
                     Pillars of Success
                     The Principles and Practices of
                     Reform in ISKCON

              
                   A devotee, therefore, should execute his
                   devotional services with full energy, endurance,
                   and confidence. He should perform his scheduled
                   duties, he should be pure in heart, and he should
                   serve in association with devotees. All six of
                   these items will lead the devotee to the path of
                   success. One should not be discouraged in the
                   discharge of devotional service. Failures may not
                   be detrimental; they may be the pillars of
                   success.

                                           Light of the Bhagavata, 43



              In October of 1984 I became active in what was later to
              be known within ISKCON as the guru reform movement.
              Over the next two years I wrote a series of widely
              circulated papers that attempted to understand and
              rectify some failures in ISKCON. As things turned out,
              I became a leader of the reform movement. At the annual
              meeting of the Governing Body Commission in March of
              1987, the reform effort reached a denouement of sorts.
              Four of the most powerful leaders of ISKCONall
              simultaneously sannyasis, initiating gurus, and GBC
              membersresigned or were removed from office, each
              under a noisome cloud of scandal.



              These and other depredations had shrunk the GBC to
              fifteen members. At the same time, the GBC had
              empowered an outside Committee of Fifty, all senior
              disciples of Srila Prabhupada, to interview and
              evaluate each of the remaining GBC members and to share
              its findings with the body. That being accomplished,
              the GBC then requested that committee to place before
              the GBC the names of some devotees as prospective new
              members. (The GBC added new members by a two-thirds
              vote.)

              My name was among those proposed, and I was voted onto
              the body. I had wanted to return to my services of
              writing and scholarship with the Bhaktivedanta
              Institute and the Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, but I fell
              unwittingly under the sway of a fairly well-established
              law: If you lead a successful revolution, you are
              condemned to become part of the government. There is no
              doubt that in the activities of reform I had to
              criticize many devotees whodeviations and shortcomings
              notwithstanding--harbored an inviolable seed of
              devotion to Prabhupada and Krsna. Having to serve on
              the GBC was only a fitting punishment for my offenses.

              Although I prefer the contemplative to the active life,
              it is true that my active engagements with the guru
              reform movement and later the GBC have repeatedly
              produced bumper crops of material to feed
              contemplation. I should explain that in my case
              reflecting on the Hare Krishna movement -- in that mode
              of critical self-awareness inculcated in academia --
              formed, from the beginning, an important component of
              my involvement with it.

              In 1971 I had moved with spouse and children into a
              fledging temple-community in Philadelphia, thereby
              committing our joint and several futures to
              Prabhupadas movement. It was indeed an act of faith,
              but it is a fact that faith seeks ceaselessly to
              understand, and I strove daily to comprehend more fully
              just what I had done, what adventure I had embarked on.
              The understanding that gradually took shape was
              composed of three closely inter-related dimensions; and
              these three, eventually, were also to provide me with
              the features of certain broad principles for reform. I
              shall call them the historical, the personal, and the
              social.

              Prior to my joining ISKCON I had seriously pursued
              academic study in religion and philosophy. Although the
              limits of the merely academic impelled me to refuge
              within a living spiritual tradition, I could not simply
              shed my prior formation. And so it was with a certain
              thrill that I realized that, having joined the Hare
              Krishna movement, I was granted the closest, real-time
              access to a kind of event that fascinates scholars of
              religion: a religion transplanting itself from its
              natal culture. I had once studied the movement of
              Christianity from its original Jewish milieu into the
              cosmopolitan Mediterranean world of the pax Romana. Now
              I recognized a parallel: in Prabhupadas ISKCON,
              Gauiya Vaishnavism being lead from its Bengal
              cradle-land into the modern global civilization of the
              pax Americana. I didnt have just a ring-side seat to
              this event; I was in the ring.

              I was committed. I had committed more than this life to
              the mercies of ISKCON. I had committed my very soul. In
              spite of my predilections for the long historical
              perspective, I was anything but a disinterested
              observer. My own personal stake in the success of Srila
              Prabhupadas endeavor had an individual as well as
              social dimension. As an individual, I had committed
              myself to the enterprise of becoming a pure devotee.
              Prabhupada had succeeded in convincing a coterie of
              idealistic American youth that sainthood was a feasible
              vocation, a live option, and I was one among them.
              Prabhupada called us to a kind of heroism of risk, of
              commitment, and of sacrifice in an ultimate war
              against maya. Prabhupada taught that this consummate
              victory was granted only to those prepared to
              subordinate all other concerns to the service of this
              single ultimate concern. When I took initiation from
              him, I pledged myself to this principle. Yet I could
              not carry out this pledge by myself; I required
              favorable grounds. That was ISKCON, painstakingly
              crafted by Prabhupada himself, placed by him in late
              twentieth century America, to nourish and foster my
              personal pilgrimage toward pure service to God.

              ISKCON harbored a further significance: ISKCON was
              itself my service. Even as ISKCON nurtured me, I was
              bound in turn to nurture ISKCON. Assisting Srila
              Prabhupada in his mission was both my obligation and my
              saving grace. His mission was to deliver throngs of
              fallen souls through propagation of the sankirtana
              yuga-dharma, effecting thereby a respiritualization of
              the entire human society. In this effort, ISKCON was
              both his means and his end. In the bhakti sankirtana
              movement, as Prabhupada taught it, saving myself and
              saving the world entailed each other. ISKCON was the
              context for both.

