The Four Sannyasis
BY: SUN STAFF
Oct 11, CANADA (SUN) — Following yesterday's segment of Deconstructing the Lilamrta, we received the following two replies. Our thanks to Hrishikesh and Babhru prabhus for helping to clarify the history of this aspect of Srila Prabhupada's lila pastimes.
From Babhru das:
"You mentioned in your Lilamrita analysis that you don't know who the other two sannyasis from the New Vrindaban 1970 debacle were. The four sannyasis were Brahmananda, Gargamuni, Visnujana, and Subala. You'll hear different versions of what they said and how the other devotees there responded depending on whom you ask, and when you ask them. I remember that when Goursundar returned from NV after that festival, he was so freaked out he didn't even talk about it for a couple of months.
Vaiyasaki discusses this in his book about Jayananda and Visnujana, but presents it in a way that makes Visnujana Maharaja look like an innocent dupe. The long view of the incident is that those four men got out, away from ISKCON temples and did some preaching, opening centers in new areas."
From Hrishikesh dasa (Henry Doktorski):
"Regarding "Deconstructing the Lilamrta - Part 70", I humbly submit the following excerpt from my New Vrindaban history book-in-progress. Perhaps some of your readers might find it interesting.
Vaiyasaki dasa also writes about this event in ISKCON history in Radha-Damodar Vilasa (Sravanam-Kirtanam Press: 1999). It is interesting to note that actually, Srila Prabhupada sent three letters to New Vrindaban, not one letter as Satsvarupa states. In Lilamrita he combined the three into one letter, perhaps for dramatic effect."
ISKCON Crisis at New Vrindaban 1970 Janmastami Festival
By Hrishikesh dasa (Henry Doktorski)
An excerpt from my forthcoming book-Gold, Guns and God:
A History of the Hare Krishnas in West Virginia
A “great sinister movement is within our society”
During January 1970, Prabhupada moved to Los Angeles and made the newly-purchased Watseka Avenue ISKCON temple his headquarters. It was the finest physical facility in all of ISKCON. “We don’t require such a nice place for ourselves,” Prabhupada told the temple president, Gargamuni Das. “We are prepared to live anywhere. But such a nice place will give us opportunity to invite gentlemen to come and learn about this Krishna consciousness.”
Under Prabhupada’s personal direction, the Los Angeles center became a model for the rest of ISKCON. At the morning Bhagavatam class, for example, he had the devotees responsively chant the Sanskrit verses after him, and he asked that this become the standard program in all his temples. In May he wrote to all of the ISKCON temple presidents inviting them to visit him at Los Angeles.
Prabhupada was pleased by the rapid expansion of ISKCON. Twenty-six centers had been established, including eighteen centers in the United States, three in Canada, and one each in England (London), France (Paris), West Germany (Hamburg), Japan (Tokyo), and Australia (Sydney). During this time in Los Angeles Prabhupada also created the Bhaktivedanta Book Trust (BBT), to (1) publish his books and literature, and (2) establish temples throughout the world, including three temples in India: Mayapur, Vrindaban, and Jagannath Puri.
Despite the obvious successes, Prabhupada was disturbed by a “poison” which had infected ISKCON. His suspicions began in April when a letter arrived from his disciple Achyutananda dasa, who had been preaching in India for two years and accepting hospitality from Prabhupada’s godbrothers at various Gaudiya Math temples. Achyutananda had explained that some of Bhaktisiddhanta’s disciples objected that their godbrother, A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami, was honored by his disciples with the name “Prabhupada.” Only their guru, Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati, they said, should be honored with that title. Achyutananda had written about this and other sensitive matters in his letters, and Prabhupada saw these innocently-written remarks as a symptom of a greater threat to his absolute position as founder and acharya of ISKCON. His immature disciples could easily become misled by his envious godbrothers.
Prabhupada believed some of his godbrothers were conspiring against him to prevent him from establishing a temple in Mayapur. “I am so sorry to learn that there is a sort of conspiracy by some of our godbrothers as not to give me a place in Mayapur.”
