Reading of other books

[Guest guest]

I have not said that one should read the books of other institutions

outside of ISKCON. I have been against reading other books since the

beginning when I heard it directly from Prabhupada. Sometimes foolish

devotees write to me and push that they want to read other books from

other vaisnavas, and I usually tell them no. I do not remember saying

that they could. Maybe once someone was so pushy that I said to him

that he could do whatever he liked. But this was not an allowance for

any others, rather it was frustration, for they would have done it

anyway and would have become more offensive. Under no circumstances

did I say that one *should* read the books of Sridhar Maharaj or

anyone else from the Gaudiya math, but practically speaking everyone

is doing whatever they like nowadays without proper consideration and

therefore there is chaos everywhere. How can I stop someone from

reading whatever he likes? And if someone is pushing me that he must

read these books, and I tell him no, he will just reject me and ISKCON

and do what he likes anyway since he is not intelligent enough to

understand the reasoning behind the instruction.

 

One may think that only in ISKCON do sannyasis and gurus fall down,

but this also happens in the Gaudiya Math. There are many horror

stories in GM as well, but they are well hidden. It is only in ISKCON

that we take great pleasure in advertising the falldowns of devotees

and hearing all the nasty details. In the GM they keep it a secret,

but it still goes on. Less than in ISKCON perhaps, I don't know since

we have many more people than they do and also we are dealing with

gross westerners basically whereas they have a head start being

Indian.