Iskcon started only a few blocks away from my house in 1967 and the followers were mainly LSD taking vegetarian hippies, bohemians and beatniks. Everyone took the Vedic stuff with a grain of salt and most people adopted a progressive "peace" approach to the philosophy, while overlooking any eccentricities of the founder as we would overlook an out of date grandfather.
There is a moral dilemma about God being above the law, having achieved that status by "chance" regardless of the boast that Krishna is the "cause of Himself" which makes probably less sense than the big bang, so Iskcon starts on shaky philosophical ground.
Sure SP (Srila Prabhupada) was super old school which includes a lot of areas in which our regular society has fortunately progressed beyond SP's experience. For example SP married a 13 year old girl which we consider child abuse now and it is illegal. SP indicated that he had mastered bhakti yoga perfectly, but even he never said that he was a "perfect person" which is now the standard line of Iskcon about ALL the Gurus as being perfect. Perfect is one of the "code" words that gets thrown around like confetti with little regard for it's factual application to the subject.
What is the issue? HONESTY and being inadvertently seduced by worship of others. No matter how you try and spin it, even the new bhakta student gets older devotees bowing down to them, like Kings or God used to get, and they get to be worshiped on the first day in KC. It can make them feel to be better than their parents which is emotionally seductive. This problem has been building up in the movement since SP left. I saw the transition myself, and immediately I could foresee the inconceivable upcoming problems as some older devotees gave class in their new "authority position" as Gurus.
It is at least questionable that our original falldown was supposed to be that we tried to take the place of God, when the Iskcon solution on face value, is to have students strive to be worshiped just like God by other people. So everyday we see devotees doing the exact activity that we all supposedly got thrown out of Godhead for, while they claim that those worship activities are meant to be our rehabilitation for same crime. No mental adjustment can hide the obvious fact that Iskcon is a society of self and teacher worshipers along with worshiping God in idol or in dietie form. Although a "pure" devotee can conceivably handle being a via medium for ppl's worship of God mentally, most people get seduced by the attention and they then are right back to our original falldown "sin" issue of trying to take God's place. Very hypocritical...
Worship is a mentally tricky biz. Are we are rationalizing our imaginary friends syndrome, like when devotees tell you to stand back so the picture of the Guru can look an see the statue of God? lol I like a line from an old kung fu movie at 1 am, "He who praises his teacher, praises himself". Thinking one self to be a middleman for God and expecting to be treated as God while claiming "diplomatic immunity" for doing the exact crime that KC is accusing us as our original sin.
Devotees talk a lot about humility, well here is a humbling thought..... we may simply die like any other animal on this planet and cease to exist and so far there is no publicly released proof of any other scenario.
There is a moral dilemma about God being above the law, having achieved that status by "chance" regardless of the boast that Krishna is the "cause of Himself" which makes probably less sense than the big bang, so Iskcon starts on shaky philosophical ground.
Sure SP (Srila Prabhupada) was super old school which includes a lot of areas in which our regular society has fortunately progressed beyond SP's experience. For example SP married a 13 year old girl which we consider child abuse now and it is illegal. SP indicated that he had mastered bhakti yoga perfectly, but even he never said that he was a "perfect person" which is now the standard line of Iskcon about ALL the Gurus as being perfect. Perfect is one of the "code" words that gets thrown around like confetti with little regard for it's factual application to the subject.
What is the issue? HONESTY and being inadvertently seduced by worship of others. No matter how you try and spin it, even the new bhakta student gets older devotees bowing down to them, like Kings or God used to get, and they get to be worshiped on the first day in KC. It can make them feel to be better than their parents which is emotionally seductive. This problem has been building up in the movement since SP left. I saw the transition myself, and immediately I could foresee the inconceivable upcoming problems as some older devotees gave class in their new "authority position" as Gurus.
It is at least questionable that our original falldown was supposed to be that we tried to take the place of God, when the Iskcon solution on face value, is to have students strive to be worshiped just like God by other people. So everyday we see devotees doing the exact activity that we all supposedly got thrown out of Godhead for, while they claim that those worship activities are meant to be our rehabilitation for same crime. No mental adjustment can hide the obvious fact that Iskcon is a society of self and teacher worshipers along with worshiping God in idol or in dietie form. Although a "pure" devotee can conceivably handle being a via medium for ppl's worship of God mentally, most people get seduced by the attention and they then are right back to our original falldown "sin" issue of trying to take God's place. Very hypocritical...
Worship is a mentally tricky biz. Are we are rationalizing our imaginary friends syndrome, like when devotees tell you to stand back so the picture of the Guru can look an see the statue of God? lol I like a line from an old kung fu movie at 1 am, "He who praises his teacher, praises himself". Thinking one self to be a middleman for God and expecting to be treated as God while claiming "diplomatic immunity" for doing the exact crime that KC is accusing us as our original sin.
Devotees talk a lot about humility, well here is a humbling thought..... we may simply die like any other animal on this planet and cease to exist and so far there is no publicly released proof of any other scenario.