              Bhakti is at once personalistic and social, for it is a
              philosophical truth that the personal and the social
              cannot be separated. What a person is can be fully
              manifest only through interactions with other persons.
              This principle is exemplified at the highest
              ontological level in Krsna, whose supreme personhood
              entails that he is also supremely social. The fullness
              of the Godhead entails that the supreme, transcendental
              absolute is equally the supremely, transcendentally
              relative. Krsna, therefore, is never alone but always
              in the company of his devotees. He is constituted by
              relationships, and many of his proper and eternal names
              include those of his nearest and dearestas, for
              example, Radha-kanta, Radhas sweetheart;
              Yasoda-nandana, Yasodas darling boy;
              Partha-sarathi, charioteer to Prthas son, and so
              on. For this reason, bhakti -- devotional service -- is
              preeminently a social activity, and that social
              principle attains its fullest exfoliation in the idea
              of sankirtana, the congregational glorification of
              Gods name, fame, activities, and so on. Therefore,
              Prabhupadas founding a society of devotees was not
              simply a tactical expedience; it was a metaphysical
              necessity.

              The effort of Prabhupada, then, was to establish the
              community or communion of devotees, a communion that,
              out of the natural overflowing of its own joy, would be
              ever-increasing. That communion is one in which certain
              kinds of personal transactions would take place among
              the devotees; by them, the devotional consciousness of
              the participants would ever increase; and, in a spirit
              of compassion for those suffering outside this
              community, the members would always be initiating
              others into their circle to share in the felicity of
              their communion.

              Prabhupada, however, was not inaugurating this society
              de novo, from scratch. Inducted into ISKCON, we became
              part of a sampradaya (the
              brahma-madhva-gauiya-sampradaya, to be precise), a
              venerable historical community whose task, generation
              after generation, was properly and correctly to receive
              a spiritual culture, attain full formation and
              realization through it, and pass it on complete and
              sound, free from any adulteration, to the next
              generation. Although Prabhupada came to us in the West
              as a solitary figure (an anomaly we shall examine
              later), he was the repository of a vastly rich
              tradition of teachers and students, who studied,
              composed, taught, and practiced volumes of theology,
              commentary, drama, poetry, and song. When we became
              Prabhupadas students, he was initiating us into the
              teachings and practices of that tradition, to become
              its heirs.

              Here, then, was quite another way the historical past
              came to be known by meas age-old tradition, received
              and transmitted through authority. It is the
              outstanding national trait of Americans to be without
              tradition. A nation of migrants, the United States
              could realize more thoroughly than Europe the
              Enlightenment project of a radical break with the past,
              of wholesale rejection of traditional political and
              spiritual authority, of the reinvention of humanity
              from the ground up. In America, tradition and
              traditional authorities are reflexively viewed with
              skepticism, suspicion and even hostility. Rootlessness
              is the national style, and the ability to perpetually
              reinvent oneself through a series of discrete
              identities is practically the national ideal. It is,
              unfortunately, the worlds future, as indigenous
              communities and traditions are dissolved by the solvent
              of the ever-spreading pax Americana, to survive only in
              the travesty of the theme park and the multi-media
              experience. At first, American  I should say modern
              -- rootlessness was an important, even necessary,
              condition for the beginning of ISKCON; very soon, it
              became one the greatest impediments to its development
              and continuance. The contrast between the condition of
              modern America and the Vedic culture of tradition and
              authority, of continuity and conservation that
              Prabhupada was attempting to transplant could hardly
              have been greater. With growing amazement, I gradually
              got sight the immensity of Prabhupadas endeavor. It
              was breathtaking.

              I also came to see that Prabhupada was very well aware
              of the overwhelming difficulty of his undertaking.
              Seeing him immersed in that endeavor gave me new
              appreciation for certain of his oft-repeated sayings,
              such as Impossible is a word found in a fools
              dictionary, and for his injunction to shoot the
              rhinoceros (meaning that if you are to attempt
              something, you might as well make something
              formidable). As Prabhupada explained in a 1971 letter
              to Balavanta dasa: We should always be enthusiastic to
              try for shooting the rhinoceros. That way, if we fail,
              everybody will say, Never mind, nobody can shoot a
              rhinoceros anyway, and if we succeed, then everyone
              will say, Just see, what a wonderful thing they have
              done.

              Prabhupada understood the obstacles, but he remained
              ever confident, and instilled the same confidence in
              others. His ability to convey a sense of unshakable
              confidence in himself and his mission attained its
              impressive power because it was evidently part and
              parcel of a simple and deep humility. The confidence of
              Prabhupada reposed, of course, on supernatural
              foundations, on firm dependence on guru and Krsna, and
              therefore it held impervious to all failures and
              setbacks. So I don't think there is any cause of
              discouragement, he wrote in 1969 to Vrndavanesvari,
              because we are working on a different platform.

