"Sastra does not give any third parties the right to chose a guru for someone else". Very important point, become educated in Spiritual life and then choose your own Guru.

Compiled by His Grace Gaura Keshava Dasa ACBSP

The ISKCON GBC should get out of the guru approval business.

They can solve their dilemma immediately by making a disclaimer that they do not approve of any gurus.

"Sastra does not give any third parties the right to chose a guru for someone else".

Very important point.

Let them educate people how to choose a proper guru, then as the sastra says let the prospective disciple choose.

If you want to choose a fat guru or a thin guru or a male or female guru, that is your choice not theirs as long as you have tested them and found them qualified according to sastra.

They should concentrate on helping ALL ISKCON members follow basic spiritual standards required for ISKCON membership.

If they can do that then what business is it of their's who amongst ISKCON members is guru of whom and who is disciple of whom?

They already have women GBCs. And historically Gaudiya sampradaya has had women diksha gurus. Some misogynist devotees in ISKCON may not like it but for sure must be accepted.

And if you don't want to accept a woman guru no one is forcing anyone to accept them as their guru. But neither can you tell others they cannot have faith and love and trust in a female guru if they do.

Women Vaisnavas already are siksha gurus. The only difference between what they do now and what they would do at diksha gurus is speaking a mantra into someones ear. Does it make sense they can't do that?

Read the following letter by Srila Prabhupada where he specifically orders his female disciple to chant the gayatri mantra in the ear of her husband to initiate him on his behalf into becoming a brahmin:

Bombay
4 April, 1971
71-04-04

Georgetown, Guyana

My Dear Vaikunthanatha and Saradia,

Please accept my blessings. I beg to acknowledge receipt of your very encouraging letter dated 21st March, 1971 and have noted the contents carefully....

Even though you have had no gayatri mantra, still you are more than brahmana. I am enclosing herewith your sacred thread, duly chanted on by me. Gayatri mantra is as follows:

[TAKEN OUT - ]

ASK YOUR WIFE TO CHANT THIS MANTRA AND YOU HEAR IT AND IF POSSIBLE HOLD A FIRE CEREMONY AS YOU HAVE SEEN DURING YOUR MARRIAGE AND GET THIS SACRED THREAD ON YOUR BODY. SARADIA, OR ANY TWICE-INITIATED DEVOTEE, MAY PERFORM THE CEREMONY....

Hoping this will meet you in good health.

Your ever well-wisher,
A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami
ACBS/adb

After reading this no one can argue that Srila Prabhupada would allow a woman to initiate someone with the gayatri mantra he had given her or even perform a fire ceremony.

READ IT AGAIN IF YOU DON'T GET IT. - Compiled by Gaura Keshava

So lets understand a day-night 24 hour period of Brahma (8 billion 640 million human years)

Lord Caitanya Mahaprabhu comes to this world every 8 billion 640 million years which is how long one 24 hour day and night of Lord Brahma takes to pass.

Further more Lord Caitanya Mahaprabhu only appears during the day-time between "sunrise and sunset" which is also when all the 1000 Maha-yugas take place.

There are no Maha yugas at night between "sunset and sunrise" of Brahma's 24 hour day.

A Maha yuga (Also known as a Catur yuga and Dvipa yuga) is cycle of 4 Yugas.

''Satya-yuga, Treta-yuga, Dvapara-yuga, Kali-yuga''.

Lord Caitanya comes at the beginning of just "one" Kali-yuga out of every thousand.

So lets understand a day-night 24 hour period of Lord Brahma

Every 24 hour day equals 2 Kalpas

1 - There is ''one kalpa'' for a "sunrise to sunset" day time that also has all the 1000 Maha-yugas in it.

2 - There is also ''one kalpa'' for "sunset to sunrise" night time period of Lord Brahma where NO Maha-yugas exist.

Presently we are in 28 Maha-yugas within the 7th Manu named ''Vaivasvata'' out of 14 Manu's that exist during Brahma's day-time only.

None exist during his night time.

There are 71 Maha-yugas within each of the 14 Manus.

This means Brahma's day has already gone through the first 7 Manu's plus the first 28 Maha-yugas of the 8 Manu we are in equalling 525 maha-yugas into Brahma's day.

This means it is about 11.40 am in Brahma's late morning period of the day

This further means the 1000 Maha-yugas in Brahma's day-time only occurs from "sunrise to sunset" or during the day-time that takes 4 billion 320 human years to pass.

During Brahma's night from sunset to sunrise, no Maha-yugas take place while Brahma sleeps and a partial annihilation takes place. This "sunset to sunrise" is also 4 billion 320 human years long.

