Kṛṣṇacandra Dāsa – Śrī Vṛndāvan Dham: It is not possible for FISKCON to co-exist within Śrīla Prabhupāda’s ISKCON society. FISKCON severed its link with Śrīla Prabhupāda and the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava Sampradāya when they seized control of Śrīla Prabhupāda’s society in 1978. Since that time, Śrīla Prabhupāda’s ISKCON has been suppressed and its members forcefully disenfranchised and consequently they had no voice in the society that Śrīla Prabhupāda left for them as his legacy and ultimately established for the benediction of mankind.

It is not a question of coexistence; for the FISKCON institution has, since its inception, functioned to suppress, deny and censure the true ISKCON, Śrīla Prabhupāda and his followers. Both systems are mutually exclusive by the simple fact that the FISKCON system wants us to believe that since Śrīla Prabhupāda is dead and gone, they have now assumed the mantle of power and thus by institutional edict they boldly declare that a ‘blind uncle’ GBC/guru substitute is better than no uncle.

Due to their institutionally contrived power and influence they have successfully changed the mindset of their followers to accepting modern materialistic ideologies and programs instead of the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava system as instructed by His Divine Grace AC Bhaktivedanta Swami Śrīla Prabhupāda. In order to do so they had to effectively reject Śrīla Prabhupāda’s teachings, role and function in our society and replace it with their own.

Modern liberalist/pluralist Institutional power and/or authority abhors the rigid rules and regulations of traditional scriptural reference and thought and lends itself more to the interpretive method which necessitates extraneous ideas to be acculturated into theological thought and practice. Once the ‘taboo’ of the ‘as it is’ principle is transgressed; rational thought and practice based on God-centric edict can be opened up to extraneous ideas and processes which were restricted or prohibited in the past due to restraints inherent in the traditional system established by a transcendental personal sentient/cognizant Deity.

God and His representative are no longer the final word in the nature of the absolute truth. The truth is now open to the interpretative process which is human-centric and therefore adheres to the belief that truth exists in the mind of man as an ‘a priori’ rationalization which abhors absolutes, as they believe that absolutes limit man to the dictates of an obsolete and/or controlling God/Deity. Thus they rejected the ideological premise that our goal in life is to please the Supreme Personality of Godhead by serving/pleasing the bona fide Spiritual Master and replaced it with pleasing oneself by taking the place of the bona fide Spiritual Master and declaring the Śrīla Prabhupāda is dead and gone.

To the modern day impersonalist, God is not a separate entity but is ‘immanent’ and exists in the individual and social mind of man where awareness of ‘its’ presence or immanence is only attained through the freeing of the intellect and rational thought process from an external personal Deity under whose design and order we exist. This they believe is the natural evolution of mankind where man is the centre of his universe and not some demanding external Deity whose only use was in days of yore, where man was steeped in superstitious fear and ignorance.

They adhere to the doctrine that ‘theology’ is impersonal and the Deity merely represents a unified force existent in nature which is not definable or able to be labeled or quantified by empirical study or superstitious belief born out of ignorance and fear. Rigid doctrine or dogma based on archaic rules and regulations are to be rejected as obsolete/redundant and in their place human-centric reason based on modern thought and application are to be accepted.

The FISKCON institution is comprised of people who have rejected the traditional Vaiṣṇava doctrine of God and His representatives, who represent the absolute truth. They are replacing it with the human-centric ideological viewpoint that they are now the final word in the interpretation of revealed scripture and teachings of the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava Sampradaya.

It is under this humanistic liberalist/pluralist agenda that they have set about changing Śrīla Prabhupāda’s society to meet the needs of a modern day pluralist religion which seeks religious homogenization [syncretism] rather than offering authentic theological process, that accepts the sovereignty of a Supreme Personality of Godhead who has sent His divine representative to assist us in our journey of liberation by engaging us in His pure devotional service.

Over the last three and a half decades they have established and acculturated an ideology that places the institution as the preeminent authority for the dissemination of Bhāgavata Dharma for the Kali yuga as opposed to the guru paramparā system of bona fide spiritual masters, therefore establishing that institutional appointment is superior to spiritual authority based on śāstra and the teachings of Śrīla Prabhupāda and the past Ācāryas.

The idea has been acculturated within the mindset of the devotees that Śrīla Prabhupāda is dead and everything that he established died along with him and that the new leaders, the FISKCON leaders, are now in charge, which necessitates a complete overhaul and modernization of Śrīla Prabhupāda’s antiquated old world system that is not appropriate for the modern liberalistic/pluralistic world.

They have devalued the criteria for being a guru from being an appointment based on spiritual acumen to one based on institutional expediency. After realizing that it was never the intention of Śrīla Prabhupāda to appoint or establish a living guru system for dīkṣā initiation in his ISKCON Society, which they so dearly coveted, they decided to establish their own system that replaced Śrīla Prabhupāda as the only dīkṣā guru and had consequently relegated them to what they saw as the inferior position of a śikṣā guru, which is, when all is said and done, the only position that a nitya baddha jīva can hold given our fallen state and consciousness…

As none of our present leaders have the adhikāra to hold such an exalted position as a guru of even the madhyama level of consciousness, they extol the virtue of the living blind uncle dīkṣā guru who imparts divya jñāna by the auditory process simply because it has been established and sanctioned by the institution. They converted the transcendental process of guru paramparā turning it into a bureaucratic process where institutional authority replaced spiritual purity and/or mandate from His Divine Grace AC Bhaktivedanta Swami Śrīla Prabhupāda. Now any devotee that they appoint into the position of an initiating Spiritual Master must be unquestionably accepted as a pure devotee because they appointed him or her and therefore he or she must be afforded all due respect, worship and deference of God’s representative on earth.