Prabhupada observed other offenses. During the July 1970 San Francisco Ratha-Yatra parade some leading disciples prevented Prabhupada from riding on the Ratha cart, even after he insisted, and the disciples rode on the cart themselves-as if in his place. (The leaders tried to explain to Prabhupada that earlier in the day some angry blacks had thrown stones at the cart and started a fight, and they thought Prabhupada might be injured if he rode in the cart during the parade.)
One time Prabhupada noticed that a devotee who had cleaned his room had carelessly placed his photograph upside down. Prabhupada also discovered that his secretary had allowed the temple authorities to read and censor his mail; at their discretion they withheld from him letters they considered petty or disturbing. The Los Angeles managers even prevented some of Prabhupada’s disciples from having personal darshans with their own spiritual master.
Another time, someone had accidentally put salt instead of sugar in the deities’ charanamrita (bathing water). Prabhupada discovered, to his horror, that not all initiated devotees were chanting sixteen rounds daily, and some said that the temple authorities had instructed them that it was better to do service than chant the required number of rounds. Prabhupada was also insulted by Tamal Krishna who asked, in a letter from Paris, if Prabhupada had been subjected to the laws of material nature during his previous life. Prabhupada replied:
A spiritual master is always liberated. In any condition of his life he should not be mistaken as ordinary human being. . . . So I do not know why you have asked about my previous life. Whether I was subjected to the laws of material nature? So, even though accepting that I was subjected to the laws of material nature, does it hamper in my becoming Spiritual Master? . . .
So far I am concerned, I cannot say what I was in my previous life, but one great astrologer calculated that I was previously a physician and my life was sinless. Besides that, to corroborate the statement of Bhagavad-gita-“sucinam srimatam gehe yogabhrasta samyayate” [6.41]-which means an unfinished yogi takes birth in rich family or born of a suci or pious father. By the grace of Krishna I got these two opportunities in the present life to be born of a pious father and brought up in one of the richest, aristocratic families of Calcutta (Kasinath Mullick). The Radha Krishna Deity in this family called me to meet Him, and therefore last time when I was in Calcutta, I stayed in that temple along with my American disciples. Although I had immense opportunities to indulge in the four principles of sinful life because I was connected with a very aristocratic family, Krishna always saved me, and throughout my whole life I do not know what is illicit sex, intoxication, meat-eating or gambling. So far my present life is concerned, I do not remember any part of my life when I was forgetful of Krishna.
In addition, the ISKCON press had committed a great blunder: it had misprinted Prabhupada’s name on a new paperback book. His name appeared on the cover as simply “A. C. Bhaktivedanta.” Omitted was the customary “His Divine Grace” as well as “Swami Prabhupada.” To make matters worse, when Prabhupada opened the book, the binding cracked, and some pages fell out. Prabhupada was furious.
Prabhupada was so disturbed by all these things that he was unable to concentrate on his translation work. Prabhupada confided in Hansadutta, “During the last few months I was very much mentally depressed.”
Prabhupada suspected that a poison from India had infected his society. The poison was impersonalism; considering the spiritual master to be an ordinary man. The Mayavadis sometimes compare the guru to a ladder. One uses the ladder to reach a higher position, but when the ladder is no longer needed one kicks it away. Prabhupada’s position as the founder and acharya of ISKCON was slowly but surely becoming minimized.
One disciple reported, “With so many disturbing incidents coming mostly from his senior men, Prabhupada can understand the purport of these omens-his position is being minimized by an element of maya emanating from India. A relative conception of his stature as Spiritual Master has infiltrated the Society. He sees seeds of calamity in his movement, although his young disciples are not consciously plotting. But Srila Prabhupada knows that if this tendency continues, the movement will go off the track and he could lose his authority. The entire mission will be compromised as a result. As far as Prabhupada is concerned, there is a major crisis in ISKCON.”
Even Kirtanananda Swami had inadvertently contributed to his master’s pain. Prabhupada had planned to attend the August 21-23 Janmastami festival at New Vrindaban. However, when he spoke to Kirtanananda on the telephone about the festival, his first sannyas disciple casually mentioned that “it wasn’t necessary for him to come.”