              Yet at every minute Srila Prabhupada was wrestling with
              failure and setbacks. Indeed, as I was gradually to
              learn, when Prabhupada single-handedly conducted
              Caitanyas mission to the West, he did so as the sole
              undebilitated survivor of a monstrous spiritual failure
              in India, the foundering of his spiritual masters
              mission and institution, the Gaudiya Maha. He came to
              America like a survivor paddling away from a colossal
              shipwreck. Even from the beginning of his Western
              mission, Prabhupada was carrying on in the face of
              massive failure and discouragement in the generation
              previous to us. He noted this, for example, in a letter
              of 1972 responding to a disheartened Guru dasa: Do not
              be depressed. All along my godbrothers gave me only
              depression, repression, compression--but I continued
              strong in my duty. So never mind there is some
              discouragement, continue with your work in full
              enthusiastic Krishna Consciousness attitude of
              service.

              Prabhupadas own movement also soon provided him with
              ample reason for discouragement. From the very outset
              there was trouble: his authority was challenged; his
              position compromised; his instructions distorted,
              neglected, or selectively followed; his teaching molded
              to various fancies; his assets misused, mismanaged, and
              misappropriated; his standards broken; his dependents
              neglected, exploited, and abused. And the worst of this
              was committed by men Prabhupada entrusted with
              responsible positions. Prabhupada traveled continuously
              around the world, grappling with problems. Each day his
              mail washed up to him a jumbled deposit of scandals,
              failures, and disappointments. Internal weaknesses and
              shortcomings turned the eleven years of Prabhupadas
              personal supervision into a concatenation of crises.

              It is a noteworthy feature of ISKCON during that time
              that there was hardly any frank and open acknowledgment
              of the problems among the members. Even though almost
              any of us could provide impressively detailed accounts
              of a plethora of scandals and failures, a weird sort of
              schizoid compartmentalization allowed us to maintain
              the conviction that we as a society were pure and
              transcendental and that, almost by definition, we could
              do no wrong. Scandals and failures tended each to be
              viewed as discrete and anomalous, and they were rarely
              surveyed as a whole to alarm us with the picture of a
              chronic condition, a pervasive pattern, a trend. We
              became so captivated by our own dazzling ideals that we
              were blinded to our actual behavior. We could have
              benefited by accepting some of the devastatingly
              accurate criticisms leveled against us by the anti-cult
              movement, but unfortunately the anti-cultists called
              for the destruction of ISKCON. Their condemnations were
              indiscriminate and sweeping, and they in no way wished
              us well. As a result, they simply fostered the very
              bunker mentality they condemned and only fed the
              self-righteousness of the devotees.

              Yet given all that, it was more than possible to
              flourish spiritually within ISKCON. True, when I moved
              into a temple of little over a dozen residents, it was
              a shock to discover the extent of the struggle with
              spiritual weakness that went on daily. It was a test to
              undergo the difficulties of human relations within a
              small tightly-knit, high-demand, high-intensity,
              religious community, especially one nearly bereft of
              the human comforts of social or psychological
              compatabilities. Nevertheless, one could, if one
              wanted, negotiate all the individual and group
              minefields, and not only advance in Krsna
              consciousness, but also deliver it effectively to
              others. In fact, I could do neither of those things at
              all outside of ISKCON. If, on my worst days, I found
              myself thinking that the devotees I lived with were
              fools and rascals, I always reminded myself that
              without these fools and rascals, I could make no
              advancement in Krsna consciousness. I had better learn
              to appreciate them. We were, all of us, fools and
              rascals; nevertheless, Prabhupada still enabled us to
              do miraculous things, rendered all the more miraculous
              in light of the character of the performers.

              Thus, it was not until after the demise of its
              founder-acarya in 1977 that ISKCON as an institution
              had to acknowledge and come to terms with its failures
              and shortcomings. At first--with the lineage apparently
              handed over securely by Prabhupada to eleven
              hand-picked successor-acaryas--ISKCON set out with
              great panache, leaping off with the boyish ebullience
              of Siegfried bounding down to the Rhine, horn blaring.
              Yet it was not long before ISKCON had to confront, at
              last, its own shadow, as over the decade intractable
              failures and shortcomings--abuse of authority,
              enjoyment of position, attachment to material
              pleasures, and the like--emerged within the group of
              initiating gurus. The movement was forced to begin
              facing, frankly and openly, the gap between its ideals
              and its actual achievements. We had attained the
              condition for real progress.

              So profound was ISKCONs denial, its concealment of its
              own problems from itself, that many reacted initially
              as if these problems among leaders were some shocking
              brand-new phenomenon. They contrasted the prelapsarian
              paradise of ISKCON under Prabhupada with the now
              hopelessly degenerate society, devoid as it is of the
              salvific presence of any maha-bhagavata. Some awaited
              eagerly the emergence of a new self-effulgent acarya
              who would restore us to our lost purity. There are
              those who still await the coming of such a savior,
              while there are yet others who proclaim to have found
              him manifest in the person of some particular devotee,
              usually this or that elderly Indian sannyasin.

