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So we just try to broadcast and today is July 6th and this is two days after the departure of Bhakti Charu Swami, so I decided that I would like to share with all of you what I believe is in his heart and what he would want us to understand from his life and take forward. And I’ll also share some of my experiences with him but I think sharing what’s in his heart is extremely important for all of us and especially important for the future of ISKCON. I’ll begin just sharing a few of my experiences with him and that will give time for others to come online because what I share later that will be most significant and so I just want to wait to get to there, to that point.

Many of us who have joined ISKCON when asked why we would join or when asked were you thinking when you were young that you’ll become a sadhu, most of us would say no. A few of us might say I was thinking of becoming a monk or a nun but most of us would say no, I never thought I felt as a religious person or dedicating myself to this. But Bhakti Charu Swami, when he was young, he used to think about becoming a sadhu and he said, “I thought that was normal that young boys would think about becoming sadhus.” Just like young boys in America often (at least in my generation), when you ask them what do you want to be when you grow up, they’d say I want to be a fireman or I want to be a policeman. So that was quite normal. He was thinking about becoming a sadhu. I think most of us were not thinking about becoming sadhus, we were thinking about becoming other things.

And when he said that he thought that every young boy thought that way, that indicates what’s in his mind and heart from the very early age, that he was thinking someday I will become a sadhu and I’ll renounce everything. So that is an indication of a great soul right from the beginning. You may have heard the stories because it has been discussed a little bit that he became fed up and hit a point where he went back to India from school in Germany to find a guru, that was his decision. He went to the Himalayas and couldn’t find one and then when he got Prabhupada’s books, when he read the Nectar of Devotion (he got it from a friend who had become a devotee), he just immediately said this is my guru. It was like it all happened. His deep connection with Prabhupada, it’s such a good example for all of us. When he read Prabhupada’s book, right away he knew this is my guru. That means right from the beginning there is a deep connection. I don’t think everyone when they read Prabhupada’s books thinks that evening itself that I found my guru! Here is my guru, I need to meet him, I need to give my life to him. So right from the beginning there was this deep connection and Maharaj says that when he finally met Prabhupada personally, that was in Kumbh Mela, he said when Prabhupada looked at him and he was in his presence, his heart was beating so hard that he wasn’t really present to what was going on.

It was such an amazing experience. This connection he had with Prabhupada was, I would say, special but also unusual. I mean, we all were moved when we saw Prabhupada but not like that, not like something that special. And that was his whole life. The trajectory of his whole life was this special connection with Prabhupada. And you will often see when Maharaj speaks, he speaks about remaining in ISKCON or remaining dedicated. People take it like, “Oh, he is a GBC so he just wants us all to follow GBC” and it is almost like a political statement. You know, “Well, you are a GBC so you want everyone to cooperate, that’s why you are saying that.” It is not at all like that. He said his connection was so deep that ISKCON for him was non-different than Prabhupada personally. So as much as he was attached to Prabhupada, to that same degree he was attached to ISKCON because he saw ISKCON as non-different from Prabhupada. And Hridayananda Maharaj said something quite amazing that I would like to share with you. He said that Prabhupada had many sons but Prabhupada’s sons didn’t become devotees, at least not fully. And he said that Bhakti Charu Swami was the son that Prabhupada always wanted but never had, an intelligent, educated Bengali who became a devotee.

I thought that that was so beautiful. So there was this very, very deep connection. If you listen to Maharaj speak and you understand this context, then what he is speaking about makes more sense. It is like this deep connection with Prabhupada that comes out as this deep connection with ISKCON because it wasn’t like some loyalty to a company, it was all manifestation of loyalty to Prabhupada. So whenever he is talking about ISKCON, in his mind and heart, he is just talking about devotion to Prabhupada. If I stay in ISKCON, work within ISKCON – he is saying stay with Prabhupada, work with Prabhupada. Of course, people who leave ISKCON don’t think they are leaving Prabhupada and I don’t think he would accuse them of that, but in his heart, his feeling is that if I left ISKCON I am leaving Prabhupada because Prabhupada is ISKCON, Prabhupada is everything to me and ISKCON is Prabhupada’s baby. It was like, here is my baby, I am leaving, I am handing you this baby. This is my heart, I am giving you my heart, this is what is dear to me. So that is how Maharaj saw his relationship with Prabhupada and ISKCON. They were the same thing. That devotion to Prabhupada meant devotion to ISKCON, that devotion to ISKCON meant devotion to Prabhupada. Taking care of ISKCON was like taking care of Prabhupada’s body. He didn’t see it any different. This is a very, very important idea because every organization has problems, every organization has challenges, every organization has leadership that doesn’t always act properly or in a way we would expect. He established this siddhanta so deeply. As Prabhupada said ISKCON is my body.

A lot of times when we talk about ISKCON, people think that it’s just an organization, and organizations have so many problems, and I am devoted to Prabhupada, but not to ISKCON. Bhakti Charu Swami never made that distinction, he didn’t want us to make that distinction. He made it very clear that if you are criticizing ISKCON, you are criticizing Prabhupada. If you love Prabhupada, you will work to make ISKCON better. That’s really important because as ISKCON grows, there will always be people who will make that distinction – I am devoted to Prabhupada but I just don’t like ISKCON, I don’t like what the movement is doing, I don’t like where it is going, I don’t like the leadership. And that may all be true. It’s not that he liked where everything was going, but he didn’t leave because he saw this was Prabhupada. You can’t leave Prabhupada because you don’t like the way things are going, you have to make it better. I think that is the first point. That we should not distinguish between ISKCON and Prabhupada. You can’t leave ISKCON without leaving Prabhupada to some degree. It’s an illusion. I know some people who have left ISKCON would criticize me for that and I don’t want to say this absolutely, and I don’t want to say they are being condemned by Prabhupada, but I want to say that Prabhupada’s heart was within ISKCON and making it better. That’s how Bhakti Charu Swami saw it, that’s how he lived, and that’s how he preached. He had a very deep relationship with Prabhupada. If you read anything about his life, know anything about him or just listen to him talk, you can see he had a very, very deep connection with Prabhupada. It is very inspiring to see how dedicated he was. Totally fixed in service to Prabhupada no matter what. And that connection to Prabhupada was his connection to working in ISKCON. I will give you an example of this. Let me give a little history. I don’t know if I met Maharaj before 1989. He had come to Mauritius and I had come to Mauritius, I’d been a president in Mauritius in 1982 or 1983 for about a year, or a year and a half, and then I left Mauritius. We installed deities and after that, I left and turned it over to another Godbrother.

