Guru-tattva

T S : People want to remember their past lives. We want to forget them. We're not interested in the hypnotic regression of the New Age, find out about our past lives. Why should we? Why should we want to find out about that? We are not, apparently they seek some further validation, hearing about it from the Bhagavad Gita is not sufficient to know. They want some personal experience. They had such past lives, what value would that be? I suppose they have some psychological theories or something like that surrounding hypnotic past life regression, perhaps they look at it from that angle. I used to meet many people that had undergone such treatments and found out about their past lives. They were a queen in England one life before and two lives before that they were a pharaoh in Egypt and three lives before that they were a hero in some great battle and now what I would say to them was what happened to them this time? Because this time they were just an ordinary person walking through the airport, they weren't a king, or pharaoh or a great military leader, anything of the sort. So that not very valuable. To remember your past life, that's not very valuable. Forget about your past life and forget about this life in as much as we're giving too much importance to something that has little baring in your eternal nature, very little, it's causing us much difficulty, it's very problematic. If you can hear about our dignified life, awaken to that, it will fade very quickly like a dream after waking, yuktam sevayam. That is the message of the Bhagavatam.For regularly hearing this is why. Once when I, in a simple way I was explaining reincarnation to one lady, one girl who came to one of the temples once where I was staying, making a report and her mother accompanied her. So I gave the logical explaination, so forth, and her mother interrupted, she said, "I think that sounds horrible. " I said, "so do I, so why don't you do something about it, that's the point." It's not a good thing, changing bodies life after life, up and down. So do something about it. So Guru in this way comes to show us what is our prospect. In that sense Guru is not different from us. Not a foreign element, not an outside element, an oppressor of any kind, but my own prospect coming before me. My future beyond all these lives, lesser lives, pasu-buddhi animal life. Beneath liberation they're all called animal intelligence only, animal thinking. Then to transcend death to get out of animal conciousness, leave your animality behind. But, that's only a basis for a happy life. That does not come out to a full and happy life in itself. Negation of material life doesn't come out to something transcendental. To make it material life is not enough, but anyway, the full picture of transcendance. So therefore, we say initiation is only a beginning. Initiation means for stopping death. That's what it means. Initiation from the Guru means to stop death. If we really apply ourself in terms of this ideal as it is a joint scripture and so forth then we can see that it amounts to that. That voluntarily I'm giving up my body, voluntarily I'm giving up my mind's perception,

matra-sparsas tu kaunteya
sitosna-sukha-duhkha-dah

the world is created in the mind. I live in a world created through my mind and senses and I am the God there and I go forward to exploit everything that I come in touch with for my world. Back to the New Age again, create your own reality. This is nothing special. That's what everybody is doing, creating their own reality. That is obscuring what is the ultimate and absolute reality. With power of mind which is so much advocated in the New Age, we can never come even... we can not come close to what is Krsna consciousness. The power of mind is so great in comparison from what we can do physically. But we misconstrue it as such that there lies our possibilities, ultimate prospect, not in mind. So when the Buddha possesses the mind of another in this phenomenon, we began talking about this phenomenon of channeling. It can have nothing to do with our spiritual life. It cannot help us individually, especially if we're the channelor. Neither can it help those who hear that kind of news. It all arising from the mental plane, mental plane. We want to be saved not by imagination, but from imagination. So Guru is coming to address that, as we talked last night, to close down the mind, to shut down the mind and shut down the intelligence as it is functioning at present, that the heart may come out and find fulfillment. So he comes to address that, in that way in a foreign element, our highest prospect coming before us. Not even, not different from ourself even, an old friend, something like that coming before us, showing us what we can be, so free. By the help of mind we cannot get much space, not much freedom. So yes, if you would remember all of your past lives you would die. You cannot have knowledge and ignorance at the same time. Our present life is ignorance. If we were to have all the knowledge, our present life would finish, be finished. But if we get knowledge then it has to be in the spiritual sense of the term, knowledge means ultimately,

bahunam janmanam ante
jnanavan mam prapadyate

that service, this is the end of knowledge. End of knowledge brings us to the idea that service and love is what I live for, this is what I want. Not knowledge for it's own sake. Ultimately we don't need knowledge, but in the interim we need some knowledge to rise above ignorance. When we're in safe land then we don't need that. When we're home then it's not required, then we can be relaxed, we don't have to move with trepidation and caution, filter everything through this mental, intellectual analysis of profit and gain, profit and loss. What will happen if, what will be in for me if I get through this, if this ceases. When we're in our home land and happy land this business all finishes. So when we come to our Guru then in this sense we want knowledge. We want knowledge for the sake of... we want to fulfill our heart. Then we have stopped death. Death means that you have to give up your body and body is a concept of the mind, so that means you have to give up your present state of mind also by the force of the nature of this plane of experience that has to come about. But we're unwilling, we're resisting that. But when we give ourself to the Guru, initiation, then that means that we stop death because we give up our body in the true sense of the term, it means that he brings the wood for the fire and in the fire, what happens when we get initiated, sometimes we do the fire especially for the mantra diksha, a ritual is required. So it is not just some smoke that goes up or something like that. But in the fire we are to put everything that we are carrying with us to be offered into the fire. Everything about us, our whole present way of thinking and so forth is to be put in the fire and a new way of thinking to come out in the company of our Guru. A new way of thinking about everything, how to look at everything from a different angle of vision. So in this way it's a stopping of death. Who embraces this idea in the true sense of the term, he stops death. Voluntarily he gives up his body. Voluntarily she gives up her mind, ahead of time, you will be forced to do anyway and get another one who does it thoughtfully, voluntarily, ahead of time. It is in this way stopping death and therefore, initiation means the beginning because as I said, to stop death doesn't in of itself amount to spiritual life. To negate the problems of material existance still there's nothing positive there. Initiation is a beginning, to stop death and now learn about my real life, to become a child again, something like that. In a spiritual context and learn how to walk, how to talk, as our father is teaching us how to see, how to walk, how to talk. This is the idea of spiritual life. Such a quest, we will be opposed to that. The Western mind isn't, it's so lacking in reverence, the rugged individual is so much pushed forward as an ideal and so forth, that the principle of Guru is a little bit difficult to understand, what to speak of follow, difficult to understand. India is much a land of worship, worship of cows, worship of earth, everything. They're the worshipping kind, something like that, by nature. It's a little bit in their blood. Not so here. So this kind of idea is very much foreign to the Western mind. It's a practical thing, if someone helps us then we'll have regard for them. If our parents help us we have regard for them. In proportion to the knowledge they give us, what kind of knowledge is coming from Guru? How much help is coming from there. So how much regard will be there; and many kinds of Guru's; and of course, this has been an issue in the ISKCON movement for years since our Prabhupada left, what kind of Guru's. There's the siksa guru, there is the diksa guru, there's the vartma pradarsika guru, there's the sannyasa guru, you've heard of raga-marg guru, all these things. Which guru is more important? And this issue has been battered about here and there, back and forth, referring to this book and that book, and this statement and that one, and this angle of vision and that; but what does guru really mean? The answer to that question, that kind of discussion is summed up with a simple understanding of what guru means; and Shridar Maharaja once gave that in a very wonderful way, he just immediately put it on the spiritual platform. When he was asked, "which guru is more important? The siksa guru, the diksa guru, the sannyasa guru, the vartma pradarsika guru, sastra guru, raga-marg guru?" He said, " whichever one helps you the most. He's the most important." So aside with all formalities, whoever helps us the most he's more important; and whoever helps us is important. It's all the Lord. Guru means Krsna. Guru Tattva is different from the jiva tattva. Jiva tattva is, as we said earlier, neither here nor there. Guru Tattva has a strong position. That is Krsna. Tatasta-shakti means neither here nor there, dependant, fully dependant on association, whatever association he gets he becomes like. But Guru is another thing, the strong position that is asserting. Krsna. Self asserting.

aham sarvasya prabhavo
mattah sarvam pravartate

Krsna asserts Himself. This is who I am. I am everything. Everything comes from Me. So Guru is of this category. Guru tattva, not jiva tattva. Tatasta-shakti is the jiva tattva and Guru is the Guru tattva, different thing. Now that phenomenon, tattva, manifests in the jiva who is a Vaisnava; but that inspired side of the Vaisnava that is called Guru tattva. He may have another side, we may call the ordinary side if there be such a thing of a Vaisnava, but as opposed to the Guru tattva. Ordinary side: he may not like potatoes, he may have certain personality likes or dislikes, I mean it could have been bananas or anything; but if our Guru says that he doesn't like to eat potatoes, we never eat potatoes, you understand, now we may. Siddhanta Sarasvati Thakur never ate mangoes since his childhood because he thought he had made one offense to the Diety, having eatten a mango as a boy before it had been offered and chastised by his father, Thakur Bhaktivinoda. He took a vow never to eat mango. But our Prabhupada didn't hesitate to eat mango's. So these things we have to balance out. There's the inspired side, Guru tattva, and there's the Vaisnava; and generally, we'll be inspired by the Vaisnava side too, whatever he does because the message he's carrying has so much bearing on our lives that it's transforming our lives and the medium through which that's coming will also take on all types of divine appearance to us. It is divine really, in a sense, whatever he may do. This will be our angle of vision. Still, sometimes we have to shed some light on what is the advice, what is the instruction and that thing when it may appear in different forms, different shapes, at different times, they come to us to help us, if we put too much weight on the other side, the normal, ordinary particular disposition, style of delivery and so forth, of our Guru, then it may obscure our capacity to find that essential teaching and expression of Guru tattva that is not limited to appear in any particular form. It may appear anywhere, at any time. It may appear in another Vaisnava. It may even come in an ordinary person. Prabhupada said, he was writing his Back to Godhead magazine and one man in Vrndavana said, "why you don't write books? Why don't you publish books? Books will be kept, taken more seriously by the people." And Prabhupada said, "at that time I could understand that my Guru Maharaja, Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur, was appearing there and speaking to me through him and inspiring me in that way." So, one time Tamala Krsna Maharaja told me that he thought, having had the company of our Prabhupada, that if you are spiritual, if you're a spiritual person and someone asks you a question and the answer is 'yes', then you go like this: yes, yes, and you move you head this way, whereas if your a mundane person and someone asks you a question and the answer is 'yes', you go: yes (no head movement ). He said, "until I went to India and I saw that everybody in India goes like this (moves his head in a small figure eight motion.) Because he only had experience that Prabhupada, yes, yes (head movement.) So you have to sort all these things out and be thoughtful and in this way we have to progress to a deeper understanding of tattva. It's very elusive, Guru tattva.

saksad-dharitvena samasta-sastrair
kintu prabhor yah priya eva tasya

He's Krsna and he's not Krsna at the same time. He's Krsna, all the sastras proclaim it. Krsna Himself says it,

acaryam mam vijaniyan

I am the Acarya. Never be envious of Him, that's Me. So all the sastras proclaim, saksad-dharitvena samasta-sastrair, then the next line, kintu prabhor yah priya eva tasya, He's very dear to Krsna. They all say that He's Krsna. We should also know that He's very dear to Krsna. Now wait a minute, how can He be Krsna and He's dear to Krsna? So it's an illusive kind of tattva, Guru tattva. Sridhara Maharaja has given a nice explanation, the inspired side is there, Guru tattva, and there's the Vaisnava side. Vaisnava has to be very humble. Trnad api sunicena . This is the order of Mahaprabhu. More humble than the blade of grass. You may know that Thakur Bhaktivinoda gave a nice explaination. Sometimes it's called more humble than... it's rendered more than a straw in the street because a straw in the street offers less resistance than a blade of grass, because if you step on the grass it still may come back up, but the straw on the street, if you step on that, it's been beaten down by so many, it doesn't get back up. But more humble, we should be more humble than the straw on the street, how can that be? So Bhaktivoda Thakur has given us an idea to help us, he said that because our position is actually lower than the straw on the street we should be more humble. Why is it more low? Because if the straw on the street, if a favorable wind comes it will be caught up in the favorable wind and go with it; but we even in the face of a favorable wind of good advice, we often offer resistence. So we're worse than the straw in the street, we're lower, so something like that. So this is Vaisnava standard and particularly Gaudiya Vaisnavism is characterized by intense humility. An example is Krsnadasa Kaviraja Gosvami, is offered to us and, of course, Rupa and Sanatana and others, but Kaviraja Gosvami his disposition that he reveals to us as the author of Caitanya Caritamrta is almost, we have to block our ears when he says, " I'm lower than Jagai and Madai. If anyone hears my name he loses his piety. If anyone chants my name he performs a sinful activity. I'm lower than Jagai and Madai and my position is like that of a worm in the stool, but somehow I've been ordered to do this, write the Caitanya Caritamrta. Please forgive me." This we can hardly tolerate, but this is such a standard of humility as shown in Gaudiya Vaisnavism and Mahaprabhu has set that standard. Trnad api sunicena. More humble than a straw on the street, more humble than a blade of grass. So this is very interesting because Guru has to assert Himself, he has to assert, of course, on behalf of Krsna. He has to take the position of Krsna and be assertive. It's foreign to His own nature as a Vaisnava that He's cultivated His whole life. He's cultivated a opposite disposition and suddenly He's being told, "go give the orders and tell everybody, criticize everybody, and it is the business of the Guru to criticize the disciples, instructively of course, but... When Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur heard Ragunatha dasa Gosvami offended by one caste brahman at Radha-kunda on the Vraja Mandala Parikram. Dasa Gosvami has given many slokas, in one of his slokas he offers his respects to the brahmanas on earth, he wasn't born in a brahman family, so some people take it, "Oh, Dasa Gosvami he's lower than us because we're born in brahman families and he's the prayojana-tattva acharya of Gaudiya Vaisnavism. He's shown the highest, his writing have shown the highest, what is the highest possible attainment in Gaudiya Vaisnavism, prayojana-tattva, sumbanda adi... So the writings of Dasa Gosvami are all like that. We find them focused on that, prayojana-tattva. He's called prayojana-tattva acharya and some brahman is thinking that we're superior to him because we're born in brahman families. It's a great misreading of his sloka where he shows great humility. So when Siddhanta Sarasvati overheard this on the Vraja Mandala Parikram at Radha-kunda he began fasting and his own party of so many men on the Parikram were all fasting. So someone said, "Guru Maharaja, why are you fasting? Who cares for this man? He's a nonsense man. Why your fasting?" He said, "No, if I was a only, if I was a babaji and I had no position then I would simply ignore him and walk away because I am representing the sampradaya as Acarya then I have to do something. I have to counteract this kind of propaganda and of course, this man became very frightened that the whole party was fasting and refused to eat and he came and apologized and recognized his mistake in the position. So the point is that the Acharya has to, as a representative of Krsna, has to assert. It's foreign to the disposition of a Vaisnava. We may also see it as the further extention of the principle of humility ordained, ordered by Caitanya Mahaprabhu. That yes, your whole life you've culivated humility and the disposition of a servitor. Now, put that aside and act in this way, assert yourself on my behalf. So, this requires some humility to do that. To put aside that kind of a disposition in a sense. Acharya-abhimana. It's a kind of a madness, something like that. Vaisnava to be giving orders and to assert himself. But it is the necessity, so anyway. By that good connection in our material life if we do it properly then that comes to an end quickly and our spiritual life begins to develop in His company and grow; and this is the New Age we're looking for. Not that we're channeling in the Aquarian Party or something. That won't be very helpful to us.

