by Mahatma das (based on the talk 2022)
For a follower of Prabhupada, loyalty to ISKCON is a manifestation of devotion to Prabhupada. To stay and work in ISKCON is to stay and work with Prabhupada. So whenever one talks about ISKCON, in one’s mind and heart, one just talks about devotion to Prabhupada. If one stays in ISKCON, work within ISKCON – one is staying with Prabhupada, work with Prabhupada. While those who leave ISKCON may think that they are not be leaving Prabhupada, and I don’t think we should accuse them of that, but in one’s heart, one’s feeling is that if I left ISKCON I am leaving Prabhupada because Prabhupada is ISKCON, Prabhupada is everything to me and ISKCON is Prabhupada’s legacy. This is how one should look at the relationship between Prabhupada and ISKCON: devotion to Prabhupada means devotion to ISKCON, and vice versa. Taking care of ISKCON is like taking care of Prabhupada’s body – there should be no distinction. This is crucial because organisations have problems, challenges and imperfect leadership, but one should see ISKCON as Prabhupada’s own body. Some may think they can be devotees of Prabhupada without supporting ISKCON, but this is a mistake. To criticise ISKCON is to criticise Prabhupada. If you love Prabhupada, you will work to improve ISKCON as it grows, despite its challenges. — “I don’t like where it’s going, I don’t like the leadership.” — And that may all be true. It’s not that you should like where everything is going, but we shouldn’t leave because we should see ISKCON as Prabhupada. You can’t leave Prabhupada because you don’t like the way things are going; you have to make them better. I think that is the first point. That we should not differentiate between ISKCON and Prabhupada. You can’t leave ISKCON without leaving Prabhupada to some extent. If one has a very deep connection with Prabhupada and one is dedicated, totally fixed in the service to Prabhupada no matter what, then that connection to Prabhupada is one’s connection to working in ISKCON.
The depth of one’s relationship with Prabhupada reflects the depth of one’s Krishna consciousness. Your connection with your spiritual master, your connection with Krishna and Krishna consciousness, and your depth of bhakti they are not different. Someone may say, my guru this and that and that, but I love Krishna, I love ISKCON, yet I am leaving, I love Prabhupada but I’m leaving ISKCON. It doesn’t exactly work that way. They are synergetic and holistic. If you have one, you have them all. Your behaviour and devotion should be centred on Prabhupada. Your Vaishnava behaviour, your devotion to ISKCON, and your willingness to serve come from the fact that your heart belongs to Prabhupada and you know what he wants.
What should deeply concern us is that Prabhupada is not the centre of ISKCON, and that means that the position of guru has eclipsed by several things.
First – he was eclipsed by the position of diksa-guru. Prabhupada should be the main focus and attention. We do his guru-puja daily and read his books, but I also mean it in every sphere and on every level. Our instruction, our strongest connection and our understanding of liberation all come from Prabhupada – everything else just brings us to him. Prabhupada is the sun and we are his rays. This centrality of Prabhupada has been eclipsed, and it should be a matter of extreme concern. We should discuss this at length, because Prabhupada must become the centre of everyone’s life and heart. Otherwise, in future generations, Prabhupada’s position, teachings and legacy will be lost, and other gurus and acharyas will dominate ISKCON, sidelining Prabhupada.
When Prabhupada was present, there was only one guru in ISKCON. Devotees rarely heard lectures by anyone other than Prabhupada, as recordings of other speakers were rare and of little interest. This context is important for understanding the concerns of senior devotees about maintaining Prabhupada’s central role after his departure.
During Prabhupada’s time, recorded lectures by other devotees were rare because the technology to copy and distribute them was limited. Prabhupada’s lectures and kirtans dominated the tape ministries and were ubiquitous in ISKCON temples and on devotees’ personal cassette players. Prabhupada was the centre of attention and everyone listened to his lectures, morning walks and room conversations. All the news was about Prabhupada’s activities and teachings.
So there was no question of keeping Prabhupada at the centre. You didn’t have to keep him there; he was the centre. There were only his disciples and he was the centre of their lives. There was no competition or anybody else dominating the attention of the devotees. I mean, there were devotees who were powerful and attractive and pleasant to listen to or hear their kirtans, but they were just sunbeams compared to Prabhupada. They all saw them as just little rays of Prabhupada and nothing compared to him. So there was no question that they could ever eclipse or eclipse Prabhupada. It wouldn’t happen. Prabhupada was the only guru; there were no other gurus.
I think the loss was so profound that they needed someone to sit on a vyasasana whom they could honour and worship, because they didn’t feel they could exist without Prabhupada. So they thought, “We’ll put someone else up there; he’ll be the guru, and even for us as Godbrothers, he’ll be a strength for us. Even some of the appointed leaders began to say, “Well, now if you want to be connected with Prabhupada, you have to be connected with me; you have to work with me; you have to worship me”. It became very, very crazy. What started to happen in ISKCON was a shift from a focus on Prabhupada to a focus on the current guru, who was a zonal guru, who you would call an acharya. They gave him names like Vishnupada, Acharyadeva and Acharyapada.
It was like that for the whole nine years.
