cbrahma

What kind of response??????

One can argue from this then that a hard-harted person cannot be a bhakta. Wow, I guess I've rarely met a bhakta.

If you favor initiation, that's the only way to go. I for one do not need a human master.

I've experienced worse karma when following a process of chanting and devotion. Some devotees use the fan metaphor. The electricity is turned off and the fan continues...but slows down..my fan sped up.

Nobody has ever tried to push their guru on me. They just look down their noses at my not being initiated. A condition they are quite content with and I am content not to change.

I can say with absolute certainty I've never seen cows eating meat.

I abandon the idea of initiation altogether. I am initiated by baptism. I don't need to be enslaved by a human being. The Papacy tried it and failed miserably.

Association of 'devotees' those who have realized what's in the books. Association is a completely different issue from initiation. It doesn't argue for living guru no more than Prabhupada did. (I don't want to have to copy those quotes again.

Whether he ate sausages at one time, it is documented that he was vegetarian at another. Let's face it, the history of vegetarian cultures is quite bellicose riddled with wars. It's no guarantee of spiritual anthing. Prabhupada admitted 'pigeons are vegetarian'.

You said Jesus didn't love you. Not I. I said just the opposite in a prior post. ! It was not written as a single book. It was compiled over a long period of time from very different texts and different sources. Calling it 'one book' is deliberately misleading. It's like saying the Mahabharata, or the Srimad Bhagavatam is just one book. Then you are bowing down to something which is not God. Same difference. What does that have to do with me?

You're barking up a very slim tree. If historical documentation were that inadequate, scholars would have refuted Christianity as pure myth a long time ago. Most Gospels were written within the lifetime of the evangelists. They compiled oral tradition. An understanding of this kind of tradition is essential in that it carries eye witness accounts through the community over time. The same can be said of the Srimad Bhagavatam. Whether the writers were the original apostles is not critical to their authenticity. Paul never saw Jesus but associated with many who had (Peter) I'm afraid you're grasping at straws here.

It's all a matter of chronology as with most vegetarians. "If I offer a child the choice between a pear and a piece of meat, he'll quickly choose the pear. That's his atavistic instinct speaking." - Adolf Hitler. December 28, 1941. Section 81, HITLER'S TABLE TALK "The only thing of which I shall be incapable is to share the sheiks' mutton with them. I'm a vegetarian, and they must spare me from their meat." - Adolf Hitler. January 12, 1942. Section 105, HITLER'S TABLE TALK "At the time when I ate meat, I used to sweat a lot. I used to drink four pots of beer and six bottles of water during a meeting. … When I became a vegetarian, a mouthful of water was enough." - Adolf Hitler. January 22, 1942. Section 117, HITLER'S TABLE TALK "When you offer a child the choice of a piece of meat, an apple, or a cake, it's never the meat that he chooses. There's an ancestral instinct there." - Adolf Hitler. January 22, 1942. Section 117, HITLER'S TABLE TALK

I was expecting that inconceivable rabbit out of the theological hat. acintya beda beda tattva means we are equal in quality but not quantity. If we are God in the second sense, then we should all be worshipped. Nobody should be bowing to anybody else. The sense of diksa applied to human beings I reject, is a worshipable being to which we must surrender totally and bow down. This is idolatry. Do not commit 'argumentum ad hominem' by constantly referring to my position on ISKCON. Do not obfuscate intelligent and justifiable rejection by repainting it as irrational hatred. That tactic is too easy. I can play it also.

Obviously. That is your option. I choose not to. It is inconsistent with my faith. My 'hatred' for ISKCON is based on knowledge and experience, not blindness. I more moved, however, by my love of Jesus on which you are not an authority. Actually the Bible isn't just one book. It is a compilation of many many texts over several centuries. Bhagavad Gita is also one book. Likewise, just because the SB says that MahaVisnu laid down in the ocean breathed out universes doesn't mean he did. If you believe it you are a fundamentalist, of course. No blinder than you for accepting that a statue is God.

Where does Jesus say He doesn't love you? He said he came to save the world not to condemn it. He is incapable of anything but Love. He exhorts us even to love our enemies. all gurus are not krsna-tattva but jiva-tattva. I don't subsribe to the idea that Godlike = God. There are many saints who are godlike but they do not equal God and will be the first to object to such an identification. It violates the First Commandment - in the Judao-Christian tradition. "I am the Lord thy God. You will have no other gods before me". To worship something/somebody is to consider that something/somebody a god. It is idolatry. If the 'as good as God' is to be accepted then I want proof. Let the guru raise somebody from the dead. Then I will believe it. Otherwise it is vain boasting. You can do whatever your conscience dictates. I will not do it. The first commandment forbids idolatry.

Thus speaketh Ayodhya.

