Esoteric Teaching Community Newsletter

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Esoteric Teaching Community Newsletter 1

 

 

 

The Future of Vedic Wisdom in the West

 

 

 

Dear Students and Friends,

 

 

 

Happy New Year, and a very warm welcome to the first edition of the Esoteric

Teaching Community Newsletter!

 

 

 

As I write this, I face the challenge of addressing the interests, needs and

concerns of a widely diverse community. Looking over the r list, I see

old friends with years of experience in Vedic teachings and lifestyle,

dedicated disciples of various Vedic lineages, and also unfamiliar names of

those who may be brand new to the whole concept of the Vedic Esoteric Teaching.

How can I write something that will benefit all of them?

 

 

 

In response to this challenging assignment, I am inspired to explain something

of interest to all levels of students and readers: Why do we call our Vedic

spiritual community The Esoteric Teaching, and what exactly is its

significance? There are several approaches to this topic, and I would like to

touch on a few of them briefly, for a complete discussion is far beyond the

scope of a short newsletter. If you feel a need to know more, you can always

reply with your questions or post them on our open discussion forum.

 

 

 

The short answer is that we are trying our best to make the way clear for the

future development of Vedic wisdom teachings in the West. For a more detailed

explanation, please read on.

 

 

 

The roots of the unique design of our teaching mission lie in the severe

difficulties experienced in the organization of our spiritual master, Srila

Prabhupada. From the very beginning of our association with that organization,

it was clearly apparent that the leaders were pursuing policies that would

alienate the public and eventually destroy the credibility of both the

organization and its teaching. I am speaking, of course, of their deceptive,

exploitive book distribution and other preaching and fund-raising tactics.

 

 

 

Despite my high-level professional background in advertising and public

relations, years of negative public opinion and critical feedback from many

senior devotees, the leaders of this organization remain completely

unresponsive to any suggestions to change. Out of loyalty to my spiritual

master, I remained associated with his organization and served it faithfully

for many years. Unfortunately, the behavior of the management reached a point

where I could no longer justify this connection, either by the concept of

loyalty or by my personal need for association with fellow disciples.

 

 

 

Therefore after a long period of agonizing soul-searching, I separated from the

organization of my spiritual Master Teacher and the association of fellow

disciples. I resolved that my personal spiritual teaching and mentoring would

be done on a platform that would prevent the many ills we experienced in that

organization. With that purpose in mind, I proceeded to research spiritually

healthy organizations. What I found in this research led to several very

interesting conclusions.

 

 

 

Our Vedic spiritual tradition necessarily must be passed down in an

hierarchical manner from self-realized spiritual Master Teacher to his personal

disciples. However, that does not imply that a religious organization based on

these teachings must be managed in the same way. This extremely dangerous

unconscious assumption led to an hierarchical model of organization. But we see

from history that wherever leadership positions are based on seniority and

loyalty instead of merit, abuse of the concentrated power inherent in such an

organization inevitably ensues.

 

 

 

Srila Prabhupada attempted to decouple the management of his organization from

its spiritual leadership by insisting (in a landmark 1969 document entitled

Direction of Management) on democratic election of the temporal management and

regular rotation of the spiritual leadership. He also designed a network of

autonomous temples with strong local leadership. Unfortunately his neophyte

students rejected this excellent and eminently practical concept, instead

instituting a flawed centralized management scheme mirroring the corrupt

ecclesiastical structures of the past. Not only that organization, but any

organization based on this outmoded management model will, by its very nature,

generate corruption, nepotism and other abuses of power. Basing advancement on

loyalty and seniority rather than merit always leads to stagnation, and to

sacrificing intelligent and talented people simply because they question the

established order.

 

 

 

Any organization needs new ideas, talent and fresh energy simply to keep up

with the times and avoid attrition of its membership. Hierarchical

organizations are simply too rigid to respond to rapidly changing

circumstances. Yet our spiritual Master Teacher often insisted that our

presentation of the Vedic tradition must be consistent with the time and

harmonious with changing circumstances. Therefore in my research into

organizational models, I identified several alternate structures that avoid the

natural deficiencies of hierarchies, while maintaining the spiritual integrity

of the disciplic succession system. I determined to implement these in my own

spiritual teaching work to avoid the inevitable deficiencies and tragic flaws

of the hierarchical management model.

 

 

 

It is gratifying, in a way, to see many disciples of the Vedic teachings

gradually adopt positions and attitudes we already held, and sacrificed much

for, back in the 1970s. Better late than never, I suppose. But what really

would be rewarding would be to see our Godbrothers and -sisters transcend the

broken management model that is, more than anything, responsible for our

difficulties in the parent organization. Instead we see them go to other

organizations structured according to the same defective model. Unfortunately,

that will have exactly the same result.

 

 

 

If the Vedic tradition has any future in the West, it will be in a form that is

acceptable to Western ideas of organizational management. At the very least, it

must change to include principles of democratic leadership and participatory

management. At best, it will become a purely spiritual community managed by

consensus and facilitating mutual respect, understanding and love among its

members.

 

 

 

In planning my spiritual teaching activities, I also performed methodical

market research into public opinion on Vedic organizations in the West. What I

discovered is that public opinion of Vedic spiritual organizations had reached

a new low and was still declining. A well-known principle of marketing is that

when the public loses trust in a brand due to bad publicity, the products

faults must be corrected, and then it must be re-branded to establish a new

image and regain its customers. Therefore I concluded that along with changing

the management structure to avoid the failings of hierarchical organizations, I

had to rename the Vedic teachings I received from my spiritual Master Teacher

to avoid the brand names that had fallen into public disrepute.

 

 

 

Please note that changing the name of a spiritual teaching does not necessarily

change the teaching itself. Any name is just a word, and is different from the

thing it represents. We still use the exact same philosophy, source materials

and practices that we received from our spiritual Master Teacher; we simply

have changed the terminology to avoid the negative associations in the public

mind. This was not done lightly nor arbitrarily, but only after applying a deep

study of semantics and ontology to the subject.

 

 

 

It is easy to criticize something one does not really understand, just on

superficial appearances. And many of our fellow disciples do criticize our work

without really understanding it. Our predecessor Bhaktivinod Thakur rejected

this shallow approach in the following words:

 

 

 

....all religious works and philosophical performances and writings of great

men... suffered from the imprudent conduct of useless readers and stupid

critics. The former have done so much injury to the work that they have

surpassed the latter in their evil consequence. Men of brilliant thoughts have

passed by the work in quest of truth and philosophy, but the prejudice which

they imbibed from its useless readers and their conduct prevented them from

making a candid investigation. [Light From the Beautiful Bhagavat, 1869]

 

 

 

Anyone who actually reads and researches deeply our rendition of the timeless

Vedic teachings will certainly perceive its integrity and recognize its

fidelity to the original source. We beg the intelligent and enlightened reader

to kindly excuse the bad behavior of some of our fellow students, whose

understanding and of the subject is hampered by their intellectual blinders,

and whose realization has been deviated by personal ambitions for wealth,

followers and power. Our purpose from the beginning was only to present this

great tradition in a light that would enable everyone, especially intelligent

and sensitive souls, to benefit from its self-effulgent spiritual teaching. We

hope that despite the inevitable flaws of such a pioneering effort, we have

made some small progress in this direction by recasting its nomenclature in a

form more acceptable to intelligent people in contemporary Western society.

 

 

 

That, in brief, is the story of The Esoteric Teaching. Thank you for your

continued interest in our work.

 

 

 

Love,

 

 

 

Gaurahari Dasanudas Babaji

 

 

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