In 1989, I felt I should come back and help. I felt some connection and he was there. So I can’t remember if we ever had any association or if I met him before that. I don’t remember. At that time he had no position. I don’t think he was a GBC or anything. He was just a simple sadhu and I particularly remember we had given him a room in the temple and the only thing in that room was a little desk on the floor and some straw mats. That’s where he slept, and that is where he would always work. He was translating Prabhupada’s books into Bengali at that time. So the whole time he was there, that was his focus, that was just what he did. Giriraj Swami wanted him there for the association and to help the yatra. A few years before that, the GBC guru had left, and four years even before that the previous GBC guru left, so the Mauritian yatra had been hit hard. It is like a one-two punch. In boxing, if the first one doesn’t knock you out, the second one could. So they got hit twice and Giriraj Swami just wanted more devotees to come and help. So he invited Bhakti Charu Swami. He felt that his influence on the devotees there would be very powerful because at that point when you have lost two gurus, your faith in ISKCON would be weak, so he wanted to bring the right person so he could instill faith. That’s when I first met him. That was 1989. And then he had become GBC. He must have become a GBC around that time, I don’t think he was a GBC then. If he was I didn’t get the impression he was because he was like a simple sadhu. What happened was, we were trying to build a temple, bring in more devotees, make things happen faster, and sometimes when you’re trying to do a lot you need more help. And so we felt to have a co-GBC would really help us. We asked Bhakti Charu Swami and he agreed. Probably he agreed reluctantly.

I think he saw that he can contribute so he came. I could see that he was an expert manager and detail-oriented, but I could see that he would prefer just to study and do more artistic things. Like you know, he was a musician, he did the Prabhupada movie. One time I was in his office in Mauritius and he had some CDs of classical Indian music and I said, “what’s this?”, he said, “management is so mundane, I need something a little more profound” [laughing]. So I could see it was an austerity. If you see his history, the GBC sent him to many troubled situations because he was a peacemaker. He was someone who could bring people together, he was someone that everybody could understand. His motive was just to please Prabhupada and he knew how to bring different groups together. So they sent him to all these difficult, troubled spots. He became GBC in Mauritius, South Africa. He came into New York when no one could manage it and things couldn’t get along years ago. He came in and he came to France after the gurus there had left and nobody could really bring devotees together. So he was always being sent to these troubled situations and I am pretty certain he would have been very happy just to be doing something more philosophical and more creative. Definitely. There is no question. But he did it because he saw service to ISKCON as direct service to Prabhupada’s feet.

One experience I had that stood out was this. As you know in ISKCON if I say to you “I need to talk to you, let’s talk at 12” then twelve could mean twelve, it could mean 12:03, it could mean 12:06, if it’s a meeting in some cultures twelve could mean 12:30, it could mean 1:00, it could mean you come if you can. We all know that, right? It’s kind of rare to have a meeting in ISKCON where everyone, 100% of the attendees actually come on time. So Maharaj was helping to manage, I was a temple president. We were always interacting. There were so many problems at that time, so there were many things to deal with. So we were going to have a meeting at noon. The rooms we were in, were on a veranda. Let me explain this, here is my room [gesturing to the right], here is his room [gesturing to the left] and next to that is a bathroom. So you walk out of my room, it’s on a veranda and you walk out the veranda right by his room. So I went to go to the bathroom, it was 5 minutes to twelve and I could see that he was resting. So I went to the bathroom, came back, and I thought “Well, he is resting, I’ll come back 5 minutes after twelve and see if he is awake. I don’t want to wake him up for the meeting if he is tired, it’s not that important”. So I come like 12:05 or 12:03, it is like a few minutes later and he says, “why are you late?” [laughing]. I said, “Because at 5 minutes to 12, I saw you were resting and I didn’t want to wake you up”. He said, “No, I was up and ready at 12”. I said to myself, now I understand if Bhakti Charu Swami says he is going to be ready at 12, he is not messing around. He is serious.

Then another thing happened that was very similar. This year that Bhakti Charu Swami was there for Janmashtami it was 1992. In 1992 was the biggest Janmashtami up to date we ever had in Mauritius. We made a huge endeavor to make it big because in Mauritius most of the people are shiva-bhaktas so Janmasthami it wasn’t like a Shivaratri. During Shivaratri, the whole country stops. But Janmashtami was kind of like Valentine’s day compared to Christmas. Not a big thing. And we wanted to make it a big thing. So Maharaj was there, Giriraj Swami was there, he brought devotees from South Africa, we had big people in big positions helping us organize. It was a huge effort. I think it went on for four days or something. So every year this one mataji and her crew would stay and cook for Srila Prabhupada for Prabhupada’s appearance day and then it was offered at noon. So Janmashtami day, big event, I doubt I went to bed before 2 am. Maybe something like 3 am and then Vyasa-puja was the next day, and Vyasa-puja was part of the event that we advertised so we expected a big crowd to also be there. I got up at 8 o’clock, as I remember, just so I would be rested. I couldn’t get up earlier else I would be a mess, so I thought I need to be rested so at least let me rest for 5 hours. So I got up at 8 o’clock, assuming that all night this woman was cooking and everything was on schedule. Lo and behold, we find out, I don’t think we found out until it was time for the offering, that actually she got the flu and she didn’t show up in the kitchen till 10 o’clock so the offering wasn’t ready. And Maharaj was so upset. He said, “Prabhupada takes prasadam at noon, how could you not have this at noon?” Out of his love for Prabhupada, he was so upset and I had no idea what was going on because every year she would cook and I just had no idea because she didn’t tell me she wasn’t cooking. So I just got up trying to get my rounds done, everyone is running around, no one is telling me the offering is not there, and then we find out around noontime or around 11-11:30, that they just started cooking. I guess she felt that making an offering at noon was not an issue. And that was so important to him, so I got mercifully chastised, because if you are a president then whatever happens, it is your responsibility even if you have no idea what’s going on. So again it showed this relationship he had with Prabhupada Let me tell you another story. Let me tell two more stories and then we are going to gradually turn this into a philosophical discussion about guru.

