Our movement is becoming less exclusive. Is this a bad thing?
n the past, we used to sometimes have a more exclusive mentality in our movement. We would set certain standards and would reject people who would not fit into them.
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Nowadays, the word “exclusive” is usually taken as a positive adjective. An “exclusive restaurant” is a place where you can find important people, an “exclusive seat” is a premium seat on a plane, and so on. However, the word “exclusive” also has a negative connotation, which is to exclude people who don’t fit into a certain standard or stereotype. In this sense, an “exclusive restaurant” becomes a place where people who don’t belong to a certain group or have a certain level of income are discriminated against, and an “exclusive seat” is a place where not everyone can sit. On the opposite spectrum, we have the word “inclusive,” which means a place where everyone is welcome.
In the past, we used to sometimes have a more exclusive mentality in our movement. We would set certain standards and would reject people who would not fit into them.
In one sense, standards are good because when properly enforced, they help to keep purity and steadiness, helping to avoid negligence and carelessness. If we can somehow elevate everyone to the standard being demanded, this can be hugely positive, like the idea of elevating everyone to the brāhminical stage. The difficulty starts when the focus changes from elevating people to simply setting artificial or unhealthy standards. When this happens, we can easily create an unhealthy situation where people have a double life, trying to keep up appearances when with other devotees but behaving differently otherwise. Another problem with this approach is that many interested persons may abandon Krsna Consciousness because they are unable to follow the demanded standards. We can see that, historically, this led to our movement declining in many areas over the past few decades, as the enthusiasm of the first generation gradually waned.
There are different standards prescribed by our previous ācāryas that are considered important in the process of sādhana-bhakti, such as waking up early, chanting a prescribed number of rounds daily, avoiding eating impure food as well as different intoxicants, abstaining from sex outside of marriage, being clean, maintaining good moral principles, and so on. It is difficult for anyone to advance in spiritual life past the initial stages without following them. The question is that adopting these principles should come as an individual choice when a devotee understands their importance. The problem starts when these principles are imposed as a barrier to being part of a group. When this happens, we risk creating an unhealthy atmosphere where people are judged based on externals, such as how they dress, how they talk, or who they pretend to be, leading to a cultist or sectarian mentality. When this happens, a group becomes “exclusive” in the bad sense. This is a problem that can be noted in most organized religious groups, where people usually press each other to fit into the dominant cultural and behavioral standards.
When Śrila Bhaktivinoda Thākura made his famous predictions about the spread of the holy names, he specifically spoke against that:
“The principle of kirtana, as the future church of the world, invites all classes of men without distinction of caste, creed, or clan to the highest cultivation of the spirit. This church will extend all over the world and take the place of all sectarian churches which exclude outsiders from the precincts of their mosque, church or temple.” (Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu: His Life and Precepts)
We can see that part of the process to make our movement “the future church of the world” (instead of just another organized religion) passes through this metamorphosis of evolving from an exclusive group that excludes outsiders to an inclusive group that welcomes all classes of people and gradually transforms them through the potency of the pure chanting of the holy names and genuinely saintly association.
Gradually, it appears that we are entering this inclusive phase, where people are encouraged to face their problems and deficiencies and find space to grow in spiritual life at their own pace. Helped, but not forced.
We now better understand that becoming a saint is not something that happens overnight, and we have more tolerance for each other’s imperfections. Gradually, we are learning to offer people a path for gradual progression instead of trying to force them to immediately adopt a closed set of standards of behavior and turning them away when they fail to comply.
We are also gradually reducing the space between our private lives and the image we project to other devotees, and we are gradually becoming less judgmental, understanding that anyone who is trying to follow Krsna Consciousness, regardless of their deficiencies, is worthy of respect. As the saying goes, “Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.”
I wrote a book dwelling on this topic in more detail, which is now freely available to everyone. You can check if you are interested in going further:
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