| In order that the prophecy of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu be fulfilled we need an army of pure preachers. If we desire that the Holy Name be chanted everywhere, we will need countless gurus guiding countless disciples in their spiritual life. All of them will regard their gurus as transparent, capable representatives of our Guru-Sastra-Sadhu principle. Since we may never offend a Vaishnava without spoiling our own spiritual life, we have to adjust our darshan-vision to allow for neighboring temples, gurus and disciples.
No matter how beloved one particular guru may be, his disciples will not all be able to transfer that same love to any successor-acarya, whose relative position may be that of a godbrother. New choices have to be made concerning how a mission shall run after the Acarya disappears. Each individual devotee has to determine how to continue his own life of surrender and preaching, and the mission should try as far as possible to accommodate him. How sad is it otherwise, for a Vaishnava mission, if valuable members withdraw due to unfortunate conditions which are beyond their control.
It is hard to conceive of, and neither in the past has it been shown, that a spiritual master who inspired a growing mission with the help of many disciples could just be substituted by any single successor. Firstly, the godbrothers are not surrendered to him in the same way they were to their guru. Secondly, he may not have the same drive or capacity as his Guru had, and thus, his failure to maintain things will go to his discredit, what to speak of expanding the mission. Individual devotees are capable of doing wonderful things and those who were expecting all wonderful things to manifest only within their own jurisdiction will again and again be reminded of the all-pervading nature of Transcendence. All the disciples of Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur were taken by surprise to see one of their godbrothers, Abhay Charan, Srila A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupad almost single-handedly fulfill the prediction of Sriman Mahaprabhu.
The WVA shall accept as members all those who preach the gospel of Krishna-Prema, Krishna-kirtan and Vaishnava-seva in as much as they represent the pure doctrine and share the common goals of the WVA. Therefore, the WVA cannot exclude from membership anyone just on the basis of a dispute he has with some other member. As a matter of fact the WVA shall provide such a happy and broadminded view that many such disputes will naturally be set aside to concentrate on our real business which is: Sri Krishna Sankirtan. |