Devotee: The best Guru tattva is that help according to the highest level of help or just the general help because like you said that there's different levels of understanding?

T S : So, then as you get help, as you grow in proportion to the help you get, our point is that appreciation will be, will naturally follow. So, you have to be a little open. Parents are also a guru. Parents, according to the Vedic culture are also a type of guru. Isn't it? You get some help from them, they'll appreciate. You need help as a child, you approach your parents, they give you help. Later more help may come. As your need for help and your understanding of what help is develops, then you may get higher connection. A teacher in school, something like that. May help you more, or whatever. Or you may need someone who says, "Hey, why don't you come and check out the Hare Krsna movement, right? He may be a Hare Krsna, whatever you want to call him and he may convince you. That's called vartma pradarsaka guru. He might convince you this is the path. You may very much appreciate him, he brought you in the fold and you always have regard for him in your heart, even though he blooped or something later on. You still like him, that man. "I can never think of him differently, he brought me in. They say this about him and everything, but anyway, I always think about him in a different way, because he actually brought me into this. I have some regard for him." You may something, I know something about him, that is an inspired side in him also that came out at that time. That you appreciate. Then he may bring you to, let's say, Prabhupada. So Prabhupada helps you in a big way as the siksa guru and diksa guru and so forth. Sat guru. So you have much appreciation and so forth. Same time, someone like Prabhupada, it's possible, his campaign is so broad as a recruiter for the absolute truth, that many, many people may come in touch with Him, become disciples and then they become disciples in a general way. They become disciples of Vaisnavism and of Caitanya Mahaprabhu's Gaudiya Vaisnavism and so forth. But such a broad campain of recruiting, he may be empowered to bring many persons in whom later then, he will place them in a particular section with a particular guru, something like that, a particular camp. Some may be His eternal associates, that's also possible.

Devotee: So you are saying that guru tattva is actually the jiva's present platform as a link to a higher platform?

T S : Guru tattva means Krsna and we have to have a growing and a progressive idea of this tattva and in this there will never be any disregard, you understand. We're talking about something that's absolute, but we try to look at it from our relative vantage point, so then we think, we try to think he's lesser, he's more, or something like that. It really doesn't enter in that we're getting absolute, we're getting in touch with God, with our real nature as servant of God through different agents, different times. Let us say today we all leave this world, we all have our Guru's. Right? And maybe we'll all be born again, let's not say us, we won't but maybe at the Aquarian Party or something. They are not having this kind of eternal katha; for a moment they are slipping from the culture of eternity and devotion. So, then what will happen? I mean, also, let's be practical, this is a culture. It takes long time, many lifetimes. So next life, where you are is where you are. It's a simple thing. Krsna consciousness is not I'm here and then I go there. You are where you are. It's a conciousness. Where you are now and what you see, you have a theory of Krsna conciousness that you might be good at presenting, but where you are, where you actually exist that may be another thing. The vision of one who really dwells in the plane of consciousness that Caitanya Mahaprabhu is coming to speak about is Vrndavana. Wherever he looks, whatever hill he sees is Govardhan, every body of water he sees is Yamuna. The tree is kalpa-vrksa in Vrndavana. We're seeing something else. Mahaprabhu is not hallucinating, we're hallucinating. We're only getting a partial picture. The dog looks through two eyes at the same phenomenon that you look at, but he sees entirely different. Where is the dog? He's in a particular world of consciousness, you understand. Conscious perception of reality. You have a picture, I have a picture of that. Where you are is where you are, not that you're here and you die today and you go somewhere else. That's where you stay and from there you can get another life and go on, and so forth. Something like that. It's not like die and go to heaven. Anything can happen, but that's not the norm. If Krsna wants to take you, a great Vaisnava wants to take you, immediately he can take you from where you are, but generally you get what you've got, or something like that. Of course, you are acquiring something now, also, accumulating something which is not bearing fruit at present. It will bear fruit in the future, so your next life will be very different. That also has to be considered. But anyway, so you take birth next life, so who will your Guru be? Guru means Krsna. Guru tattva. If your Guru is Prabhupada, what do you think, he'll come again, the same person, a Bengali gentleman, sixty-nine years old, he crossed the ocean. It's going to be a whole set of different circumstances and so forth. So your getting help from Krsna and Krsna has, as Prabhupada says in his address in Bombay, you may know it, that this is not a sectarian idea. Acharya is one, appearing in a multitude of forms to help all of us to understand. So he may come, you should be open to that. To really serve and Prabhupada is our Guru, for example, formally and substantially, if we really serve him then we will be able to progress in our understanding of what it is about him that phenomenon, Guru tattva, that we're so drawn in by and as we come to understand that then we'll also be able to identify it more to whatever degree it's appearing anywhere. Krsna, where is Krsna? A man from Arya Samaj, it's an atheistic group of India that was popular years ago, gave a talk. His talk was that if you look out into the night you'll see the stars. The light that's coming from the stars, it takes light years to reach here and light goes at the speed of one hundred, eighty-six thousand miles per second. That's twenty-five thousand miles around the earth circumference, so for seven, eight times, almost eight times around the earth in a second. That's fast. And it's moving at that speed for years and years and years before it get to earth. So those stars are far, far away, right? And then he said, and some of those stars have not yet become visible to us. How far away are they? And where is God? We are told He is beyond the stars. So how far away is God, therefore, why should we concern ourselves with Him? Let's be concerned with the here and the now. He gave a talk like this and Sridhara Maharaja's relative heard the talk and he repeated the talk to another fellow in the company of Sridhara Maharaja when he was just a young boy. Sridhara Maharaja when he was a young boy, Sridhara Maharaja was just about twenty-two years old; he developed a very intense sense of detachment from the world. It's his modest way of saying, "at twenty-two I became brahman realized," something like that, "I was very much, I lost all interest in the world. It faded and it went very pale." Something like that, "the glitter of the world turned pale to me" and the relatives were concerned, just like your relatives are concerned. They want you to marry and carry on the family name and so forth. Especially so in the Indian culture. It's also true in the Philippine culture, the Asian culture, much more so than it is here in America although it's a concern here as well. So they were concerned, so this one relative was repeating this thing and Sridhara Maharaja was in the presence and he was trying to rub it in and say, "that was a pretty good talk, actually. That was a pretty good thing." So he kind of sought of reply and Sridhara Maharaja replied at the time that "you say God is so far away, but my question is this: is there any place that he's not? Where is God? Beyond the stars, but my reply is: is there anywhere where God does not exist?" In this way the idea was defeated. So where is God? We want God. We want Krsna. Where is Krsna? Well, Krsna is there in Guru. We say Krsna's there in the Diety, right? How do we know Krsna's there in the Diety? Because Guru told us, Vaisnava told us. Why do we pay our obeisances to Rukmini and Dwarkadish? Because a Vaisnava told us, "this is Krsna." So where is Krsna? He's more in the Vaisnava then He is in the Diety. Sometimes the...Thakur Haridasa never went to the temple. Mahaprabhu went to him. There's a lesson to be learned in this. You may criticize, why he didn't go to the temple? But Mahaprabhu showed another thing. The Diety went to the Vaisnava. Mahaprabhu is the walking Diety, he's walking Jagannatha. He went to him, you understand? This is our teaching. The Vaisnava is a greater bearer, so to speak, of Divinity than is the arca-vigraha, the Diety. We're to leave the Dieties' service for the menial service of the Vaisnava, if such occasion should arise, we're taught. Ram Dasa came to talk to the house of Krsnadasa Kaviraja's brother, the pujari there was worshipping the Diety. Ram Dasa is one of the Dwadasa Gopals, the original cowherd boys associated with Nityananda Prabhu, eternal association of Nityananda and Balaram. He came there in his playful way and appeared and he was neglected by the pujari, not attended to. He thought the Diety worship was more important and this was allowed, this went on, under the auspices of Kaviraja's Gosvami's brother. He said, "you will fall down. For first, you are thinking that Caitanya Mahaprabhu was more important than Nityananda, this is also total misconception. Caitanya Mahaprabhu strongly advised us, 'if you worship me, but you neglect Nityananda then I don't accept any worship.'" And Nityananda means also Guru tattva. If we worship Krsna and we neglect the Guru, we neglect the Vaisnava who's in the Guru varga category of Guru, our Guru also has associates. It is possible. They are worshipable by us also. They may have differences, but we cannot enter into the mystery of those differences. Just like we find that Nityananda and Adwaita, they had many differences. And Adwaita and Mahaprabhu, Mahaprabhu slapped Adwaita. Adwaita and Nityananda regularly fought with one another, argued, and called one another names; and Nityananda was particularly often abused by Adwaita, but we are warned repeatedly by Vrndavana dasa Thakur and Caitanya Bhagavat, "don't think this to be anything less than the pastime." If you think it to be anything less than lila, if you think that Adwaita is more important than Niyananda, and these groups formed. Adwaita vamsa, Nityananda vamsa and so forth, minimizing one over the other and so forth. We're cautioned against that. So Guru, Vaisnava, is more important than the Diety even. We wouldn't be worshipping the Diety without them and under their direction we're worshiping. They've brought the Diety for our worship and so forth. So what is the point? So anyway, Guru and Vaisnava, a higher manifestation. We are to give our regard there. Then we can understand Krsna in a natural way, in a happy way, real way, not in a mental way and artifical way. The substantial way. So Guru, so Krsna comes to us, this is the point, as Guru. He's everywhere. He's in the Diety, yes, but he's in the Vaisnava, heart of the Vaisnava and more so; and if we listen to that Vaisnava, Guru, he will draw us in very closely. If we really follow and this we'll have to consider, discipline means that there is some discipline, willing to undergo some discipline. That's what it means. Proportionate to our willingness to avail ourself to what he has offered, has given, we may come to know what he's about and the more we come within, the deeper we come within, drawn into the Krsna conception and perception of reality through the agency of Guru, the more we'll be able to perceive the fact that Krsna's existing everywhere and in everything. So in time, when we turn around from facing our Guru, or hopefully when he leaves, I'll see Krsna everywhere, in everything. This is the teaching, Vrndavana everywhere. So we have to try to develop in a thoughtful and essential and substantial way to the understanding of the Guru tattva. Not only in a... I'll give an example. When Prabhupada began this movement, he was known as Swamiji on the Lower East Side in New York. "Swamiji, he was a pretty cool guy from India, Swamiji, he gave classes from the Bhagavad-Gita and hey, why don't you come over and hear Swami talk? It pretty neat you know, it's pretty cool." Whatever they used, I don't know, "it's pretty far-out," or something. So persons would come and listen and so forth and a group was gathering, there were regular talks and Prabhupada was coming out little by little and they were able to perceive what it was about and one day he said, "tomorrow there will be initiations," you know the story, "so tomorrow we will hold initiations." So somebody ventured to say, question, you know, "what does that mean? What does that mean Swami?" He said that, "that means that we accept the Guru as good as God" and he got up and walked out. Well, a fair number of the gathering also got up and walked out and said, "well, we're not into that. Swami's pretty neat and all, he's pretty cool, but that's like a little too much" and some people went for that and came in further. So as he comes out more then the group may become smaller, you see. If I ask, "how many people in the room, not this room, but a room full of people let's say, how many people believe in God? So many may raise there hand. Alright, now how many people believe that Krsna's God? Much less will raise there hand. Now, out of all of you, how many of you understand that Lord Caitanya is Krsna? Oh, most Indians will put their hand down, they don't understand that. Then you can go further also. How many of you understand that Caitanya Mahaprabhu was Krsna in the mood of Radha? And so on. So as the thing becomes more specific, more focused, the number involved will be less, that will diminish. So as the Guru tattva comes out then interest may seem to diminish, it may become a smaller number. A big number may come and join and so forth, but in a progressive way as He reveals what I'm here for and what this is about then we have to go the distance. We have to surrender again. Everytime He says, "Now I'm over here!" "Oh, I have to go over there." "Now I'm over here" and we have to run over there. "Now I'm underneath you, now I'm above you, now I'm on your right, now I'm on your left" and we have to go there. Prabhupada said at a certain point, it used to be get up nine in the morning, eat some halava, lay around, and go out on Hollywood Blvd. and chant till midnight, Hare Krsna. I may get in a fight with somebody with kartals or something; and then go back to the temple, sleep it off, that was the program. After a while, Prabhupada said, "now we're going to start practicing bhakti yoga." "Oh, what's that Swami? We're going to start bhakti..." They were already initiated. "Now we're going to introduce bhakti-yoga. That means that you get up at 4:30 in the morning, you attend this aratik and there will be a class from the Srimad Bhagavatam every day; and some people thought, "oh, I don't know if I can go this far." They still wanted to remain in a kind of hippyish mode and what not and so on. So, in this way, these are just kind of general ways, he kind of came out more so to speak. And it isn't over. It isn't over. And because he's left the world for his disciples it's not over. We're still in touch with this phenomenon of Guru tattva and it still wants to come out and show Himself to us, what I'm all about; and we have to follow that, where that may take us. And in relation to our Prabhupada, for example, wherever that deeper expression and manifestation of Guru tattva takes us to, whatever understanding, and whomever at a result of that we meet, whether it be Thakur Bhaktivoda, Sri Rupa, Sanatana, Sridhara Maharaja, whoever is in the hierarchy of spirituality with our Gurudev, all of our thanks, all of our gratitude, all of our love and appreciation will go back to that person who made it all possible. In this way it's all harmonized, you see. So it not, I may find I'm getting help now directly from so and so, from Rupa Gosvami. I only read his books. It many come to that, for a time in your spiritual life your only reading Rupa Gosvami's books and your thinking, "what help I'm getting from him, goodness, how much I'm appreciating." In a natural way you thinking, "Prabhupada made this all possible, that I could meet him and so many others and Krsna Himself." In this way it's happy, it's not one less than another and so forth and so on. I may get my mantra, diksa, and siksa from Guru and he may leave at his own choice, he may go and someone else may appear on the scene by some Divine system to help me, it's possible and he may bring me farther along. The point is this, the question is how close have we come to this thing? This we have to honestly assess and then if we do, we'll be open for all the help we can get. Something like that. This is the teaching. You want to worship Prabhupada? Worship him in a substantial way, not only in a formal way. As he said himself, worship of Guru does not amount to simply offering fruits and flowers, but who serves the mission of the Guru, he has done the Guru Puja. It is not simply, it is also fruits and flowers and incense, but it's also something more than that. After all, the whole of arcana marg is a lesser manifestation also, you understand. Arcana marg means the Diety worship and so forth. We don't neglect those things and all, but that will also be surpassed. When nama bhajan comes to predominate in us, then Diety worship will become non-essential. That is to help us, help us who are sensually oriented and externally fixated. The Diety comes to help us; and through rituals and actively using our senses and so forth, we can become purified. What is the purification? We come to the inner experience of Krsna conciousness; and through the nama, nama bhaja, we can sit tight and chant Hare Krsna. Like Thakur Haridasa and Mahaprabhu is coming to him everyday. He didn't go to the temple and perform the pujas. Use that example again. So, all these things are important, but you have to understand where they fit, what is there place in terms of our eternal progress and so forth. And yes, we may have the Guru Puja and worship the Guru with a ceremony and so forth and that's glorious and happy and wonderful and so forth; but let's look at our Prabhupada for example. He wasn't everyday having a ceremony for Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thakur and offering incense and flowers and so forth. He put his picture in every altar in the world, but in a substantial way. He said, "I never feel the absense of my Guru, even for a moment." So in a substantial and an essential way we have to try to understand this, this principle. If another, I mean is it possible, I mean that we're going for the Eternity, progressing towards Krsna consciousness. So many may come to help us, we hope you that, we hope for that. It's a higher idea, I mean you can't be, you can't jump to a higher idea either; so to go at your own pace, we should worship our Guru and give him all regard and so forth, but we should have an open mind about these things. Everyone is not going at the same pace also. I mean here we are, you know, and we are a little different than the ISKCON temples, you know, but I have something to do with ISKCON being the way it is and the way it was. I was involved before and after. We got a connection with Sridhara Maharaja by Prabhupada's own order. Prabhupada told me, "if you want any advice for philosophy, see my Godbrother B.R. Sridhara Maharaja of Navadwip." So, I go for advice and find it's very good, so I have to take it. Yes?

