Non-GBC Sannyäsés

Homages from Non-GBC Sannyāsīs
Çréla Prabhupäda gave them the inspiration and with it the room to grow—and they blossomed. He
also cautioned us about the opposite style of management:
Krishna Consciousness Movement is for training men to be independently thoughtful and competent
in all types of departments of knowledge and action, not for making bureaucracy. Once
there is bureaucracy the whole thing will be spoiled. There must be always individual striving and
work and responsibility, competitive spirit, not that one shall dominate and distribute benets
to the others and they do nothing but beg from you and you provide.” [Letter, 22 Dec 1972]
Let every Temple President work according to his own capacity to improve the Krishna Consciousness
of his center. So far the practical management is concerned, that is required, but
not that we should become too much absorbed in fancy organization. Our business is spiritual
life, so whatever organization needs to be done, the Presidents may handle and take advice and
assistance from their GBC representative. In this way let the Societies work go on and everyone
increase their service at their own creative rate. [Letter, 22 April 1972, written by Karandhara
Däsa, to all ISKCON T.P.s, approved by Çréla Prabhupäda]
Only thing is, we must try to avoid becoming too much overly organized like the material
businessmen. Our business is to ourselves become Krishna conscious, advance in spiritual life,
and to preach to others how they can also take advantage and come to the perfectional stage of
life. Too much business or paperwork, vouchers, plans, these things become too much cumbersome
for our spiritual growth, they take us away from our real emphasis of work, namely, to go
back to Home, back to Godhead. [Letter, 14 May 1972]
It seems that Prabhupäda’s spiritual master had much the same idea. He warned in no uncertain
terms:
The idea of an organized church in an intelligible form marks the close of a living spiritual movement.
The great ecclesiastical establishments are the dikes and the dams to retain the current
that cannot be held by any such contrivances. They, indeed, indicate a desire on the part of the
masses to exploit a spiritual movement for their own purpose. They also unmistakably indicate
the end of the absolute and unconventional guidance of the bona de spiritual teacher. [The
Harmonist, January 1929]
The original purpose of the established churches of the world may not always be objectionable.
But no stable religious arrangement for instructing the masses has yet been successful. The
Supreme Lord Çré Caitanya Mahaprabhu, in pursuance of the teachings of the scriptures, enjoins
all absence of conventionalism for the teachers of the eternal religion. It does not follow that
the mechanical adoption of the unconventional life by any person will make him a t teacher
of religion. Regulation is necessary for controlling the inherent worldliness of conditional souls.
But no mechanical regulation has any value, even for such a purpose. The bona de teacher
of religion is neither any product of nor the favorer of any mechanical system. In his hands no
system has, likewise, the chance of degenerating into a lifeless arrangement. The mere pursuit
of xed doctrines and xed liturgies cannot hold a person to the true spirit of doctrine or liturgy.
[The Harmonist, 1932]
Based upon his spiritual master’s instructions, as well as his own experience of the Gauòéya Mission’s
collapse, Prabhupäda was concerned that his own society not degenerate into such a “lifeless
arrangement”:
There is no doubt about it, to distribute books is our most important activity. The temple is a
place not for eating and sleeping, but as a base from which we send out our soldiers to ght
with maya. Fight with maya means to drop thousands and millions of books into the lap of the
conditioned souls. Just like during war time the Bombs are raining from the sky like anything.
[Letter, 3 August 1973]
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