One 24 hours full day of Brahma is 2 kalpas and takes 8 billion 640 million human years to pass through.

So presently as explained, we have already passed through the previous 6 Manvantaras in Brahma's day and are now into the 7th Manu out of 14 Manu.

All 14 Manus have 71 Maha-yugas in them.

And this is just one day of Lord Brahma only.

Brahma lives for 311 trillion 40 billion years then dies, then there is another 311 trillion 40 billion years of inactivity until another Brahma manifests.

All souls not qualified to go back to Godhead are stored in the Body of Maha Vishnu as individual units until the next creation of this single universe by the next Brahma.

There are millions of universes and Brahmas other than ours that are also deep inside a Brahmanda that all come from the body of Maha Vishnu.

Then they carry on and get another material body according to the combination of their karma and material desires from where they left off in the previous Brahma's creation in this universe inside our Brahmanda.

Prabhupada never asked George Harrison to join the Temple. Instead Prabhupada encouraged George to offer his own abilities and talents

Cyndi Lauper is are smart girl and was not going to continue the experience of female repression her mother went through.

Sadly she meet some young inexperienced ISKCON devotees.

Such devotees foolishly tried to tell her they will arrange her marriage to a devotee and she does not have to do anything.

They told her to just surrender and let senior devotees do the thinking for her, this was the fanatical 1980 where most devotees were under 35 years old.

In her book she reveals so many attemtps to control her life as you see as you read on.

However, Prabhupada never did that over bearing preaching with George Harrison, by trying to force him to live in the Temple under Temple rules and always telling him what to do.

No, Prabhupada never did that.

What these immature devotees did was against Prabhupada's teachings and that is why she left.

Prabhupada never asked George Harrison to join the Temple.

Instead Prabhupada encouraged George to offer his own abilities and talents at a pace he was comfortable with.

In the article Cyndi was sick of seeing the suppressed and arrogent control of women's rights

The devotees in this book presented themselves as dictatorial that only made women feel inferior and not good enough to offer their own abilities or have their own opinion.

She explains it well and because of this discrimination against women by ISKCON, she saw the repression and the stagnation it caused because it denied self expression.

A husband and wife should worship Krishna together "as equals," serving each other in the mood of reciprocation and NEVER a one-sided slave mentality, that all women are meant to serve their husbands with a out question and do as they are told by them!!

The man should never demand service from a women or wife and talk down to the women with some nonsense superiority complex.

In this age everyone is lower than sudra so the standards of Satya, Treta and Dvapara yugas and most of the Manu samhita do NOT apply in this Kali-yuga.

If ISKCON wants success then women must be treated as equals in many cases except for the male position of Sanyas or Swami but can become Guru if qualified.

But there are differences between a male and female material bodies.

Because of the material body, certain positions we must follow like women give birth to children and protect women and children because by nature most women are not as strong as men.

The bottom line we are all spirit souls and are not the material bodily vessel or container we are in.

In this life we have a male material body and the next life one may have a female material body.

But in the presents of Krishna all jiva souls are female but can play many parts in the Spiritual World.

Cyndi Lauper and choir sings "True Colours" at the Utah Hare Krishna Temple USA

Remember 3/4 of the Spiritual Sky is "eternally youthful and ageless without beginning or end.

Only 1/4 of the Spiritual Sky is material and is always in a constant state of decay, decline and in need of constant maintenance.

The material bodily vessels that house the soul, are always in a state of constant decline, disrepair, decomposition, decay and end with death (total breakdown).

The great world wide Sankirtan Movement of Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu WILL save all living entities from being trapped life after life in these mundane troublesome temporary material bodily vessels we are in while within this material world.

Such bodies are always in a state of constant decline, disrepair, decomposition and end with death (total breakdown).

Sankirtan or the congregational chanting of the Hare Krishna Maha Mantra, WILL free one from identifying with the external material body one is trapped in while in this material creation.

An aspiring devotee quickly learns, as they progress in Krishna consciousness, that they are NOT the external material bodily container and have nothing to do with this material world when their full spiritual bodily (vigraha) potential is expressed and realized.

The present decaying or deteriorating material body we are in, is NOT our real spiritual eternal bodily form or self, nor is this temporary material creation our REAL home.

We, the marginal living entity (jiva soul or jivatma) should NOT even be here in the material creation in the first place!!

It was a mistake we chose long, long ago to come to this dark material temporary decaying universe of death that is a dark cloud existing in one corner of the Spiritual Sky.

The real purpose of being given this rare human form of life, is to educate yourself through devotional service to get back to where you eternally belong!

