Srila Phabhupada And His Baseless Claim

I have often observed that most believers, when they come in contact with a guru or spiritual master, never question the veracity of the information presented to them or the motives behind the guru’s words. They assume that everything presented by the guru is somehow the unvarnished truth. Even when they do find something incredulous, to challenge a guru is often considered disrespectful in Hindu culture and may often lead to being ostracized by the guru’s community. Peer-pressure and self-delusion keeps them from opening their mouths even when they are presented with certain information that seems totally baseless or concocted.

 

Srila prabhupada (Via Famous-people.info)

 

Anyone who has carefully read the Introduction to the ‘Bhagavad Gita As It Is‘   by Srila Phabhupada, the founder of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), knows what I mean. In his introduction to the Gita, Prabhupada made a bold, albeit suppositious, claim that the Brahma-Madhva-Gaudiya sampradaya* ( disciplic lineage through which spiritual knowledge is passed)  to which he belongs,  started with Lord Krishna himself as the original spiritual teacher [Bhagavad Gita As It Is, 1989, soft cover: Page lxi] 

Lord Sri Krsna, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, is the original teacher of a chain of spiritual masters that continues to the present day. Jut as an unbroken wire delivers electricity, so, for the benefit of all mankind, this unbroken disciplic succession delivers the spiritual knowledge of Bhagavad-gita

 

In order to prove his claim he went on to list the names of all spiritual masters belonging to the sampradaya, who received knowledge of the Gita in an unbroken disciplic succession from Krishna to himself. The list can be found here on page 31 of this version of Bhagavad Gita As It Is

 

Lord Krishna Brahma Narada Vyasa Madhva Padmanabha Narahari Madhava Akshobhya Jaya Tirtha Jnana-sindhu Daya-nidhi Vidya-nidhi Rajendra Jayadharma Purushottama

Brahmanya Tirtha Vyasa Tirtha Lakshmipati Madhavendra Puri Ishvara Puri (Nityananda, Advaita) Sri Chaitanya Rupa (Svarupa, Sanatana) Raghunatha, Jiva Krishnadasa Narottama Vishwanatha (Baladeva) Jagannatha Bhaktivinoda Gaurakishora Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada

 

The reason why Prabhupada stressed so much on the importance of learning the Gita from a person of an *authorized* disciplic lineage is not hard to guess. It’s what every power-hungry and fanatical spiritual leader has claimed since the beginning of civilization. The claim that - spiritual knowledge received from anyone other than an authorized person is devoid of any benefit – has probably no other goal but to bury the competition. It’s done with the singular, sinister intention of establishing a group’s religious beliefs as the one and only true form of belief and their interpretation as the one and only true interpretation.  There is no other reason. There cannot be any other reason. Otherwise, why would disciplic succession matter to the truth of an argument or to the interpretation of a body of knowledge (even the religious maniacs have enough business sense to understand that too many people overcrowding a market is bad for business. After all a man’s gotta eat !)?

Coming back to the list, a cursory glance of the list looks pretty authentic. A lot of the names are well known to any serious Hindu devotee. But, the problem arises when we pay close attention to the list. The first 3 names on that list represent totally fictional characters. There is not a shred of historical evidence that Krishna, Brahma or Narada ever existed (for some entertaining read, here are two deluded devotees, an  astrologer  and another scholar , trying to prove the historicity of Krishna). The 3 characters can only be found in Hindu mythological texts and legends, written by Hindu authors most of whom lived hundreds of years after the birth of Christ (which if Hindu scholars are to be believed was almost 3000 years after the birth of Krishna) and hence thousands of years after the birth of Krishna. 

However, a greater problem arises when we look at the historical dates when these spiritual masters lived.

Madhva(1238-1317 AD), the 5th in the line of spiritual masters was born almost 4300 years after the 4th master on the list - Vyasa (existence of whom is also somewhat dubious) . So how could a person who lived  almost 700 years ago be a direct disciple of  a master who lived almost 5000 years ago? How could a gap of almost 4 millennia between two masters be claimed as an “unbroken disciplic succession” ?

