Esoteric Teaching Community Newsletter

Esoteric Teaching Community Newsletter 1



The Future of Vedic Wisdom in the West



Dear Students and Friends,



Happy New Year, and a very warm welcome to the first edition of the Esoteric
Teaching Community Newsletter!



As I write this, I face the challenge of addressing the interests, needs and
concerns of a widely diverse community. Looking over the subscriber list, I see
old friends with years of experience in Vedic teachings and lifestyle,
dedicated disciples of various Vedic lineages, and also unfamiliar names of
those who may be brand new to the whole concept of the Vedic Esoteric Teaching.
How can I write something that will benefit all of them?



In response to this challenging assignment, I am inspired to explain something
of interest to all levels of students and readers: Why do we call our Vedic
spiritual community The Esoteric Teaching, and what exactly is its
significance? There are several approaches to this topic, and I would like to
touch on a few of them briefly, for a complete discussion is far beyond the
scope of a short newsletter. If you feel a need to know more, you can always
reply with your questions or post them on our open discussion forum.



The short answer is that we are trying our best to make the way clear for the
future development of Vedic wisdom teachings in the West. For a more detailed
explanation, please read on.



The roots of the unique design of our teaching mission lie in the severe
difficulties experienced in the organization of our spiritual master, Srila
Prabhupada. From the very beginning of our association with that organization,
it was clearly apparent that the leaders were pursuing policies that would
alienate the public and eventually destroy the credibility of both the
organization and its teaching. I am speaking, of course, of their deceptive,
exploitive book distribution and other preaching and fund-raising tactics.



Despite my high-level professional background in advertising and public
relations, years of negative public opinion and critical feedback from many
senior devotees, the leaders of this organization remain completely
unresponsive to any suggestions to change. Out of loyalty to my spiritual
master, I remained associated with his organization and served it faithfully
for many years. Unfortunately, the behavior of the management reached a point
where I could no longer justify this connection, either by the concept of
loyalty or by my personal need for association with fellow disciples.



Therefore after a long period of agonizing soul-searching, I separated from the
organization of my spiritual Master Teacher and the association of fellow
disciples. I resolved that my personal spiritual teaching and mentoring would
be done on a platform that would prevent the many ills we experienced in that
organization. With that purpose in mind, I proceeded to research spiritually
healthy organizations. What I found in this research led to several very
interesting conclusions.



Our Vedic spiritual tradition necessarily must be passed down in an
hierarchical manner from self-realized spiritual Master Teacher to his personal
disciples. However, that does not imply that a religious organization based on
these teachings must be managed in the same way. This extremely dangerous
unconscious assumption led to an hierarchical model of organization. But we see
from history that wherever leadership positions are based on seniority and
loyalty instead of merit, abuse of the concentrated power inherent in such an
organization inevitably ensues.



Srila Prabhupada attempted to decouple the management of his organization from
its spiritual leadership by insisting (in a landmark 1969 document entitled
Direction of Management) on democratic election of the temporal management and
regular rotation of the spiritual leadership. He also designed a network of
autonomous temples with strong local leadership. Unfortunately his neophyte
students rejected this excellent and eminently practical concept, instead
instituting a flawed centralized management scheme mirroring the corrupt
ecclesiastical structures of the past. Not only that organization, but any
organization based on this outmoded management model will, by its very nature,
generate corruption, nepotism and other abuses of power. Basing advancement on
loyalty and seniority rather than merit always leads to stagnation, and to
sacrificing intelligent and talented people simply because they question the
established order.



Any organization needs new ideas, talent and fresh energy simply to keep up
with the times and avoid attrition of its membership. Hierarchical
organizations are simply too rigid to respond to rapidly changing
circumstances. Yet our spiritual Master Teacher often insisted that our
presentation of the Vedic tradition must be consistent with the time and
harmonious with changing circumstances. Therefore in my research into
organizational models, I identified several alternate structures that avoid the
natural deficiencies of hierarchies, while maintaining the spiritual integrity
of the disciplic succession system. I determined to implement these in my own
spiritual teaching work to avoid the inevitable deficiencies and tragic flaws
of the hierarchical management model.



It is gratifying, in a way, to see many disciples of the Vedic teachings
gradually adopt positions and attitudes we already held, and sacrificed much
for, back in the 1970s. Better late than never, I suppose. But what really
would be rewarding would be to see our Godbrothers and -sisters transcend the
broken management model that is, more than anything, responsible for our
difficulties in the parent organization. Instead we see them go to other
organizations structured according to the same defective model. Unfortunately,
that will have exactly the same result.



If the Vedic tradition has any future in the West, it will be in a form that is
acceptable to Western ideas of organizational management. At the very least, it
must change to include principles of democratic leadership and participatory
management. At best, it will become a purely spiritual community managed by
consensus and facilitating mutual respect, understanding and love among its
members.



In planning my spiritual teaching activities, I also performed methodical
market research into public opinion on Vedic organizations in the West. What I
discovered is that public opinion of Vedic spiritual organizations had reached
a new low and was still declining. A well-known principle of marketing is that
when the public loses trust in a brand due to bad publicity, the products
faults must be corrected, and then it must be re-branded to establish a new
image and regain its customers. Therefore I concluded that along with changing
the management structure to avoid the failings of hierarchical organizations, I
had to rename the Vedic teachings I received from my spiritual Master Teacher
to avoid the brand names that had fallen into public disrepute.



Please note that changing the name of a spiritual teaching does not necessarily
change the teaching itself. Any name is just a word, and is different from the
thing it represents. We still use the exact same philosophy, source materials
and practices that we received from our spiritual Master Teacher; we simply
have changed the terminology to avoid the negative associations in the public
mind. This was not done lightly nor arbitrarily, but only after applying a deep
study of semantics and ontology to the subject.



It is easy to criticize something one does not really understand, just on
superficial appearances. And many of our fellow disciples do criticize our work
without really understanding it. Our predecessor Bhaktivinod Thakur rejected
this shallow approach in the following words:



....all religious works and philosophical performances and writings of great
men... suffered from the imprudent conduct of useless readers and stupid
critics. The former have done so much injury to the work that they have
surpassed the latter in their evil consequence. Men of brilliant thoughts have
passed by the work in quest of truth and philosophy, but the prejudice which
they imbibed from its useless readers and their conduct prevented them from
making a candid investigation. [Light From the Beautiful Bhagavat, 1869]



Anyone who actually reads and researches deeply our rendition of the timeless
Vedic teachings will certainly perceive its integrity and recognize its
fidelity to the original source. We beg the intelligent and enlightened reader
to kindly excuse the bad behavior of some of our fellow students, whose
understanding and of the subject is hampered by their intellectual blinders,
and whose realization has been deviated by personal ambitions for wealth,
followers and power. Our purpose from the beginning was only to present this
great tradition in a light that would enable everyone, especially intelligent
and sensitive souls, to benefit from its self-effulgent spiritual teaching. We
hope that despite the inevitable flaws of such a pioneering effort, we have
made some small progress in this direction by recasting its nomenclature in a
form more acceptable to intelligent people in contemporary Western society.



That, in brief, is the story of The Esoteric Teaching. Thank you for your
continued interest in our work.



Love,



Gaurahari Dasanudas Babaji


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