And those Abodes of the Lord with His pure devotees where we eternally belong, are known as Goloka-Vrindavan (Krsna's abode) and Vaikuntha (Vishnu or Narayana's unlimited abodes)

Both are equally the perpetual eternally youthful Kingdom of God.

Our Earth globe it is NOT Bhu-Mandala, our earth round global sphere is way too small to be Bhu-Mandala. The fact is, Bhu-Mandala IS our small universe that our earth planet is in.

Each Egg shaped almost spherical Universe (Brahmanda) below in painting coming from Maha Vishnu, our small Universe is deep within.

Our small earth globe is 24,901 miles in circumference and is 7,917.5 miles in diameter, it is NOT the Bhu-Mandala Universe described in Srimad Bhagavatam that is 4 billion miles in diameter or 12.6 billion miles in circumference and has 14 Planetary Systems in it.

Here is the proper bona fide understanding our earth globe.

Our Earth globe it is NOT Bhu-Mandala, our earth round global sphere is way too small to be Bhu-Mandala.

The fact is, Bhu-Mandala IS our small universe that our earth planet is in, that is deep within and encased in the larger surrounding Brahmanda.

And within our small universe exists 14 different Planetary Systems.

There are 7 layers of material elements surrounded  our small 4 billion mile diameter ''Bhu-Mandala'' Universe and its 14 planetary systems in it.

Each material layer our small universe is surrounded by is 10 times thicker than the previous layer.

Starting with the small 4 billion mile diameter Bhu-Mandala Universe deep within the surrounding  Brahmanda Egg, there are 7 material layers.

So just multiply each layer from one to seven by 10, for example, the 4 billion miles diameter Bhu-Mandala
multiplied by 10 = 40 billion miles in diameter of the "earth" element

Then you multiply 40 billion by 10 for the next layer which equals 400 billion for the "water" element.

It is like this for all 7 layers of material elements and adds up to 44 Quadrillion 444 Trillion 444 billion miles.

Srila Prabhupada - "The first covering of the universe is "earth", and it is ten times thicker than the universe itself. If the universe is four billion miles in size, then the size of the earthly covering of the universe is four billion times ten"

Śrīmad Bhāgavatam 3.11.40

This phenomenal material world is expanded to a diameter of four billion miles, as a combination of eight material elements transformed into sixteen further categories, within and without, as follows.

PURPORT

As explained before, the entire material world is a display of sixteen diversities and eight material elements. The analytical studies of the material world are the subject matter of Sāńkhya philosophy.

The first sixteen diversities are the eleven senses and five sense objects, and the eight elements are the gross and subtle matter, namely earth, water, fire, air, sky, mind, intelligence and ego.

All these combined together are distributed throughout the entire universe, which extends diametrically to four billion miles.

Besides this universe of our experience, there are innumerable other universes. Some of them are bigger than the present one, and all of them are clustered together under similar material elements as described below.

Śrīmad Bhāgavatam 3.11.41

TRANSLATION

The layers or elements covering the universes are each ten times thicker than the one before, and all the universes clustered together appear like atoms in a huge combination.

PURPORT

The coverings of the universes are also constituted of the elements of earth, water, fire, air and ether, and each is ten times thicker than the one before. The first covering of the universe is earth, and it is ten times thicker than the universe itself.

If the universe is four billion miles in size, then the size of the earthly covering of the universe is four billion times ten.

The covering of water is ten times greater than the earthly covering, the covering of fire is ten times greater than the watery covering, the covering of air is ten times greater than that of the fire, the covering of ether is ten times greater still than that of air, and so on.

The universe within the coverings of matter appears to be like an atom in comparison to the coverings, and the number of universes is unknown even to those who can estimate the coverings of the universes.

Śrīmad Bhāgavatam 3.11.42

TRANSLATION

The Supreme Personality of Godhead, Śrī Kṛṣṇa, is therefore said to be the original cause of all causes. Thus the spiritual abode of Viṣṇu is eternal without a doubt, and it is also the abode of Mahā-Viṣṇu, the origin of all manifestations.

PURPORT

Lord Mahā-Viṣṇu, who is resting in yoga-nidrā on the Causal Ocean and creating innumerable universes by His breathing process, only temporarily appears in the mahat-tattva for the temporary manifestation of the material worlds.

He is a plenary portion of Lord Śrī Kṛṣṇa, and thus although He is nondifferent from Lord Kṛṣṇa, His formal appearance in the material world as an incarnation is temporary.

The original form of the Personality of Godhead is actually the svarūpa, or real form, and He eternally resides in the Vaikuṇṭha world (Viṣṇuloka).

