Namacharya Das asks:
Is there difference between
refugees and aspirants? In the online list there is
"refugees" and here in this scan you write
"aspirants".
*** HpS - AS Jayapataka Swami explained it to us, and it was set ups for/by him, you can be an Aspirant almost immediately. This was to give a sense of belonging to people who would otherwise be "initiated" by other Gaudiya Vaisnava groups outside of ISKCON before they were following any principles. Then you are a Refugee after six months of following everything. So, technically they are all Refugees. We don't do anything formally for Aspirants usually. When Prabhupada was manifest he wrote and the standard was that anyone who followed the principles and lived in the Temple for six months could take first initiation, but for second initation there had to be more care taken.