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Hare Krishna!

I do not want to hurt anyone faith or believes. I just want to inquire for spiritual advancement.


1) I generally feel that ISKCON members over the time has made answers to all possible spiritual questions based on a particular interpretation of scriptures which may or may not be true. Whenever a new member comes, he simply accepts the answers given by previous acharyas without questioning them. Whenever  somebody questions anything, he is reminded of vaishnav aparad, offences etc and said to have faith in the process. Although iskcon people says, they are not blindly following anything, but deep down yes they are.


2) The real key to spiritual advancement is to question, to explore, to experience yourself. Don't believe in anything unless you have yourself experienced it absolutely with no doubt.  People will say that Prabhupadh says about first, second and third class people. Everyone thinks that I am first class person so I should not question and simply follow. I respectfully disagree with Prabhupadh's argument here. People who does not question, explore, contradict and simply follow will have doubts later in life. Those who are hard nuts, who are open minded to believe and disbelieve in anything, who first see themselves and then believe, will have far less chances of doubts in future.


3) Why Krishna? We can worship any god be it Shiva, Ganesha, Durga as long as we are not having any material desire. Is it because the scriptures say it or ISKCON community made the scriptures say it? If Krishna was known to be God, why didn't all the scripures clearly mentions it everywhere in every scripture. We find one line in scriptures telling Krishna to be god. But it may be referring to the quality of God (Krishna = all-attractive) and not as a person.


4) The people who consider god as impersonal, or buddist, jain people, they all have one thing in common, they do not believe, they experience first and then believe. This inspires them more and more in spiritual path.


5) We do not see any kind of miracle or supernatural in following ISKCON. I know, people will say the sun is a miracle, etc. but these doesn't work. Again, these are the answers made by previous achryas in their books and people are sticking 100% to it. Some will say you will taste it when you get advanced, but that may be the psycological effects of chanting and doing good deeds, nothing else. Some will say we are not that advanced as previous acharyas. I want to know who is advanced in iskcon. If the process is same, why it is not producing advanced people like Namdev, Tukaram now who have shown many miracles in their lifetime. People will say no no they are actually gopis named this and that etc. How do you know? Our acharyas have told us. How do they know? We have faith. How do you know that they know? On the other hand, in buddhism, or people who believes in impersonal god are showing miracles. For example: many people predict their time of death, there are many examples of people attaining sidhis. As far as I know, no such miracle is experienced in iskcon. I know that these sidhis and all are useless as Prabhupadh told, but still they motivates the person in their spiritual path. People will say all these things are automatically attained by people who follow the process. Please let me know any such example of that.

6) People generally feel that Prabhupadh is the upper limit in spiritual  advancement. How do you know? Prabhupadh went to Golok. How do you know? We can't be as advanced as Prabhupadh. How do you know?

7) In ISKCON people says that they feel estacy while following the process, so they must be moving in right path. My argument is that people who follow impersonal god, or any other personal god or no god or himself/herself as god are also feeling estacy. People will say their estacy is only a fraction of estacy felt through the prescribed process. How do you know? Have you experienced both? Then who are you or the acharyas to decide?

8) Prabhupadh says that Buddha is an incarnation of Krishna who has come to deceive atheist. It can also be the other way. Maybe iskcon is deceiving people to chanting, imbibing good qualities converting every attachment to attachment for Krishna so that later attachment of form can be removed to make them experience and meditate upon impersonal god.

9) What I believe that people are choosing ISKCON as it is a simple process (or let's say shortcut) easily available. Everyone is following it, so we should also. People believe that we are safe now. We have a community and family now. Now they stop exploring and comparing and start following. Further it is buttered by its authoritativeness and parampara, sampradaya etc etc. All this process stands upon one thing : one particular interpretation of scriptures, and not on scriptures.



My purpose is to question my faith not anyone else's. I hope I can get constructive arguments from YOUR experience and not from the scriptures or someone says so, so that we together can advance in spiritual path.

Dandwats!