I was in South Africa, maybe it was 5 years ago. I was just there I think for a yatra and Maharaj was there, and many senior devotees were there. So this one night they wanted to have a katha, Prabhupada-katha in one of the temples. So Bhakti Caitanya Swami, Bhakti Charu Swami, myself and Ksudhi Prabhu (Ksudhi Prabhu was one of the first devotees in South Africa). He said “Can you tell some Prabhupada lila, Prabhupada-katha?” So I told some katha from the very early days. It was some of the stories of our personal sacrifices and austerities we did as we were young devotees – living in vans and traveling not having money, not knowing where we are going to live – things of that nature and then Krishna providing everything. It’s a huge sacrifice in establishing. This story I was telling took place in 1970-1971. Maharaj came to ISKCON in 1975. So I think from what Maharaj told me (I got an impression) that he did not know a lot of this early history, he wasn’t involved with it. And even if he joined earlier, this was history in America he may not have known about. After I told that story of austerity and sacrifice and lots of anxiety that we went through in our service to Prabhupada,, he said something to me that I think only he would say. After I finished, he grabbed my hand and said, “Thank you for doing that” and I was thinking “Wow, no one ever said that to me.” No one ever said thank you for making that sacrifice. But he was a sensitive person and that means that because he loved Prabhupada, anyone who made a sacrifice for Prabhupada, that touched him. So when he was thanking me, it was in relation to “Wow you did that for Prabhupada, you did that for this person I love so much, thank you for doing that.” It is just one thing he said of many things he may have said to me that I don’t remember. That was not ordinary. It’s not every day some Godbrother comes to me and says I just wanted to thank you for all you are doing. Although you know, sometimes they do. But in that context, it seemed unique.

Then I think maybe like 4 years ago, I was in Mayapur and I was speaking with Kripamoya and we were sitting down outside, in front of the temple where the bookstore is. And then Maharaj came out of the temple, it must have been after class or something. Maharaj came out of the temple walking back to where he was staying and so we saw him so we stood up and Maharaj was asking how we were doing and how long are we staying. Kripamoya said I am leaving today and I am going to such and such place. Maharaj said, “How are you getting there?” I think Kripamoya Prabhu said, “I am taking a train or a taxi” and Maharaj said, “I have a car and a driver, you don’t have to do that. I will give it to you, you take it”. Maharaj was like that, the loving brother, like I have this facility why should you not have to have it? So I was thinking that was like another unusual thing. It is not normal that when you tell a Godbrother you are leaving they try to figure out how can they make it easier for you. Of course, you might say not everyone has their own car, that’s true. But even if you have some facility it is not common to offer it to your Godbrother. With Maharaj, it was like immediately, you shouldn’t have to do that, I have a car and a driver. Something like that. Then because Maharaj and I worked in Mauritius, either I was asking him if he was going to Mauritius or he was asking me something about that. There was some discussion about it. And he was saying “No, I’m not going there anymore.” He had been a GBC for a while but he didn’t have the time to put into it and I don’t think he felt he could help the situation much more than he did. And there were a lot of other petty problems that he was dealing with in Mauritius and he had bigger things to do, so he felt kind of like these problems probably will always just go on and it is just the nature of small countries and islands. These things go on. So he felt he had a bigger mission and bigger projects to deal with. So I said, “Are you going back to Mauritius?” and he said something like “I decided not to.” And I said something like “That’s probably a good decision,” it was a little sarcastic, like what you had to go through there, it was very petty. His response was interesting. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t respond. I was kind of playing into like “Yeah, it was a good decision you left,” and he didn’t play into that. It was more like “Well, I have other services so I am not doing that. And I was kind of playing into it “Yeah, it is kind of not worth doing it and there are so many problems there, why put energy into it.” He didn’t go with that at all, and it stood out because that’s where I was going with it. I was being sarcastic and he didn’t respond to that and I remember that. I thought “He is a gentleman. He is cultured, and he wouldn’t play into anything that wasn’t right”. It was a little bit in jest, like it is probably a good decision you are not going back, you know why there are so many problems. He didn’t play into that. Immediately when that happened I thought, I said the wrong thing, he is a gentleman, he would not have said that and his response was no response. It was a polite way (and I don’t think it was his intention) of saying “you shouldn’t say that”. That was not his intention but that’s the message that Supersoul gave to me. It was because he was such a gentleman that that’s how he responded and that had such an impact on me! Because I see often, our behavior as Westerners, and I think most Western devotees will acknowledge and admit this, it’s sometimes not as refined as it should be. Bhakti Charu Swami’s behavior was very refined and when I would think of him I would always think of ‘refined’ or as Hridayananda Maharaj said, he was the gentleman of ISKCON. His behavior was refined. When I saw him, it was like I would see OK this is the standard, he knows etiquette, he knows Vaishnava behavior. So when you see him act, you would take note of that, that’s how you are supposed to act. As an American, you may not always act that way because your culture is different. But as this refined, cultured, Bengali gentleman, just notice what he is doing. You will become more refined. That’s how I took it personally. I don’t know how others took it. That’s how I would suggest you also taking it. When you hear about his pastimes, or you hear his lectures, or you see he’s in situations where you think I would have said this or I would have done this, and you see that he didn’t do that, just take note. That’s how a Vaishnava behaves. You may say to me “No, we feel you act that way also,” but I am just saying personally I don’t feel I do, not on his level. He was always an example to me of Vaishnava culture, Vaishnava etiquette, Vaishnava behavior, he always maintained it. That’s what Vaishnava etiquette means to me – maintain the behavior of a Vaishnava in all situations. I was thinking about this. He was very cultured, he was thinking from birth “I want to be a sadhu,” he got first and second initiation at the same time. Three months later, he got sannyasa and became Prabhupada’s personal servant. That’s not ordinary. It’s like he almost surpassed everyone, even surpassed where we are today in 3 months. He is not an ordinary person by any stretch of the imagination. We have to appreciate the depth of his sadhuness. And as I was saying earlier the depth of his relationship with Prabhupada was a manifestation of the depth of his Krishna consciousness because they go together simultaneously. Your connection with your spiritual master, your connection with Krishna and Krishna consciousness, and your depth of bhakti they are not different. Someone can say, my guru this and that but I love Krishna, I love ISKCON but I am leaving, I love Prabhupada but I’m leaving ISKCON. It doesn’t exactly work that way. It is synergistic, it’s holistic. If you have one, you have them all. Everything that I see in terms of his behavior, his dedication, it all centers around Prabhupada as a hub. And everything – his Vaishnava behavior, dedication to ISKCON, willingness to be GBC even though he did not like managing, his sacrifice to come to America [and] start that project… He would be a lot happier just hanging in Ujjain or Mayapur and studying, teaching shastra, and teaching lila. He would be happy. But he takes on these projects because his heart is Prabhupada and he knows what Prabhupada wants.

