Beggar

....stop having superficial relationships with others due to false renunciation.

Exactly which posts on this thread do you find offensive to Prabhupada? Do you think that the entire topic is offensive? <!-- / message --><!-- sig -->

1. Stop smoking ganja<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /> 2. Stop preaching trnadapi sunicena and being a road rager. 3. Stop drinking decaf because you think it has no caffeine in it, it does. 4. Stop selling stickers at American football games. 5. Stop going to 12 step programs, there is only surrender to Krsna. 6. Stop spending your time on forums and chant your prescribed number of rounds. 7. Stop completely at stop signs. 8. If you are a Western devotee stop listening to “devotee” rock music. Replace it with “devotee" Country Western music.

Prema Prayojana Prabhu formerely known as Arunya Maharaja was at Srila Narayana Maharaja's Vyas Puja Festival near Hilo Hawaii. He also met personally with SNM in Oahu. So he basically left and then came back. During the festival he explained how his godbrother told him that Srila Narayana Maharaja told how he had prayed to Radha and Krsna that, "if I have ever done a drop of service for You, although I never ask for anything in return, now I am asking, please bring my boy back". Upon hearing this Prema Prayojana Prabhu's heart was melted and he vowed to return to the lotus feet of his gurudeva even if he could not maintain the sanyasa ashram. So on a positive note perhaps we could change the name of this thread to, "Why Did Aranya Maharaja Return?".

This part the this thread brings up a very important topic, what is Srila Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada’s position in relationship to all non-Indian followers of the line Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur? Since it is clear that practically no one would have known of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu or his Sankirtan Movement the answer is obvious. Fish says,”Many of the iskcon devotees in SNM's sanga have heavy iskcon conditionings and their katha tends to be more book distribution, did humans go to the moon, vedic culture, "Prabhupada said" - oriented. Just a different mood.” But isn’t this the mission of Srila Narayana Maharaja, to help Srila Prabhupada’s followers and preach in the West by the ordrer of Srila Prabhupada? And isn’t this the essence of his katha that we should stop being so external in our approach and try to understand the internal mood of our guru varga? Fish’s criticism of those with ”heavy iskcon conditionings” is in itself superficial. If we are criticizing sanga siddhi bhakti or mixed devotion and showing how it must be given up for swaupa siddhi bhakti or pure devotion, that’s one thing. But to artificially create a class of persons of those with “heavy iskcon conditionings” and imply that they are to be shunned by sincere persons is reactionary. It is just a reaction to the attitudes of many iskconites that they are the only real followers of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu because their guru is the only real follower of Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur. The offenses of others does not justify our offenses. And offenses in the name of pure devotees are paticularly obscene.

Soon after Srila Prabhupada's earthly lila, Jayatirtha (one of the "eleven appointed ISKCON gurus) became a big advocate of LSD calling it the "sacrament". He believed that the soma referered to in shastra was a psychadelic tonic. He gradually became so bewildered that he was having affairs with his follower's wives, thinking it was spiritual. His so-called lila ended when he was beheaded by a disciple in the U.K. in the mid to late eighties. When Srila Sridhar Maharaja first heard of Jayatirtha's predeliction for psychadelic drugs he said LSD stands for "leads to spiritual death". (Jayatirtha already had a relationship with Srial Sridhar Maharaja and was posing as a standard devotee). He wondered how could western devotees think that something material can give something spiritual and would quote from Bhagavatam, bhaktya sanjayate bhaktya, "only bhakti can give bhakti." And who is bhakti? One time in the 70's a devotee in the temple left for several weeks to go back out into "Maya". He came back in an extemely enthusiastic and faithfull mood. I was inquisitive about his new determination and he told me that he had a very wonderful vision of Krsna while on LSD. The temple president told us how a few years earlier a girl had come to the temple while Prabhupada was there and how she insisted that she had seen Krsna on LSD. Prabhupada tried to explain to her how it was more a less an hallucination, but she insisted that she had a vision of Krsna on LSD. Srila Prabhupada finally said, "Alright you have seen Krsna, now serve him." The big difference between my devotee friend I mentioned above and Jayatirtha is that my friend did not take LSD with the intention of having a spiritual experience nor did he take it again. Jayatirtha on the other hand founded a psychadelic version of the Krsna Consciousness Movement and the result was chaos and finally his own destruction. Srila Sridhar Maharaja would tell the story of a man who used to show pilgrams, "Krsna in a tree". In one open area there was a tree several hundred feet from the road and from that distance if you looked closely it seemed you would see Krsna in his three fold bending form. The whole thing became quite popular. Finally the man came to the Math and Srila Sridhar Maharaja explained to him how he was simply cheating others. Srila Sridhar Maharaja said, "We don't want that Krsna, we want the Krsna who is very difficult to attain." The main surrendered and became Srila Sridhar Maharaja's disciple.