              Yet even in Prabhupadas presencethe all-acknowledged
              maha-bhagavata--ISKCON regularly failed to live up to
              its own ideals. Moreover, it was during Prabhupadas
              presence that ISKCON devotees were most successful at
              maintaining their concealment; only after Prabhupada
              was gone did the concealment begin to break down. It
              has taken longest for those failures enacted during
              Prabhupadas own presence to attain admission to
              consciousness. Seeking the reason for this delayed
              recognition has led me to face an uncomfortable fact:
              It was Prabhupadas very presence that had gradually
              begun to function for many devotees as an instrument of
              concealment and denial.

              It was natural for us to identify ourselves to some
              extent with Prabhupada as the living embodiment of our
              ideals and to see him as the very personification of
              ISKCON (so that his purity became ours). This helped us
              maintain our ideals and our enthusiasm to attain them
              even in the face of setbacks and adversity. However,
              such a relationship turns unhealthy if I engage in the
              worship or adoration of an ideal precisely in order to
              compensate for personal failures become chronic, for
              weaknesses accommodated to. In such cases, my
              self-respect no long resides in the heroism of my
              struggle, for I have given up on the struggle, without
              acknowledging that I have done so. Now, as a substitute
              for dealing honestly with my failures, I identify
              intensely myself with my savior-figure. My disowned
              anxieties about my true condition and the psychic
              tensions of concealment find release as adulation, one
              that reveals its origin in falsity though its strident,
              driven character. In such cases, worshiping a guru
              becomes a substitute for becoming Krsna conscious. Thus
              we have the too familiar phenomenon in ISKCON (then and
              now) of fanatical followers and so-called guru
              groupies. This pathological submergence of self into
              an all-powerful, idealized savior-figure is, of course,
              one of the phenomena that gives rise to the notion of a
              cult. It is a sure sign of arrested spiritual
              development disguising itself as true religion.

              The point is that the difficulties that precipitated
              the guru reform movement are intimately connected with
              psychological patterns and styles of relationships that
              began to establish themselves from the beginning. These
              are grounded in the inability of many devotees to
              acknowledge and deal fruitfully with their own
              spiritual shortcomings and failures, or, in traditional
              vocabulary, their inability to execute the process of
              anartha-nivrtti (the eradication of unwanted things
              from the heart). This general, widespread failure,
              which pervades the institution and has even shaped some
              structural features of it, is the root debility, of
              which the guru crisisthe crisis of successionis
              simply a highly visible symptom. It is my conviction
              that any real reform has to address effectively the
              root debility. Too many of us have tried to fix the
              symptom while ignoring the local manifestation of the
              disease, including the manifestation within our own
              hearts. Too many have tried to purify ISKCON as a
              substitute for purifying ourselves. This kind of
              behavior is the disease, not the cure.

              In 1979 questions about the gurus position had burst
              out in major eruptions at ISKCON centers at Vrindavan
              and Juhu Beach, ejecting over the rest of the movement
              thick fascicles of photocopied papers. In May of 1980
              the GBC body was forced to convene an extraordinary
              general meetingan emergency meeting-- in Los Angeles
              to find immediate responses to controversial behavior
              on the part of Hamsadutta Swami (abuse of power, drugs,
              sex, crime) Jayatirtha Swami (LSD, as it would turn
              out), and Tamal Krishna Goswami (extreme autocracy). A
              mere three months after sanctioning these gurus, the
              GBC issued a philosophical position paper defending the
              position that the current gurus were to be understood
              as maha-bhagavatas. In any case, by 1981 the GBC had to
              remove Hamsadutta from his position, and it did the
              same with Jayatirtha in 1982. By this point, most
              senior devotees believed that guru failures and abuses
              were going to continue, and the GBC could not control
              them. This growing anxiety finally found institutional
              articulation at a routine meeting of the North American
              temple presidents and sannyasis in September of 1984.
              The thirty-five voting members present polled
              themselves and discovered that 94% of them believed
              that there are fundamental and compelling problems
              with the guru institution as it presently exists in
              ISKCON.

              The group called a second meeting in November to pursue
              this issue further, and, in spite of a good deal of
              reluctance, I was persuaded to the meeting. Much to my
              surprise, I found myself becoming greatly enlivened and
              encouraged by the association and the commitment of the
              devotees. I realized, with a shock, that quite
              unconsciously I had fallen into a state of despair
              about ISKCON--and about myself as well. I was in a
              spiritual slump, and the meeting was waking me up. At
              this gathering I was asked to conduct research to
              determine just exactly what had gone wrong with the way
              the position of the guru had been institutionalized in
              ISKCON. I agreed to take the job.