It is now common belief in our international society of Vaiṣṇavas that a devotee is deemed qualified to act in the role of an initiating spiritual master or dīkṣā guru by ‘bureaucratic’ mandate via an elective or appointment by vote process and the process has no bearing on the candidate’s spiritual acumen. The new ideology is that the institution is now to be seen as the recipient of God’s mercy and divine instruction which undermines the authority of the guru paramparā or spiritually transcendent authority.

The definition of a spiritual leader having changed, members of our Vaiṣṇava Community have been accustomed to a lower, more ‘permissible’ standard of what is acceptable and what is unacceptable for a spiritual leader. This change in the morality and ethic of our society is why we, as a society, accept degraded behavior and ideologies as being spiritual in essence and therefore we permit them to continue unchecked by the standard set by Śrīla Prabhupāda and the previous Ācāryas.

It is the GBC who now dictate the line of command/authority and standard of our society and not the previous Ācāryas, Śrīla Prabhupāda or Vaiṣṇava śāstra. Decisions are now made on managerial or intellectual expediency which defies and undermines the theological/ecclesiastical basis of our ISKCON Vaiṣṇava society and places power and control in the hands of bureaucrats and businessmen.

To be accepted as a member of this FISKCON society one must accept that Śrīla Prabhupāda is dead and with him died the spiritually realized leader along with everything that he established and instructed us to do. The ultimate conclusion being that if Śrīla Prabhupāda is dead then God as a sentient cognizant being is also dead. Śrīla Prabhupāda is dead therefore God is dead.

In order for this to be a successful transition of power and control, the FISKCON institution had to overhaul and remodel the whole system that Śrīla Prabhupāda established while still maintaining a semblance of the traditional Vaiṣṇava in outward appearance. They needed to dismantle the ‘as it is’ principle by setting precedents of change in all aspects of our society from Śrīla Prabhupāda’s books and his management procedure, through to his preaching style and emphasis. However, the most insidious change was to change our Vaiṣṇava culture of personalism to the impersonalist mayavadi doctrine of the New Age Spiritualist Self-styled Guru.

As we are witnessing at present in ISKCON, the Gurus are making very good use of the internet to promote themselves as politically correct pluralistic self styled impersonal spiritualists, independent of the authority of Śrīla Prabhupāda and Lord Kṛṣṇa, to the masses; and on the other hand ‘act’ as śuddha bhakta’s and bona fide representatives of the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava guru paramparā to their ISKCON disciples and followers.

This is also being witnessed in the Academic world by our so called academics who study diacritical theology which interprets and describes our Vaiṣṇava siddhānta via negative critical analysis which seeks to ascertain what they believe are ‘logical fallacies’ inherent in any theological thought and rejects theology of the absolute which they believe is authoritative, definitive and restrictive and therefore not open to interpretation and discussion. They seek to free man from what they believe is acceptance of an arbitrary sentient God who is transcendent and therefore removed from immanence in man’s mind and intellect.

To Academia, the Vaiṣṇava siddhānta, as given by the Ācāryas, is seen as being anti-academic in its fundamental premise and consequently contradicts with the Humanistic understanding of rational thought which is based on impersonal human-centric ideology. Ultimately they reject the transcendence of divya jñāna and consequently the idea that Bhāgavata Dharma is transcendental to this phenomenal world. They accept that it is simply a fabrication based on the ‘a priori’ reasoning of man to find answers to their existence that are imaginative and escapist in orientation.

However, this ideological viewpoint of the modern day scholastic world falls short of rationality when our leaders themselves play into the hands of imaginative thought when they contradict their humanistic orientation with that of the sahajiya sects coming from the Babaji’s of Vraja who advocate the use of mundane day dreaming in the guise of rāgānugā bhakti, falsely believing that Kṛṣṇa and His lilas are to be found in ones imagination simply by imagining Him to be…

Both of the above schools of thought and practice of our Preachers ultimately rejects Śrīla Prabhupāda as the final word in Kṛṣṇa consciousness and ‘errantly’ seeks to free mankind from the restraints of a personal controlling God and His representative. The mentality of the humanistic sciences has insidiously inculcated itself into our Vaiṣṇava society via the senior FISKCON leadership who have intentionally incorporated the secular humanistic educative curriculum, syllabus and accreditation into our schooling system and encouraged our adults to seek training and qualifications in the secular academic tertiary educative process by their own personal example. Having done so they have established in the mindset of the general devotee that western urban based education is entirely acceptable as a replacement for Śrīla Prabhupāda’s educational program which they promote as being redundant.

Simultaneously our leadership, being spiritually bankrupt and materialistically motivated, have begun to reveal their actual intentions and realization and are beginning to openly preach their mayavadi impersonalistic doctrines to the public without reference to our Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava siddhanata and consequently without acknowledgment of His Divine Grace AC Bhaktivedanta Swami Śrīla Prabhupāda.

It is now beyond doubt that our leaders have betrayed us and are now openly showing their true colors which blatantly declares that His Divine Grace AC Bhaktivedanta Swami Śrīla Prabhupāda is WRONG and that they are right.

Their deception is like a malignant melanoma which has been spreading its voracious tendrils throughout the body [ISKCON] for years before it erupts through the skin to announce its lethal presence. Unfortunately when it does, it is usually a death sentence. Luckily Bhāgavata Dharma is not a mundane disease – it is actually a cure for material disease. Once it is applied correctly it will throw off the vile diseased state of impersonalism and ignorance we as a society are presently embroiled in, and Śrīla Prabhupāda will be once again allowed to lead our glorious ISKCON society.