Some Thoughts about the Rtviks
BY: GEORGE A. SMITH
Aug 22, 2011 — CALIFORNIA, USA (SUN) — Sriman Yasodanandana in one of his position papers submits to us the following evidence that supports his conclusion that such a presentation is free from any defect or chance of error.
"The empowered acarya and pure devotee is a self realized soul who is beyond the four defects of conditional life."
Bhrama pramada vipra-lipsa karanapatava
Arsa-vijna-vakye dosa nahi dosa ei saba
TRANSLATION
"Mistakes, illusions, cheating and defective perception do not occur in the sayings of the authoritative sages."
Although I accept Yasodanandana conclusion in regards to what he claims of the acarya that his presentation is free from defects and any possibility of error, such an acceptance cannot be extended to the efforts or person of any conditioned soul, which Yasodanandana admit that he is, but does not seem to be able to factor that into his own presentation. He seems completely incapable of even entertaining the possibility that his own conclusions may be mistaken. This and the fact that the Hare Krishna Society (HKS) goes on to portray anyone who questions the accuracy of their conclusions as insincere speculators renders it impossible for me and others to take them at all seriously, except as a threat to everything that Srila Prabhupada stands for.
In examining this part of Yasodanandana's position paper we read in support of the quoted verse above what he offers to us as being Srila Prabhupada's purport, but which is actually not, although had I not double-checked, I would have failed to discover this fact and accepted that it was.
Yasodanandana offers:
"There cannot be mistakes, illusion, cheating, or imperfect perception in the words of liberated sages... Srila Vyasadeva revealed these statements after perfect realization, and therefore they are perfect, for liberated sages like Vyasadeva never commit errors in their rhetorical arrangements... Since the Personality of Godhead and His plenary portions and self-realized souls are all transcendentally situated, they cannot be misled by such deficiencies "(10) Adi 2.86
Until I checked the verse's purport I was under the impression that what Yasodanandana was offering us was at least a block quotation from Srila Prabhupada's purport, and not just bits and pieces of it cobbled together in support of Yasodanandana's arguments and conclusions. The complete and entire text of Srila Prabhupada's purport to this verse reads as follows, with the portions of it that Yasodanandana das has cobbled together underlined and highlighted in bold below.
Srila Prabhupada's complete purport to Caitanya-caritamrta Adi 2.86:
Srimad-Bhagavatam has listed the avataras, the plenary expansions of the purusa, and Lord Krsna appears among them. But the Bhagavatam further explains Lord Krsna's specific position as the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Since Lord Krsna is the original Personality of Godhead, reason and argument establish that His position is always supreme.
Had Krsna been a plenary expansion of Narayana, the original verse would have been differently composed; indeed, its order would have been reversed. But there cannot be mistakes, illusion, cheating or imperfect perception in the words of liberated sages. Therefore there is no mistake in this statement that Lord Krsna is the Supreme Personality of Godhead. The Sanskrit statements of Srimad-Bhagavatam are all transcendental sounds. Srīla Vyasadeva revealed these statements after perfect realization, and therefore they are perfect, for liberated sages like Vyasadeva never commit errors in their rhetorical arrangements. Unless one accepts this fact, there is no use in trying to obtain help from the revealed scriptures.
Bhrama refers to false knowledge or mistakes, such as accepting a rope as a snake or an oyster shell as gold. Pramada refers to inattention or misunderstanding of reality, and vipralipsa is the cheating propensity. Karanapatava refers to imperfectness of the material senses. There are many examples of such imperfection. The eyes cannot see that which is very distant or very small. One cannot even see his own eyelid, which is the closest thing to his eye, and if one is disturbed by a disease like jaundice, he sees everything to be yellow. Similarly, the ears cannot hear distant sounds. Since the Personality of Godhead and His plenary portions and self-realized devotees are all transcendentally situated, they cannot be misled by such deficiencies."