              Back in Philadelphia, I concluded that the only way I
              could responsibly conduct research on such a loaded
              subject was to attempt to entrust myself to the
              guidance of Supersoul, the indwelling guide and
              director of intelligence. I feared more than anything
              else my own stupidity. I was the Straw Man, and I
              needed a brain. I decided to entrust myself to
              Prabhupadas instructions for attaining direction from
              Supersoul. Thus, as a remedial measure, I undertook to
              rigorously restore my sadhana to a strict level. I
              defined good sadhana as chanting the Holy Name while
              trying assiduously to avoid offenses. In this way, I
              would be in a position to receive intelligence from
              Krsna whenever He chose to give it. Prabhupadas
              instructions were as potent as they are simple:

                   In all spiritual affairs, ones first duty is to
                   control his mind and senses. Unless one controls
                   his mind and senses, one cannot make any
                   advancement in spiritual life. Everyone within
                   this material world is engrossed in the modes of
                   passion and ignorance. One must promote himself to
                   the platform of goodness, sattva-guna, by
                   following the instructions of Rupa Gosvami [in the
                   first verse of Upadesamrta], and then everything
                   concerning how to make further progress will be
                   revealed.

                                     (Preface, Nectar of Instruction)

              It seemed that this was as pertinent for guidance of
              the entire movement as it was for personal guidance.

              As my sadhana became strict, my spirits picked up, and
              my despair over the fate of ISKCON began to evaporate
              like fog. And everyday I thought hard about what had
              gone wrong in ISKCON. Then a breakthrough came.

              One evening some of us who had attended the meeting in
              Towaco were discussing strategy. Sesa dasa, the temple
              president, was there, as well as Mahakrama Swami, who
              had been elected vice-chairman in Towaco. He was also
              the regional secretary for Satsvarupa dasa Goswami, the
              initiating guru and GBC for our area. Although
              Satsvarupa Maharaja would later publish an influential
              book called Guru Reform, his initial reaction to the
              nascent reform movement had been filled with
              misgivings. He did not interfere with our
              participation, yet he had publicly expressed strong
              reservations about the Towaco meetings, questioning the
              suitability of politics to deal with spiritual issues.
              After our strategy meeting broke up that night, Sesa
              took me aside and warned me: You know, you should be
              really careful about what you say around Mahakrama! He
              reports everything back to Satsvarupa Maharaja. You
              should know that.

              I was stunned. I thought: Here we are supposed to be
              the reform party, and we think we can save ISKCON, but
              we cannot even trust each other. How will we be any
              better? It was during the sleepless night that
              followed that I came to realized that the guru
              problem was merely a symptom of a disease, with which
              we were all infected. The polarity of us-and-them was
              wrong. I remembered the famous motto of Pogo, the
              newspaper-comic opossum: We have met the enemyand he
              is us! Any effort at reform that did not begin with
              myself and with our side would be superficial and
              counterproductive. It would indeed be mundane politics.

              Ideas flooded into my head, and in the morning I began
              intensely discussing them with Kunali dasa and others
              and setting them down on paper. Addressing my
              god-brothers and sisters. I began by asserting, The
              root of all problems now facing ISKCON is that we, the
              disciples of Srila Prabhupada, have not yet established
              proper Vaisnava relationships among ourselves. While
              Prabhupada was here with us, we did not enjoy such
              relationships, and our spiritual master plainly told us
              that our greatest fault was our tendency to quarrel
              with each other. And then I went on to commit to
              writingfor the first time--my honest perceptions of
              life in ISKCON:

                   A society of devotees in which proper Vaisnava
                   relations are not yet the norm is called a
                   kaniha-adhikari society. Its distinguishing
                   characteristic is contentiousness arising from
                   envy. Envy is a product of false ego. Because of
                   false ego, the members are unable to establish
                   spiritual friendship among themselves. Instead,
                   they vie with each other for prestige, power, and
                   perquisites. Intensely desiring the honor and
                   respect of others, the contentious neophyte
                   pretends to be more advanced than he actually is.
                   He tries to conceal his shortcomings and
                   falldowns, and in so doing he develops a secretive
                   mentality and holds himself back from entering
                   into open and honest relations with his
                   Godbrothers. Because he cannot reveal his mind in
                   confidence, he remains aloof from real fellowship.

                   He strays from the path of devotional service, but
                   his peers do not help him. For he thinks that if
                   he allows someone to preach to him, he implicitly
                   admits his own subordination. Therefore he cuts
                   himself off from hearing and becomes impervious to
                   instruction or good advice. Because he has many
                   secret misgivings about himself, he becomes eager
                   to find the faults of others; that way he
                   reassures himself of his own superiority in spite
                   of his many unacknowledged weaknesses.

                   Spiritual immaturity often leads a kaniha-adhikari
                   to identify spiritual advancement with
                   organizational advancement. He thinks that
                   attaining prestige, power, and the perquisites of
                   office is evidence of spiritual advancement.
                   Lacking the assets for real spiritual achievement,
                   he substitutes organizational elevation, which he
                   can attain through his cunning or political
                   prowess. He therefore competes intensely with
                   others for high office, and he comes to believe
                   implicitly that one achieves a spiritually
                   elevated state only by becoming victorious over
                   others. In this way material competition becomes
                   institutionalized in kaniha-adhikari societies.