Prabhupada was visibly upset by Kirtanananda’s words and walked out of the Los Angeles temple into the garden, where he announced to Brahmananda, Gargamuni, and his secretary Devananda, “So you do not need me.” Prabhupada told them he was leaving, and it was final; he would return to his rooms at the Radha-Damodar temple in Vrindaban, India, and his disciples would have to manage ISKCON without him.
Prabhupada wrote, “At the present moment in our ISKCON campus politics and diplomacy has entered. Some of my beloved students on whom I counted very, very much have been involved in this matter influenced by Maya. As such there has been some activity which I consider as disrespectful. So I have decided to retire and divert attention to book writing and nothing more.”
Prabhupada takes immediate action to protect his society.
Yet after due reflection, Prabhupada decided that he would not abandon his misguided disciples; he would try to save his mission with immediate and firm action. Prabhupada decided to (1) award sannyas to some of his disciples who were becoming enamored with the power from their managerial positions and force them to travel and preach, (2) leave Los Angeles and travel to India, where he hopefully would be free to preach and translate without disturbance and halt the spread of the “poison” at its source, and (3) create a Governing Body Commission (GBC) to manage the society in his absence. Hayagriva dasa was one of the twelve leading disciples selected to form the original GBC, along with ten other householders (Bhagavan, Hansadutta, Jagadish, Karandhar, Krishnadas, Rupanuga, Satsvarupa, Shyamasundar, Sudama, and Tamal Krishna) and one brahmachari (Bali Mardan).
Prabhupada wrote to Hansadutta, “Regarding the poisonous effect in our Society, it is a fact and I know where from this poison tree has sprung up and how it affected practically the whole Society in a very dangerous form. . . . You are one of the members of the GBC, so you can think over very deeply how to save the situation. It is a fact however that the great sinister movement is within our Society. . . . All of you may try to save the Society from this dangerous position.”
On July 20, Prabhupada initiated four brahmacharis into the sannyas order: Brahmananda, Gargamuni, Subaldas, and Vishnujan. Four days later, Prabhupada initiated two more sannyasis, Devananda Swami and Karttikeya Swami, his secretary and personal servant, respectively. Soon after, another sannyasi was initiated: Madhudvisa Swami. ISKCON now had eight sannyasis.
On August 7, Prabhupada left Los Angeles for India, via Hawaii and Japan, accompanied by four sannyasis, Devananda, Karttikeya, Madhudvisa, and Kirtanananda, and one householder, Tamal Krishna. The newly-formed GBC scheduled their first meeting to be held during the upcoming Janmastami festival at New Vrindaban, where four of the new sannyasis (Brahmananda, Gargamuni, Subaldas, and Vishnujan) were also headed.
The first annual New Vrindaban Janmastami festival.
Very few local Marshall County residents knew about the New Vrindaban ISKCON farm community at first. The Old Vrindaban farm was located at the end of a muddy and rutted two-mile road, and devotee traffic on McCreary Ridge Road was minimal. When a dhoti-clad shaven-headed young man appeared in Moundsville, en route to the commune, it was an event worthy of publication in the local newspaper. “A young man in yellow robe and head shaved with a pigtail on back got off a bus this morning here, and looked for a way to get to New Vrindaban. He is the former Chuck Paulin of Seattle, Washington, who since he joined the Krishna Consciousness temple there, has been named Gopal Das. He came to live for a while at the ISKCON colony here, at the north end of McCreary Ridge, which is the only rural colony of the growing movement that is an offspring of ancient Hindu writings.”
To help publicize their first annual Janmastami festival, Ranadhir visited the Moundsville Daily Echo offices and spoke with editor and publisher Sam Shaw. The Echo reported:
Public Festival At Krishna Farm Next Weekend.
