Back To Prabhupada, Issue 37, Autumn 2012
n the following lecture, ISKCON guru Kripamoya Dasa highlights the fact that ISKCON's "gurus" are hardly physically present in the lives of their disciples:
"In fact, 95% of our movement is really initiated by someone who they hardly see. That's alright. I was initiated by Prabhupada, I hardly saw him, maybe six, seven times. Did Prabhupada ever personally crush me, rub me, boil me, break me, chastise me? No. But did others? Yeah, you bet! And Prabhupada made sure, that was our culture - the rubbing, crushing, pulverizing. That's why the culture, sometimes, of remote guru, short conversation, flattering the disciple, is not working. It adds up to very weak disciples."
(Kripamoya Dasa Lecture, 4/8/2012)
And Kripamoya Dasa admits that his own experience was similar - which was typical of many other disciples of Srila Prabhupada, who either never met, or had very little physical contact with Srila Prabhupada.
We therefore have the ludicrous situation whereby it is argued that an ISKCON "diksa guru" is necessary because the diksa guru must be physically present, even though:
a) He himself may have hardly had the physical presence of his own diksa guru, Srila Prabhupada;
b) He may provide hardly any physical presence to his own disciples.
We thus have a movement of "diksa gurus" who justify their existence on the basis of a physicality that, in general, they themselves may have not experienced, nor offer! Clearly, therefore, such a concocted explanation serves no purpose other than to enable such persons to "pretend" to be diksa gurus in order to take all the profit, adoration and distinction (PAD) that accompanies such a position.
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