              I also could propose a path of reform:

                   Fortunately, however, the kaniha stage is followed
                   by the madhyama stage. A kaniha-adhikari advances
                   to the madhyama platform by means of
                   sadhana-bhakti. Sadhana-bhakti, pursued diligently
                   and attentively, destroys false ego, and as long
                   as the neophyte devotees attend to their sadhana
                   they can be sure of elevation to the higher
                   stages. There is, however, no other assured means
                   of advancement, and habitual negligence in sadhana
                   is therefore fatal to progressive spiritual life.
                   Furthermore, when a neophyte devotee has risen to
                   the madhyama platform, sadhana is absolutely
                   necessary to maintain him in that position. If he
                   becomes slack in sadhana, he rapidly reverts to
                   the neophyte condition. Therefore, the essential
                   prerequisite for both creating and sustaining a
                   madhyama society is intense common commitment to
                   sadhana.

              Further on, when I described this grass-roots process
              of reform, I expanded upon what I felt were the
              pervading social and individual deficiencies in ISKCON:

                   One special advantage to this revolutionary
                   project for the regeneration of ISKCON is that it
                   need not wait on the action of the GBC. It can be
                   initiated in each temple immediately. It can be
                   started by one devotee, and then spread by
                   progression to two, three, and on and on. Thus
                   there can be many centers of reformation, and they
                   will each widen until all of ISKCON is included.

                   Any devotee who wants to institute reform must
                   begin with himself. The prerequisite for coming to
                   the madhyama stage is to be a strict follower of
                   the regulative principles of devotional service.
                   Spiritual fellowship cannot flourish if anarthas
                   are not being relentlessly uprooted by daily
                   practice. Therefore, every devotee who wants to
                   help in the reformation of ISKCON must first
                   carefully review his own spiritual condition and
                   his personal devotional practice. If he is
                   careless in observing regulative principles and
                   slack in sadhana, he must immediately take up the
                   process of rectification. This entails attending
                   the complete morning program in all alertness,
                   with especial concentration on attentive,
                   offense-avoiding japa. by this effort, a devotee
                   may quickly remove all his accommodations to sense
                   gratification and undertake the deliberate
                   dismantling of his false ego. A devotee of the
                   reforming party should recognize sense
                   gratification and false ego as the two great
                   impediments to Vaisnava fellowship. They are the
                   mortal enemies of ISKCON, and he should resolve to
                   conquer them.

                   Having undertaken whatever personal reformatory
                   measures are required, the reforming devotee
                   should then undertake the rectification of his
                   relationships. Most devotees will discover that
                   few, if any, of their relationships are
                   satisfactory. The devotee will probably see that
                   he has almost no confidential friends, and that he
                   does not and cannot trust most of his associates.
                   He is conscious that many of his associates have
                   made accommodationssometimes quite extensiveto
                   sense gratification. Indeed, he has participated
                   in many meetings in which the faults and
                   shortcomings of those not present have been
                   thoroughly examined. Yet the established patterns
                   of relationships are such that while everyone is
                   free to talk about, no one is free to talk to
                   them. In this situation, devotees find themselves
                   standing helplessly by as they watch one of their
                   associates sink deeper and deeper into maya until
                   he finally bloops; no one is able to come to his
                   aid. As the failing devotee falls further and
                   further away, the criticism of him intensifies,
                   but no one helps.

                   Nor can the devotees work together effectively,
                   because they have no way of working out the
                   inevitable differences that arise in any
                   collective effort. When one devotee transgresses
                   against another, the offended party will either
                   respond in wrath or else retreat into wounded
                   silence (complaining, however, vociferously to
                   others). He does not know how to approach the
                   other devotee and openly resolve their
                   differences. He is unable to reveal his mind
                   without giving offense.

                   Under these conditions, a great stockpile of
                   resentment builds up in time, and the atmosphere
                   is filled with sullen undercurrents of hostility
                   and mistrust, relieved only by periodic outbursts
                   of anger. In this uncongenial climate, devotional
                   relations become more and more burdensome, and
                   materialistic people start to seem relatively
                   nice. The devotees find themselves living in
                   deepening isolation from one another, each
                   enthroned in a well-fortified ivory tower of false
                   ego. They learn to get along by avoiding each
                   other. These are some local conditions that arise
                   in the milieu of fratricidal strife.

              I called the finished paper a preliminary proposal,
              and gave it the title The Next Step in the Expansion
              of ISKCON: Ending the Fratricidal War. My realizations
              were quite personal; I had conducted no surveys nor
              much textual research on the guru question. So,
              tentatively, I mailed photocopies to three or four
              devotees to get their responses. (Remember that at this
              timeNovember, 1984facsimile machines were not yet in
              common use; it was photocopying, then ubiquitous, that
              carried the reform movement.) What happened next
              astonished me: within two weeks strong responsessome
              of them very personalbegan flooding in from devotees
              all over the world. Chain-photocopying had
              geometrically propagated the paper swiftly throughout
              ISKCON. Devotees called to complain that I had left
              them off my mailing-listI had to explain that the
              paper had published itself.

              Clearly, I had struck a nerve. The response was
              overwhelmingly favorable. However, Ramesvara Swami, the
              head of the North American BBT, was outraged, and he
              charge me with the worst of malefactions: because I was
              discouraging the devotees, I was hurting book
              distribution. This I worried about until the Christmas
              mail delivered a store-bought card from Los Angeles
              displaying on front the words Good Job! and Thank
              you! inside. It was signed by Ramesvara Swamis
              biggest book distributors--Mothers Kaumadaki,
              Jagaddhatri and friends too shy to write their
              names--who added the message: Dandavats for your
              Preliminary Proposal for ISKCON. At last some hope!!