The public is welcome to the first annual festival next weekend at New Vrindaban, the farm colony of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness-on McCreary Ridge-but they have to walk a pilgrimage of two miles to get there. Ranadhir, the camp director, said that it just is not going to be possible to get the present jeep trail bulldozed into an auto road in time. It is a beautiful walk down a little stream called Big Run, through the woods, finally emerging onto a roadway up the hillside with a view of the farm buildings across the fields.
The public festival is Friday, Saturday and Sunday, August 21, 22-23, at seven o’clock each evening, with booths and dioramas, plays, puppet shows, a religious service, and a free feast of prasadam, pronounced as “prashadam,” of vegetarian items permitted to devotees.
They expect over a hundred visitors from other colonies of the growing movement around the country-but their hopes for having the spiritual master of the movement, Swami Bhaktivedanta here, fell through when he went to Honolulu recently. . . .
Bhaktivedanta brought the faith from India in 1966, and there are a number of colonies in cities, but this is the first rural colony. Some 45 people live in the Marshall County colony.
Sam Shaw accepted Ranadhir’s invitation to visit New Vrindaban during the festival, and he walked the two-mile road on Saturday afternoon. Sam was impressed with the beauty of the trail, the colorful orange robes of the men, and the long Indian sari dresses worn by the women. He observed some similarities between the Vaishnavas and the Catholics and Presbyterians. When heavy rains came down, Sam departed along the muddy road, on which he “slid around as on ice.” Finally “darkness overtook us,” “the wet road turned into a river,” and Sam began “desperately fighting splosh by splosh toward the outside world.”
Saturday evening we hiked out to New Vrindaban to visit their festival. Today, Monday, is their anniversary of the birth on earth of Krishna, God, as a baby-thus corresponding to our Christmas. It is a beautiful walk from the old Oakdale school building, down the run and then up the hill to their farm that lies southeast of Burch Run Lake.
They had the road bulldozed this summer in the hope that the public could come in cars to visit the festival-but the fact that it crosses the run three times, plus the fact it is a clay soil shaded by trees that holds moisture, kept it unsafe for anything less than 4-wheel-drive vehicles, and they got the word to come, but not all, that the last two miles would have to be walked.
We arrived to find perhaps 150 people at the colony that normally is one-third that size. Many were devotees from all over the world, men in orange robes, often bare above the waist; women in long Indian sari dresses that come to the ankles. There were also a few out of uniform: some folks who are more or less interested in this revival of the ancient Hindu scriptures, a few spectators like the Roger Pettit family and this writer.
They were serving a feast of prasadam, or “Kosher” food, all vegetables. We found on our plate half an ear of corn, a concoction based on rice, a pile of dark-brown material like spinach, a couple of items that were light brown outside and rather sweetish.
It was a colorful scene. A few of the people were blacks, and at least one couple was East Indian-who would have this type of religion already in their backgrounds. Most of the folks we saw seemed to be people in their 20s or early 30s who had become dissatisfied with the current Western way of life and are looking for something.
However, this something different has an impressive amount of parallels with Christianity. The monastic way of retreat from the world has been going on for thousands of years in the Catholic Church. The repeated chanting to the glory of God occurs in many churches. In fact, the Westminster catechism which is supposed to be the core of Presbyterianism, has as its first paragraph that the first end of men is to glorify God.
There were booths of photos and literature, and a new open-air shelter they had put up since the last time we visited there, which they were using as a temple. And in that milieu of the austere and simple life, and a religion going back four thousand years, what did we see-a modern videotape recorder playing back on a TV set pictures of their celebration the evening before!
A gong sounded and the people moved into the temple-shelter, and began singing the “Hail to God” chant in Sanskrit: “Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna” that is the theme of their daily living. They sang it over and over again, and some were bouncing around to the music.
Then came the rain-gentle at first.
They invited us to stay on the farm overnight, but though we wanted to, we couldn’t-we had a date . . . for ten p.m. to get welded a broken roller arm on our new press. So we started back down the road.
Then the rains poured.
The water lubricated the top layer of the road, so that one slid around as on ice. We caught up to a black family of four from St. Louis, who were trying to get back to their car. They hadn’t known about the two-mile hike, and the woman who was a member of the faith, had worn only sandals. She was soon in foot trouble.