I am no more a fan of the editing of Srila Prabhupada's books than I am sure Yasodanandana das is, and yet an omission is also a form of editing or interpreting, as is the selection of just what one wants to quote in support of one's own arguments and conclusions, especially when it is done without any explanation that one is doing so. This is very dangerous, for the trusting and unsuspecting reader is not going to be aware that one is doing these things and is going to accept at face value that what is being quoted is the genuine article, complete from the pen of the pure devotee and presented to them as evidence without any editing or interpretation at the hands and through the mind of any conditioned soul who just so happens to be selecting what to include and what to cut out in accordance with his own biases and prejudices. This, just in the desire to support his own arguments and conclusions, which were he to have provided to us the text of the purport entire, simply on the strength of it, we might consider to suggest differently or prove not at all.
In this instance, the author Yasodanandana is seeking to establish the credentials of the pure devotees and enlightened sages, which of course some of the readers of his article, his fans, are going to consider him also to be, while if he had presented the purport in it's entirety, those reading it might be cautioned to consider the author's position and accept that he is himself a conditioned soul, and thus dissuade them from any acceptance of him or of his conclusions as products of perfection or as being the absolute truth.
The author does not, however, dissuade one from differentiating himself from the standard of perfection by providing to us this partial quote. Indeed, through his omission of much of Srila Prabhupada's purport, the boundary between himself, the conditioned soul and the acarya and enlightened sages is so much blurred that there is no distinction made between the perspective of the author Yasodanandana and the Sampradaya Acarya Srila Prabhupada, who he claims to be representing. Thus he seems to be presenting himself as being a transparent via medium between us and Srila Prabhupada, transmitting to us what can only be the absolute truth, rather than simply the conclusions of a conditioned soul.
Here again is a partial statement that Yasodanandana provides us with from Srila Prabhupada's purport, along with the statement immediately following it that he does not include in his edited version of Srila Prabhupada's purport, which provides the needed caution to those who consider the claims of any and every conditioned soul:
"But there cannot be mistakes, illusion, cheating or imperfect perception in the words of liberated sages. Therefore there is no mistake in this statement that Lord Krsna is the Supreme Personality of Godhead."
The obvious caution that is being provided here by Srila Prabhupada is that while there can be no mistake, illusion, cheating or imperfect perception on the part of a liberated soul , and thus no error, that this self same freedom from the four conditioned defects is not the province of any conditioned soul, including Yasodanandana. Thus his words, his theories and the conclusions that he draws are certainly suspect as being the produce of such defects and thus certainly prone to error, from the beginning.
Conditioned as we are, we are conditioned to accept mere assertion as being proof, just a statement or a claim, what to speak of a statement or a claim that has been "dressed up" with the appearance of being upon the platform of the Absolute, as being the word and will of Srila Prabhupada himself. "And it takes a very strong stomach to go against this conditioned response, to question the veracity of such claims, especially in the light of the fact that should you dare to even doubt the truth of the Rtviks' assertions, you will find yourself dangling head first over the bog of eternal stench or some such forever.
That the Rtviks dare to attempt to manipulate people through such terror tactics into unquestioning or unchallenging support of them or into silence or into mindless obedience if they wish to join their elitist club, says more to me than anything else that they, or their pundits rather (for many Rtviks are very wonderful and sincere devotees) are just as bad as ISKCON ever was, or that they are going that way. Actually, for those who are familiar with the history of the blind faith religion of Christianity that they are attempting to transform Krsna consciousness into and to emulate stands the chance of becoming far, far worse than even terrors of the inquisition ever attained to.
What we are actually faced with the Rtviks pundits are self admitted conditioned souls who are upon the kanistha platform, allying themselves with both persons of evil intentions and others of dubious motivations, or with basically anyone who will seem to support and agree with them, and there is no discrimination between even any of these based upon any spiritual merit. Anyone, even Hansadutta who Srila Prabhupada said wanted him dead and who is responsible for so many great offences to Srila Prabhupada and the devotees, is admitted and given a place of high honor and allowed to theologize upon their behalf. All the while, they damn ISKCON for the self same MO and they admit no hypocrisy in this.
History repeats itself. Why? Because human behavior repeats itself. How does one change human behavior so that bad history will stop repeating itself? The only way is this. You have to change human consciousness.
