The Boy from Chicago Meets the Boy Wonder in Delhi

Is Guru Maharajji God? Duh …

“The entire world is now full of many asuras in the guise of politicians, gurus, sādhus, yogīs and incarnations, and they are misleading the general public away from Krishna consciousness, which can offer true benefit to human society.”(Shrimad-Bhagavatam 10.3.21 Bhaktivedanta Purport)

Incredibly, there are several pages of The Journey Home dedicated to Radhanatha’s meeting with this fraud Lord of the Universe.

It is said that a missed opportunity is a thorn in the side, and that is the nicest thing that can be said of Swami Radhanatha’s The Journey Home. If the American Swami actually did meet all these counterfeit incarnations he waxes so eloquently about, then in his tedious yarns about his get-togethers with each mental speculator, he should at the very least have overturned their hackneyed philosophies. It is the duty of the Vaishnava to present Gaudiya arguments and utterly defeat the puerile speculations of any sham avatara who imagine himself into Divinity.

Tearing up false beliefs of becoming one with God and sending the phonies who preach such baloney running is the duty of the Vaishnava preacher. That is what The Journey Home should have been about. A Vaishnava cannot tolerate any philosophy that is offensive to the Supreme Personality of Godhead Shri Krishna and therefore he bristles and defeats it. Establishing the genuine darshan of the Absolute Truth is the duty of a true servant of the Supreme Lord. To the eyes of a devotee one does not become exalted by being a “Mayavadi collector” but he only degrades himself and anyone with whom he associates. For the devotee there is no room for a nano-second’s association with impersonalists. In life talking about the one you love is natural. Devotees love Krishna and enjoy discussing His pastimes Therefore the devotee reader of The Journey Home is left to wonder why after each meeting there is a feeling of being short-changed. Why are Krishna’s pastimes like lifting Govardhan Hill or killing innumerable demons not given as examples to utterly defeat the God posers?  The reader is left cheated by the limp handshake of compromise since nowhere in the book does Radhanatha establish the Vaishnava version by defeating the circus of Mayavadis he encountered. 

The Supreme Absolute Truth defeats all demonic speculations of Mayavada, and since this element of preaching Krishna consciousness purely is only visible by its absence, each of Radhanatha’s meetings become excuses for mere swami braggadocio rather than philosophical elucidation. The book itself should have ripped these asuric Mayavadis to shreds. But since The Journey Home falls flat in that category, it is a grand failure and a disaster that leaves the reader hanging in some impersonal void. For many stalwart faithfuls in the Krishna consciousness movement, this appears to be nothing less than a deliberate subterfuge to entirely mislead the reader and Prabhupada’s Hare Krishna movement.  

On page 186 Radhanatha begins his brainless narrative about his meeting with absolutely the most bogus, pretentious, and phoney “incarnation” that India has ever regurgitated to exploit the world: Prem Rawat aka Guru Maharajji. Incredibly to meet this imitation Krishna, Radhanatha took a bus all the way from Kulu Valley to Delhi. 

From the book: 

“Back in New Delhi hundreds of Guru Maharajji’s disciples crowded the ashram grounds waiting for a glimpse of him. I sat in a corner and watched. An elderly disciple struck up a conversation with me and then introduced me to a group of mahatmas, a title for those empowered to bestow Guru Maharajji’s “knowledge.” The mahatmas decided that I must meet Sri Mataji, the holy mother of their Lord. She sat on a cushion surrounded by admirers who whisked her with yak tail fans and listened to her every word. To my surprise she decided that I must have a private darshan with her son before he departed, so a mahatma escorted me to his room. Guru Maharajji was a boy of only thirteen years, slightly pudgy with hair neatly parted on the side. He introduced himself as Prem Rawat and explained that he was the successor to his father Sri Hansaji Maharaja. From amid the bustle of disciples Guru Maharajji brought me to a rooftop for a private meeting. There, away from the crowd, we paced together back and forth while he asked me many questions about my life …” 

Naturally out of thousands of adoring fans Radhanatha as usual was the one who was invited for the private darshan. There the Boy Guru encouraged Radhanatha to “take knowledge”—a process whereby this youthful fraud would simply touch the forehead of a follower and in one second transmit the divine knowledge that he was God. And that would be the sum and substance of the efforts of the “premmie.” Take knowledge and give money. Taking knowledge was their tapasya, sadhana­­, puja—everything and for all time. Radhanatha, as per his usual ruse, naturally declined Prem’s generous offer, but that was basically so he could go on and meet the next incarnation on his journey. Because if he had accepted—then the book would have ended then and there. 

Radhanatha continues …

“I was grateful for his attention and believed he could be an accomplished yogi, perhaps from a past life, but when I looked at myself there was no inclination to accept him as Krishna, the Supreme Lord of the universe.’Who is God,’ I thought is a serious subject not to be taken lightly.”