Slowed down by the awful walking, darkness overtook us. Other people came along. The wet road turned into a river. Now there were ten people with only three flashlights slogging through the mud, desperately fighting splosh by splosh toward the outside world. Finally, victory!
And there at Oakdale school, we found about a dozen people just arriving, and advised them strongly against trying to go in the road that night. Two had already unrolled sleeping bags on the school porch. One fellow in his robe said his VW bus had broken down at Zanesville en route from Chicago, and needed someone to go out and pull him in. We asked, “How can people in such self-enforced poverty afford repairs on cars?” Answer, “Krishna will provide; He always does.”
As we pulled out to drive back, our radio came on, with a chorus singing, “Oh, for a thousand tongues to sing my great Redeemer’s praise.” We had just heard a hundred tongues doing that, up on the hill. The rain came down in sheets and pillowcases and cats and dogs, and our wiper on high speed could just keep up with it but not with the fogginess. We got around one woman driver who had stopped right in the road, because she couldn’t see.
ISKCON crisis at New Vrindaban.
Besides the heavy rains and mud, the August 21-23, 1970, Janmastami festival was notorious for another reason: it was the scene of a great crisis in ISKCON which was precipitated by four errant newly-initiated sannyasis who preached to the devotees at New Vrindaban that Prabhupada had abandoned them and fled to India because his disciples had not recognized that he was actually God.
Yet this heresy was not without due cause. Brahmananda remembered a month or so earlier in Los Angeles when Kirtanananda telephoned Prabhupada and indicated something to the effect that “it is not necessary for you to attend the Janmastami festival.” As explained earlier, Prabhupada was very hurt and told Brahmananda and others that he intended to abandon his disciples and go to India because his disciples had minimized his position. Brahmananda and Gargamuni were sincere disciples-although perhaps not yet perfectly fixed up in the philosophy-and they took Prabhupada’s words to heart. After serious reflection, they devised a solution to save ISKCON: instead of minimizing Prabhupada, they would maximize him. During their travels they convinced their fellow sannyasis Subal and Vishnujan of the crisis in ISKCON, and their solution to save the movement.
Satsvarupa Das Goswami described the “nightmare” at New Vrindaban:
The Janmastami-Vyasa-puja festival in New Vrindaban had become a nightmare. Hundreds of devotees had converged there from the East Coast, with many others from California and even Europe. They had come for a blissful festival [which they expected Srila Prabhupada to attend], but instead had found Srila Prabhupada’s newly-initiated sannyasis expounding a devastating philosophy.
The sannyasis, speaking informally to groups here and there, would explain how the devotees had offended Prabhupada and how he had subsequently withdrawn his mercy. The sannyasis revealed their special insights that Prabhupada was actually God, that none of his disciples had recognized him as such, and that all of them, therefore, beginning with the sannyasis, were guilty of minimizing his position. And that was why Prabhupada had left for India; he had “withdrawn his mercy” from his disciples.
The devotees were devastated. None of them knew what to say in reply. The sannyasis, by their preaching, had projected gloom everywhere, which was proper, they said; everyone should feel guilty and realize that they had lost the grace of their spiritual master. No use trying to cheer one another up by chanting Hare Krishna or eating a feast; everyone should accept the bitter medicine.
Yet Brahmananda claimed he was forced into saying that Prabhupada was God. He explained. “At one open session during the impromptu New Vrindaban meetings, one devotee challenged me by asking if Srila Prabhupada was so great as to be Krishna. ‘Is Srila Prabhupada Krishna?’ Silence fell over everyone; it was a tense moment. If I answered in the negative, then my mission to convince the devotees to maximize Srila Prabhupada would have been defeated. I had to answer the affirmative. Arguments broke out; and the atmosphere of the festival was permeated with suspicion and doubt. For the first time, there was a serious crack in our brotherhood.”
