How could Prabhupāda put people who would abuse their posts in positions of leadership?
Often, people question how, being a pure devotee, Śrila Prabhupāda could give high positions to disciples who would later create great harm. This could be explained in the following way...
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Often, people question how, being a pure devotee, Śrila Prabhupāda could give high positions to people who would later create great harm to devotees who were under them.
This could be explained in the following way:
There are different material designations, like being tall or short, black or white, man or woman, as well as different material skills, like being able to chant well, speak in an articulate way, collect and compile great volumes of information, and so on. In the Bhagavad-gītā, Kṛṣṇa teaches that as long as one is not completely transcendental, the best way to advance in the spiritual process is to engage these different material characteristics in His service, following the process of karma-yoga.
There are two levels of karma-yoga, called sakāma-karma-yoga (when one is still attached to the results of his work) and niṣkāma-karma-yoga (when he is not attached to the results but is still attached to acting in certain ways), and above both, there is pure devotional service (when one doesn’t care for anything apart from serving Kṛṣṇa). An ācārya will be able to engage people according to their material qualifications in a way that they can be more useful to the mission. Sometimes, a neophyte devotee who has high material qualifications may be engaged as a manager, while a pure devotee without such material skills may be engaged in doing some humbler service, just like one may be engaged as an engineer or as a dentist according to his skills.
The mistake is when we start to classify the level of advancement of devotees according to their material positions or material qualifications. This is, in reality, not a more reliable classification than if we tried to classify devotees according to the color of their skin or the size of their feet. Someone under this māyā could very well think that being illiterate, Śrīla Gaura Kiśora Dāsa Bābājī was a novice devotee, while a materially educated caste brāhmana was advanced. It would not be possible to be more wrong.
Similarly, we may sometimes see devotees who are actually very advanced engaged in humble positions and devotees who are not so advanced acting as big managers. The fault is not in them being engaged in such ways, according to their material skills, but in our defective understanding of equating the level of spiritual advancement with such material skills. This is the mistake that opens the door to all kinds of mistakes and abuse.
Abuse doesn’t come from just a neophyte being engaged as a manager. It comes from others accepting to follow him without questioning. This blind following is what creates the possibility of an abusive leader. Without it, a bad leader is forced to follow in line or be replaced.
In this connection, there is an interesting passage from Śrila Bhakti Thirta Swami, in his book “Reflections on Sacred Teachings”:
“We have a tendency to think that the greatest devotees are those who are always in the limelight or those who can manipulate many material things. Not necessarily. In some cases, Krsna gives a person a big position because, without that position, they wouldn’t even remain in the devotional process. For such devotees, unless they can manipulate many material things, they would leave the devotional process. Their minds and senses would get distracted by other arenas. Furthermore, a person with a big position is not always the most spiritual person. It might be the case, but maybe not. Śrila Prabhupāda was a powerful, spiritual utilitarian and put people in different types of positions for different reasons. A manager also makes such arrangements. A person might not always receive a service because he or she is the most spiritual. A devotee might work well with the material energy; therefore, he can be encouraged to work on that level with the hopes that he will gradually become more purified.”
The fact that different leaders abused their authority over time does not imply a defect in Prabhupāda’s work. He was just selecting the people who had the necessary skills among the possible choices. If there were perfect men available, he would certainly choose them instead.
What it reveals, however, is a defect in our tendency to confuse external position with spiritual realization. An ācārya may engage a talented person by material standards in a way that one may be useful for the mission; the danger starts when we mythologize the post, create a hero out of a thief, and stop using our intelligence.
Just as in material institutions, blind following creates blind leadership. When a conditioned soul is accepted as the ultimate shelter, the power easily rises to the head. We can study the story of Pauṇḍraka, the false Vāsudeva, in chapter sixty-six of the Tenth Canto. Glorified by fools surrounding him, Pauṇḍraka really thought he was Vāsudeva Himself. Similarly, any imperfect soul may start thinking himself a pure devotee, an ācārya, or an empowered incarnation if he is surrounded by a large enough group of yes-men. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and that’s how we ended up with all the scandals that plagued our movement in the past. If we repeat the same mistakes, the same may again repeat in the future.
Appointing better people is always an improvement, but it doesn’t solve the core of the problem, which is the lack of a proper culture, one that distinguishes service from status, welcomes respectful questions, puts in place a proper system of checks and balances, and measures success by genuine spiritual qualities and fidelity to the conclusions of Śrīla Prabhupāda, and not by charisma, managerial positions, or popularity.
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