The word mahātmanaḥ is used here to indicate Mahā-Viṣṇu, and His real manifestation is Lord Kṛṣṇa, who is called parama, as confirmed in the Brahma-saḿhitā:

īśvaraḥ paramaḥ kṛṣṇaḥ
sac-cid-ānanda-vigrahaḥ
anādir ādir govindaḥ
sarva-kāraṇa-kāraṇam

[Bs. 5.1]

“The Supreme Lord is Kṛṣṇa, the original Personality of Godhead known as Govinda. His form is eternal, full of bliss and knowledge, and He is the original cause of all causes.”

Do the maths yourself based on Srimad-Bhagavatam and work out the massive size of our Brahmanda Egg shaped Universe

Śrīmad Bhāgavatam Canto 3 Chapter 11 Text 41

TRANSLATION

The layers or elements covering the universes are each ten times thicker than the one before. (End of Text)

Srimad-Bhagavatam Canto 3 Chapter 26 Text 52

TRANSLATION

This universal egg, or the universe in the shape of an egg, is called the manifestation of material energy.

Its layers of water, air, fire, sky, ego and mahat-tattva increase in thickness one after another.

Each layer is ten times bigger than the previous one, and the final outside layer is covered by pradhāna.

Within this egg is the universal form of Lord Hari, of whose body the fourteen planetary systems are parts.

PURPORT

Srila Prabhupada - There are seven coverings, each one ten times greater than the one preceding it.

The layer of water is ten times greater than the diameter of the universe, and the layer of fire is ten times greater than that of water.

Similarly, the layer of air is ten times greater than that of fire.

These dimensions are all inconceivable to the tiny brain of a human being.

It is also stated that this description is of only one egglike universe. There are innumerable universes besides this one, and some of them are many, many times greater.

It is considered, in fact, that this universe is the smallest; therefore the predominating superintendent, or Brahmā, has only four heads for management.

In other universes, which are far greater than this one, Brahmā has more heads.

In the Caitanya-caritāmṛta it is stated that all these Brahmās were called one day by Lord Kṛṣṇa on the inquiry of the small Brahmā, who, after seeing all the larger Brahmās. (End of Srila Prabhupada's Purport)

There is some confusion in Bhagavatam as in one place it says the first layer is earth and in another place it says the first layer is water.

Also in many cases only 6 layers are mentioned and the names change to like Maha tattva is said to be a layer in one purport and ether is not even mentioned in others.

Srila Prabhupada says there are 7 layers 8 including the original 4 billion miles in diameter or 12.6 billion miles in circumference that has 14 Planetary Systems in it  inner Bhu-Mandala universe

Anyway one can do their own maths, start with the size of our Universe Bhu-Mandala

There are 7 layers of elements, do the maths and see what you get. Each layer is 10 times greater than the previous layer as Srimad Bhagavatam tells us

1 - 4 billion miles × by 10 = 40 billion miles (Earth)

2 - 40 billion miles × by 10 = 400 billion miles (water)

3 - 400 billion miles × by 10 = 4 Trillion miles (fire)

4 - 4 Trillion miles × by 10 = 40 Trillion miles (air)

5 - 40 Trillion miles × by 10 = 400 Trillion miles (sky or ether)

6 - 400 Trillion miles × by 10 = 4 Quadrillion miles (false ego)

7 - 4 Quadrillion miles (mind and intelligence) × by 10 = 40 Quadrillion

Now add this up and see the maths for yourself.

8 layers (that includes the inner 4 billion mile Bhu-Mandala universe)

The full size of our Brahmanda Egg shaped Universe that has the 4 billion miles diameter Bhu-Mandala smaller Universe very deep inside it at it's center,  is 44 Quadrillion 444 Trillion 444 billion miles in diameter.

Srila Prabhupada arrived at the right time and right place in America in 1965

Srila Prabhupada arrived at the right time and place in 1965

There is a big difference between pre-world war 2 1930s and the mid 60s flower power cultural revolution in the United States of America

Prabhupada arrived at the right time and place in 1965.

American youth at that time was fueled by Indian mysticism like the The Tibetan Book of the Dead, LSD, Timothy Leary, Ken Kesey, the Merry pranksters, Bob Dylan, Alan Ginsberg, Pete Seeger, the Hippie Movement, the Civil rights Movement, Martin Luther King, the Beatles and the growing vegetarian movement

A search for something higher was going on that historians called ''the greening of America''.

Barry McGuire's famous anthem ''Eve of Destruction'' was released a few weeks before Prabhupada arrived in America in 1965 and constantly played on radio.

American youth were searching for answers and Prabhupada came at the right time with those answers. When you think about it his arrival was truly amazing and God sent

Barry McGuire's famous anthem ''Eve of Destruction'' was released a few weeks before Prabhupada arrived in America in 1965