The Rtviks are not even suggesting that human consciousness should be changed, they stand ready, willing and even eager to transform the Krsna consciousness movement into the spitting image of the very thing that has brought so much misery and suffering into the world. And by such willingness, they display themselves to be completely clueless as to what Srila Prabhupada intended, which is just exactly what Rocana das mentions, which is to free us from ignorance, once and for all.
Such words, theories and conclusions that anyone offers that would subject our movement to such a transformation should be examined critically, over and over and over again, subjected to analysis after analysis, the pros and cons of such an acceptance argued back and forth many times. And finally, as another portion of the purport that Yasodanandana leaves out attests to, that such a transformation of our movement into just another damned church of the world proven beyond a shadow of a doubt, and it cannot be so despite Srila Prabhupada's acceptance of Christianity and as Christians as being Vaisnavas, where in his offering to Lord Krsna in his poem written on board the Jaladuta excludes them from the following?
"Most of the population here is covered by the material modes of ignorance and passion."
(Srila Prabhupada - on board the ship Jaladuta, dated 18th of September, 1965)
At that time in this country the Christians were still the majority.
That the truth must be established by reason and argument even by the pure devotees, by such faultless persons as Srila Prabhupada himself who are free of all conditioned defects, is attested to by another portion of the purport that Yasodanandana edited out of his presentation.
"Since Lord Krsna is the original Personality of Godhead, reason and argument establish that His position is always supreme."
Even the Goswamis, Sri Jiva himself in his Sat-sandarba argued strongly against his own postulates, putting forth many doubts, samsaya in regards to them and arguing strongly in favor of his doubts, and yet the Rtvik pundits are to good for this? They are better than Sri Jiva? Who will they be better than next week, and the week after that? When will it be Srila Prabhupada's turn for them to be better than him? When will it be Krsna's?
Of course in the minds of the Rtviks, their attitude is that they have already done all of this, and thus they cannot be mistaken, cannot be in illusion, cannot be cheating – any one of them, or at all imperfect in their perceptions, or in other words, that they are themselves "liberated sages", pure devotees, already good as God. Although they do not, of course, come out and openly state this, for they know that their support base would dwindle away if they did.
And if they are not liberated sages, then they are at least the next best things – they are fetishists.
Since the publishing of my last poor article upon the Sun ("Don't Let ISKCON or the Rtviks Get the Better of You", which coincided with Rocana dasa's excellent series of articles ("A Word and a Staple"), which everyone (and especially the Rtviks) should read, and read again (and thank him for), I have been attacked by some of the Rtviks along with Rocana and accused by one of their chief most pundits of attacking Srila Prabhupada, along with Rocana dasa, simply because I agreed with Rocana and with many others that they, the Rtviks, are leading people away from Srila Prabhupada's perfect presentation. And because I compared them to the useless Gaudiya Matha and to that other useless, the present day ISKCON.
Such a baseless accusation against us is painfully transparent to anyone who has read my actual article or Rocana dasa's, but the Rtvik pundit who proffered these charges and who actually had read these articles was certainly aware of this, that his charges were baseless. When a person who has become so twisted that he becomes like the evil that twisted him recognizes that truth will give him no advantage against those who he has accounted to be his enemies, he manufactures lies against them. He then attempts to dupe any and all those who accept him as being a minister of the truth into accepting those lies, so that he can manipulate them by the beliefs that he has created in them to do his evil work for him. Thus instead of offering the truth to his own party, this twisted person chooses to do what the Christians refer to as "bearing false witness against your neighbor", and offered against me and Rocana a lie instead, in order that he might be able by this manipulation strategy to generate the greatest possible degree of antipathy towards us in the minds of what he hopes to be his own mindless followers.
That the Rtvik rank and file are not all as mindless as such Rtvik pundits are hoping them to be might be indicated by the fact that after several weeks, his article stands alone without any of the invited comments, i.e. passionate responses calling for my lynching and Rocana dasa's.
You know, if it ever came to that, I can think of no finer company to hang with. But hopefully it isn't going to come to that. Yeah, when Sulocana's friend starts engaging himself in the same kind of things that ended up getting someone to put a bullet through Sulocana's head and you are still listening to him, and regarding him to be any type of spiritual authority and lending credence to anything he tells you, despite his complete disregard for your physical as well as spiritual welfare, you're not really helping him or yourselves. And if you think that you're helping Srila Prabhupada, you had best go think again.