What Deeply Concerned Bhakti Charu Maharaj

Now, I want to talk about what was deeply in his heart and what deeply concerned him. It was that he didn’t feel that Prabhupada was the center of ISKCON and he felt that the position of diksha-guru had eclipsed two things: One, Prabhupada being the primary center of focus and attention. (We do Guru Puja every day, we read his books… He did not mean it that way.) He meant in every sphere, on every level – where we get our instruction, where do we feel our strongest connection, how we understand how we are being liberated, and that everything is from Prabhupada, everyone else is just bringing you to Prabhupada. Everyone else is little. Prabhupada is the Sun [and] we are little rays. He felt that was being eclipsed, as many devotees do. But it was of extreme concern to him. It actually bothered him I would say 24/7. He talked about it so much because he felt that if Prabhupada doesn’t actually become the center in everyone’s life and heart, then in future generations Prabhupada’s position, Prabhupada’s teachings, everything about Prabhupada is going to be lost and other gurus, other acharyas will dominate the landscape of ISKCON and Prabhupada will be sidelined. You might think “No, that is not going to happen”. No, that is a real concern and many senior devotees are very concerned about this. And he is at the helm of this concern. If you ever hear him talk about staying in ISKCON, staying with Prabhupada, Prabhupada in the center, it is all being generated from this concern.
Now let me explain why this concern is there for those of you who joined ISKCON after Prabhupada left. When Prabhupada was here, of course, there was only one guru. I just want to give you a picture of the landscape of ISKCON when Prabhupada was here. Very, very rare there would be a recording of any lecture by anybody other than Prabhupada, and that meant it was very rare for anyone to hear any lecture other than Prabhupada’s because there weren’t any and if there were, you know, not that many people would be that interested. Let’s say I recorded a lecture and people said “Hey that’s a nice lecture, can I hear it?” It would go around but there was no digital media so you would have to actually get a tape and you would have to copy that tape to another tape. So it would be like the 3rd or 4th generation cassette recorders. And you are copying it through speakers […] not that you would have copy machines. Even if you had copy machines, every generation degraded. It just wasn’t a good facility. Whereas with Prabhupada, we had a whole ministry So all the tape ministries came after Prabhupada left, that’s when gurus had their own tape ministries. So during Prabhupada’s time, I rarely remember ever hearing recorded lectures of anyone just because they weren’t available and there wasn’t a great interest in hearing them. We had Prabhupada’s and Prabhupada was lecturing every day and there was a tape ministry. So everywhere you’d go, everywhere in ISKCON, in everyone’s cassette player, in everyone’s Walkman, in every temple, were lectures of Prabhupada. Now there were Kirtans. You had Vishnujana Swami kirtans, you had a few albums devotees made (Radha Krishna, like that), but I would say there were probably four or five other recordings maximum, of other devotees, and we had numerous recordings of Prabhupada. So generally at any temple you would go to, you would hear kirtans and bhajans of Prabhupada. Naturally, he was our guru, that is what we wanted to listen to. Lectures of Prabhupada, morning walk conversations, room conversations… That’s what everyone was listening to, and all the news that we were getting was about who and about what? Where is Prabhupada, what is he doing, what is he saying? That was ISKCON up to the time Prabhupada left. So there was no question of keeping Prabhupada in the center. You didn’t have to keep him, he was the center. We were his disciples, he was the center of our lives. There was no competition that somebody else is in some way dominating the attention of the devotees. I mean, there were devotees who were powerful, who were attractive, we liked listening to, we liked listening to their kirtans, but it was just sunrise in comparison to Prabhupada. We all saw them as just little rays of Prabhupada and nothing in comparison to Prabhupada. So there was no question that they could ever eclipse Prabhupada, or ever sideline Prabhupada. It wouldn’t happen. Prabhupada was the only guru, there were no other gurus.
Some devotees have asked me to describe this history, so it wasn’t my intention to describe this history but in order to express what I feel Bhakti Charu Swami wants the world of ISKCON to understand deeply, what he dedicated his life to live and explain, I had to explain a little bit of this history. We had the idea that Srila Prabhupada, as acharya, whatever he does we should copy. He is teaching us how to live by his example. So then we thought or many, not everybody, but those who seemed to be moving ISKCON, making the decisions locally and internationally, thought if Prabhupada is gone now we have 11 new gurus, they need to do what Prabhupada did because Prabhupada set the example. So what did Prabhupada do? Every day he had Guru Puja, he had his own rooms, he had his own cooks, he had his own seats, he had his own car… And everything that we could do in our power to facilitate Prabhupada’s service, to make his live comfortable, we would do. That was the philosophy. So now instead of Prabhupada being the center, the new gurus who were now following in Prabhupada’s footsteps… Not all of them felt this, but the movement was pushing that this is how it should be done so they convinced them all to do it. I would say most of them bought into it, but some didn’t because it felt very awkward and wrong. But this is what the movement did and this was the ignorance. They thought: Prabhupada is gone, there is an absence, we need to replace him and we will replace him with these new acharyas. We thought because Prabhupada appointed them, he transferred his shakti so now they were all way above everybody else. There was a lot of confusion. We didn’t understand. We thought Prabhupada made these people gurus because they were pure devotees, he gave them his shakti, we need to now replace Prabhupada in some way with them. Let me try to explain psychologically what I think was happening. I think the loss was so deep that we needed someone to sit on a Vyasasana that we could honor and worship because we didn’t feel we could exist without Prabhupada. So we thought we will put someone else up there, he will be the guru, and even for us as Godbrothers he will be a strength for us. Even some of the Godbrothers started to say “Well, now if you want to be connected to Prabhupada, you have to be connected with me, you have to work with me, you have to worship me”. It got very, very crazy.