In the very next paragraph Radhanatha describes that he has been carrying a copy of Krishna, the Supreme Personality of Godhead that was given to him by Shrila Prabhupada in Bombay. He describes his attachment to his books, including several Mayavadi texts, and how he could never part with them. Yet somehow the American Swami missed the following words from the Krishna Book: 

“The Māyāvada conception of the perfection of the Absolute Truth without potency is due to insufficient knowledge.” (from vol.1, ch.31, “Songs by the Gopis”)

“The highest blunder committed by the impersonalist is to think that when the incarnation of God comes, He accepts the form of matter in the modes of goodness. Actually the form of Krishna or Nārāyaṇa is transcendental to any material idea. Even the greatest impersonalist, Śaṅkarācārya, has admitted that nārāyaṇaḥ paro ’vyaktāt: the material creation is caused by the avyakta impersonal manifestation of matter or the nonphenomenal total reservation of matter, and Krishna is transcendental to that material conception.” (from vol,1 ch.2, “Prayers by the Demigods”)

“The concoction of the impersonalist, that one can become God by meditation or by some artificial material activities, is herewith declared false. God is always God in any condition or status, and the living entities are always the parts and parcels of the Supreme Lord. They can never be equal to the inconceivable supernatural power of the Supreme Personality of Godhead.” (from vol,1 ch.7, “Salvation of Trinavarta”)

 “… it is recommended that one should hear, but not from the impersonalist rascals. If one hears from the right sources with right understanding, then his situation will be different.” (from vol,1 ch.32, “Description  of the Rasa Dance”)

“"From the subject matter under discussion, we can gain a clear understanding of the difference between the impersonalists and the personalists. The impersonal conception recommends merging in the existence of the Supreme, and the voidist philosophy recommends making all material varieties void. Both these philosophies are known as Māyāvāda. Certainly the cosmic manifestation comes to a close and becomes void when the living entities merge into the body of Nārāyaṇa to rest until another creation, and this may be called an impersonal condition, but these conditions are never eternal. The cessation of the variegatedness of the material world and the merging of the living entities into the body of the Supreme are not permanent because the creation will take place again, and the living entities who merge into the body of the Supreme without having developed their Krishna consciousness will again appear in this material world when there is another creation. The Bhagavad-gītā confirms the fact that this material world is created and annihilated. This is going on perpetually, and conditioned souls who are without Krishna consciousness come back again and again whenever the material creation is manifest.” (from vol.2 ch.32, “Prayers of the Personified Vedas”)

Again, a missed opportunity is a thorn in the side—and it appears that Radhanatha should actually have read the Krishna Book rather than simply carrying it along with his Mayavadi literature from one bogus ashram to another.

Somehow—and right on cue—Radhanatha had met Guru Maharajji just as he was making his first trip to America to make bigger fools out the gullible crowds there. During the ensuing years and over the course of his chequered career Guru Maharajji would fall in love with and marry his American secretary who was nearly twice his age. He kindly allowed his followers to kiss her feet at the wedding.

Here’s mud in your eye, Lord of the Universe

But Sri Mata became incensed that her precious incarnation had married a low caste American. After all, Americans are only useful as followers and for giving away their money freely—not for getting married to.  So Sri Mata natrally forbade her Little Prem from being God any longer, She went to court to replace him with his elder brothers—who were actually the Trimurti, don’t ya know. She explained to the court that in reality his elder brother was the actual God, but she had made the thirteen year old into the Supreme Lord since he was cuter. It became the judge’s job to decide which brother was the actual God. 

There was a famous incident wherein a curious premmie tossed a shaving cream pie into Guru Maharajji’s face. It has been alleged that the Boy Wonder himself ordered this disciple’s take down. He was soon attacked by two thuggish premmies who beat him so badly over the head they cracked his skull. To save his life the doctors had to insert a permanent plate in his cranium. 

Shrila Prabhupada once wrote to a rogue “devotee” who fell under the cheap influence of Guru Maharajji that his new “God” had been found smuggling watches into the Delhi airport and his passport had been seized. Prabhupada curtly dismissed this useless disciple with the words. “Do whatever you want.”  Shrila Prabhupada had no time for such glow worms or their cheap admirers when the Golden Full Moon of Lord Shri Chaitanya was coming up on the horizon.

It is unbelievable that any serious Gaudiya Vaishnava could write that he met a teenager dressed as Krishna and pondered for even a nano-second whether this lad might be the Supreme Lord. Shrila Prabhupada would be livid with rage if he ever saw such a nonsense book distributed in his ISKCON centers. And just imagine if a Tridandi Swami in the heyday of the Gaudiya Math had written such things about nonsense swamis and avataras during that time period. The Lion Guru who founded the Gaudiya Math would have ripped him to shreds. But this is the sort of Mayavadi rubbish that The Journey Home promotes—a book that is celebrated by a tongue-tied and feeble GBC and sold in temples worldwide. There are no more bold preachers in the Hare Krishna Movement since feel-good grins have replaced hard truth.

For more on the saga of the Boy Guru, see this: http://premrawat-maharaji.info/indexea25.html