Srila Prabhupada: Real or not?

Summer 2007

In their desire to replace Srila Prabhupada with themselves, ISKCON's gurus continue to concoct new philosophies. One such recent instance is by GBC voted-in guru HH Sivarama Swami (SRS) who claimed that accepting Srila Prabhupada as the diksa Guru of ISKCON would mean Srila Prabhupada is not real:

"[...] the Srila Prabhupada that some people refer to who is the only person who initiates, the only person who you can trust, is not the real Srila Prabhupada, it is just a reflection of the real Srila Prabhupada."
(SRS podcast, May 20th, 2007) on January 28th, 2007

Yet this was exactly the situation which prevailed for 11 years between 1966 until 1977, when everyone accepted that Srila Prabhupada was the only person who initiated, the only person who could be trusted.

One such participant of this was SRS himself, and no one ever thought there was anything unreal about Srila Prabhupada then. But then, of course, SRS was not jockeying to replace Srila Prabhupada as diksa Guru. Now he is, the same state of affairs will cause Srila Prabhupada to suddenly become unreal. SRS also implies that Srila Prabhupada is not living

“[...] we worship Vaishnavas, we don’t only worship Srila Prabhupada and all the guru parampara after that. We worship living Vaishnavas, that is perfection and happiness for us”
(SRS podcast, May 20th, 2007)

For SRS, worshipping Srila Prabhupada and the guru parampara is not sufficient because we must also worship “living” Vaishnavas, such as himself.
In addition to this offensive minimization of Srila Prabhupada’s position, in the same lecture SRS also states

“So the body is the institution and Srila Prabhupada is the life and soul of that institution.”
(SRS podcast, May 20th, 2007)

In order to be the “life and soul” of anything, Srila Prabhupada would first have to have LIFE, i.e. be living!

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