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Attack on ISKCON
<< 3 What about the GBC? >>
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| As someone wrote to me recently, the idea of GBC is not in the scriptures (chuckles), so, "Why we should follow GBC"? But the point is anything that a pure devotee does is as good as śāstra. There's the Bhāgavata, which means the philosophy of the śāstra, and there's a person Bhāgavata, the person who exemplifies that philosophy and preaches that philosophy. So Prabhupāda is the person Bhāgavata. What he says is as good as śāstra because he's self-realized.
| | Just like we take that the poems and the songs of Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura are as good as
śāstra because they're given by a realized person. So the argument that GBC is not valued because it's not in the scriptures, is a bogus argument. It undermines Śrīla Prabhupāda's position. He's a fully self-realized soul, pure devotee of the Lord. So Prabhupāda created the GBC, he had picked all the men in the GBC, and he helped to train them, to correct them when they made mistakes, to bless them when they were successful.
| | And as Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvatī did, when he left his body, he said, "No one person should become the ācārya, or the spiritual master of ISKCON." Rather his organization, rather that the GBC, the collective group of men, would be the ultimate authority in ISKCON, because Prabhupāda knew that all the problems that would come up in the future, what have to be taken care of, they wouldn't all manifest during his lifetime. And he had confidence that a group of senior men, who were loyal to him, will be able to solve these problems by guru and Kṛṣṇa's grace.
| | So, Prabhupāda once said about ISKCON that it is not different than him, that it is his body. And in this like we have to consider ISKCON as sacred as is the divine form of Śrīla Prabhupāda. Of course, that's not to say that there will not be problems in ISKCON. And there are many problems in ISKCON, but not because the idea is imperfect, but simply because we are imperfect.
| | But nevertheless, we should never abandon ISKCON. And this seems to be a very common thing these days, that some other organization comes along, some other... some charismatic individual comes along, and because devotees are dissatisfied within ISKCON because of its problems or their personal problems, they give up ISKCON so easily and join these other organizations. This makes my blood boil. It makes me very angry that devotees would so easily leave Prabhupāda's transcendental ship which is meant to cross us all over the ocean of Kali-yuga.
| | And what makes me even more angry is that while they are abandoning ISKCON, they have so many criticisms of ISKCON. In order to justify their leaving ISKCON, they criticize ISKCON as they are leaving and when they've left. But for one who has served ISKCON for thirty years, and for one who... I'm trying to be loyal to Prabhupāda as his disciple, knowing how important ISKCON is to Śrīla Prabhupāda, and it makes me very angry. And that is the reason that I am speaking to all of you today.
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