Such primitive mentalities as are unable to differentiate themselves from the article of their devotion or desire -- themselves and their presentation from Srila Prabhupada and his presentation -- are not liberated sages. Those who take some words from Srila Prabhupada that support them while excluding any others that might call their arguments and conclusions into question are more akin to primitive tribal witch doctors, who while fearing the actual beast, covet its strength. They have it killed and then seize upon the cut off tail of a hyena, and by making it into a fetish and waving it about before the faces of their audience, they give to both themselves and their audience the impression that the
witch doctor has, through this fetish, attained all the remarkable strength of the beast whose cut off tail he waggles before them.
As the tribal witch doctor does with the tail of the hyena, the Rtvik pundit seeks to accomplish by cutting off parts of Srila Prabhupada's words and waggling them before us, in order to attain to an illusionary strength and status in our minds. They could not otherwise achieve this status, or in reality possess it through their own ability, or at least not so easily. In short, both of them, the Tribal witch doctor and the Rtvik pundit, are lazy and dishonest, to wit both are conditioned souls afflicted with the cheating propensity.
In Part Six of "A Word and a Staple", Rocana dasa makes the following plea to them, which invites them to subject their own arguments and conclusions and themselves as well to a closer scrutiny:
"Even if the Ritviks will only concede that post-samadhi ritvik diksa could be asiddhantic, they should recognize that if it actually proves to be so, and they've made the mistake of preaching this asiddhantic philosophy due to having some ulterior motive, they are at risk of getting a very serious reaction. ISKCON history is full of gruesome examples of what happens to those who begin preaching asiddhantic philosophy."
With all respect to Rocana Prabhu, if there is a clearer example of wisdom crying out unheeded in the street, I haven't seen any, And although I am sure that the wisdom of his words will (and have already) persuade the non-fanatical and sincere seekers in the Rtvik camps to re-examine both their leaders' arguments and conclusions as well, they will have absolutely no impact upon those among the Rtviks who are simply pretending to be Rtviks in the hopes that through such a pretence they can generate power, wealth and prestige, not for Srila Prabhupada, but for themselves.
A few years ago I happened to attend a nama-hatta program with a devotee friend, that included some Rtviks. I was at the time under the impression that the Rtviks were completely against the Zonals. During the course of the program, one of the young ladies there happened to mention to me the name of her guru; it was Hansadutta. She was not thinking of him as being only her Rtvik initiator, but as being her guru, and she was quite enthusiastic about chanting his glories. You see, in her mind Hansadutta was only pretending to be a Rtvik out of his own great humility, but he was really himself a pure devotee and her guru.
Those who sup with the devil must have a long spoon, but unfortunately for the Rtviks, they are so attached to their own conclusions that they will form the closest of alliances with even the greatest of devils, as long as he seems to support them. Once such devils have attained to the degree of esteem with which they were regarded by this young worshiper at the nama-hatta program that I attended, and by enough of them, they will simply do an about-face and "admit" that they had been mistaken about the Rtvik philosophy and claim to see now that it is not only erroneous, but offensive. Then, taking all of their Rtvik disciples with them, they will bid the Rtviks adieu and turn completely against them. And if the Rtvik pundits and rank and file are unaware of this, then in addition to being host to the four principle defects they are also stupid idiots.
At this moment in the history of Rtvikism, a re-think and re-examination is called for along the lines expressed in Rocana dasa's articles. Unlike ISKCON, Rocana is interested only in serving Srila Prabhupada, only in the truth. At one time I did not think this, but I was either wrong or he has grown beyond it. If Srila Prabhupada did indeed intend for ISKCON to emulate the Christians, you can convince us all with reason and argument and with proof, or with words and data that has not been cooked. This is how the truth is established in a Vaisnava manner, not by demonizing anyone simply because they call into question your methodology, or show you up by asking you questions that you should have already asked of yourselves. Just a thought.
All glories to Srila Prabhupada
Hare Krsna
Ys George A. Smith