Let me tell you my personal experience of this. I remember one devotee (I was in Los Angeles when Prabhupada left) […] who was pushing: these new gurus they are pure devotees, we have to worship them like Prabhupada, this is what the shastra… And then if you read in the shastra what it says about the pure devotee how he is non-different from Krishna, worshiped as God… So we were just trying to follow the shastra with them. I remember when they built the Vyasasana, there was a permanent Vyasasana for the guru. So if you are a guru, when you went to the temple you did not sit on the seat of the Bhagavatam speaker, you sat on the Vyasasana that was almost as big as Prabhupada’s. Some temples you will go to now (in South Africa, Dallas) you will see Prabhupada’s Vyasasana and then you will see another Vyasasana but on the other asana they’ll have tulsi or book display and it’s the same height or it is [slightly] higher than the Vyasasana of that guru who was the acharya of that zone. Because in those days there was only one guru in that zone and everyone who came became that person’s disciple and if they didn’t want to be that person’s disciple there was a little subtle “What is wrong with you? Why wouldn’t you accept him? He is the guru.” The first time this guru in Los Angeles, Ramesvara (Maharaj, at that time), who was not into this, he was not into this at all, he was one of the most practical people, he just wanted to serve Prabhupada and he was willing to do… He would sit on a bed of nails if that would please Prabhupada, so he was not into… He didn’t like it. He felt uncomfortable being honored and worshiped, he really did, but he was forced into it because that was the prevailing ethos and they wouldn’t let him… He tried to throw out the seat and the GBC came to him and said you can’t do this because it would disrupt the whole ethos that is going on with the other GBC. I was in the meeting with him, because I was one of the leaders, with about five other GBC men who said you cannot do this. And he was saying “but there is no history outside or Prabhupada taking Guru Puja daily, there is no history in Gaudiya Vaishnavism, everybody sits on the same seat, nobody has an exultance.” Others said “No, this is Prabhupada, he set the example, he is the acharya!” So there was so much confusion and so the first day that Ramesvara Prabhu sat on that Vyasasana, there was this intense feeling coming over me “This does not feel right, there is something terribly wrong with this”. But at that point because of the pressure that they are pure devotees, Prabhupada is the acharya, you would have to be a guru if there was no guru. There was so much of that coming I couldn’t process that feeling but I am sure many, many devotees at that time had the same gut intuition “This does not feel right, there is something wrong with this”. What started happening in ISKCON, there was a shift from a focus on Prabhupada to focus on the present guru who was a zonal guru, who we would call acharya, we gave him names Vishnupada, Acharyadeva, Acharyapada. It was like the whole nine yards. […] Prabhupada was not his initiated name, that was a title that was given to him as our guru. Actually he had to tell us to give it to him but that was our ignorance. So they had titles, they had very, very opulent quarters, just like Prabhupada, amazingly opulent and in many cases, their quarters were nicer than Prabhupada’s. And their Vyasa-pujas started being nicer than Prabhupada’s. Everything started shifting and this created this huge alienation because many of the Godbrothers started feeling like this is not the movement I joined. That was Prabhupada centric, now it’s this guru centric. And so this alienation that I felt on the first day that he sat on Vyasasana it just continued. So you had devotees who were being alienated and then you had other devotees who were saying “No, this is the way it is supposed to be. This is good”. There were a lot of good results, a lot of people were inspired (the ones who liked them), he had a lot of power, he could do a lot of things, he had a lot of disciples, easy for the disciples – one guru… You probably know the history, but one by one gurus started having trouble because they had misserved their position. They were imitating Prabhupada and shastra says if you imitate the great devotees it’s like drinking poison. Of the eleven, I think seven had fallen away due to either not being able to maintain strictly the principles or maybe you could say not being able to maintain, in the broader sense, strictness. They just couldn’t maintain their position. They have either fallen down breaking one of the regulative principles, or come close to it, or being challenged to do it. They just couldn’t maintain their position because it was not the position Prabhupada intended.
It climaxed around 1986. The Godbrothers had formed practically a revolution. There were various revolutions going on to reform this; guru reform. There was a meeting in New Vrindavan I participated in and it was like a historical meeting at that time, and the Godbrothers just spoke out “This is nonsense, you’re imitating Prabhupada. This is wrong. You are destroying the movement. You eclipsed Prabhupada. You pushed him out”. Let me tell you something. This is going to sound strange to you but it will help put this in perspective. In 1982, I went to South Africa to raise money. I was the president at Mauritius and there was no money in Mauritius. It is a very poor country. That time South Africa was one of the wealthiest countries in the world. I had just been living in South Africa the year before, so I knew where to go, I knew how to collect. I said we could collect in a month (more money than they could make in Mauritius in a year) and we can buy so many things we need and I want to start a festival program we can buy all that we need, sound system, this and that. So we went there and this devotee was a disciple of Ramesvara. […] We were given the cars, he was playing lectures of Ramesvara, kirtans of Ramesvara, kirtans of other devotees. I’d never actually been in that close proximity with a disciple of the new gurus because for us it was just… We would just listen to Prabhupada, that was like normal, that’s how we grew up, that’s all you listen to. There were no other books, there were very few other books. So there were no other books to read but Prabhupada’s books. I turn to this devotee and I say “Do you ever listen to Prabhupada?” and the devotee says “No”. And this devotee was shocked like “Oh, I never thought of that. We don’t do that.” That made a deep impression that there is a serious problem there. Now you might say “But Prabhu, that’s the way it is in ISKCON now. That’s just normal”. Yeah, that’s a normal serious problem. That’s how we as leaders and Godbrothers, and even as gurus, although we are gurus and we give lectures, and you listen to them, and we will even say “Please listen to that lecture that I gave, it’s really important,” and you are thinking “Why you give a lecture every day if you want us to hear Prabhupada?” Well because this is