Devotee: I don't quite understand a little, I mean, there's subtleties that are to me a little confusing because it sounds like in a way, your not directly saying, but it sounds like your saying that you accept the Guru according to your needs, just like Prabhupada, Prabhupada's spiritual master was Bhaktisiddhanta and when he became more and more advanced he didn't say, "well, this person came along and he became my spiritual master because he taught me this, this, and that." Prabhupada always respected Bhaktisiddhanta as his spiritual master and having an eternal relationship with his spiritual master. So you have to, because Krsna consciousness, you know, talks about individuality and you're a eternal individual and you have an eternal relationship with your spiritual master, meaning you are, Prabhupada's our spiritual master. We were initiated into Krsna consciousness by Prabhupada, Prabhupada was initiated into Krsna consciousness by Bhaktisiddhanta and he has an eternal relationship with that particular spiritual master. That's his personal spiritual master. He doesn't change spiritual masters along the way, that's what is a little confusing to me.

T S : But are there two spiritual masters or is there one?

Devotee: The message is one.

T S : Right, so what is the spiritual master...

Devotee: Formally speaking and etiquette-wise you have an eternal relationship with your spiritual master and the message of, you know, in the sampradaya is all one and all spiritual masters and all gurus should be respected on equal levels, but still you have your own personal spiritual master. He's eternally your spiritual master. Isn't that link eternal?

T S : Yes, but we're only speaking the ideal of what the spiritual master is, like the deepened...

Devotee: But it sounds so, it sounds so...

T S : It's esoteric.

Devotee: Well, it sounds very abstract, well, you know, he's my spiritual master and he's my spiritual master, of course, every pure devotee is our spiritual master and a pure devotee can learn from everyone, but still formally speaking and...

T S : Well we're not advocating that the formalities should be neglected by any means whatsoever.

Devotee: It just sounds very...a can't quite get the word for it, kind of casual, you know.

T S : It's not casual.

Devotee: It's not, because you have an eternal link with your spiritual master.

T S : Right, but you have to understand this, you see, your spiritual master is linking you with a whole world.

Devotee: With the whole sampradaya.

T S : And a whole sampradaya. A whole world. So through that agency your going to come in touch with a whole world of Krsna consciousness. This is our point. A fellow told me, "Hey listen, Maharaja, why do you read Sridhara Maharaja's books?" He said, "Prabhupada gave us everything, we don't need anybody else." Right? I said, "well, I look at it like this, Prabhupada gave us everything, he gave us everybody else." Everybody worth listening to. So I find he's worth listening to and why do I find he's worth listening to, because I know what's worth listening to from Prabhupada. So you see, it's not divorced from Prabhupada. It's completely linked to Prabhupada. Without Prabhupada I couldn't understand what's Krsna conscious. Should I deny Krsna consciousness and call it glorification of Prabhupada, you understand? I understand this is Krsna consciousness over here, I'm going to celebrate that. I'm going to take advantage of that. That's what I want, that's what I'm interested in. I find it here, I'm going to take it.

Devotee: Do you change spiritual masters along the way or what, you know what I'm saying?

T S : It's not a question of...

Devotee: I mean, Prabhupada's still your spiritual master?

T S : Of course, as was already said, he's my eternal spiritual master, but I'm just saying that the spiritual master, in time we'll have a more developed appreciation of what, that it includes, just like Krsna, your an eternal servant of Krsna, right?

Devotee: Uh huh.

T S : What is Krsna? Are you going to be alone with Krsna?

Devotee: No.

T S : No, because Krsna has friends, Krsna has an abode and all these things. So our Guru has all these things. When you understand what is Goloka, what is Radha-kunda, who is Sanatana, Rupa Gosvami, what is their position in the whole thing, they're in the hierarchy that we're being introduced to. When we have a real and practical acquaintance with all these things then we can say we've understood the mission of our Guru; and to the extent that we don't have acquaintance with all those things, well we haven't understood and we have to grow in that, that's all. But our spiritual master, yeah, we're eternally connected. He connects us with the absolute and with the eternal plane, he's not going to disappear, neither can we disregard him, this is a higher regard we're talking about, a more full regard based on a more complete and developed understanding, it's more subtle from a more gross and formal understanding to a more subtle and developed understanding. With the more subtle and developed understanding you don't lose any of the appreciation or the connection you had in a formal and external way, but it deepens only. It becomes more deep, more meaningful, that's all.

Devotee: What happens when we hear people who initially take Prabhupada as their spiritual master, or somebody else, and then they take re-initiation from somebody else. Why is that?

T S : They must be in illusion.

Devotee: They change their name or they feel maybe that...

T S : Anyone that would reject Prabhupada, we would not want to see his face. Anyone who would think that Prabhupada didn't give me enough. If you were a disciple of Prabhupada and then you thought, well, he didn't give me enough so I have to get initiated from somebody else, that person we would call guru-tyagi. He gave up his guru. That is not exceptable, that is not at all exceptable by us. But that he might except more help that's readily desirable if it's available. That's the teaching. When Raghunath dasa Gosvami, when Caitanya Mahaprabhu and Svarupa Damodar left the world, he was under their care, he thought, "well, what's worth living for, I'll go to Vrndavana now and jump off Govardhana Hill," but when he got to Govardhana Hill he found Rupa, Sanatana and thought "Oh, Caitanya Mahaprabhu is living here in him. No reason to go." You understand? He found there connection. This is more the norm if we study Caitanya lila that this is going on. Narottama, Thakur was initiated by Locanath, but he was sent to Jiva Gosvami as was Shamanada Prabhu and Srinivasa. They all had different gurus, but they were sent to Jiva Gosvami to learn and study and be prepared for their mission and so forth. They didn't forget their Gurus doing that. It's a plural, vande gurun, Caitanya Caritamrita begins with these words. Prabhupada called Caitanya Caritamrita the Phd. study of Krsna consciousness, right? It begins with this word, vande gurun. I offer my obeisances to a plurality of gurus. Different siksa guru, different, is non-different from the diksa guru but the function is different. How they will function is different. Like say your diksa guru is Prabhupada and also your siksa guru, you understand these terms, diksa and siksa? At the same time Prabhupada is like a family doctor, he knows all about you, right? He knows your whole case history, right? But in his absence you may be ailing, we hope. In his absense, well, you know, we kind of hope you'll be feeling a need, something like that, that's a good sign, that's not a bad sign, your feeling a need. So another doctor may not know your whole case history, he knows something about it so he may come to help. That's called siksa guru. So we can have one diksa guru only, but we may have many siksa gurus to help us; and their help may be very substantial. What will be the form of that help? If they will expertly try to instill in us deeper appreciation for what it is our Guru came to give, with new strength and new energy and greater understanding we'll go forward with that mission and try to fulfill his ideals, something like that and some place for him may come in our heart, understand? We're going to a world where everyone is our Guru, even the dust there is superior to us, something like that and so, when we're in the material world we think I can only have room for one in my heart, something like that. We're going to a different world, the spiritual world and say for example, Sridhara Maharaja, we got siksa of Sridhara Maharaja, and why, of course, because Prabhupada told us to go there and get the siksa. Why do you think anybody went there? I had a good reputation for doing what Prabhupada wanted, even though some people didn't like it. Maybe I didn't do it that well, that's another thing, but anyway, he wanted it, so I tried to do that. To sell his books, he asked me to do that. So he said, you go there. So we went there. Some people misunderstood and some people understood. The persons who critized and said that we shouldn't have gone there seemed to forget that it was Prabhupada who told us to go there. If they went there and found something objectionable then their question should be, "then why Prabhupada told you to go there if it was objectionable?" And where are those people today? You have no experience, you never met Sridhara Maharaja, right?

Devotee: I don't think so.

T S : You never read any of his books, right?

Devotee: Not that I recall.

T S : Right, so what do you know about him?

Devotee: I honestly don't know anything about him.

T S : Well, whatever you do know, that's what you've heard from other people. This is the first time you've come into this kind of gathering that has a favorable opinion about him. So you are kind of a victim of what you've heard from people you probably don't have a lot of respect for anyway. Persons who organized the Society in a particular way after Prabhupada left and figured out what everybody was supposed to be thinking and so forth about all the issues and fostered that understanding down on others and many of them made some miscalculation in all of that and they're not active at present. We hope that they will be re-activated, but at present they're not activated

Devotee: You have to hear both sides.

T S : So this is my point. You may be carrying an understanding, an opinion just based on hearing from persons that you don't even have much regard for right now.

Devotee: Actually I haven't even heard that much.

T S : Well that's the general state of affairs in ISKCON. There is a lot of misinformation and so forth. The basic thing is that Prabhupada told us to go there, so if Prabhupada told us to go there and hear from him and some people went and found that objectionable then what are we to conclude, that Prabhupada made a mistake about that? Is that glorification of Prabhupada?

Devotee: The thing is that not a lot of people were personally on hand who heard Prabhupada say this or say that, so people, especially when it comes to women and people who were not in close association with Prabhupada, we always miss out on first hand information, so you hear a little here and a little of that and that's all you know.

T S : Yes, but you have to be practical, in 1978 Prabhupada had left the world in 1977 in November, middle, third week in November. 1978, two months later, at the Mayapur festival to decide how the whole thing was going to go on, the whole GBC went to Sridhara Maharaja. Now where in the heck would they get the idea to go to him? They just make it up all of a sudden? We're all going to go over there and talk to him and ask his opinion. Because Prabhupada told them to go there and they issued a paper at the time that said, in consultation with higher authority, it was called. Well, who's the higher authority? It's Sridhara Maharaja they went to talk to. Now they misconstrued many of the things he said, because many of them had personal interest and that should be fairly obvious to many of us, that they had personal interest that entered into ISKCON and obstructed the whole thing. So they went, they had personal interest and it stands to reason that they miscontrued what he said. Other people maybe they had personal interest also, but maybe they went there and they heard enough to get purified of their personal interest, it's possible. Or maybe they didn't have personal interest, they also went there. They heard, they came back with a different understanding; and I like that understanding, it's a happy one. The other one is a sad story, actually. It's a sad story that amounts to the whole cause of the present state of affairs of ISKCON. It amounts to Vaisnava aparadha and the subsequent effects of that, which are all-pervasive, like nuclear fall-out. The bomb may be exploded by this one or that one, but the Society had to be subjected by the radiation of that. This is the worse possible thing you could do. It was done in the worse possible way to the highest possible type of Vaisnava. So it's a ugly story, actually. It's a very unhappy story. The story, those who went and listened, they have many charming thing to relate to us about the spirit of Vaisnavism, appreciation of Prabhupada in a very deep, meaningful way, a substantial way, carrying on his ideals and so forth. So you have to, it's nice that you come, open yourself to us. We have a little book that's, the details, the relationship between Prabhupada and Sridhara Maharaja, unfiltered through the GBC. The unfiltered version. It's a very nice little bookl called, "Our Affectionate Guardians."

