Jagannatha Dasa Babjaji lived for 140 years?

[Guest guest]

Is this true? It seems like an unusally long life, especially in modern times.

 

http://www.iskcon.com/about/parampara/jagannatha_dasa_babaji.html

[Guest guest]

125 years, but still it's a long time. He stayed long enough to pass the baton on to Srila Bhaktivinode Thakur.

[Guest guest]

Did the disciplic succession end when Srila Prabhupada died?

[Guest guest]

no, Prabhupada passed on the succession to 12 disciples.

[stonehearted]

guest: Prabhupada passed on the succession to 12 disciples

 

Dear God, let's not get a thread started on this one. The truth is that Srila Prabhupada incessantly taught throughout his preaching career that all his disciples should become fit to carry on the disciplic succession.

[Guest guest]

Thanks for the info., I had heard something about that. I will research it on my own.

[stonehearted]

There has beena misconception that Srila Prabhupada appointed 11 disciples as successor spiritual masters. The history shows that this is not what he did; he was formalizing what has previously been informal arrangements for chanting on beads and selecting disciples' names, and adding to that the responsibility for deciding who was fit for initiation, for the remainder fo his stay with us. This was to accommdate his declining health. This became understood as an appointment of successors, something he decried throughout his preaching as a cause for the breakup of his guru's institution, Sri Gaudiya Math.

 

This misunderstanding and the problems/abuses it spawned have generated a reaction in the form of an assertion that Srila Prabhupada named these folks as the first ritviks to initiate new disciples as his disciples within ISKCON for as long as the institution existed. This idea (popularly referred to as "ritvikphilosophy") is as mistaken as the first.

 

If you read all of Srila Prabhupada's books and lisen to all of his lectures, the only conclusion you can reasonably draw is that he intended to train his disciples to become fit to serve as spiritual masters after his disappearance. I have many old, dear friends in the ritvik camp. I understand and am very sympathetic with the concerns that move them to advocate this idea. No one has yet made the case, though, that this is what Srila Prabhupada intended--at least to my satisfaction.

[Guest guest]

A longer life for the enlightened figure is possible as time moves differently in the spiritual world and the entire universe is created and annihilated in a small number of Brahman days. Time is on a different level for the mystical figures.

[Guest guest]

But he wasn't in the spiritual world, he was here on earth. How is time different for one individual?

[Gauracandra]

That I think is a reachable number. I don't recall the oldest recorded person, but I think it was up there, maybe 115 years or something. But there are millions of people around the world, so who knows what the oldest really is.