what Prabhupada wanted us to do, but he didn’t want us to eclipse him. He didn’t want us to write books to eclipse his books, to give lectures to eclipse his lectures. So I am just giving you my perspective as a Prabhupada disciple who came to ISKCON in 1969 and seeing this shift, it was like this is unprecedented. There was never a time in ISKCON history where it wasn’t just Prabhupada, his books, his kirtans, his words. You might say, well today it can be that way. That’s true, but it has gone overboard in the other direction. It has to be that way sufficiently that you have to listen to Prabhupada’s lectures sufficiently, you have to listen to his bhajams, you have to have sufficient because he is the center. And then the other problem was that the disciples were thinking their guru was on the level of Prabhupada. They weren’t really making a distinction AUDIO CUTS liberated, if Prabhupada made us AUDIO CUTS into guru he’s AUDIO CUTS they are starting to think all of these 11 gurus descended, even though they were all hippies. They were like no, that was just their lila. It was distorted. They’re all descended, transcendental… And if that’s the case you could understand easy to AUDIO CUTS Prabhupada’s. Anyway, the point I am trying to make is that they were eclipsing Prabhupada. The focus was going away from Prabhupada and therefore you could say “but you can’t eclipse Prabhupada,” but you can if you shine the light on someone else you are eclipsing. Prabhupada is eternally self-effulgent, but we are not seeing that so much because the light is being shone on these other people. Everyone around 1986 and the 80s was feeling [that] we made a huge mistake in having these people imitate Prabhupada and basically it’s like the whole movement is centering around these eleven people. They yield all the power, they have all the resources, they have all the men, the money, the control… And it was like what happened to ISKCON where Prabhupada was in the center, where resources were distributed equally, no one had specific powers, everything was managed by a GBC? Now, these gurus were unmanageable, they had whole zones and powers of GBC, how could they control them? Then there is this whole guru reform movement with temple presidents and then finally GBCs were interrogated, gurus were interrogated […]. Things have gotten better but still, to this day, the vestiges of that have not been removed. Even for new devotees who become gurus, although they grew up through that and they’re more conscious not to do that, but still within the culture many of us AUDIO CUTS enough Prabhupada in the center. The devotees are just not understanding Prabhupada’s mood and mission.
One devotee I had met in Mayapur (she stayed in Mayapur because of the lockdown), I think she read Prabhupada’s Gita twice and now she was studying something at MIHE or somewhere, tenth canto commentary by Visvanatha Chakravarti Thakura…or something like that. So these kinds of things. You go into a market place and there are books you can read that Prabhupada told us “don’t read these books”. It’s such a different landscape. I have disciples and I’ll quote a verse that every bhakta knew in 1970 and they don’t know it. I’m like, how could you not know that verse? It means there is a different mood now and we had a mood of learning verses. The mood changed. This is a concern.
This was Bhakti Charu Swami’s concern and this is what he said and this is what he felt and why I wanted to explain this to you. He said I feel insignificant (I am paraphrasing), I feel like I am nothing, I’m insignificant, my only credibility is that I am connected to Prabhupada. Then here is the important thing, the point he made. He said, “I am not taking my disciples back to godhead, Prabhupada is taking them back to Godhead. I am bringing them to Prabhupada. Prabhupada is doing everything and I am bringing them to Prabhupada”. He said “I don’t feel that within ISKCON this is the culture in the heart and mind of the disciples and the devotees.” Even maybe some of the gurus may not feel anything, I’m doing it by Prabhupada’s mercy but I am doing it. You come through me, I will liberate you, I will bless you. He feels that we have a culture in ISKCON that if it doesn’t change, if we don’t recognize that it’s Prabhupada’s movement, it’s Prabhupada’s teachings, it’s Prabhupada’s power – we are nothing. We are all useless without that. It is all him. If that is not instilled within the heart of every single member, theh his fear, and rightly so, is that in the future Prabhupada will become like a second-class citizen He just won’t be that important. He won’t be that central. There will be other people who arise to prominence. We want gurus to rise to prominence but not at the cost of minimizing the reality that all the potency that they have is Prabhupada’s potency and that everyone should understand it. Now the problem that I see is that when Bhakti Charu Swami said this, he was accused of being a ritvik because what he was saying was very similar to what ritviks were saying, that Prabhupada was being pushed to the side, he is being eclipsed by the gurus, we lost that Prabhupada centric culture, and so forth.
I think that as a great glorification not as a criticism because the fact is the ritvik philosophy just went a little bit too far, that Prabhupada will be your guru because the other gurus they did a bad job so let’s just get rid of them. That is not Gaudiya Vaishnava Siddhanta. The Gaudīya Vaishnava Siddhanta is the other gurus will represent Prabhupada, they will bring you closer to Prabhupada, they will put the glasses on you so you see Prabhupada better. That’s the mood of a guru. That if I can help you get closer to Prabhupada, if I can help you deepen the relationship with Prabhupada, if I can put the glasses on you to help you see better who Prabhupada is, what he is teaching, what he wants, what his mission is, what his heart is, where he wants his movement to be, how you could become a better member of that movement and help him… If I can do that then I have done my job as guru. If I do anything else and make you think I am someone special independent of Prabhupada, it is a disservice. Now you might say, the gurus are not doing that. But the problem is we have a culture in which it makes the disciple think when a guru says that he is just being humble and he doesn’t really mean it. That it is just, oh every guru thinks they’re nothing at the feet of their guru, Prabhupada said he was nothing at the feet of Bhaktisiddhanta. Yes, that is true, but this is different because this is a fact. Prabhupada was definitely something before he met his guru. He was a Vaishnava. He was definitely something. And by the power of his guru he was able to spread Krishna Consciousness, no doubt, and no doubt Prabhupada would feel I am nothing. But he wasn’t nothing before he met his guru and Prabhupada said “In my life, I never committed any sin, there was never a time when I did not think of Krishna”…