Devotee: So, your opinion that after Prabhupada left this planet, you think that all the people who were initiated afterwards should have been referred to Sridhara Maharaja?

T S : That's not what Prabhupada wanted. Let me, ... you see nobody knows everything. Nobody knows the plan of Krsna. When Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur left he explained how the mission should go on. He didn't say, "Ahbay Caranaravinda, everybody should follow him. He's going to go out and make the whole world know about Krsna consciousness." It's safe to say that he didn't say that because he didn't know that. He said quite different things. He said the management should go on like this, so and so should be in charge of the management, you should form a governing body and these things and so forth; and they weren't able to do all those things, it didn't work out like that. This is the will of God, it's the will of Krsna. What did happen was the successor movement to the Gaudiya Math, which was troubled by personal interest was ISKCON, substantially speaking. The essential ideal of Bhaktisiddhanta left Gaudiya Math and appeared in the form of ISKCON, right? We readily accept that, practically everyone in Gaudiya Math doesn't but we do, it's the way we saw that. It's accurate.

Devotee: Well...

T S : ...wait, your question, what is it?

Devotee: No, I said, in your opinion do you think that after Prabhupada left this planet that all the people who got initiated afterwards should have been referred to Sridhara Maharaja?

T S : When Prabhupada was leaving the world, he wanted his disciples to carry on the mission, that's what he wanted and that's all that he saw that was really pretty much available, so he picked out his senior men and told them to carry on and he also mentioned that for philosophical advice, you should go to my Godbrother Sridhara Maharaja. So, what should have happened did happen, Prabhupada didn't know everything that would happen. No one can know the will of Krsna. He didn't know they all would, so many would make mistakes that they would offend Sridhara Maharaja, it's a divine system. It's the will of God. The sun of Prabhupada's manifest lila set and the moon of Srila Sridhara Maharaja arose, in what Prabhupada termed 'self-effulgent acarya'. He said, if there was anything that Prabhpada taught about the succession of his movement from him, after his departure, it was this: that you will look for a self-effulgent acarya. Sridhara Maharaja is a self-effulgent acarya, without any effort thousands of people came to him, thousands. No effort. He simple sat there on his veranda and the Western world came to him throught the disciples of Srila Prabhupada, they came, the talks were given, the talks were recorded, literature was produced, it was distributed, and so many persons came to take shelter of him and get confidence. So this is the transcendental system, this is what happened. It was the will of God. Sridhara Maharaja was in the background, he brought to the forefront. Who brought him to the forefront? Prabhupada. Is that any different, we think that's extraordinary? Prabhupada tried to do that his whole life. He tried to bring Sridhara Maharaja to the forefront because Bhaktisiddhanta advised him to. Bhaktisiddhanta told Prabhupada on a number of occasions, "try to bring out Sridhara Maharaja for preaching. He has many high realization, but he keeps them to himself, so try to bring him out." So Prabhupada used to go there and say, why don't you come and preach with me and Sridhara liked to stay in the background. When it all finally came out, he said, "Oh, Swami Maharaja is such a friend, even after he's left he's dragging me out as Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur wanted him to do"; and there is not one desire of Bhaktisiddhanta Saravati Thakur that he had for our Prabhupada that he didn't fulfill, even this one. He even brought Sridhara Maharaja out. After he left he arranged it. He never gave up, he so much wanted that because he knew he has many high realizations, Guru Maharaja has told me that and therefore I'm going to bring him out and all the people I'm bringing to this ideal, I want them also to get his company because Guru Maharaja has ordered me to do so; and he did it. There could not be a better servant of Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur than our Prabhupada. So much he fulfilled his every, any slight, this is Prabhupada, any slight indication from Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur, that he wanted something of our Prabhupada, Prabhupada took it as an order. Prabhupada used to say, "my Guru Maharaja has ordered me to print books and distribute them and preach in the English language, therefore I'm doing, therefore I'm successful. That order came in a suggestion in a letter: "I think it would be good for you if you print books in English and preach in the English language." Prabhupada got that letter a fortnight before Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur left. He only talked to Bhaktisiddhanta a total of like fourteen times, over fourteen days, scattered over a number of years, personally. He took so seriously everything that he said. He used to call it the order of Bhaktisiddhanta. It was like a suggestion, if you read the letter. It isn't "I order you to speak in English and preach and distribute books to the Western world," it was just like, " I think it would be good for you and it would be good for other people if you do something like that." But he took it as my order, I must do it. Also, he told him, "I think you should draw Sridhara Maharaja out for preaching." He took it, "I will do that, I must do that." Sridhara Maharaja couldn't come for good reason, he couldn't come to Mayapur. He was too ill. Prabhupada said, well, I'll build a house there for you, we can carry you there on a palanquin. We'll build a house for you and I'll see that they'll take care of your every need there. You just come and sit there in Mayapur and my disciples from all over the world will come and hear from you. I want this, " and Sridhara Maharaja, that was the last time they talked and Sridhara Maharaja said, "well alright, well let me think about it. Let me think about it." I mean he's living there for fifty years, in Navadwip, he's eighty years old and he's thinking, Swami Maharaja has got so much energy, he's moving all over the world and he wants me to move, I don't even have enough energy to move across the river and why does he want me to go over there. I'm going to die at any minute, he's going to live for so many years. What happened was six months later, Prabhupada left; and just before leaving, I was there just a month before Prabhupada left. He said, "go to my Godbrother B.R. Sridhara Maharaja of Navadwip for philosophy." So, that it would exactly unfold the way it did and all, well, no one could know, but it's interesting the way it happened. So what should have happened, what Prabhupada wanted was one thing. What happened was something else. They went to Sridhara Maharaja, what should have happened was, they should have gone to Sridhara Maharaja, they should have realized who he was because if you ask Sridhara Maharaja a question, "well, uh, Maharaja, um, we were wondering, um, whether the Guru's should have a Vyasasana in the temple or not, that's the kind of question they asked him, they'd ask him a kind of relative question like that and he would answer and then in the course of the answer he'd like drift off to the eternal lila of the Lord and His Associates and come out with all these wonderful gems of Krsna conscious insight and shower you with them and then if you had any interest in Krsna consciousness, you'd forget the question that you asked, it was so insignificant. Just what is he talking about, this is wonderful, this is what we've come for, this is what Prabhupada wanted us to have, all these things that Prabhupada tried to give us and he keeps trying. Like that's what my experience was. The question you'd ask, you'd forget about in the course of the answer which drew so many wonderful things down. But they were only interested in the answer, "alright, forget all that other stuff, all that katha and everything, I mean it's nice, it's nice philosophy, you know, but what's the answer, how big should the seat be? And how many mantras should they chant, the disciples?" I mean, I'm making a bit of a crude presentation but it went in that direction, let us say. So they miscalculated and they, other people started to go to Sridhara Maharaja, then they started to think, "uh oh! So many people are going to go there, what's going to happen to us? We're supposed to be in charge of the movement. We're trying to collect the followers and so forth and cement the position of ISKCON and so then they, due to miscalculation, began to offend him and they made edicts that you can't go there, nobody can hear from him. Why did they said that? Because Sridhara Maharaja was preaching to them. He wasn't just an information desk, ok, come check in, get the information you want, and go away, except this, reject that. He did what he did his whole life, when people came to him, he preached to them. He preached to the ISKCON leaders and he said that you think that you have finished the whole thing, but I don't think you have. You think you've graduated and finished everything, I don't see it like that; and he preached to them, and they didn't like to hear it; and they didn't want anyone else to hear what he was preaching to them also. He addressed their conditioning, really; and he addressed it in such a way that they could have gotten the necessary support to do the thing that Prabhupada wanted them to do. Prabhupada wanted them to carry on the mission, but in their adolescence in the company of their uncle, instead of doing the work and getting the necessary strength to become an adult, they remained as adolescents only. They offended their uncle and lost all position, that's history. We don't have to debate about that, lost all position practically. His work was to cement them in their position. What should have happened is they should have drawn all the wonderful insights from him and filtered them down to all the devotee's and Sridhara Maharaja, he would have stayed in the background, happily. He didn't want to get in the middle of ISKCON at all. He wanted what Prabhupada wanted, that his disciples could carry it on, what could be more dignified than the disciples would carry on the mission; and he thought, well, okay, I want to be of some help. He wanted to solidify them in their position and help them to do the work they had to do. He could have remained in the background, all the insights would have been filtered down to so many devotee's and all the devotee's would have respected them so much because they would have been acting in a spiritual way about the matter. See, when we act spiritually it always looks like we'll lose, but the fact is we'll always gain. They thought they'd lose, they would have been the gainers only. They had a material calculation in the matter, so everything was lost. So then what happened? Well, then Sridhara Maharaja had to be in the forefront and still he tried that Swami Maharaja, Prabhupada's disciples would carry on. He told this Maharaja or that Maharaja that I think you need some disciples, you have to go and preach. When I asked Sridhara Maharaja, "Maharaja, any service. What can I do?" He said, "You know what to do, Swami Maharaja has told you everything. Swami Maharaja means Prabhupada. You go out and preach." So I had to go, preach; and preach means I'm a sannyasai, I have to preach, I had to make members, I had to start an institution and in his presence we were doing that. He wanted that to go on. He saw himself as a banker with greater capital who would give support and then as things transpired, Sridhara Maharaja left and he had a successor to his own particular mission and we hope that we, the disciples of Swami Maharaja would interface with the Sri Caitanya Saraswat Math and the whole thing would go on in a happy way as Prabhupada wanted. That's what should have happened; and that is what is happening, also; but everybody's not participating in it, that's all. Mostly it means that ISKCON is not participating in that because they continue to ignore the fact that Krsna Consciousness is going on Cardiff Street also, today. It also happens here. It doesn't happen only within the geographical and the legislative boarders of ISKCON. You know, one of my disciples or one of Govinda Maharaja's disciples or one of Sridhara Maharaja's disciples meets one of my Godbrothers or Godsisters somewhere in the street corner and they say hello, they see his beads or something and say "hari bol prabhu." He says, "hari bol, what's your name?" "My name is Nitya Gopal." "Really, well, who are you a disciple of?" "Well, I'm a disciple of, you know, Govinda Maharaja." "Who's that? What is that? That's not in ISKCON." You may not have had directly that experience, but my disciples have had that kind of experience. "Oh, you are a disciple of T. Maharaja? He's not Krsna conscious, he's not in ISKCON! He's taking you to hell, he's not in ISKCON. " They come back to me and they say, "This guy I met, he said he's your Godbrother, but actually he's nuts, he's crazy." You know I'm generalizing, but the administrative powers that be in ISKCON live in that kind of misconception. When I asked permission from the Book Trust to publish Prabhupada's writings in our magazine Clarion Call, they told me, we will not allow you to publish anything Prabhupada wrote because if we do, in effect, we're saying that Krsna consciousness exists outside of ISKCON and that's not our philosophy. That's what they told me. Well, they misunderstood the philosophy because Krsna is not limited, that he can only appear in the ISKCON society, because we're Prabhupada's disciples, so what. How much are we disciples? Those who are initiated by him? How much are we? That will determine how much Krsna decides to manifest Himself in us. Yes?

Devotee: Maharaja, in reference to Chandra Prabhu's question about whether you are recommending that whether Srila Sridhara Maharaja should be initiating after Prabhupada, as I recall, Srila Sridhara Maharaja was always very adverse to initiating.

T S : Very.

Devotee: Especially Western disciples. He wouldn't have anything to do with accepting Western disciples until much after Prabhupada had left.

T S : Then at that point he had to.

Devotee: He had to, he was forced to practically.

T S : He was forced to because of the faith crisis. So many persons were coming, their Guru, so-called Guru, had gone and so forth and he thought, "all these people, they're coming so close to this, let me try to help them then. They're coming here. I can't turn them away. Let me try to help them, I am forced to. He wanted that we would carry on and that he would help.

Devotee: He wanted ISKCON to be initiating. ISKCON, the GBC, somehow from ISKCON would arise a new group of preachers to carry on Prabhupada's mission and if they needed advice, he would give them advice. But there wasn't any idea that he would step in and start initiating disciples from the West. That was not his mood at all.

T S : Not at all. Not at all.

Devotee: So in retrospect, even though Prabhupada really didn't say so, what you are saying is yes to my question.

T S : Well, Sridhara Maharaja is the Guru of everyone.

Devotee: I mean in retrospect, considering what happened to all the Guru's and everything else and since you said it's like Prabhupada is like the sun setting and Sridhara Maharaja is the moon rising.

T S : Yeah, but it has to be qualified.

Devotee: Right.

T S : He is the Guru. Sridhara Maharaja is the successor also, so to speak, and he's the natural siksa guru for all of ISKCON. Some accept it and some don't, but that he is, is undeniable. If you understand what is Guru, Sridhara Maharaja is the Guru, the siksa Guru, for all of ISKCON. For all of the disciples of Prabhupada.

Devotee: What is initiation, siksa or diksa?

T S : Diksa. Siksa means teacher.