Satsvarupa continued: “Although Prabhupada had given his disciples three volumes of Srimad-bhagavatam, as well as Bhagavad-gita As It Is, The Nectar of Devotion, Teachings of Lord Chaitanya, and other literature, none of the devotees were well-versed in them. Many devotees wondered if the philosophy the sannyasis were preaching was correct, but none of them knew enough of the scriptures to immediately refute it. The devotees turned to the new GBC men, Prabhupada’s appointed leaders and guardians of ISKCON. The GBC, along with other senior devotees, began carefully searching through Prabhupada’s books to ascertain exactly what he had said about the position of the spiritual master.”
Hayagriva leads battle against errant mayavadi sannyasis.
Out of all the twelve GBC men, only Hayagriva understood clearly what had happened. Satyabhama devi dasi remembered, “The GBC kept meeting and discussing and trying to figure out what was going on. Because it felt really weird, really off, but nobody knew the philosophy well enough, except Hayagriva, who had done all the editing of the books. Rupanuga was baffled. Hayagriva was the only one who had them pegged. He was unequivocal. His final analysis was, ‘They say Prabhupada is God, and Prabhupada is the spiritual master, and sannyasis will become spiritual master. These are the sannyasis, the leaders of the movement, the future spiritual masters. So they’re going to be God. And that’s what this is all about.’”
“Subsequently, Hayagriva wrote an essay, ‘The Spiritual Master: Emissary of the Supreme Person,’ which appeared in the next issue of Back to Godhead to clear up the matter for the whole society and for the public at large. Prabhupada congratulated Hayagriva for having thoroughly grasped the concept of the spiritual master.”
At New Vrindaban, serendipitous letters from Prabhupada arrived from Tokyo which turned the tide in the nick of time. Although Prabhupada could not have known about the current crisis at New Vrindaban when he wrote these letters some days earlier, perhaps he suspected something might be amiss. He knew that Brahmananda and Gargamuni Swamis were going to attend the New Vrindaban festival, and Prabhupada recently had some grievance with them. Only one month earlier on July 31, Prabhupada had written to the two brothers and begged them: “I am fervently appealing to you all not to create facture in the solid body of the Society. Please work conjointly, without any personal ambition. That will help the cause.”
Prabhupada wrote to Hayagriva: “Regarding Janmastami arrangement, it is going on nicely- that is very encouraging. . . . At the same time, please make a very nice scheme to purge out the non-Vrndavana spirit that entered in our Society.”
There is still another reason why Prabhupada might have sent encouraging letters to his New Vrindaban disciples at this time. As he was originally scheduled to attend this Janmastami festival, he knew his disciples would be greatly dejected when they discovered that his travel plans had changed. Prabhupada may have sent one letter specifically to encourage and reassure his disappointed disciples at New Vrindaban. Satsvarupa described one of Prabhupada’s timely letters:
Hayagriva announced that a letter had just arrived from Srila Prabhupada in Tokyo. As soon as the devotees all gathered under the pavilion roof to hear, Hayagriva read aloud: “My dear Sons and Daughters,” and then Prabhupada listed almost all the New Vrindaban residents. The devotees immediately felt a wave of hope. Just to hear Prabhupada say, “My dear Sons and Daughters,” was a great relief.
Hayagriva continued to read: “Please accept my blessings.”
Prabhupada hadn’t rejected them!
The letter went on to say that Srila Prabhupada was pleased with the work of the New Vrindaban devotees, and he promised to come and visit them. Soon he would send for other devotes to join him in India, he said. As he described what preaching in India would be like, the devotees became caught up in the momentum of Srila Prabhupada’s preaching spirit. They cheered. They felt blissful.
Then Prabhupada specifically referred to the difficulty facing ISKCON: “Purge out of New Vrindaban the non-Vrindaban atmosphere that has entered.” His letter turned the tide against the Mayavada teachings.
Prabhupada encouraged Hayagriva in a personal letter:
I am very glad to know that the GBC is actively working to rectify the subversive situation which has been weakening the very foundation of our Society. All you members of the GBC please always remain very vigilant in this connection so that our society’s growth may go on unimpeded by such poisonous elements. Your preaching in New Vrindaban as well as intensified study of our literatures with seriousness is very much encouraging. Please continue this program with vigor and reestablish the solidity of our movement.