I will get to your comments in a minute. There are two books Prabhupada said not to read… [thinking] Govinda-lilamrita… Bhaktisiddhanta said don’t read Govinda-lilamrita. That is one of them. There is one more, I’ll remember.

I was not born a Vaishnava, there was a time I forgot Krishna, I have not followed all the principles my entire life so there is a difference. And I am probably not someone who could have come to America alone. There is a difference and every guru will note that difference, and every guru feels that difference. The problem is in ISKCON, because of that zonal culture that we had in 1977 when Prabhupada left, the remanence of that culture still, the odor of that culture, it still permeates to some subtle degree in ISKCON, and it has become a challenge for gurus to communicate that we are nothing and that Prabhupada is everything and we are just trying to help you get to Prabhupada in an environment where the guru position is so dominant.
Now here is where the problem lies. ISKCON has been trying to educate devotees in this area and it has been really challenging. It is the area of shiksha guru versus diksha guru because in Gaudiya Vaishnava history all emphasis was not given on diksha, the emphasis was given on guru. And guru could mean diksha guru, diksha guru could mean vartmapradasaka-guru.
Let’s go back to history. This is a real story in my life. I am working with a disciple of Ramesvara, we are working very closely, he is very close with me, he respects me so maybe at that time I might have been a devotee for 10-15 years and he is a new devotee, so there is some difference in what I can teach him. He respects that. At that time, we as Godbrothers, were challenging the authority of these gurus and there was a lot of rhetoric going on for those who were challenging. You know, we were challenging out of sincerity, out of fear that the movement would be destroyed or corrupted, or in some way fall into disarray. And many of us were called black snakes in order for the guru to protect his disciples.

(Replying to a comment) Srila Bhaktisiddhanta asked “can I publish these books” and Bhaktivinoda Thakur [said] you can publish for yourself because no one can understand them and read them.
It is not a crime to read other’s books, but one has to be qualified. In discussions when they talked about this with Prabhupada and they said “Prabhupada did you say we shouldn’t read other books?” and Prabhupada said “No I never said that. You should read them.” And then another devotee said “But we should read your books first,” and Prabhupada said “Yes. I am writing so many books. You read them.” So yes, it is not a crime to read other books, the crime is you haven’t read Prabhupada’s books over and over and over again and then you read other books, because then you may misunderstand them if you can’t see them through the lense that Prabhupada has given. That was the concern. Ujjvala-nilamani and Govinda-līlāmṛta. Those two books. Bhaktisiddhanta wanted to print and Bhaktivinoda said, print one to yourself. One of Bhaktisiddhanta’s seniors-most disciples was asked about those books. AUDIO CUTS talking about them, few sentences and he said “I can’t say more because I’ve never read them.” If anyone was qualified enough to read them, it would be him, not us and he did not read them because Bhaktisiddhanta did not allow anyone to read them. That’s just for the history.

Where did I leave on? I got too excited about the comments… […]

