Sri Vyasa Offerings of His Holiness Bhakti Caru Swami to His Divine Grace Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada
Dear Śrīla Prabhupāda,
Please accept my most humble obeisances at your divine lotus feet, which are my eternal shelter.
Today I want to inform you about a glorious achievement. This year we have successfully established and permanently secured your position in ISKCON as its founder-ācārya. For many years many of us in ISKCON were seriously thinking about this need, and finally through the authority structure of the GBC body, we have been able to establish your position in ISKCON as its spiritual head for all time. You often said that to effectively preach Kṛṣṇa consciousness all over the world there is need for an institution, and through our practical experience we realized that to hold that institution together and make it function effectively we need Your Divine Grace as its permanent head, along with a governing body to collectively manage its affairs.
Ever since your departure we have faced many, many difficulties. You yourself cautioned us that after an ācārya leaves the planet there will inevitably be crises. How could we expect that after the disappearance of an ācārya like Your Divine Grace we would not face any crises? However, we also noticed that just by putting Your Divine Grace in the center we could overcome those difficulties quite easily. We began to realize that it is our love for you that will hold us together and enable this movement to sail through troubled waters. Through those difficulties we realized that the secret of success lay in establishing your position as the founder-ācārya of this glorious ISKCON institution.
Eventually, in 2006, the GBC decided to strategically establish your position in ISKCON by forming a subcommittee called “The Śrīla Prabhupāda Position Committee.” For seven years we, the members of that committee, met twice a year to discuss how to formally and effectively establish your unique position in ISKCON and thus fulfill the prediction of Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu. Finally, after profound deliberation and extensive research, Ravīndra Svarūpa Prabhu has brilliantly written a book called Śrīla Prabhupāda—The Founder-Ācārya of ISKCON. Before final publication, the book was scrutinized by all GBC members and scholarly devotees of our movement, and after we had taken their thoughtful input into consideration, the book was printed and has been authorized by the GBC body as an official position paper of ISKCON.
Now we want to distribute this book all over the world to educate the devotees about their relationship with you as the principal spiritual factor for their spiritual progress. In this way, all the members of ISKCON should become joyfully aware that all their relationships in ISKCON are centered around you. The devotees of ISKCON, generation after generation, will see you as their preeminent śikṣā- guru, and thus your teachings will be the guiding factor for all. In fact, everyone can see that this has already become a reality: all the Bhāgavatam classes in the temples are conducted on the basis of your Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, and the Gītā classes are based on your Bhagavad-gītā As It Is. Your books and teachings are the very foundation of our movement. Who could ever fail to recognize that?
The book by Ravīndra Svarūpa Prabhu has inspired sincere devotees so much that they have started to consider how to implement its purpose in a practical way. For example, during the last GBC meeting Jayapatāka Mahārāja proposed that when a devotee decides to seriously take up the process of Kṛṣṇa consciousness by chanting sixteen rounds and following the four regulative principles, he should commit himself to you through some official ceremony that will also include a fire sacrifice.
Sometimes devotees express their concern that too much glorification of Your Divine Grace may foster a misconception that your position is on the same level as that of the Supreme Lord, which is a deviwant philosophy that you very much resented. But we do not see the propagation of such a philosophy as a realistic possibility in ISKCON because through your books and lectures you have given us a crystal clear understanding of the position of the Supreme Personality of Godhead. According to my perception, the misunderstanding that developed in the early days of ISKCON, which you considered the result of a conspiracy, arose because the devotees at that time did not have the depth of spiritual understanding to discriminate between viṣëu-tattva and jīva-tattva. Now that ISKCON has become firmly established on the solid ground of a very clear spiritual understanding of sambandha-jïāna, that possibility is extremely remote.
Śrīla Prabhupāda, today I feel very happy that we have been able to systematically establish your position in ISKCON as its founder- ācārya for as long as ISKCON exists. Although you wanted this concept to be firmly established in ISKCON, you did not want it for your personal aggrandizement but for the benefit of the entire world.
We have seen that in the past the Gauḍīya Maṭh fell apart because its leaders failed to keep Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura in the center as its founder-ācārya and thus disregarded his prime directive to manage the institution collectively under a GBC. If they had, then you would not have had to create your own institution. You would have been happy functioning as a member of that glorious institution. It was extremely unfortunate that the Gauḍīya Maṭh had to go that way, but through the mistake of those devotees we learned the real secret of spreading Kṛṣṇa consciousness most effectively all over the world.
Śrīla Prabhupāda, please continue to bless us so that we can remain as your loyal servants in your ISKCON and become effectively engaged in fulfilling the prediction of Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu.
Your humble servant eternally,
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