Devotee: Yes, but my question is, Prabhupada initiated some devotee's and what was his, did Sridhara Svami think that the best thing you could do was to re-initiate them and give them new names?

T S : Who? Prabhupada's disciples?

Devotee: Yes.

T S : No, of course not. He never re-initiated Prahbupada's disciples.

Devotee: That's what we heard.

T S : Well, you heard wrong.

Devotee: Well, like a lady, what's her name...

T S : Let me tell you a few things.

Devotee: ...Karuna Avatar.

T S : Oh, you know Karuna Avatar?

Devotee: From Berkeley.

T S : Right, I know her.

Devotee: Her name was, you know...

T S : Karunashayi (?).

Devotee: Karunashayi. And then she said that Sridhara Swami re-inititated her and gave her the name Karuna Avatar. So, my question is that Sridhara Swami's ...

T S : No, let me, you have misunderstood. Let me explain it to you. Karunashayi was initiated by Prabhupada, hari nama initiation, first initiation. Second initiation she got from a man named H, you all know H.

Devotee: This was in the Phillipines.

T S : He was, yes; and Berkeley. You know him from the Phillipines maybe. So, H. left and so she actually came to me, Karunashayi, to have a connection with Sridhara Maharaja. Actually, I preached to her about Sridhara Maharaja and she came to appreciate. So, she wanted to get the second initiation from Sridhara Maharaja, because the second initiation from H. was invalid, he no longer existed in the transcendental hierarchy.

Devotee: Well, I said that about myself because I was first and second initiated by H. in the first place.

T S : Right, so, H. had no position to help her. So, she needed to get a Guru for her second initiation. So I suggested Sridhara Maharaja, now she has two Gurus. Prabhupada is her hari-nama Guru and Sridhara Maharaja is her Gayatri-mantra Guru. So, for Sridhara Maharaja to give her a name is totally fitting. Do you understand?

Devotee: Yes.

T S : The system in the Gaudiya Math was, anyway, that you didn't get your name changed at hari nama, but at the second initiation you got your name changed because Gaudiya Math primarily existed in India and everybody had kind of a Krsna type of name, a spiritual type of name. Prabhupada kind of changed it because you came and your name was Bob or Mary or Jim, so at the hari nama he'd change your name.

Devotee: So Sridhara Maharaja never actually gave re-initiation to second initiated Prabhupada disciples.

Devotee: What about Dhira Krsna?

T S : Yes, Dhira Krsna was initiated by Prabhupada, first and second and sannyasa he took from another devotee who also left the hierarchy. People may not think so, but he certainly did. So, Dhira Krsna, he, of course, developed a great affinity for Sridhara Maharaja; and he asked Sridhara Maharaja that he could take sannyasa from him because he had no regard for his sannyasa guru because he had no regard for Sridhara Maharaja. That's a good reason for not listening to him, I'll tell you, or anybody else. So, Sridhara Maharaja with due consideration gave him sannyasa and the system when you get sannyasa is regularly, that was in Gaudiya Math, that the named was changed at sannyasa. So, instances like that we're talking about.

Devotee: I see, okay.

T S : And this is how it's been misconstrued. There are some other examples, this is a good one. Sometimes someone would come to Sridhara Maharaja and he would say, "so what is your name? You are a disciple of?" "Prabhupada." "And what is your name?" " My name is such and such." And he'd say, "what?" "It's such and such." He'd say, "can't be. You know he was a Sanskrit scholar. That doesn't make any sense. Your name couldn't be that. " And then you know the system, Prabhupada initiated a lot of people and Prabhupada didn't give out the names and Prabhupada didn't chant on the beads sometimes. It was just too many disciples . Sometimes Prabhupada give me beads to chant on. Here, you chant on their beads. I mean, he's the Guru, I'm just doing it in a ritvic way and pick out the names. You would go through the Bhagavatam and pick out some names and he had a book of names of his disciples, you'd look in there and try not to get a repeat or something, although that happened. It's unavoidable, he had five, six, seven, who knows how many thousand disciples, formally initiated. So sometimes the thing, through that system, it got filtered down to someone and the name would be not quite right. It wouldn't make any sense. So Sridhara Maharaja, he might say, "I think that maybe your name is this, that sounds like what he must have meant there." And those that had faith in him would say, "yes, that makes sense. I don't want to have a name that doesn't mean anything, thats incorrect or something." So a couple of instances like that. And Sridhara Maharaja, of course, was known for that. For making a particular type of adjustment in terms of titles and things. And in fact the name Bhaktivedanta, that our Prabhupada had, came from Sridhara Maharaja. The title Bhaktivedanta, you know you talk about changing names, well Sridhara Maharaja changed Prabhupada's name from Abhay Charanaravinda to A.C. Bhaktivedanta. Sridhara Maharaja gave him the title. Later that title was further confirmed by Kesava Maharaja, who gave him the name Bhaktivedanta Swami Maharaja. So Prabhupada's name changed from Kesava Maharaja, whom he took sannyasa from, and before that from Sridhara Maharaja. Prabhupada was being called Bhaktisiddhanta, you know? Narasingha Maharaja has the papers for the League of Devotees in Jansi with two signatures where Prabhupada signed Abhay Caran Bhaktisiddhanta dasa Adkikary because I think Bhakti Saranga Goswami Maharaja had liked his writing and had started calling him that. The other Godbrothers complained and they went to Sridhara Maharaja, which was generally the system. "This Abhay Babu, he's calling himself Bhaktisiddhanta. We can't tolerate this. Who does he think he is?" Sridhara Maharaja said, "he's not calling himself, but Goswami Maharaja is, he likes his writing and it's fitting his title, after all. But then if it may offend you, it can be adjusted and we we can call him Bhaktivedanta. The meaning is the same." So everyone accepted, okay, so he can have the title Bhaktivedanta, fine. Then later on, when Kesava Maharaja, who is the sannyasa disciple of Sridhara Maharaja, initiated Prabhupada into sannyasa, he gave him the name Bhaktivedanta Swami Maharaja. So Sridhara Maharaja was doing those kinds of things, but never in effect saying, "your initiation from Prabhupada is not enough, it's not valid, therefore, you better get initiated by me." There are people like that in Navadwip. There's a lot of people like that, they say, "you want to hear something that your Guru never told you? Like who you are in the spiritual world? And get a real initiation." There's people like that and some of our disciples went to those people. They had their names changed, the whole thing, and they are rejected by us entirely. Sridhara Maharaja even tried to help some of those people. You may remember the godbrother who left Prabhupada and went to Lalit Prasad and he got some kind of so-called special initiation--rejected Prabhupada. Sridhara Maharaja tried to save him and a boy named Nadia, you know Nadia, they were walking around wearing the babaji dress in Navadwip and a waterpot like they were Rupa, Sanatana for a few years, bare-footed and everything, chanting 64 rounds a day, reading all the Goswami's books, you know, Lalita-Madhava and Ujjvala-nilamani and all these things, Krsna Karnamrita, even books that Bhaktisiddhanta disallowed his disciples from reading and Sridhara Maharaja, he tried to help them also. It is hard to cooperate with that kind of a thing.

Devotee: There's a saying actually that according to one's perception, ones ways may be imperfect, but there's always perfect intentions.

T S : What is that?

Devotee: Ways can be imperfect, there's such things as perfect intentions. Ways cannot always be perfect.

T S : Well, I would say this: that Prabhupada had perfect ways and perfect intentions. Sridhara Maharaja also had perfect ways and perfect intentions.

Devotee: That's what I say, according to one's perception. He might think this, that's how he thinks it's good.

T S : He gets confused.

Devotee: So hearing from that, then I, see 'cause my only doubt is I believe that Sridhara Swami's giving, you know, changing, and you know.

T S : Right. See, that's why, these are happy discussions. I mean, if we think like that, we have to think ill of a pure Vaisnava because we've heard in some way a distorted message and we see one of his disciples and we think, "Oh boy, the poor guys confused, he got initiated by Sridhara, you know, the sahajiya of Navadwip who... and it's just not true at all, it's the farthest thing from the truth and, you know, we may be implicated in these kind of things and this should be cleared up. It's a cloud that lingers over all of ISKCON, inhibits it, really, from being the dynamic movement that it was. It's a shadow of what it was. It's a shadow. Sridhara Maharaja said in 1982 they passed a edict, "anyone who have affinity for Sridhara Maharaja cannot live in ISKCON." You know, the house in which everybody can live in, everybody except those people. This is the edict they passed and they had a few other things they tried to do at that time-- like trampling on the faith of people and Sridhara Maharaja said, "I fear for the life of ISKCON. It is cracked at the foundation. It will become a shadow of what it was." Who with any eyes will not say it's a shadow of what it was, it is, it's a shadow and it's unfortunately lingering in the cloud of Vaisnava aparadha. So it should be cleared up. You should have happy kind of discussions. There's such a happier picture than the picture of ISKCON. The picture in ISKCON: some demon in Navadwip tried to destroy the movement. We tried to save it, but gee, we couldn't exactly and who knows what else, some Gurus came in and they tried to take over the movement and gather up worship for themselves and it's really like an ugly kind of scenario. We can talk like this, it can become a happy picture. Yes?

Devotee: I have another question. You made a very interesting point before, you say that Prabhupada could not delegate anybody to be an initiatior, only Krsna knows who the self-manifested Guru will be after Prabhupada. Then you said that he said that we should accept a Guru that's self...

T S : effulgent.

Devotee: effulgent, but we are in a lowly, fallen position, how are we to recognize who is self-effulgent?

T S : That's up to you, that's your qualification. Before you put the onus on guru, it comes back to you. You must know what is the temperment of a disciple? You have to have sufficient eagerness. There's no difficulty on the part of Godhead to reveal Himself to you. The shortcoming is not on that side. The shortcoming is on you, as you say, I'm fallen, how will I know? Understand how fallen you are and you will know. The more you understand how fallen you really are, the more you will have the need, the more you will have the necessity, the more the truth will become apparent to you. The truth may be in front of you, but you may not know. The necessity will have to develop in you. So you say, I am fallen, so how will I know? How will I see? And I say to you, know how fallen you are, really, and then you will be able to see. That will give you the eyes to see. You should really meditate on and understand and penetrate how much of a predicament you are in and how urgent is spiritual life. If you really analyze the situation thoughtfully you'll see that it is like the house is on fire. I need spiritual life now. Immediately. And the more this sense of urgency develops within you, you will then have the vision, the eyes to see, "oh, the truth has come to help me." So the burden lies with you.

Devotee: So I understand that your saying that all the disciples that accepted imperfect Gurus, in a sense it was their own lack of sincerity that they couldn't see.

T S : No, that's not what I'm saying. That, first of all, the plan of Krsna's will, we can draw back and see that in all of this, so many things are to be learned. So if we appeal to Krsna that I want to be used by you, we'll have to be prepared for anything. He may even use us in that way. So many young persons that came, they may have been used in that way. Now what are they asking for? You were initiated by Ramesvara, and this one came by H., so why did you come to Krsna consciousness? Did you come to be a servant of Krsna? Then you should be prepared for anything. If Krsna wants to use you like that, teach a lesson to others and to yourself then you be prepared for that and learn a lesson and go on and make that connection. We don't say that they're insincere, but if they are insincere that will be apparent with how they deal with that senario, when that becomes part of their life. They go away and say, "oh well, who cares for this anyway? This is nonsense. Well anyway, I don't need him anyway," or something like that, "I've got Prabhupada anyway." Or something like that, they say different things and so forth. In one sense I always apologize to all of them because that was our movement and there were my Godbrothers and so forth and that's unhappy for them, but another side, we can only blame ourself for anything that happens. We come to Krsna consciousness, we have certain amount of sukriti, so we may get connection proportionate to our sukriti. It may be also analyzed in that way. But I like to say further in this, you asked for service to Krsna, so the problems of ISKCON, so to speak, that all has some divine scheme behind it also. We have to see from the highest vantage point that, that something is to be learned from that. That a lesson is to be learned. So people may be sacrificed in the whole drama, someone may be a villain in a drama, it is possible, but it is only a drama. The lila of ISKCON, we have to also look at it in that way. Yes?

Devotee: A couple of things, first off, at a certain point of time many devotees, didn't they have no choice which Guru they would take initiation from in the zonal acharya system?

T S : Yes, we think in that sense they, there was no such initiation, because initiation is not something to be based on ecclesiastical considerations or something that's, they kind of contacted a misrepresentation, so to speak. It would be ungenerous to say they had no sincerity in the matter, so we try to put that in another way.

Devotee: And second of all, ISKCON seems to me, maybe I just don't have the intelligence, but it seems to me that's it's still going on and still preaching and still the devotee's are coming to the temple and it's just going through the process. I know Krsna consciousness is not a process, but it's still a evolutionary, dynamic process going on. We see some at reform within ISKCON, within the GBC and perhaps it's not the running stride of an old, established mainstream religion that we might see in India, in the Gaudiya Vaisnava Society which has had some hundreds of years, but still it's in the past twenty-five years, is it now, twenty-five years the child is starting to walk a little bit. It's walking, the steps may not be so steady, but it's still going on, I think Srila Sridhara Maharaja, he said, "if ISKCON goes, the whole Gaudiya Vaisnava Society goes."

T S : Yes, he said things like that. The thing is that that is a gradual thing, they have some power to make some connection. They're connected with Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's movement throught Prabhupada's mission, an agent thereby and when that person is gone, whether there's sincerity, or the strength of their sincerity will be hit by that also. How they will deal with that subsequently. So it's part of their, my situation is different. We come to this with something also. We come to this with some background, that can't be denied. We come to this with some background and that background we have to deal with, some karma. We come and that will have to be dealt with. But to call it insincere, that is not a generous way of explaining the matter. So we have a certain amount of power to make a connection. Yes?

Devotee: I said, maybe immature but not insincere. On this ISKCON thing, it sounds like it's two seperate camps because the way you talk of ISKCON, it's like ISKCON to you means not Prabhupada but the GBC, the one who made mistakes and so on; but ISKCON is not just the GBC, it's all of Prabhupada's disciples.