              Bahudaka dasa, the chairman of the North American
              temple presidents and leader of the reform movement in
              America, was a little disappointed. He wrote me that

                   We need solid research to understand what should
                   be the role and position of guru. With that paper
                   we can push on strongly for real change. ISKCON as
                   Prabhupada set it up has changed radically and the
                   primary cause is the serious mistakes being made
                   regarding the position of guru. How can we
                   establish the importance of sadhana in our
                   movement when the majority of gurus give the worst
                   example in this regard?

              As Bahudaka wanted, I did go on to write a further
              paper about the misunderstanding of Prabhupadas order
              concerning the position of guru in ISKCON. Under My
              Order . . .: Reflections on the Guru in ISKCON
              (August, 1985) became accepted as the position paper
              the reform movement, and the papers thesis helped
              lead, two years later, to the formal dismantling of the
              zonal acarya system.

              My investigation of this issue brought home the fact
              that the difficulties undergone by ISKCON uncannily
              paralleled those suffered the Gaudiya Maha after the
              demise of its founder. Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati
              hakura had appointed no successor to occupy the chair
              at the head of his institution; instead he ordered the
              institution to be managed by a Governing Body
              Commission, that is, a board of directors of the kind
              that runs modern corporate enterprises. (Governing
              Body Commission is in fact the name of the governing
              board of the British-established Indian Railways.)

              Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati hakura was attempting to
              construct a preaching mission effective in the modern,
              global context. To do this he instituted a collection
              of reforms that rendered his mission suspect to many
              formed by and attached to prevailing practices, which
              they regarded as sanctified by sacred tradition. The
              idea of a GBC was one such innovation. However, it did
              not prevail. As Srila Prabhupada recounts it:

                   Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati hakura, at the time of
                   his departure, requested all his disciples to form
                   a governing body and conduct missionary activities
                   cooperatively. He did not instruct a particular
                   man to become the next acarya. But just after his
                   passing away, his leading secretaries made plans,
                   without authority, to occupy the post of acarya,
                   and they split into two factions over who the next
                   acarya would be. Consequently, both factions were
                   asara, or useless, because they had no authority,
                   having disobeyed the order of the spiritual
                   master. Despite the spiritual masters order to
                   form a governing body and execute the missionary
                   activities of the Gauiya Maha, the two
                   unauthorized factions began litigation that is
                   still going on after forty years with no decision.

                             --Caitanya-caritamrta, Adi-lila, 12.8,
                             purport

              According to Bhakti Raksaka Sridhara Deva Goswami (who
              discussed this matter during a audio-taped conversation
              with a group of GBC members on October 17, 1980), a GBC
              of thirteen members was formed ten days after the
              departure of Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati hakura, but
              Sridhara Maharajawho would not serve on the bodywas
              dissatisfied with it, and he and some other senior
              members prevailed upon the Maha to elevate Ananta
              Vasudeva dasa, a brahmacari of brilliant scholastic
              ability who had served as Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati
              hakuras secretary, to the position of acarya. In
              effect, the Maha reverted to an ancient, tradition
              model of leadership, in which a single guru, recognized
              by all as possessing exceptional spiritual power is
              elevated above all others to rule autocratically at the
              seat at the head of the institution. One of Ananta
              Vasudevas principle supporters, B. R. Sridhara Swami
              recollects (referring to himself in the first-person
              plural):

                   We made him acarya, though a brahmacari, because,
                   next to Prabhupada [Bhaktisiddhanta Saravati
                   hakura], he could satisfy us with the siddhanta,
                   shastric siddhanta, shastric conclusion. He was
                   well versed [in the sastra]. It was universally
                   accepted: Next to Prabhupada, he knows the sastric
                   siddhanta. So we felt indebted to him. And from
                   early time, we thought the next acarya will be he.
                   That was our conviction.

              Two years after the elevation of Vasudeva Prabhu,
              however, someone stumbled across some love letters,
              part of a correspondence between Ananta Vasudeva and a
              woman; these letters were brought to B. R. Sridhara
              Swami, who concluded, together with some other senior
              men, that Ananta Vasudeva could not do justice to the
              seat of our Guru Maharaja and should step down. Ananta
              Vasudeva, however, did not agree, and he and his loyal
              followers squared off with the others in protracted,
              painful hostilities that included systematic
              discrimination, much persiflage and on occasion
              physical assult. Finally, as Sridhara Maharaja put it,
              Prabhupada withdrew from him, and Ananta Vasudeva
              began to preach against Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati
              hakura Sridhara Maharaja says this blasphemy was the
              result of Ananta Vasudevas having committed so many
              offenses against devoteesand he left the mission. He
              gave himself sannyasa in Allahabad, and later took
              initiation (as Puri Goswami) among the babajis of
              Radha-kuna -- a group highly antagonistic to
              Bhaktisiddhanta -- among whom he continued as leading
              intellectual light, even though he eventually got
              married. After his abdication, the Gaudiya Maha
              fragmented into contending parties over the succession,
              and the case ended up before the Calcutta High Court
              for resolution.