You will be terribly mistaken if you think that such questions ever perturb a believer. To a devotee, the answer to such questions is like bailout money to the American treasury  - print readily, distribute freely.  No evidence is ever asked for and none is required. All that is needed is a person’s faith and someone claiming with conviction that it is the truth.

 By Madhva’s own account, he, the self-proclaimed divinity on earth (who like every other crackpot guru claimed himself to be an avatar - for his case an avatar of Vayu, the Vedic god of wind ) met Vyasa while traveling across India and Vyasa at having found a worthy disciple then passed on his divine knowledge to Madhva. But was this the Vyasa of Mahabharata fame and if so how was Vyasa alive for so long ? Oh That’s simple. You didn’t know that ? Vyasa is supposedly immortal (that should put an end to that !!)

In fact, this discrepancy was put to rest by Prabhupada himself in a letter to one of his disciples (emphasis is mine) [Letter to Dayananda, 12th April, 1968 Link]

Regarding parampara system: there is nothing to wonder for big gaps. Just like we belong to the Brahma Sampradaya, so we accept it from Krishna to Brahma, Brahma to Narada, Narada to Vyasadeva, Vyasadeva to Madhva, and between Vyasadeva and Madhva there is a big gap. But it is sometimes said that Vyasadeva is still living, and Madhva was fortunate enough to meet him directly. In a similar way, we find in the Bhagavad-gita that the Gita was taught to the sungod, some millions of years ago, but Krishna has mentioned only three names in this parampara system—namely, Vivasvan, Manu, and Iksvaku; and so these gaps do not hamper from understanding the parampara system. We have to pick up the prominent acaryas, and follow from him.There are many branches also from the parampara system, and it is not possible to record all the branches and sub-branches in the disciplic succession. We have to pick up from the authority of the acharya in whatever sampradaya we belong to.

Ah ! the typical reaction of dishonest gurus to anything that contradicts their claims. Dismissing them as trivial and “oh, that’s nothing and you don’t have to worry about that.” 

Why shouldn’t we wonder about those gaps when the bedrock of your assertion of being an *authorized* spiritual master rests entirely on the claim of belonging to an unbroken disciplic succession? If the answer to that fundamental question is just assumed on faith, how can someone claim to be an authorized source? Also, what was the evidence available to Prabhupada, other than Madhva’s own admission, by which he claimed that Vyasadeva was still living and that Madhva actually met him? Isn’t it deceitful and dishonest of someone to pick up any random prominent acharya and claim that he belonged to an unbroken line of spiritual masters from Krishna in the guru-shishya parampara(disciplic succession)? Especially, without verifying his credentials or when evidence for such a claim was absent. What gave someone like Prabhupada the confidence to claim that it is so ?

The only thought which comes to mind from such a line of asinine reasoning is that it’s no reasoning at all.  It is either a type of deception or a form of self-delusion that many so-called gurus like Prabhupada indulge in (although going by his answer, I would say it’s more deception than delusion).  It is called  ”I-will-believe-and-make-you-believe-whatever-I-want-to-believe-irrespective-of-evidence” . The problem with such blind faith is not only that it’s blatantly dishonest, but that it can be easily manipulated by a guru to justify almost anything he wants or does. And, *that* in my opinion is what makes faith so dangerous.

 

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* The reason it is called Brahma-Madhva-Gaudiya sampradaya is because Lord Brahma, the creator of this universe, was supposed to have been the first disciple of Krishna and had originally received the knowledge directly from Kishna. When Madhva joined this lineage, it came to be known as Brahma-Madhva sampradaya. After Sri Chaitanyajoned the lineage and further invigorated the movement, the lineage came to be known as Brahma-Madhva-Guadiya sampradaya since Chaitanya was from Gauda ( the name by which Bengal - present day West Bengal and Bangladesh – was known during his time )[Ref]. However, here is a report that casts doubt even on the authenticity of the sampradaya that Prabhupada belonged [pdf Link].

 

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