T S : It's Prabhupada's ideal.

Devotee: Yes.

T S : We identify with the ideal.

Devotee: You can't judge ISKCON by the GBC and so many Gurus who made this and that mistake. ISKCON is a lot more than that, you know what I'm saying? It's like...

T S : Well, we agree with that.

Devotee: I just see separate camps. It seems to me...

T S : No, you see we agree. We say that ISKCON is the ideal and that's not, as I said earlier, limited to some geographical area or set of legislation, rules and regulations, it's not limited to what the GBC comes out with every year or something. Who ever reads those things anyway? We agree with that.

Devotee: Uh huh.

T S : But they are formally organizing the Society.

Devotee: Yes, but when I think of ISKCON, I don't think of the GBC or this Guru or that Guru.

T S : That's fine, but you're not me. If you walk over to the temple or you don't walk over to the temple, it doesn't make a heck of a lot difference to the GBC, but if I walk over to the temple, it'll go all over the whole movement.

Devotee: Are you preaching something different than Prabhupada's teaching.

T S : Well, I know you're here tonight, what do you think? I don't think so.

Devotee: The way I see it, you have directly said it, but what you're saying is that unless devotee's accept Sridhara as more or less...

T S : We're saying that unless they understand the reality of what happened, then they're not going to know the whole picture.

Devotee: So you don't get to know that picture just by being Prabhupada's disciple is what I'm saying, do you think that they have to have Sridhara Maharaja?

T S : I think only if you're Prabhupada's disciples or a disciple of his disciple that you can know about it because it's a spiritual thing. But what are you going to know about it, part of what your going to know...

Devotee: Prabhupada has other Godbrothers and there's other pure devotees.

T S : I know that and we should know who they are and how important they are in our lives.

Devotee: Don't you think that ISKCON in general respects all devotee's.

T S : No.

Devotee: Because they don't receive instructions? There's a difference between respecting somebody and getting instructions from somebody.

T S : Yes, but there's also a difference in this, there's a difference in respecting somebody because he wasn't sent to instruct you and taking instructions from somebody because they were sent to instruct you. So you can talk about, "well, Prabhupada had so many Godbrothers and we should respect them..." Sridhara Maharaja is not just another Godbrother and you don't really know about the relationship between Prabhupada and Sridhara Maharaja and what Prabhupada wanted, what role Prabhupada wanted Sridhara Maharaja to play in our lives; and we know about that and we're just pointing that out and it's like something else about Prabhupada that maybe you haven't heard yet. You want to serve Prabhupada, right? This is part of it. It's happy, it's not a unhappy thing. It's a happy thing.

Devotee: But that's not my point.

T S : And we don't say... we say that all you have to do is worship Prabhpada and follow him. That's all you have to do.

Devotee: Yes.

T S : And that's what we're doing, but this is also part of it, that's all; and I'm saying that we're worshipping Prabhupada and following him...

Devotee: This means respecting all Vaisnavas.

T S : It does. It means respecting all Vaisnavas, thats right. And it also means that different Vaisnavas have different positions too, because there's different kinds of Vaisnavas, right. And then you have to analyze what is the kind of Vaisnava that Sridhara Maharaja is and what is his relationship with Prabhupada and how should I deal with him. Just like you respect all Vaisnavas, right?

Devotee: Uh huh.

T S : So you've got friends, right?

Devotee: Yes.

T S : You respect them in a certain way, you have lady friends that you hang out with or whatever and you respect them and male friends and you know, your husband at one time, you have a relationship with him, it's different now, you respect him in a particular way and I expect that you deal with me in a different way, but you respect them all.

Devotee: Mm hmm.

T S : That's the basic thing, but then depending on who they are and where they are situated formally and substantially, there's going to be some difference. You might have a conversation with a girlfriend who's a Vaisnava who you should respect and I should, but it's going to be different in the kind of conversation you might have with me as a sannyasi and so forth. So similiarly, you have to respect all Vaisnavas, but then you' have to take into account who they are. Who is Sridhara Maharaja? What kind of role did Prabhupada want him to have in relation to us.

Devotee: Didn't he say, I mean, I didn't personally read anything he directly said about Sridhara, at least not to myself and I never personally heard a tape made when he was there, but he said, if you have, if you question, if you need advice, you can go to Sridhara. He didn't say you have to go to Sridhara, now that I'm gone, you have to go to Sridhara for further advancement.

T S : Right.

Devotee: So, it's a personal choice. If I feel like I want to know something I can approach either my Godbrothers, an advanced sannyasi, or whoever I feel...

T S : Right.

Devotee: He didn't say you have to. Otherwise you're doomed.

T S : That's what we say.

Devotee: But that's what it sounds like you're saying. You said if ISKCON doesn't accept Sridhara then it's like this ISKCON--this other entity that's doomed.

T S : No, you misunderstand.

Devotee: That's what it sounds like.

T S : No, Sridhara Maharaja himself said that you shouldn't come to me unless, you know, you really think you need to come to me.

Devotee: Or you want to, or whatever.

T S : Right. But what we're saying is this. The present stance that the formal ISKCON society takes towards Sridhara Maharaja is hardly the generous respect to all Vaisnavas.

Devotee: Where does that come from? Does that come from him or does it come from some of his disciples because, you see, you take a pretty heavy stand.

T S : Listen, you want to talk about a heavy stance, in 1982 we were told, "if you have any affinity for Sridhara Maharaja, you can't live in this movement." So we're being told if we like Sridhara Maharaja, get out. We got out because we didn't think that that was what Prabhupada wanted. We were thrown out for that. Now you call that generous?

Devotee: No, no.

T S : Okay, we don't either. That should be corrected.

Devotee: But still that enmity is there.

T S : Now what a minute, where is it coming from? I'm Prabhupada's disciple. I do what Prabhupada wants me to do, as far as I can understand. I understood that Prabhupada wanted me to also hear from Sridhara Maharaja after he left. So I went, I heard. The powers that be in ISKCON didn't agree with that, so they kicked me out. Alright? Fine, you know they won't let me give a talk over here at the temple or any other ISKCON temple, so who's got the problem? It's not me, I don't mind going and giving a talk. I have no problem with it. So who do they have a problem with? They've got a problem with Sridhara Maharaja and I don't think that that's what you call respect for all Vaisnavas. I don't think they have it. I don't think as a policy they have that. Therefore, we say that policy should be corrected.

Devotee: So what started the whole, why in particular did they...

T S : Make that policy.

Devotee: Yes.

T S : Because, I talked about this earlier, because they had personal interests and they thought they were the Gurus of the world. They divided the whole world up into different zones and Sridhara Maharaja told them, "I think you're all students, to be honest with you and that you haven't graduated yet." And they went to him just to get information and some of it they used to support their erroneous conclusions and he said, "I'm not going to be a party to that. I'm not sitting here just to give ditto to everything you say. I've got my own understanding of this, fifty years in Gaudiya Vaisnavism and I'm going to tell you what I think the philosophy is, " which is what, you know, Prabhupada said, we should hear from him for philosophy. So they didn't like that. That's why. Not for a good reason. There's no good reason for it, it's a bad reason. That's the problem. I mean, what do you think? Do you think it's respecting all Vaisnavas that one of the GBC hires someone to kill Sridhara Maharaja? Do you think that's good?

Devotee: I never heard of that.

T S : Well then, you know, there's a lot of things you didn't hear about.

Devotee: No, but see, the GBC hears about these things because they're in that, you know, that association. I'm not in the association.

T S : Well, you don't seem to respect the GBC very much.

Devotee: I just don't get political. I don't like the politics.

T S : Politics means you've got to discuss policy, so we're here discussing policy. We think it's not a good policy to offend Vaisnavas and you seem to agree. Only we're just pointing out that some people are doing it and we don't want to be part of that.

Devotee: See, on a higher level there's subtleties that I myself cannot understand. You know, there's subtleties of etiquette. There's this, this, and that. There's things going on that are not obvious to us, that are not black and white, to a lot of us, you know. So, on that level I can't say that I understand what's going on. I don't know what's going on.

T S : Yes, but I've got something to say to you, you're finding out. It's happening. This is still going on. We're sitting here in a house right now and this is being discussed and it's not just going to go in one ear and out the other. You've got a little different angle of vision and, you know, something is going on. We're making progress in spiritual life, however slow. We're making progress, somethings happening and if we're sincere whatever misconceptions we have about things are going to get cleared up in time and the true picture's going to come out. It's not over. You can't just say, "Well, heck, I don't want to deal with this anyway. I don't want to talk about Sridhara Maharaja. He had nothing to do with me. I respect him, he's a Vaisnava. I don't know anything about him. I'm going on with my spiritual life." But it just doesn't exactly work like that because he happens to be in the hierarchy of the place we're trying to get access to. So it keeps coming up and the Society over here has taken a wrong posture in relation to that and it's caused havoc. It's been created, people are suffering from that.

Devotee: Why do you think they are all like that? I mean, you are generalizing.

T S : Yes, I am. I'm generalizing and I'm also saying to you that Vaisnava aparadha has very far reaching effects. I mean, let's take yourself. You are a real nice person and you come here and talk and hear and listen and a lot of people like you, maybe not just like you but similiar, they don't have much information about the subject. They never paid much attention to it and they hear some things like Sridhara Maharaja re-initiated people and so they don't like that very much and they hear my name and their face turns white, you know. Someone's having a conversation, "hey, hare krsna, where have you been prabhu?" "I've been here and there." "What are you doing?" "Well, heck, I'm traveling with T. Maharaja." "Oh yeah," because some of them know, he's with Sridhara Maharaja, and say, "Well, I've got things to do." You know, so these things are happening, you say I'm generalizing. I am. Some people committed offenses. Everyone may also be affected by that to some extent, in terms of their conceptual framework.

Devotee: Because in ISKCON, everybody was taught from the beginning to surrender to the superiors and not even ask any questions and they were taught to surrender to the temple president and just believe what you hear and don't ask any questions basically. That was the concept of surrender, you know, and people trusted the GBC so you really can't, I think a lot of the devotee were immature and...

T S : Well, listen to me, I'm not blaming anybody, I'm just saying this is a reality.

Devotee: Yes.

T S : I'm not blaming you or anything, I'm just saying that we should do something about it. We should clear these things up, because it's not happy. You know, it's, I mean, gee, you meet somebody that's a disciple of Sridhara Maharaja and you've got these thoughts that have been fostered on you, you know, third and fourth hand information or something, and you think, "that poor guy," or something, or. "I don't want to talk to him." You know, it's weird, he's a pure Vaisnava. He's got so many disciples, he's got disciples who have got disciples, you know, and it's going on. Life goes on. Krsna consciousness is going on. We've got a big family. We should be happy about that. And I'm not blaming anybody. I know there's a lot of nice people in ISKCON, who don't understand this, but they're not going to be able to just say, "Well, I don't want to hear about it anyway." It's going to keep coming up, because we're talking about the eternal world. Sridhara exists there. He's our uncle. Now, if you feel, "look, I like to read Prabhupada's books and chant and follow the basic guidelines of Prabhupada," then I'm happy with that. Well, I think that's great. I think that's very good and I think if you have that attitude and you really do that then you'll appreciate Sridhara Maharaja if you hear about him or of him and you may not want to read his books, or not find any interest at the time and you're not supposed to, or that's fine. And you might meet some people, you know, give you a book, you might read it, you might find it interesting, regard him in a particular way. I mean, you can look at persons like Prabhupada in different ways also. Appreciate him with different sentiments and so forth. But what we really say is this, that's an offense posture, that's not healthy; and at large the ISKCON Society in principle, at it's administrative level, authoritarian level, it has an offensive policy. I mean, I did a lot to help this temple over here. I lived here for years, in this temple. For something like three years Rukmini and Dwarkadish was my Diety. The first Diety I ever offered arotik to. I spent a lot time there, even when I left and travelled at Prabhupada's request. I was coming back to Los Angeles and in those days, Prabhupada was staying for like months at a time. He stayed one time for six months in Los Angeles. Three months in the spring, three months in the fall, like two years in a row; and I went on walks with Prabhupada, I stood next to his Vyasasana every day, and I stood up through every class, so that I wouldn't fall aleep. Just to be right next to Prabhupada and hear and this means a lot to me, this place, but I know, if I walk over there, some people will look at me like, "what's that guy doing here," and I don't want to put them in that position and made to feel uncomfortable myself. I mean, I'm going there tommorrow morning, mangal arotik, but 'surprise!' you know, "here I am," but that doesn't make me happy. Should it make you happy, I don't think it should make you happy. I'm not such a bad person.

Devotee: Well, I personally don't understand how anybody could be banned from the temple.