              We see that ISKCON is not going through anything new.
              It faces the same issues that broke apart the Gaudiya
              Maha. The fact that the Bhaktisiddhantas disciples
              could not continue their founders visionary reforms
              demonstrates first of all the sheer difficulty of the
              undertaking. It may well take several generations to
              get it right. The undertaking is to pass on a spiritual
              tradition in a sound and healthy form, its living force
              undiminished, into the modern world. This is no small
              task. Up until now, when the religions of the West have
              encountered modernity, they have tended either to
              remain intact by withdraw into the self-protective
              shell of fundamentalism, or to become swallowed up and
              assimilated by the world, to live on only as a few
              nostalgic gestures. Does a similar fate await Lord
              Caitanyas movement? The task facing Gauiya Vaisnavas,
              it seems to me, is to discover another alternative.

              Awareness of the history of the Gauiya Maha not only
              shows us the difficulty of challenge, but it may save
              us from the same mistakes or at least help us rectify
              those we have made. Any hope we have of healing
              fragmentation and isolation depends upon our
              recognition of past mistakes. At the beginning of the
              reform movement, I tried to show how within ISKCON
              concealment of failure leads to isolation. This
              principle holds as much for relations among communities
              as among individuals. Progress in spiritual life,
              individually and institutionally, depends first of all
              on the frank acknowledgement of shortcoming, errors,
              and mistakes. Without that, all progress is mere
              bluff.

              At a certain time, Germans found it necessary to put
              themselves through a painful process to which was they
              gave the name Vergangenheitsbewaeltigungthat is,
              coming to terms with the past, past here referring
              to the period 1933-1945. ISKCON requires its own
              Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung. Each devotee needs to
              undergo it as an individual, and the society to
              undertake it an institution. It is also a necessary for
              the various present offshoots and spin-offs of the
              original GauiyaMaha. ISKCON is not the only place
              mistakes get buried. In those quarters there seems to
              be a reluctance to face up to an historical failure to
              serve the order of Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati hakura.

              The reform movement in ISKCON aimed at establishing the
              GBC-principle and subordinating initiating gurus to the
              GBC authority, based on Srila Prabhupadas order. To
              me, however, the most important element of reform is
              the personal reform as I envisioned it in my
              preliminary proposal. And it is this project which
              has, as you might suspect, proven to be the most
              intractable.

              For devotees in the Krsna consciousness movement,
              reform must be a fundamental spiritual practice,
              inseparable from our cultivation of the Holy Name. We
              must accordingly recognize that reform is a
              never-ending enterprise, our daily work. It should
              never be neglected, nor should we ever assume that the
              job is accomplished. Our confession should be
              perpetual:

                   trnad api su-nicena taror iva sahisnuna

                   amanina mana-dena kirtaniyah sada harih

                   One who thinks himself lower than the grass, who
                   is more tolerant than a tree, and who does not
                   expect personal honor but is always prepared to
                   give all respect to others can very easily always
                   chant the holy name of the Lord.

                             --Caitanya-caritamrta, Antya-lila 20.22

              At the same time, if we show some perseverance in the
              matter, always begging Krsna to destroy our desires to
              enjoy independently in this world, Krsna will
              reciprocate with us and give us guidance from within.
              In this way, the devotee becomes acquainted with the
              infinitely caring and carefully guiding presence of
              Krsna, a presence which becomes the solace of the
              devotees heart. And the devotee can progresses
              confidently. The devotee is also empowered to give
              guidance to others.

              When I became involved with the reform movement, it
              distressed me to see the number of my revolutionary
              god-brothers who thought that the problems with ISKCON
              resolved themselves in to the fact that other people
              were not Krsna conscious enough. The other people, in
              this context, were those who had become the first
              initiating gurus after Prabhupada. Each of them had
              been a responsible leader under Prabhupada, and
              Prabhupada relied much upon them. Prabhupada deeply
              appreciated them because they had shouldered the burden
              of so much responsibility on his behalf. Whatever their
              shortcomings, they were Prabhupadas best men. If, in
              the event, they turned out to be not good enough, then
              the question I had to ask myself was: Why wasnt I any
              better? After all, we are told that the spiritual
              masters mercy is equally available to all disciples,
              without discrimination. Prabhupada did not play
              favorites. So the fault was mine: I had every
              opportunity to be better, but I did not take it.

              I also realized that, despite all their failings,
              Prabhupada appreciated the service of these people. I
              should therefore appreciate it as well. And it seemed
              to me that success in reform of leadership would only
              come when Krsna became convinced that there were other
              people who would be as willing to carry the burden of
              responsibility as those who had failed and who would
              strive more diligently than they did to become free
              from impurities. In sum, the personal qualification for
              reform is: With a firm vow, we in ISKCON have to commit
              ourselves to 1) purifying ourselves, and 2) accepting
              responsibility to care for others. I am convinced that
              any devotee  man or woman, senior devotee or new
              bhakta, big preacher or humble doorkeeper  can, by
              taking these two vows, become increasingly empowered by
              Krsna to save ISKCON. You can begin today.

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