“Kirtanananda is now a completely Krishna Conscious person …”
Dear Guru Maharaja,
All glories to A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Srila Prabhupada! 🌸
Please accept my humble obeisances. 💌
“Kirtanananda is now a completely Krishna Conscious person …” from 5th September 1967, letter to Umapati
I have been thinking about this sentence.
In my understanding, completely means there is nothing more to fill. It is full. Fully. How then can a completely Krishna conscious person become not so? Offences, yes. But how can someone described as completely Krishna conscious, within a relatively short time, become a person acting in ways so contrary to Krishna consciousness?
I am not here thinking primarily about the changes Kirtanananda later made to the practice of Krishna consciousness. That is another topic. But in this connection I cannot help wondering about the abuses he later perpetrated and, if I may say so, the criminal activities he engaged in — all after having been described by Srila Prabhupada as a completely Krishna conscious person.
In a way, I am also not trying to figure out what Srila Prabhupada meant by this sentence. That, for me, would be impossible. To really know what he meant, I would have to be able to ask him.
What interests me is something else: Srila Prabhupada sometimes uses words in a very strong, even absolute, way. And here I find myself wondering whether the words are simply exaggerated.
If “completely Krishna conscious” can be said about a person who later behaves that way, then I naturally start to wonder about some of Srila Prabhupada's other expressions as well. Not all of them, certainly. But some.
This is perhaps the more uncomfortable part for me. If I take his words literally, some of them seem difficult to reconcile with what later happened. If I say that he was simply using strong/exageratted language, then I have to accept that at least some of his statements are not meant to be taken as precise or absolute descriptions.
And that makes me think about the way I listen to him.
I don't want to dismiss his words. At the same time, I don't want to force reality to fit the words when reality seems to contradict them. Somewhere between those two things I find myself having doubts — not about everything Srila Prabhupada said, but about some of his (very strong) expressions.
There is also a practical concern here. When someone in a spiritual institution is publicly described in such absolute terms, other people naturally take that seriously (or fanatically or dogmatically). It can affect how they see that person, how much they trust him, and what authority they give him. So perhaps there is something important to consider in how such expressions are used.
I am, right here, not trying to come to a conclusion about Srila Prabhupada here. I am simply trying to be honest about what this particular statement does to my understanding of his other statements.
… and what it actually means to be a Kṛṣṇa conscious person, especially a completely Kṛṣṇa conscious person.
In trying to serve,
Namacarya Das anu das anu das
HpS - AgtSP. Running to airplane.
We take letters as less precise than books.
We understand that Prabhupada describes Brahman as complete. Paramatma as more complete and Bhagavan as most complete.
complete
completer
completely.
it is a character of his rhetoric.
maybe his community.
airplane.
hope more later.
