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Our Original Position Śrīla Prabhupāda and the Vaiṣṇava Siddhānta
<< Preface >>
 | Śrīla Prabhupāda repeatedly warned his followers not “not to change anything” in his absence. Śrīla Prabhupāda’s position as the Founder-ācārya of ISKCON manifests primarily in his continuing authority to guide and command the spiritual society which he created. ISKCON has resisted unauthorized attempts to change what Śrīla Prabhupāda gave us. There have been attempts to change ISKCON’s administrative structure, its ceremonies and even its dress code. Now ISKCON faces a serious attempt to change the philosophy which we learned at Śrīla Prabhupāda's feet.
| | | My purpose in writing a portion of this volume on the jīva-soul is simply to demonstrate that the Vedic scriptures and the previous Vaiṣṇava ācāryas support Śrīla Prabhupāda's sublime teachings. There has been an attempt to isolate Śrīla Prabhupāda from the Vedic scriptures and the previous ācāryas, to portray him as teaching a concoted doctrine invented for the sake of preaching. Such accusations, whatever their motive, are false, as the reader will soon discover in this volume.
| | | Srila Prabhupada often stated, and indeed wrote to me in a letter, that we should try to understand Vedic knowledge as follows: Lord Krishna says that He is the taste in water. Now we should try to understand how Lord Krishna is the taste in water; This is called philosophical speculation. On the other hand, mental speculation, which is against the principle of bhakti, is to speculate on whether Lord Krishna is the taste of water.
| | | Similarly, the members of ISKCON, who live perpetually at the feet of Śrīla Prabhupāda, may speculate how Śrīla Prabhupāda's statements are true, but they may not challenge his statements or claim that they are false; this is precisely what it means to accept Śrīla Prabhupāda as the Founder-ācārya of ISKCON.
| | | It is not my intention in this volume to ultimately resolve in all its details the theological question regarding the origin of the jīva soul, but rather to simply restore within ISKCON the proper spiritual culture within which we may study that issue. The proper spiritual culture is to submissively accept the statements of our Founder-ācārya as fact, and then try, through devotion and service to realize the purport of his statements.
Hṛdayānanda dāsa Gosvāmī
Cambridge, Massachusetts
December 27, 1995
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