ISKCON gurus rule out HH Gaura Govinda Swami

In the BTP 17 item “ISKCON guru rules out his own tape ministry”, we quoted HH Gaura Govinda Swami (“GGS”), an ISKCON guru who died in 1996 but who is lauded by the entire GBC as a great saint, stating in his book:

“One has to hear. It is not that, “All right, tapes are there, I’ll hear the recordedtapes.” Sabda-brahma will never descend. [...] You should be greedy. Physical contact is required. You must hear directly, not just by listening to tapes. Sabda-brahma will never descend through a tape. One must hear from a physically present Sri Guru.”

HH Gaura Govinda Swami

(HH Gour Govinda Swami, ‘Q&A’, The Worship of Sri Guru, chapter 3)

Thus in one fell swoop, GGS declared Srila Prabhupada’s entire tape ministry as useless (not to speak of his own and those of his fellow GBC gurus!). However, we see from the statements from two ISKCON GBC voted-in gurus below that GGS’s philosophy has been completely rejected:

“There is more that comes out from this tape machine than just plastic tapes (shakes a tape). What really comes out of that tape recorder on these tapes is divya-jnana, or transcendental knowledge.”
(HH Indradyumna Swami ‘darshan’ - Text COM:1974636, 1999)

“Vani, the vibrational presence is the instructions we receive from the spiritual master [...] It can be on an audio or video recording. Or it can be written in a letter, book, or article. No matter in which way the instruction is given and received, it is fully active and potent.”
(HG Sankarshan Das Adhikari, Lecture, November 9th, 2007)

Thus ISKCON’s own gurus have effectively rejected GGS’s status as a great ISKCON saint. Srila Prabhupada also completely destroys GGS’s bogus philosophy:

1) He states that transcendental sound is not dependent on “physical contact” of the Guru:

“The potency of transcendental sound is never minimised because the vibrator is apparently absent.”
(Srimad-Bhagavatam, 2.9.8, purport)

2) He proved this by initiating hundreds, if not thousands, of his disciples by tape (gayatri mantra), e.g.:

“You should have a fire sacrifice and the second initiates should hear through the right ear the mantra on my recorded tape.”
(Srila Prabhupada Letter, November 13th, 1975) 

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