I was responding to the accusation that Jesus could not be guru. Jesus is guru in role of teacher and savior. But he is not just a human being, he is also divine, in a way that is not in accord with the jiva-tattva philosophy of the vaisnavas. He does ask me to follow his commandments because He is one with the Father God. This is where it differs from the diksa concept. So many humans are being worshipped as god in the same way that Jesus is. But these self-appointed (or committee-appointed) 'gurus' are NOT GOD. It offends me to see people worship them and prostrate themselves to them. It is idolatry.

Hitler was a vegetarian. Jesus ate fish.

Jesus is my Teacher my Master in the sense that guru is used. In fact His salvific power is very similar to that of the diksa taking the soul back to God, taking on the karma of the disciple. As far as his historicity is concerned your opinion differs with scholarship. Josephus, in the book Jewish Antiquities" wrote: "At that time lived Jesus, a wise man, if he may be called a man; for he performed many wonderful works. He was a teacher of such men as received the truth with pleasure. . . .And when Pilate, at the instigation of the chief men among us, had condemned him to the cross, they who before had conceived an affection for him did not cease to adhere to him. For on the third day he appeared to them alive again, the divine prophets having foretold these and many other wonderful things concerning him. And the sect of the Christians, so called from him, subsists at this time" (Antiquities, Book 18, Chapter 3, Section 1). Tacitus, in writing about accusations that Nero burned the city of Rome and blamed it on Christians, said the following: ". . .Nero procured others to be accused, and inflicted exquisite punishment upon those people, who were in abhorrence for their crimes, and were commonly known by the name of Christians. They had their denomination from Christus (Christ, dm.), who in the reign of Tibertius was put to death as a criminal by the procurator Pontius Pilate. . . .At first they were only apprehended who confessed themselves of that sect; afterwards a vast multitude discovered by them, all of which were condemned, not so much for the crime of burning the city, as for their enmity to mankind. . . ." (Tacitus, Annals, 15, 44). There are many documents oral traditions etc...many of which were compiled as the canonic New Testament that speaks of Jesus. There's as much proof of his existence as the existence of any other well known Jew of the period such as Saul of Tarsus of wrote copiously on the subject. He was the Messiah of the Jews and of all of humanity. He was the Savior of all the world. I know because he sent his apostles to preach to all the nations. In fact it was Paul's specific mission to evangalize the Gentiles (non-Jews).

Well my Guru is Jesus. He doesn't ask for prostration. Doesn't watch for ritual offenses. Forbids me to 'surrender' to any human as 'teacher/father' (guru). If the guru is merely supposed to lead, to enlighten, what's up with the surrender. Why should I jump when he barks?

Misunderstanding? The fear is well founded. There is no misunderstanding. Having one human being in total control of another is diabolical. Anyone who fears it has there head screwed on right. 'And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven' (see Matthew 23:8-10)."

I'm neither evangelical or Catholic. How many times am I going to have to make the point among the 'you too' finger pointing kiddies that Christianity has corruption. At least it doesn't outright demand complete subservience of one human by another. And the rites and rituals are nowhere near as complicated and fraught with possiblity of offenses. Catholic hegemony was the most corrupt and false Christianity. It was eventually overthrown. If one takes the Gospels, there is not this profusion of little rules and regulations and submissions and self-torturing rituals...

The Gaudiya Math is pretty much history precisely because of the acarya debacle. The proliferation of gurus splintered the movement just like in ISKCON. The bottom line of course is that one doesn't get 'hired' by appointment to the post of guru like a CEO of a corporation. But it's great control mechanism, which is all this diska obsession is about.

Fairness is beside the point. It's based on observable facts excruciating and convicting as they are. I conceded in my previous posts that there is also corruption in Christianity to head off what I knew would become a finger pointing 'you too' competition. That childish fault-finding is so common in ISKCON. So predictable. I'm not evangelical. No pastor has me on a leash , short or otherwise. I know many godbrothers and godsisters who are the same. I don't call anyone master other than the Lord Himself. I do that without fear because Christ is Love incarnate. The ISKCON Uriah Heeps always bowing and namaste-ing each other record every offense imagined or otherwise, hoping others will suffer consequences, waiting for them to fall. Arrogant and unloving.

There have been reported incidents as late as 2005. Nothing really changes except for the pressures exerted by legal authorities. Otherwise these little ones would still be raped by these patholigical weirdos in robes and beads. And please stop copy-pasting all these verses. They don't make a very clear point. They are a long-winded puffing of no specific statement. I was wondering when the word bitter would show up. I was not personally attacked or mistreated because I would never be so 'surrendered' to allow such a thing. Iv'e witnessed and was privy to a lot of others abuses. That is bad enough. It doesn't make me bitter. Just much wiser and incapable of being duped. Furthermore what kind of mercy calls itself master and makes hundred and one demands. What kind of mercy catalogues offenses for the most minor actions. What kind of mercy has their 'loved ones' prostrating themselves in anxiety for committing the slighest infractions. Rubbish. Sell it to somebody with their head firmly lodged in their backside.