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Autumn 2005

In an astonishing statement that will bewilder even the most ardent ISKCON Guru supporter, ISKCON Guru H. H. Bhakti Caru Swami (BCS) encourages that faith be reposed in a certain “Harikesh Prabhu”(photo, right).

BCS states:

“If you still have faith in Harikesh Prabhu, I will be the last one to tell you that you should take shelter of someone else. That’s why I feel very hesitant and awkward to give
re-initiation to his disciples.
He is my Godbrother.”
(BCS, Text PAMHO:10469072, 1 October 2005).
hks

Readers could be forgiven for doing a double-take here. Is this not the same Harikesa of whom BCS stated only two years ago:

“After Harikesa fell down in 1998, in 1999 I proposed that it’s obvious that we are going in the wrong direction.”
(BCS, Toronto Meeting, July 20th 2003)

The answer is, “Yes, this is the same Harikesa!” BCS’ illusion about the status of Harikesa is further compounded by the fact that the GBC itself, the very body that elected BCS as a Guru, categorically rejects Harikesa as any sort of spiritual authority, and recommends that Harikesa’s disciples take shelter of Srila Prabhupada, not Harikesa!

Date: 09-Dec-98
Subject: Notice from the GBC Executive Committee Status of Harikesa dasa -
Tuesday, December 8th, 1998

On August 12th, 1998 the GBC executive committee issued a statement on the status of Harikesa dasa acting as an initiating spiritual master in ISKCON. […]
It now appears that his lack of faith in Srila Prabhupad and his inability to represent the standards and teachings of our disciplic succession and Vedic shastra are deep and on going. […] The August 12th decision to place Harikesa dasa on probation came with a set of guidelines for rectification. To date there has been no positive or encouraging movement in this direction, rather it appears that he is moving farther away from Srila Prabhupad and Vedic standards and philosophy […]
We are all fortunate that there is always the security and shelter of Srila Prabhupada’s books, his personal example, his service, the Deities, and above all the association of the Vaishnavas. Taking shelter in these will protect you spiritually in these difficult times.
Your servants,
Ravindra Svarupa dasa, Sesa dasa, and Badrinarayan dasa

And if even THAT wasn’t enough to show how bewildered BCS has become by usurping Srila Prabhupada’s position, we now see that Harikesa himself contemptuously rejects the idea of the bona fide Guru as being essential in spiritual life; for on his wife’s website, he states:

“An understanding of spirituality as distinct and free from ‘religion’ as we know it today. The freedom of the soul and the soul’s inherent right to have a direct and deep loving relationship with the supreme without a need of dis-empowering itself to any form of intermediate ‘representative’ of God.”
(http://www.earthfuture.se/lectures.php, archived 17 October 2005)

It seems that BCS is unable to tell the difference between taking shelter of the bona fide Guru Srila Prabhupada, and a false Guru like Harikesa.

This is perhaps not surprising since BCS is himself a product of ISKCON’s false Guru system.