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EDITORIAL January 20, 1999 VNN2884 See Related VNN Stories The Worshipable Can Fall? The Fallible Can Be Worshiped? BY JAHNAVA DD (IRG) EDITORIAL, Jan 20 (VNN) — The Worshipable Can Fall? The Fallible Can Be Worshiped? Please, Stop the Insanity! On December 3, 1980, Tamal Krishna Maharaja confided: "Prabhupada said, 'In order to continue the process of people... getting initiated, I have to appoint some priests to help me, because I cannot physically manage everyone myself' And that's all it was, and it was never any more than that. You can bet your bottom dollar that Prabhupada would have spoken for days and hours and weeks on end about how to set up this thing with the gurus. Because he had already said it a million times. He said, 'My Guru Maharaja did not appoint anyone." Had Srila Prabhupada actually appointed anyone to such a worshipable post, then no one would have fallen! We must be convinced that SP could never have made such a mistake! So why have we been insisting, for the past two decades, that sincere new devotees worship conditioned souls to be as good as God? Sooner or later these conditioned souls inevitably manifest their four defects as gross or subtle fall-downs. Please, let us stop subjecting our senior members to a system that ultimately wreaks havoc upon their spiritual lives, and those of their followers! Srila Prabhupada chastises, "If one tries to mingle the worship of yogamaya with that of mahamaya, considering them one and the same, he does not show very high intelligence." (Cc. Madhya 8.90) Srila Prabhupada diagnoses the cause of this havoc in our society: "Intermingling the spiritual with the material causes one to look on transcendence as material and the mundane as spiritual. This is all due to a poor fund of knowledge." (Cc. Madhya 16.72) Despite his warning, and despite our ever-lengthening list of tragedies, we insist upon a system which continues to pour oil on the fire ravaging our society! This is evidenced as discouraged disciples of fallen gurus, choked up preaching, poor funding of Srila Prabhupada's books, & widespread distrust! What audacity! We insist that a transcendentally fixed vaisnava diksa-guru can become fallen! Our audacity has solidified into these GBC laws: Law # 1.7.2 When a Fallen Guru Must Be Rejected 1.7.2.1 Hopelessly entangled in sense gratification 1.7.2.2 Takes on demonic qualities Srila Prabhupada emphasizes: "Actually, a guru cannot be bad, for if someone is bad, he cannot be a guru. That is a contradiction. A guru cannot be bad! There is no question of a bad guru!" (SSR. Chapter 2) And he further emphasizes this point, "There is no possibility that a first-class devotee will fall down, even though he may mix with nondevotees to preach!" (Cc. Madhya 22.71) Repeatedly, Srila Prabhupada warns us not to commit the 3rd offense to the Holy Names, "The third offense at the lotus feet of the holy name, which is called guror avaj, is to consider the spiritual master to be material and therefore envy his exalted position." Therefore, Srila Prabhupada's lawbooks for the next ten thousand years define that the one-hundred percent Krishna conscious vaisnava diksa guru is never fallen. Again and again, SP invokes the sastric prohibition, "One is forbidden to regard the guru as an ordinary human being (guruu nara-matir. .. nrak sa). The spiritual master, or crya, is always situated in the spiritual status of life." (S.B. 10.4.20) "One who considers the ...spiritual master to be an ordinary human being ... is possessed of hellish intelligence."(Cc. Antya 6. 294) The oft quoted passages from Srila Bhaktivinode Thakur's Harinama Cintamani are targeted at the fallen family guru, (jati guru) the fallen school-teacher guru etc. They have nothing at all to do with the one- hundred percent Krishna conscious vaisnava diksa guru! Surely, all of us agree: we do want to see any more of our Godbrothers disgrace the position of diksa guru! Let all of us recommend that the GBC stop allowing them to be worshiped as good as God. It is a healthy sign for us to be fearful of jeopardizing our spiritual life. We fear offending our Godbrothers and Godsisters, including the GBC. However, aren't we even more fearful of displeasing Srila Prabhupada? How can we overcome attachment, fear and anger and hear him more submissively? Let us all bow down to Srila Prabhupada's words, his clear instructions for managing our society! See Related VNN Stories | Comment on this Story This story URL: http://www.vnn.org/editorials/ET9901/ET20-2884.html
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