T S : Well, that happens, you know. To me it happened when one of my friends was Ramesvar Maharaja and I was telling him, listen, you're making some mistakes, you're doing the wrong thing. He said, "what do you mean, I'm doing the wrong thing," and I said, "well, look, let's not kid around, it's me, T. Maharaja. I've known you for years and certain things you are doing are not up to the standard here" and he said, "how can you say that?" I said, "hey, come on, there's nobody else around, right, it's just you and me. I'm not going to go tell the world or something, I'm having a man to man talk with you. You're my friend, you've helped me in the past. I'm offering some help to you, Maharaja. I want you to continue in this and I'm ready to help you and support you, but what you're doing here is not right. This isn't going to work." He said, "Well, I don't know what you're talking about." I said, "Maharaja, it's me." But that was it, that was the end of the relationship basically. So, I said, "alright, fine, you go and do it as you want to do it, but I can't be a party to this. I can't be bringing people to you and telling them they should be initiated with you, or I can't be taking people to Bhavananda Maharaja and telling them they can be initiated, you know, I can't do that. That's not the teaching, okay, you want to change, fine, I don't know, Bhavananda, I don't think he can change too quickly, but some of the things you do could change, now I'm willing to help you. I'll be a part of it, to help you, but otherwise I can't be a party to it. So he wouldn't listen to me. So I gave up all administrative positions in ISKCON and I just travelled around and I couldn't have any enthusiasm to participate to make devotee's, even to sell books. I thought, "I sell a book, I guess if you're going to come join this organization and who's going to be, who am I going to lead them to and so forth." This was like 1984 or something like that. So then I got a book (Sri Guru and His Grace) of Sridhara Maharaja. I read the book, I read the first part, I thought, "well, I'll find out what this is about. Okay, I hear everything about these people, I'm going to find out for myself now, what it is. I've got to look into it myself." So I looked into it for myself and I thought, "there must be something wrong with Sridhara Maharaja, because they all reject him. I don't know why," so I read the book, first chapter, second chapter, and things that I thought in my heart, I found to be confirmed in this book. This was confirming what I was thinking and more than that even; and I got about half way through the book and my attitude changed; from reservation, I was reading it eagerly and when I got to the last chapter, I cried and I paid my obeisances. I thought, "no one can talk like this except my Prabhupada. No one can speak like, no one can move me like this. This is the same thing I came in touch with with him. This is the Divine current in a very powerful, forceful presentation. He's not just giving information here. He's calling on me to surrender to the ideals in a powerful way. I must go there." So I called up the person that published the book first. I thought, well, "Vaisnava dasa anudasa. I'll go there first." And he told me, well, at that time we thought ISKCON was about to be changed, many devotee's were, there was a grassroots movement for reform and change in ISKCON and I had much to do with that. Wherever I went, temple presidents were asking me, "what to do Maharaja, there's problems." I said, "we should have a meeting, we should have a meeting." I didn't know it, actually Sridhara said they should have a meeting, all the Godbrothers, they should sit and meet and air out their feelings and so forth. So the meetings were arranged and of temple presidents and then they made some policies and so forth and it was a grassroots movement for some change, dealing with issues and open wide and so forth. And then, so we thought, things were going to change, so the fellow that published the book, he told me, "well, look. Now you've understood who Sridhara Maharaja is, so stay in ISKCON and move around and talk with people because I was like a big catch, you know, I was a well-known, well established person who was always known to be very dedicated to Prabhupada, very overtly and so forth, so he thought, "This is an important figure, he can influence people." So I moved for a few months until I was caught, so to speak. I was in the Seattle temple, preaching to two devotee's and I had just gotten into it and I just keep going and going and going and somebody else came in and heard me and closed the door and went back out. I didn't even know; and he called my old friend, he said, "T. Maharaja is here in the temple and he's preaching about Sridhara," which was the heresy of the day. In five minutes, well, as long as it took him to call every temple in the United States, which wasn't long, he was pretty good on the phone. I was black-balled from every temple in ISKCON. Then I got a call from the temple presidents reform movement, who were in just about two days going to have their second big meeting. They said, "Maharaja, don't come to the meeting." I said, "what do you mean, don't come to the meeting?" "Don't come to the meeting. You know, now you're into Sridhara Maharaja, we don't want anything to do with you." And that was it, I guess that's how you get kicked out of ISKCON. Yesterday I was in, today I'm out. And it's not like it is today, you see, things were a little heavier then. Now you can say, "who cares about the GBC, or this or that." It wasn't like that. People had a very strong control over areas and I was black-balled. I was out. I was out of ISKCON. Well, now what do you do? That's what I did, I mean, I'm still doing, I'm just, evolving, progress. I went to Sridhara Maharaja. I got advice. What was his advice? You do what Prabhupada wanted you to do. If they cannot understand, if they are so hard-hearted, he didn't even say this, but this is what he meant.

How did Sridhara Maharaja get involved in ISKCON? Even if you don't know that Prabhupada really told us to go there, you could be stubborn about that, okay, fine. Still, we went there. He didn't come over to us and say, "Okay, I'm here to take over your movement and tell you what to do." It's all of us that went to him and dragged him into the whole thing. So what's his reaction? "Out of affection for ISKCON, I was drawn in, they came to me, they were asking advice, because I cared about them I tried to advise them and now anyone that ends up liking what I said, they're kicking them out and me out." He said, "and you call this Vaisnavism?" It was the idea, "this is Vaisnavism?" You know, what is the meaning of you go to arotik, you chant, you read the book, but then you deal with somebody like this and it kind of shows what you've [mis]understood about Vaisnavism. It all comes down to dealings. So the dealings were rather rough and avaisnava, not Vaisnava. So we're for gentler feelings, happier times. Those were hard times, you know, they were hard times for you too, I don't know where you were at that time. Each of us was in a different situation, different position and we had to deal with it differently. You know, I was a preacher and I couldn't go along with the policy. At the time I thought, new people are coming. I'd like to take them to Sridhara Maharaja, instead of the others. That's what I thought. Is that a bad thing? What do you think? I don't think it is. You understand? And their policy was no. I said, well, you know, the heck with your policy. If that's what you call ISKCON then forget it, because I don't think that is ISKCON. I don't think that's the big ideal of my Guru. That's not the kind of thing I joined. That's your narrow interpretation of it. Yes?

Devotee: Are you saying people are still in control of the GBC, no.

T S : Some not, but I'll tell you something. Many of the same, the GBC that Prabhupada picked were the best men he had. That's why he picked them largely. I mean, they're all kind of sincere people on all levels, but he picked them, they were good men and a lot of the men that replaced them aren't that much different. Their realization is not much better, they're dealing with the situation differently, so there's not such, so overt of a problem, but there are many problems. Covert problems. Understanding and so forth. Look at their policy towards Sridhara Maharaja still today. I was in Vancouver, I was invited to Vancouver by Dharmaraja, to preach in his house and he invited some friends who were all devotee's who did a lot to build the Vancouver temple over the years, but they're estranged from the temple, they just think it's small-minded, the present administration. So they're not interested to go there, they're talented people and all and they are married people and the temple thinks they're in maya because they live outside or something. They don't come to mangal-arotik every morning. They just can't relate to it. They have children to raise, they have things to do, they're talented people, they want to participate, they want to serve, but ISKCON there is just not big enough for them. So they came, some of them came to Dharmaraja's house and I was speaking and they were getting encouraged, they invited me back. Next thing, they had a program at another person's house and we were moving from house to house, every weekend, chanting Hare Krsna, discussing philosophy and they were getting encouragment and becoming enthusiastic. Well the temple started hearing about this; and we weren't even talking about it and we weren't even talking about the temple or anything. The temple started hearing that some people were getting, that some of these people used to come maybe on Sunday's and instead they were going to Maharaja's program on Sunday and that they thought it was valuable. They flew the GBC up there, this was like two weeks ago, they had a special meeting in the temple to tell everybody that T. Maharaja, he may look good, but he's not, because he's preaching about Sridhara and Prabhupada in such a way to be construed that Prabhupada liked Sridhara. We know, you know, that Prabhupada didn't want us to have anything to do with him, whatsoever and this is maya and ...I mean, this is ridiculous, and this is still going on. Not everywhere.

Devotee: Don't you see that the individual devotee's that are called the GBC are just a manifestation of some immaturity, some lack of consciousness.

T S : I do. I think we're addressing that.

Devotee: If you are just at that level then.

T S : I think we agree, but what should I do?

Devotee: Huh?

T S : I agree with that. So what should I do?

Devotee: Well, there's different ways of looking at it. I mean, it seems like your condemning that kind of consciousness, you condemn it but I think that ISKCON in general, not on a specific level, is at a adolescent stage. Let's take it to the understanding that we've only been in spiritual life for at the most twenty-five years which is really nothing.

T S : Well that's fine, but that doesn't mean I don't talk about it when it comes up. I don't talk about these things every night.

Devotee: I'm trying to understand it, you know, more as a big picture. You see, I don't know anything about the GBC. The only people who know anything about the GBC's are the sannyasis and the GBC's and those who have been to the meetings. Most of us don't know anything about it.

T S : But you have to understand, you're going to deal with the situation differently than I am. You are a lady, I'm a man. I'm a sannyasi and an older Godbrother and I'm a preacher and I have some credentials to do something, so I'm going to deal with the phenomenon of ISKCON's immaturity a little differently than you are. For you, it just say, okay, well, you think that's their immaturity. You may not know everything either. You may be more immature in some ways spiritually than they are also. They may make some crazy policies that may be an expression of their immaturity, but they may understand more of Krsna conciousness than you do. A lot of people are in your situation and I generalize. I don't know your situation, but a lot of devotee's have a certain attitude towards the GBC that I wouldn't neccessarily agree with. I would give them more credit than they do. You know, they practice, they come to the temple, they try to read and chant, and I hear people all the time saying, "you should read Prabhupada's books," that don't read them. I don't know how much you read them, or anything, but anyway, there's a lot of different angles of vision. You may have a certain angle about their immaturity and adolescence and I may agree with that, but I may also see you to be a adolescent in a way, from another angle of vision.

Devotee: Obviously you have different dealings with them than I do.

T S : Right, so, your a certain person, you're going to deal with what you see to be ISKCON's adolescence, in a particular way. I'm going to have to deal with it differently, obviously. I got thrown out. So I have to deal with it differently and I'm just telling my story, so, I'm not upset or anything, I'm quite happy, I've learned quite a lot as a result of it, I benefited immensely as a result of it, but if you are going to ask me about ISKCON's adolescence, I'm going to explain it in this way. This is what it means, this is what it comes down to, as far as--what do you have as a solution to ISKCON's adolescence? You see, that's another question. I saw myself as a adolescent. How did I deal with it, in the absence of my father? I went to my uncle. You chose to deal with it in another way. Now you think about it, in terms of a material example, do you have any children? Well, a lot of people like you have got teenage children, right? You've got a seventeen year-old boy, he's an adolescent, we sit here and talk to him sometimes, he's quite interesting, he's a adolescent, he told us things that his dad doesn't even know, but his dad probably suspects, you know, because his dad did a lot of those things too. So, we talked to him and it's interesting to see the phenomenon of adolescence and especially within the context of his being born as a devotee and so forth; and he's dealing with a lot of things. If his dad should leave today, his dad should die today, you know, we shouldn't even say it, but just to use the example, we pray that won't happen, but if something like that should happen, what would be the best thing for that boy to do? Just deal with his adolescence as a seventeen year-old boy? Well, if that's all he's got, fine, but if a uncle appears on the picture to help him, I think that's a better way to deal with it personally. That's the way I chose to deal with it, now you didn't see that as an option, that didn't appear to you at the time. It did to me, I dealt with it that way. We can use a material example, and maybe we can get some light from it. Now look at it from a spiritual point of view, it makes even more sense. If a spiritual uncle appears to help you, then I think the people who took the help like that have matured much more beyond adolesence than those who haven't and therefore, at the highest level of GBC, you've still got this kind of adolescent attitude that you see yourself and I see; and I'm just like, this is the way I deal with it. I try to explain it and I'm explaining the solution to it also. I think, if hearing from the uncle is the solution, a practical solution in terms of our example, then okay, why don't they do that? Their uncle left too. Okay, your uncle left and you didn't get to meet him and it's too bad, but it's not over yet. Everything the uncle had to offer, to say to us in our adolescence, has been preserved by one or two of our brothers in the form of these books. This is advice to adolescent ISKCON, spiritually adolescent disciples of Prabhupada. That's what Sridhara Maharaja addressed. Do you know who Sridhara Maharaja talked to for six years? Six, seven years, whatever it was? To us, to Prabhupada's disciples, you know, what other reason was he remaining on Earth for? He couldn't figure it out. Everybody had gone, why am I here? That's what he was there for, to talk to us. To give us insights that would help us to do what Prabhupada wanted to do; and therefore, we say that these books are good. You admit, ISKCON is adolescent, but your solution is that we'll flounder around and make mistakes and grow; and that is one process, no doubt, but there's another angle, another way; and if we really want to overcome the adolescence, our own spiritual adolescence and ISKCON's adolescence, we might want to try another way too. It doesn't hurt, it's bonafide, it's fine, it's good.

Devotee: What does the term "guardian of devotion" mean?

T S : Sridhara Maharaja is called the guardian of devotion, Bhakti Raksaka, it means guardian of devotion. He's trying to guard and protect the valuable thing that Prabhupada put in our hearts. The adolescence goes a lot further than that because, I don't know about your life, but a lot of other people, say in the L.A. community, they feel that the GBC is somewhat immature. So they don't take them so seriously and they don't take some of the policies so seriously, they take it with a grain of salt, say, "anyway, they'll get over it."

