The Journey Home Debunked

Kaliya Mardana dasa presents a forceful defense of Srila Prabhupada’s original mission in this critical review of Radhanatha Swami’s book, The Journey Home, in which he accuses the ISKCON institution’s Governing Body Commission (GBC) of supporting impersonalist (mayavada) contamination of that mission through their endorsement of the book.

The-Journey-Home-Debunked

From Chapter 39:

There is an extremely urgent need to utterly wipe out and destroy Mayavada all over the world. That is because impersonalism spells death to the public at large and sends them one and all to hell. Destruction of Mayavada can only be achieved through preaching genuine Krishna consciousness in its pure form exactly as Shrila Prabhupada taught. Wiping impersonalism off the face of the earth will not come about by making convenient adjustments to the words of the spiritual master just to please the ignorant public at large. Not only is impersonalism a direct offense against the Supreme Lord Who is always a person, but to deny the transcendental form of the Lord is also the worst form of ingratitude.

Krishna, God, is giving everything—yet the individual who is deluded by impersonalism thinks that all such benefits he enjoys are automatically supplied for his sense pleasure. With no appreciation or thankfulness he sees no need to recognize from where and from whom, as the Christians say, “all blessings flow.” In this world of conditioned entities there is no sin equal to ingratitude. The only way to teach genuine thankfulness for the kindness shown by the Supreme Lord is through this personalist philosophy of Krishna consciousness. Keep in mind that only Shrila Prabhupada and none other gave this understanding of an unadulterated path that can deliver the entire world. This is not fanaticism, but rather verified historical fact.

Yet, with the advent of The Journey Home into the temples of Shrila Prabhupada, a GBC of loose cannons has now turned the Krishna consciousness movement 180 degrees away from the intended direction established by the Founder-Acharya. The GBC’s open door policy to Mayavadi cheaters and scoundrels who pose as yogis and avataras (but who are actually wholesalers of sense gratification in the guise of spiritual practices) is an oblique deviation from the teachings that they are avowed to uphold. The GBC has refused to wake up because—as Shrila Prabhupada stated many times—you cannot awaken a man who is pretending to be asleep. In other words, even though they know better, these pretentious “elders” act as if that Radhanatha’s The Journey Home is some new form of advancement in preaching Krishna consciousness that has now become acceptable to a rising generation. Rather than maintaining the steady and secure course of the eternal disciplic succession, they have offensively instituted “out with the old and in with the new.” They have compromised and watered down the teachings of the Founder-Acharya to the extent that, as Krishna told Arjuna, “the message has been lost.”

Such forms of deviousness—willful divergence from the standard practices and principles of parampara on the part of ISKCON’s GBC—are the most serious of all offences. Let us give as the example of the “three-time loser,” a criminal who stands convicted of a crime for the third time. In a court of law, the “three-time loser” or repeat offender is given the maximum sentence under the law. Such a dull-witted deviant should have learned his lesson if not the first time in court, then surely during his second appearance before the judge. In the same way, those who know better but who refuse to do better are considered incorrigible and are handed the stiffest sentences. Similarly, this is the law of material nature, the law of karma. Certainly a severe sentence will be the fate of the all those “devotees” who are involved with distributing The Journey Home. Not only the author and the GBC who promote it (including those GBCs who sit silently on the sidelines and do not speak up against this outrage to the Founder-Acharya) but every other devotee who is involved in the distribution of this Mayavadic so-called literature. This means that all the so-called devotees who translate, type, print, and distribute Radhanath’s anti-devotional nonsense in the form of The Journey Home must someday pay the consequences for straying from the prescribed path into the dark wilderness where lurk the dangerous beasts.