobgoblin of impersonalism arrives well dressed in a convenient outfit or costume. He may be attired as orange-clad yogi whose focus is humanitarian welfare activities—even if they are meant only for the temporary benefits of the body. The Mayavadi speaks seductively and appears knowledgeable—and destroys all chances for liberation from matter.
Impersonalists, who are on the path to hell because they think of themselves as somehow having become “one with God,” do not immediately reveal their misleading notions. They do so delicately, like a spider spinning a web. They know how to attract deluded persons to their clutches through sahajiya-like presentations, and then lead their followers to regions of daarkness where there will be no opportunity to become Krishna conscious.
Impersonalism is the green light for the syndrome of change disease wherein the result is always “kill guru to become guru.” Becoming guru is dead simple these days when a “motivational guru” becomes honored for speaking rubbish. Yoga exercises are fine in their place, but Prabhupada did not want them taught for money in purpose-built sweaty yogashalas next to the temple rooms of Shri Radha and Krishna. Neither was ISKCON founded to sanctify homosexual weddings as has happened in at least one center. Farms means farming, not a devotee Disneyland where Mickey Mouse wears a shikha.
The spiritual master, always humble at the feet of the Lord, is the extreme opposite from the self-absorbed charismatic figure who needs constant worship of crowds of followers. There is a difference between the humble bhakta and the slick poser guru who hobnobs with the very wealthy on cruise ships, or in helicopter tours; and who demand parades of worship at the very birth place of the Supreme Lord. Guru’s validation is not affirmed by the presence of a crowd of weak-minded “disciples” who fawn at his every move. Rather the genuine spiritual master is the transparent via media to the previous very genuine acharya gurus in the line of disciplic succession all the way back to Krishna’s lotus feet. One becomes guru through serving the previous guru and, when he is pleased, a new link in the sampradaya arises. Guru is not pleased by greenhorns who usurp his position with a theatrical performance of saccharine imitations and subtle intimidations.
Shrila Prabhupada often admonished his disciples that “he has given us everything.” As a genuine purport of the Supreme Lord he cautioned that there would never be any need to add, to subtract, to modify, to alter, to re-think, to re-manufacture, or change anything that is embodied within his absolute teachings of Krishna consciousness. He taught only the highest and most personal form of love of Godhead as embodied in the trachings of the Gaudiya acharyas.
Since his message is non-different from the perfect message of Shrila Vyasadeva, and he is the acharya of the torchlight message of the Bhagavata, his words must be left unchanged and as they are—far from the curse of fault-finders who think that Shri Guru’s words are composed of mundane sound vibrations or grammatical marks of punctuation.
From the moment of Shrila Prabhupada’s departure in November of 1977 there has been a planned programme to usurp the throne of the acharya. To accommodate these treasonous efforts, unauthorized editing of the Bhagavad-gita As it Is was undertaken to accommodate the eleven “zonals.” Although each of these eleven have long since fallen away, the damage remains. With the 1977 hijacking of the ISKCON movement by a gang of self-designated Divine Graces, unauthorized changes in the very words of Krishna appeared. “Surrender to the spiritual master” became “Surrender unto them.”
Consequently, there was a mass exodus of the disciples of Shrila Prabhupada—even though His Divine Grace had expected each of his initiates to each qualify themselves for carrying on the disciplic succession. As the ensuing links in the sampradaya from Shrila Prabhupada gradually wore away nnd broke in the face of falsification of the Guru-vani, gradually Mayavadi elements creeped into ISKCON through the back door.
While the Governors of Hare Krishna Society were absorbed in misdirecting the devotttees via Mayavadic delusions that concern whether usurping the place of the guru can be effected simply by editing his teachings, and the debate raged on, from the side door a new menace appeared with The Journey Home. Nowhere has the assault on devotion been more pronounced than with the impersonalist drivel found in The Journey Home.
While going over these articles once again in book form, I am still in shock that the body of devotees have become so befooled and befuddled by agents of Kali who can talk them into wholesale Vaishnava aparadha against their own Founder-Acharya. It is not only shocking but disgusting that all courage has been lost in such weakling “devotees” in a psychological game that the leaders have approved but which is nothing but a cheap compromise with the devil himself.
Due to this change disease that is now afflicting the entire movement like a silent, deadly cancer, it may become difficult to say who genuine Vaishnavas are, and who are merely the Mayavadis in the dress of Vaishnavas. A cloud of delusion has descended upon the community of Krishna consciousness and the contamination of Mayavada has spread to Prabhupada’s temples everywhere.
This collection of articles from the Sampradaya Sun, one of the few very popular devotee journals brave enough to present this message as it is, should be read by each and every member and friend of the Hare Krishna consciousness movement in order to cast out the sinful influence of impersonal and shunyavadi degeneration once and for all. For the devotee, learning to discrimninate the poisonous influences of the black snake of Mayavada from the pure nectar of devotional service means nothing less than saving the soul from perdition.
I am most grateful to the devotees who kindly collected the articles from the net, while they are still around, so that they can be further distributed to the members of ISKCON who refulse to roll over and play brain-dead along with the rest of the congregation.
-Kaliya Mardana dasa Brahmachary