Standard for Initiatin - Letter to Gunagrahi das Goswami
Title: opinion about open secret in ISKCON Hare Krisna!!!
Please accept my humble obeisances, All glories to Srila Prabhupada,
Esteemed Gunagrahi das Goswami,
Recently i finished the disciples course which is now a requisite to take initiation within our institution. i felt very satisfied taking the course, and i think everybody should take it. it is a very nice opportunity for an intense and funny sadhu sanga while learning about guru tattva and the standards in ISKCON. I really appreciate how ISKCON as an institution is working hard to make everything more clear and establishing clear rules and procedures in order to protect the position and teachings of the Founder Acarya Srila Prabhupada. We are maturing. Gives confidence.
Although the course is very clear and it covers many subjects that you can say it is much more than a mere disciples course, there is something that still it is not clear to me. when it comes to selecting a guru the course defines the steps to take and it says: one should engage in favourable devotional service, follow the four principles STRICTLY, chanting sixteen rounds, and a full morning program. During this period one should focus in SRila PRabhupada as prominent siksa guru. after six months of following the above one can select an authorized diksa guru and take shelter. after a minimum of six months of having taken shelter one can accept vaisnava diksa and it says that the guru is not obliged to iniciate de candidate.
So this is pretty clear, in theory. but in the practice i can notice that there is different deffinitions of following STRICTLY, and specifically regarding about sex life. It is an open secret that there are two different standards about illicit sex within ISKCON. a few months ago you sent an article regarding this topic, "Family Matters" by Matsya-avatar Prabhu. The lower standard is having regulated sex life within marriage and the higher is having sex life only after garbadhana samskara.
Then there are some gurus within ISKCON that give initiation to devotees that are following the lower standard, and there are other gurus that only give initiation to those devotees who follow the higher standard. So in our yatra we have a devotee which is very involved and commited to the mission, actually he is one of the leaders of the yatra. He is chanting sixteen rounds, having morning program, involved in favourable devotional service, and following the lower standard for seven years now. In the present time this devotee is following everything strictly according to the higher standard for six months and will be eight months of following when his gurumaharaj visit the yatra. he is asking to be initiated to give strength to his spiritual life. he has the benediction to be initiated by the local yatra leader mahajan prabhu, maha hari prabhu, president of ISKCON argentina and even by yourself.
His gurumaharaj initiates devotees who follow the higher standard only. what do you think maharaj? should this devotee be initiated as a special mercy to him or he must wait until he follows everything for one year? please comment on this topic.
your humble servant.
Bhakta Nicasio.