Prabhupada was given the title “Prabhupada” as a guru, not as his initiated name. He had to instruct his disciples to address him as such because of their ignorance. Other gurus had lavish titles and residences, sometimes even more lavish than Prabhupada’s. Their Vyasa-puja celebrations also became bigger than Prabhupada’s. This shifted the focus to the gurus, causing many devotees to feel alienated because it was not the Prabhupada-centric movement they had joined. The sense of alienation remained even after a guru sat on the vyasasana, so you had devotees who were alienated, and then you had other devotees who said, “No, that’s the way it should be. This is good. There were many good results; many people were inspired (those who liked them). They had a lot of power; they could do a lot of things; they got a lot of disciples. It was easy for the disciples – one guru… You probably know the story, but one by one the gurus got into trouble because they misused their position. They were imitating Prabhupada, and the shastra says that when you imitate great devotees, it’s like drinking poison. Of the eleven, I think seven had fallen away, either because they could not strictly maintain the principles, or perhaps you could say they could not maintain the strictness in a broader sense.
As a Prabhupada disciple who joined ISKCON in 1969, I’ve witnessed an unprecedented change. There was never a time when ISKCON didn’t focus solely on Prabhupada – his books, kirtans and words. While it’s true that this can still be the case today, it has gone too far in the other direction. Prabhupada must remain the central focus, and his lectures, bhajans, and teachings should be sufficiently emphasised. The problem is that some disciples have come to see their own gurus as equal to Prabhupada.
The focus shifted away from Prabhupada, eclipsing him despite his eternal self-effacement. By 1986, many felt it was a mistake for these people to imitate Prabhupada because the movement was centred around them. They wielded power, resources and control, unlike Prabhupada’s ISKCON, where everything was equally managed by the GBC. The gurus became unmanageable, controlling whole zones and the powers of the GBC.
The guru reform movement led to scrutiny by temple presidents and then by GBCs. While improvements have been made, remnants of this culture remain to this day. Many new devotee gurus, though more aware, lack a full understanding of Prabhupada’s mood and mission. Devotees are now reading texts that Prabhupada discouraged, and basic verses that were once widely known are now unfamiliar. This change in mood is worrying.
I firmly believe that within ISKCON the culture in the hearts and minds of disciples and devotees should be one of unwavering recognition that this is Prabhupada’s movement, Prabhupada’s teachings, and Prabhupada’s power. Any notion of personal credibility or prominence should be firmly rooted in our connection to Prabhupada, the true source of all power and spiritual authority. If we fail to instil this Prabhupada-centred understanding in every member, we risk a future in which Srila Prabhupada is diminished, relegated to a secondary position, overshadowed by the rise of other individuals. This would be a grave mistake, for it is Prabhupada’s divine grace and teachings that are the very foundation of ISKCON. While some may accuse this perspective of resembling ritvik philosophy, I would argue that it is in fact a profound glorification of Prabhupada’s pre-eminent role. The ritvik view went too far in trying to replace the gurus altogether, but the core principle of maintaining Prabhupada’s centrality is absolutely essential. Without this, we risk losing the very essence of the Gaudiya Vaishnava siddhanta that Prabhupada so painstakingly established.
Gaudiya Vaishnava Siddhanta emphasises that the role of other gurus is to represent Srila Prabhupada and bring devotees closer to him. Their purpose is to act as lenses to help devotees see Prabhupada more clearly and deepen their connection with him. A true guru will focus on illuminating Prabhupada’s teachings, mission and desires, guiding disciples to become better members of the Hare Krishna movement and assistants in fulfilling Prabhupada’s vision. Any guru who tries to position himself as independent or superior to Prabhupada is doing a disservice, because the guru’s duty is to facilitate the disciple’s relationship with the founder-acharya, not to draw attention to himself.
The problem within ISKCON lies in the lingering effects of the zonal guru system that emerged after Prabhupada’s departure in 1977. The remnants of this culture continue to permeate the institution, posing a significant challenge to gurus who seek to convey the core teaching that they are nothing and Prabhupada is everything, and who aim only to help devotees connect with Prabhupada. This is complicated by the dominant position of the guru role within ISKCON. The organisation has worked to educate devotees on this issue, but it has proved a complex and arduous task. The crux of the problem lies in the distinction between the roles of the shiksha guru (instructing spiritual master) and the diksha guru (initiating spiritual master) in the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition. Historically, the emphasis has been on the guru figure itself rather than the specific diksha initiation process. This nuance has become a source of challenge within ISKCON as it grapples with the lingering effects of the zonal guru system.
Now, in Surasvara Prabhu’s Founder Acharya seminar series, he makes the point that your basic relationship is with Prabhupada, that’s where it starts, and your guru will help strengthen that relationship. It is not the other way round. Your basic relationship is with Prabhupada, and your guru will help strengthen that relationship. That’s a basic principle of his course. And that’s how every guru feels, or at least how every guru should feel, and that’s how every shiksha guru should feel, and that’s how every preacher in ISKCON should feel, and that’s how every devotee should feel. What the GBC had decided years ago was that no one who comes to ISKCON should choose anyone to be their diksha guru for six months, and in those first six months you should develop your relationship with Prabhupada. Now you can be attached to a guru, OK, he can be your shiksha-guru, but for those first six months, focus on Prabhupada as your guru, develop that relationship.
Not that you just choose a guru because he is charismatic or you like the way he chants or you like the way he tells stories or whatever. I’m not insulting anyone. All our gurus are glorious, all our gurus are amazingly powerful, but the point is that you want to accept someone as your guru because you’ve connected with Prabhupada and you see that this guru represents Prabhupada so transparently to you and connects you so deeply with Prabhupada. You want to be connected to him so that you can be connected to Prabhupada. That’s the culture we want to create and I think you’ll find that even though you may feel that way, not everybody feels that way and that’s a concern.