But another way, as I said, they're immature. They are immature in terms of their understanding of the philosophy and they gravitate towards this or that; like there's a big New Age party for example going on here and put on by a devotee named G. and a flyer came here and it's very flakey to be honest with you. It actually has nothing to do with Gaudiya Vaisnava siddhanta and the teachings of Prabhupada. You didn't miss anything, I'm telling you. I mean, I didn't go to the party, but I read the flyer, you know, and I know what Gaudiya Vaisnavism is about and that was like really flakey and I know, I published a magazine called Clarion Call, I don't know if you ever saw it, but it was like addressing New Age and alternative thought and I investigated it real thoroughly from the point of preaching to these people and there's so much pseudo spirituality in there that is pathetic, it's just pathetic. I met Godbrothers who said that they were channeling some entity that was telling them what Prabhupada wanted and they believed it. I said, "did he tell you to follow the four regulative principles?" "Well, that wasn't on the agenda, Maharaja." Or, you know, something like that. I mean, it's like ludicrous. They got into past-live hypnotic regressions and all kinds of stuff and I thought that, my God, they're not very heavily grounded in this thing. They're lagu, acting as guru, lagu means light, guru means heavy. I thought, let me write some of these articles to help some of my Godbrothers to give them some foundation. They interpreted Krsna, they were just taken by the winds, so to speak, of maya, in the absence of their Prabhupada and it's going on right here in the L.A. community and those people may be over there and they may go, "Hare Bol! I haven't seen you in a long while," and they've got some New Age entertainment or something, or somebody's rubbing crystals on, you know, your chakras or something, who knows what they're doing. This is the kind of thing that goes on at New Age parties and whatnot, but they're all Hari Bol! and Hare Krsna! And maybe they chant Hare Krsna for a few minutes too and something; and then they'll say, "yeah, the GBC, who cares for them? You know, they're trying. They'll mature in time and they'll get out of their adolescence," and the GBC's looking at them like, "I hope these people will mature in time and understand what Prabhupada's teaching." So it goes on in different ways. It's a big mess in a sense and these books are very grounding. Prabhupada's books are too, but if you really read Prabhupada's books, you'll see that they refer to other books, then what do you do. Prabhupada says, "for more information about this, you can refer to this." In one purport in Caitanya Caritamrita, Prabhupada says, "it is impossible for anyone to become Krsna Conscious without reading the Brhad Bhagavatamrta of Sanatana Goswami. Sridhara Maharaja happened to be like the personification of the Brhad Bhagavatamrta in particular. Brhad Bhagavatamrta talks about the gradation of spiritual evolution. Prabhupada's "Temple of Understanding" in Mayapur was supposed to be a representation of Brhad Bhagavatamrta, you go up each level of the building, at the top is Radha and Krsna in Goloka, madhurya rasa, and the temple was a way of showing that. That idea came from Sridhara Maharaja in consultation with him, to do it like Brhad Bhagavatamrta. Sridhara Maharaja happened to be, that was like one of his preoccupations spiritually, to talk about the gradations of spiritual understanding, from Vaikuntha to Dwarka, Dwarka to Goloka, within Goloka, you know, Mathura then Vrindaban. There is a conversation in the Folio about this between Prabhupada and Sridhara Maharaja. This is very interesting. So if you read Prabhupada's books you'll see it takes us to these things. These books in particular, they're heavy books, I mean, heavy, very heavy. Philosophically very heavy and very heavy in terms of pressing on you for commitment and involvement in what we know to be Krsna Consciousness, it's like powerful, it's like, "wait a minute, I don't know if I'm ready for the kind of commitment that's being talked about here." But that's the kind of commitment that our Prabhupada had and that's what love of God is about. So we can wade around in this kind of thing and we can talk about it and say we're devotee's or we can come to the ideal of divine slavery and it sounds cute and everything, but it's not such a easy pill to swallow, it's not so easy to digest; and these books are heavy in that regard. So some people, they're interested in the thing and all, they're genuine and all, but they're not interested in surrendering completely right now maybe, really getting down to the business and these books call on us for that. So some people may be put off for that reason and some people answer the call there and those people I think have good prospect for maturing beyond what you called, and I also agree, adolescence; and I think that, you know, aside from myself, I may be of some help, but I know other Godbrothers of mine who have assimilated these ideals and so forth, and they can be very helpful. They're helpful to me. You know, you don't have to listen to me or anything. You can go there, you can go hear from them, you can hear from Paramadwati Maharaja, you know Paramadwati Maharaja? He's our Godbrother, he has fifty temples around the world. ISKCON threw him out, they could have had another fifty temples. This is not a small time preacher. Me, you know, I'm a small person. I move in small circles these days. I don't have a big group or following or anything. I've got one friend in L.A. Now you are my friend too, I hope. You know, a few other people, but I think that you should consider availing yourself to something like that. Or you can go hear the standard fare at ISKCON and hear the Bhagavatam class. You probably don't go because they're probably not that interesting to you.

Devotee: Depends on the speaker.

T S : Yes, some people speak better and so forth. So, you know, I try to give my angle on it, a little history, you can appreciate. There's some books you can take, you can read. I'm still trying to sell books. You know there's also other nice people, like new people come and they also feel inspired. They think, " well, it depends who's speaking," and maybe somebody comes and speaks and they're not in ISKCON and they hear them and they think, "well, what's wrong with this? I like this. This is good," and ISKCON says, "Well, you know, it's not that good. It looks good, it sounds good, but it's not." It just doesn't make any sense to them. They see this, they see, "hmm, this is a sectarian policy." Isn't it? And they think, oh, maybe they'd like to be T. Maharaja's disciple, I've got a few people like that here. So what am I supposed to say to them? Okay, so let's go for it then and spread Krsna Consciousness. You want to help me? Then alright, we'll go; and I readily tell them there's help in other places. They're finding their help here, some of them are finding their help through me, so I have to honor that. They feel that, I have to honor that. That's my service to Guru; and they don't think that there's anybody in ISKCON they could get any help from. They may know there's some help possible, but it's kind of hard when most everyone says that their Guru isn't bonafide to give much help from them. Most of them, some of them have been in situations where they had to be like in a ISKCON temple or something and people have told them, like I've got one disciple, he is in the Miami temple right now, he's trying to get his green card so he can join me in India and he's flat and he's getting help through that in Miami. So I said, alright, you can stay at the temple if they let you. He's doing a lot of service there as a pujari and so forth. The temple president told him, he said, well I'm only going to be here for a couple more months because my Guru Maharaja wants me to come to India and they were getting a green card and so forth and then the temple president told him, who's our Godbrother, "well, you know, that's fine. Whatever will make you happy is fine with me. I just want you to be happy, that's all. I just want you to be happy. At the same time, you know, I have to tell you, you know, that T. Maharaja is not bonafide because, you know, he's not in ISKCON and he's not doing what Prabhupada wanted because Prabhupada wanted us to all be in ISKCON and follow the GBC, but he's not doing that so I want to let you know." He's talking to my disciple, right? So my disciple is just thinking, I have to listen to this, you know. My Guru Maharaja says I've got to stay down here to g et this done. I've got to listen to this, well, okay, I think I want to do what he wants, I think I want to stay here a couple months, you know, go to India and Hare Krsna. What to do, it's embarassing to me, because I've got to tell my disciples that my Godbrothers and Godsisters are senior to them, but when they make fools of themselves like that then, what do you do then? They're not blind people who come here, they're also sincere, they're also coming to give everything and they're not blind. They also have eyes to see what is maya. They're being instructed about that, just as we were instructed about that. I can't tell them to turn a blind eye to maya. They're not second class citizens. All of us, we're all students of this high ideal. We should all respect one another and wherever we see maya, we should point it out, help one another. I think that I can get help from my disciples, so why can't my Godbrothers get help sometimes also. Children also help their father sometimes, isn't it? You have to experience.

Devotee: Well I did sometimes fire authority under conditions.

T S : And sometimes the student may also; and what will the student think if he helps his Guru in some way? It's possible. What will the student think? He'll think, "Oh, by my Guru's power invested in me, I was able to give some advice." I ask my disciples for advice, what do you think? So what do you think? Sometimes they give good advice about something and they think, "Well, Guru Maharaja, anything I know about Krsna Consciousness comes from you anyways." They think this is some kind of game or something, they're always asking me for advice. But Prabhupada asked us for advice too, so what do you think? Most of them say, "well, I don't know," and Prabhupada said, "my only difficulty is I have no one to consult with." He wrote that in a letter to Sridhara Maharaja. "My only problem is I have no one to consult with. I'm surrounded by all these people." So we are all one big family, really; and sometimes some of our brothers and sister, they get a little sick or something like that. So we should try to help them--in some way have a broader and happier conception. We're all the followers of Prabhupada, they're also followers of Sridhara Maharaja whether we know it or not. The sannyasa mantra that Prabhupada accepted came through Sridhara Maharaja, so how will we think of that also? He's there, he's part of our family. So it's a happy thing really, it's not a sad thing, it's a happy thing. We have a movement for preaching Vaisnavism, if a preacher Vaisnava comes and we're unhappy because we see him, that's a problem and we just want to address that in a thoughtful way, that we'll become more happy and that we'll really embrace the teachings in a genuine and sincere way and go forward. Prabhupada didn't want us to linger in Los Angeles. He wanted us to live in Vaikuntha. One morning Prabhupada gave the talk here like so many mornings. I had my place right next to his ear, I stood right there and I always found my place right next to the Vyasasana and I could stand there, watch him play the kartals. Focus there. So one day he turned in the lecture and he said, "you should know," and he looked at me, he said, "that we are not living in Los Angeles, this is Vaikuntha." And the whole place turned into Vaikuntha and that night I took rest in the brahmacari ashrama and I got up in the night, I thought, to pass urine. What was really happening was Prabhupada wanted to show me again and I walked down the hall and the whole place, the whole of Los Angeles turned into Vaikuntha. I thought, "oh, this is not just words. It's a real thing." More than Vaikuntha. On this property, here, front lawn here I had many nice experiences by Prabhupada's grace. When Prabhupada walked on the ground, in this temple in Los Angeles, when Prabhupada came out and walked on the ground, what I saw was the whole earth went like this, it was as if the ground was tipping with every step that he made. He was, he showed me some kindness here in Los Angeles in particular and wanted all of us to understand that, come within that. Prabhupada was very kind to everyone. Sometimes though, it was like a cloud came over your head and just poured rain there. Everyone sincerely tried and nothing goes unnoticed. Nothing went unnoticed by him, nothing will go unnoticed by our Guru, except some of the bad things, then they go unnoticed, but any sincerity, that will never go unnoticed. One time, I had heard that Prabhupada was going to instruct all the devotee's here how to dance properly because he had seen some dancing here that he didn't like, or something. So I thought, "oh, that's really neat, I want to see that." Then it turned out that he wasn't going to do this. Then I thought, well anyway, I would like to dance in such a way that Prabhupada would be pleased with the way I'm dancing. I want that every movement will be pleasing to him. So he was chanting Jaya Radha Madhava and I was standing in front of the Vyasasana about ten, twelve people up and we used to be in two rows, like the women on one side and the men on the other side; and Prabhupada here and the Dieties here and there would be an aisle, I don't know if they do like that now, but that was what it was like in the old temple. So anyway, he was chanting and I was chanting Jaya Radha Madhava and I began to dance. So I held my hands up like this and I moved this leg across this and this like back and in a simple way, sometimes you could see him dance. So I thought, what do I know about dancing, whatever I saw from him and I want it the right way, I want to please him by dancing nicely and chanting. So I thought like that and so that was the end. So then about two, three months later, one servant of Prabhupada, I think Nanda Kumara at that time was sent in advance to Los Angeles and another devotee went to be his servant. So he came and of course he was telling stories about Prabhupada. He had been with Prabhupada for the last few months, we asked him what had happened, what did Prabhupada do and so forth and so on and I came in the room, he said, "Oh, Prabhu," I wasn't a sannyasi that that time, he said, "Prabhupada was talking about you the other day. He was saying how you had said this, he had heard you were saying this in the streets and selling books like that and he was repeating that line," I was saying something like "you've heard of the energy crisis? There is none. Take this." And I was giving the Reservoir of Pleasure; and Prabhupada was speaking about energy crisis, energy crisis. So Prabhupada liked that, some simple thing and he was repeating it. "He was saying this." and he was laughing and then he said, Prabhupada was mentioning you like that and then he said, "Yes, and he's also a very good dancer." And I thought, "Oh, did he?" Nothing goes unnoticed. If you try to please him, it cannot go unnoticed. So if we try to please Prabhupada, then that will not go unnoticed and he will show us his grace. The shape and the form in which it will come, then we will have to come to identify this as such. How that mercy is coming to me, in what way. It may come through a friend also. It may come through a Godbrother, it may come through a Godsister, it may come in a different way. We should be open to that and if we think, yes, I do want that, I'm interested; then if something happens in our life we may put two and two together, oh, maybe it's coming in this way, possibly, the message is coming to me like that. But the nicest thing about it, I think, is that sometimes we're not even that interested and it comes anyway. We're not even that interested and it comes after us, Krsna comes after us to grab us, our Guru comes. Some of us, Prabhupada went after us to make us disciples. For me, it wasn't like that, but some disciples of Prabhupada, Prabhupada preached to them for a long time, long time, before they finally understood and became his disciple, some Indian people in Bombay, in particular. Prabhupada used to walk on the beach with every morning when he was in Bombay. They would argue with him and argue and argue, mayavada this and Krsna that, back and forth. Prabhupada for years tried and then they became disciples and they understood in the end, "oh, that's who he was and I was arguing with him on the beach." I mean, one of my Godbrothers met, more than one, but one in particular I can think of, Prabhupada came to one hippy type of commune and he greeted him with a beer in his hand, stark naked, "welcome, Swami, to our gathering." This was his introduction. He didn't recognize Prabhupada as his Guru and it took some time. After that he was a little embarrassed. Of course Prabhupada thought nothing of it. For me it was a little different that before I met Prabhupada, he appeared to me in a dream. I knew of him throught the devotee's and I kind of joined with some devotee's, so to speak, in Santa Cruz. There was no official temple or anything and then and it was a simple dream, but he had a very lasting impression upon me and then I came to Los Angeles and because Prabhupada was arriving there at the airport and when he came off the plane, I began to cry profusely and I felt as if after a long time I'm meeting an old friend, someone I have known a long time. He's come, like I'm waiting here and he's coming after me. I'm lingering here or something, this is my honest, just simple kind of impression, old friend. So yes, I think like that and my relationship with Prabhupada, that's eternal. We pray no offense will come to interfere with that; and I think also that he sent me to Sridhara Maharaja and Sridhara Maharaja tried to send me back to him, in a sense, with new enthusiasm, more enthusiasm, more understanding, join him and the way Srila Sridhara Maharaja dealt with me was that, "Oh, maybe Swami Maharaja, he wanted me to help you in some way. So, he tried to further establish me in that relationship. So for that I'm indebted and moreover I have a relationship with him too, as a result. That is a happy thing. So, to me it's very wonderful. What do you think? Am I crazy or what? Anyway, I think you're all very wonderful. You are so patient to listen to all this. So, should we chant Hare Krsna?