From the very beginning I was strongly against the impersonalists and all my books are stressed on this point. So my oral instruction as well as my books are all at your service. Now you GBC consult them and get clear and strong idea, then there will be no disturbance. Disturbance is caused by ignorance; where there is no ignorance, there is no disturbance. The four Sannyasis may bark, but still the caravan will pass. There is every evidence that they are influenced by some of my fourth-class Godbrothers. . . .
If there is opportunity, try to convince these rascal Sannyasis who are misled by fourth-class men . . . I am simply sorry that such intelligent boys are misusing their brain-substance in this way. Try to rectify them as far as possible. . . . I do not know what is the sequence of this inquiry, but it is clear that there is a great clique and the so-called Sannyasis are the via media of spreading contamination in our Society. It is a very sorry plight.
Errant sannyasis banned from ISKCON, then readmitted.
Tamal Krishna Goswami later summarized the fiasco and described how the errant sannyasis were banned from ISKCON by Prabhupada himself:
Prabhupada detected . . . challenges to his absolute authority in the behaviour of certain leaders of his Los Angeles headquarters. Increasingly, in the guise of protecting his privacy for his translating, the leaders denied devotees direct access to him. In San Francisco at the Festival of the Chariots, there was no seat for him on any of the carts. Thus, he saw on a number of places moves to minimise his position. With an adroitness which was characteristic of his administrative skills, he acted suddenly to check this latest threat. First, he awarded the renounced order of sannyas to his errant managers, commanding that they give up their administrative roles in exchange for traveling and preaching. Simultaneously, he appointed twelve of his most trusted disciples as members of the first Governing Body Commission. As a final act, he announced that despite his poor health and advanced age, he would himself leave for establishing ISKCON’s mission in India, the source of the attack on his movement [by some of his Gaudiya Math godbrothers].
But the cancer had not been checked. Halting in Japan en route to India, Prabhupada learned that four of his new renunciants had begun preaching a strange gospel. At a huge gathering of ISKCON faithful at New Vrindaban on Krishna’s birth anniversary, 1970, they had announced that by leaving America, Prabhupada had rejected his disciples for failing to recognise that Prabhupada was actually Krishna Himself. This was nothing but another aspect of impersonalism. While Kirtanananda had previously failed to distinguish between the personal and impersonal conceptions of Godhead [during his bout with maya three years earlier], the new sannyasis had failed to distinguish the guru from the Godhead. Vaishnavas teach that the guru is the servant of God, but never the Godhead Himself. A Vaishnava spiritual master will never say that he is God or that God is impersonal.
In Japan, Prabhupada revealed the underlying implication: by making him God, the seat of the guru was now vacated to make room for one of his Gaudiya Matha godbrothers. He was, in effect, being kicked upstairs. He asked Sudama Das and Tamal Krishna Das, the two GBC representatives with him in Tokyo, what they intended to do. In unison they responded that the four errant sannyasis should be driven out of ISKCON. Prabhupada immediately agreed.
The GBC members at the New Vrindaban festival had already begun to expose the fallacious teachings of the four sannyasis by citing numerous references from Prabhupada’s books. But they were surprised by the harsh edict that came from Japan. Nevertheless, they carried out the order, relaying Prabhupada’s instruction that the sannyasis must now preach separately from the institution, depending solely on Krishna for their support. Though penniless and without institutional shelter, the forced independence appeared to strengthen their connection with Prabhupada, and they headed in different directions to carry out his order to preach.
Prabhupada’s stern response seems to indicate that he was prepared to sacrifice a few individuals to save his Society from being seriously infected with what he considered impersonalist poison. He did not, however, reject the errant sannyasis; he had merely quarantined them from other disciples to prevent further harm to his movement. He continued to correspond with them and encouraged them to preach. Gradually purified by the ordeal, each was eventually incorporated back into ISKCON and went on to perform important service for the Society.
