Objective Inquiry?
BY: RAY LANTHIER
Jul 03, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA (SUN) — The Jewish ‘hot button’ issue is being decompressed by the Sun editorial policy on objective and fact-based research. Janet Sullivan objects that such objectivity is not possible in an inherently Fascist organization. She has a point. Not so much about the means, but the motive. There have been no Iranian-style civil riots. Not even a tremor of covert grassroots resistance. Findings depend very much on what the ‘researcher’ is looking for.
When everything the rank and file hears and speaks is carefully controlled by the Orwellian ISKCON leadership, if some devotee who allows himself enough critical thought to do research on his lords and masters, that spark should ignite more than a research paper. It would signify an independent action, a blip of buddhi, unauthorized by the ISKCON mind police. This little candle of inquiry in the oppressive darkness of disinformation would certainly glow strongly enough to motivate the researcher away from the oppressive system. I see no alternative, since everything in current ISKCON is geared to preventing the pariprasnena of which Krishna speaks in the one Bhagavad Gita verse on guru Tattva:
tad viddhi pranipatena
pariprasnena sevaya
upadeksyanti te jnanam
jnaninas tattva-darsinah
Bhagavad Gita 4:34
"Just try to learn the truth by approaching a spiritual master. Inquire from him submissively and render service unto him. The self-realized soul can impart knowledge unto you because he has seen the truth."
This process of inquiry, by which the aspirant serves the Spiritual Master, Krishna, with his/her intelligence, when unimpeded, cascades into the full jnana of self-realization. Hence the term 'jnaninas’.
There is no question of oppressive systems, authoritarian censorship and intimidation. That’s neither what is meant by pariprasnena nor sevaya. The Truth sets the questioner free.
ISKCON represents the diametric opposite of such siksa inquiry. Only those whose intelligence has been enslaved by the cultic propagandists who pose as self-realized and impart nothing but cheating exploitation can remain. It would suffocate anybody with a modicum of spiritual insight.