This concern that Maharaj had is that the remanence, the order from the zonal acharya days where there was a predominance of one guru who was thought to be amazingly transcendental and everything for the disciples and now the new Prabhupada kind of… He felt that the remanence was still there.
So we are on that shiksha and diksha guru thing. ISKCON has tried through the guru-disciple course, Sivaram Swami has written a book on shiksha, Bhakti Charu Swami has spoken about this. I think all the gurus have spoken about it. We are having a really difficult time educating devotees in ISKCON that shiksha guru is non-different from diksha. Diksha is not the only one prominent guru and everything is diksha, but shiksha is of equal importance and in some cases, your shiksha guru may be more important. Prabhupada is your shiksha guru and you can have many shiksha gurus. You may even have a deeper relationship with your shiksha guru than your diksha guru. And many times in Gaudiya Vaishnava history you would get diksha, you would get your mantras and your guru would say “Ok take training from this person,” and you would be trained by another person and that relationship with that other person was as close or closer than the relationship with your diksha guru. So in ISKCON everything centered around diksha and once you become a diksha guru you are like God. Now there is a problem and the problem is when you read the shastra it glorifies the position of guru as good as God, etc., etc. So naturally disciples will worship their guru that way. But it never says diksha guru, it says guru, which means shiksha guru also. I want all my disciples to become guru also means shiksha guru. You know, see the guru as good as God, good as God means he is representing God, he is teaching what God is saying, see that his teachings are coming from God, that’s shiksha guru also. Honor your gurus, shiksha gurus also. So this story where we are being called black snakes, right? So I started pointing out some defects of what this guru was doing and it was at a point where this guru was actually… It wasn’t just a philosophical, he was actually crumbling spiritually. And this devotee said to me, “You are so dear to me, if my guru criticizes you I will have to reject him or I don’t know what I’m going to do, I don’t know how am I going to deal with it” because he saw me as a shiksha guru. So there was this guru up here dominating and we are training his disciples, we’re bringing new people, then they go to the diksha guru, the diksha guru predominates and we are like nobody now. We are the ones who breastfed you in Krishna consciousness and now you have been adopted by your diksha guru and we are neglected. But in his case, he didn’t see it that way. Fortunately. That was a big concern that those who were actually training and making devotees, they were being minimized or put in a secondary position. Or, sometimes this happens where someone wants to accept me as their guru and later on they change their mind, which happens, it’s fine, it is not the fault of the disciple or the guru… And they say can I accept so and so. Of course. And it is actually GBC resolution, you can’t tell someone not to unless you think they took LSD yesterday and that’s why they made that decision or someone had a gun at their head and said you have to take from this guru. If there is some awkward situation you might say let’s talk about it, otherwise you would say fine. But the problem is this relationship, let’s say in this example that they had with me, it may be for a year and we may be working together and I may have helped them, and then all of a sudden they choose so and so, they want to take diksha from so and so for whatever reason (that’s not the point of the discussion) then the relationship with me is like it doesn’t exist anymore. It’s like it is gone. That’s wrong. I mean, I can’t control that. I’m not saying that’s wrong because of me, it’s wrong with anyone that if you have that relationship [with], then why would you give it up just because you want to take diksha from someone else, because this person was also your guru. So when you change your mind to take initiation, it doesn’t mean oh let’s take that guru and we will just put him in a dustbin, you know, we don’t need him. These kinds of things. And not recognizing that this shiksha guru of yours, because he doesn’t carry a danda, and doesn’t have a big position, you’d think “Well I will take initiation with someone else”. I know, I have some Godbrothers who I think are some of the most amazing devotees and they are dikhsa gurus. Me personally, I love them dearly. I think they are some of the most insightful devotees and some of the most well-qualified devotees to be gurus and they hardly have any disciples because they don’t have a profile. They have like a handful of disciples. And it is like… This shows that there is a little problem here, it’s a propaganda marketing, branding issue done inadvertently and it’s built in the culture. You have a lot of followers, you’re a sanyasi, you have a zone, automatically you are going to be big, you are going to have a lot of disciples. It is just going to happen, you know. Everyone is going to start, all of your disciples are going to start saying “why don’t you take from guru maharaj because everybody else is!” So there are parts of the world where 90% of the people are disciples of one guru. These are the kinds of things that Maharaj is looking at and thinking, if this doesn’t stop, if we don’t change this culture, ISKCON will not make it because we will lose Prabhupada. So his point is, ISKCON is Prabhupada, Prabhupada is taken everyone back to Godhead, it’s Prabhupada’s teachings that are purifying us, it is Prabhupada’s everything. As much as we can latch on to that or as much as leaders we can represent that to our followers, to that degree we are successful because we are transparently representing Prabhupada. I have given you Prabhupada. He will purify you. Not me. He will purify you. And anything that I can do and any purification you feel you are getting from me, it is just that I’m giving you what he gave, it’s not coming from me. He said “Once we see that, then all of the disciples when they are getting mercy from their guru, they’ll realize he is giving me Prabhupada’s mercy and they’ll realize he’s strengthening my connection to Prabhupada.” Now in Suresvara Prabhu’s Founder-acharya series, he makes the point that your foundational relationship is with Prabhupada, that’s where it starts, and your guru will help strengthen that relationship. It is not the other way around. Your foundational relationship is with your guru and he will help you strengthen it, but your foundational relationship is with Prabhupada and your guru will help foster that relationship. That’s a fundamental principle of his course. And that’s how every guru feels or at least how every guru should feel and that’s how every shiksha guru should feel and that’s how every preacher in his country [should] feel, and that’s how every devotee should feel. What the GBC had decided years ago was that nobody who comes to ISKCON should choose anyone to be their diksha-guru for six months, and in those first six months develop your relationship with Prabhupada. Now you may be attached to a guru, OK, he can be your shiksha-guru, but for those first six months focus on Prabhupada as this is your guru, develop that relationship. And then choose a guru who can help you develop that relationship. Not that you just choose a guru because he is charismatic, or you like the way he chants, or you like the way he tells stories, or whatever. I’m not offending anybody. All our gurus are glorious, all our gurus are amazingly empowered, but the point is you want to accept someone as a guru because you’ve connected to Prabhupada and you see this guru represents Prabhupada so transparently to you and connects you so deeply to Prabhupada. You want to be connected with him so you can be connected with Prabhupada.
That’s the culture we want to create and I think you will realize that even though you may feel that way, but not everybody feels that way, and that was Maharaj’s concern. One Godbrother revealed to me that the day that Maharaj was leaving to come back to America, to do this initiation and work on his project of cow protection, he called this Godbrother who was involved in working within ISKCON to make changes on his level and he called him and he expressed that. That’s what is burdening his heart. So I think it is very significant that when Bhakti Charu Swami was coming to America this thing was still burdening his heart, when he is leaving his body, this is what was burdening his heart, that Prabhupada is going to become a second-class citizen in ISKCON. Or has already become to some degree and unless we change, we don’t have a future. This is what was in his heart. So every time you hear him talk about keeping Prabhupada in the center, the position of diksha, shiksha and all that, that’s where it is coming from. This huge concern.
Now when a great devotee leaves and we want to honor him we are honoring him by talking about him, but I think the greatest thing we can do to honor him is to create this culture in ISKCON because that’s what he wants and that is what he is living for. Not just his disciples but everybody, everyone in ISKCON. If you want to honor Bhakti Charu Swami you want to help to create this culture and I would appreciate it if you all share this video, this class as widely as possible because I just want as many devotees as possible to know what was in his heart and this was definitely in his heart.