although I rarely comment on devotee blogs this time I wish to make an exception. I can see you’re not a friend of formalities. So we’re on the same wavelength. That’s why.

I’m surprised by the number of requirements. Are there so many candidates that there must be such a strict set of conditions? Well, the reason seems to be to minimize the number of ‘dropout cases’. But at the same time it seems to repel other sincere devotees like you.

When I aspired for the harinam initiation here in CZ (at that time serving at the farm) I was required only to answer those 13 questions. Now I’m told that requirements are much more numerous – and some quite ‘politically loaded’, being related to the allegiance to the local temple leaders – so quite some devotees submitted to this ‘bureaucratic’ process only with ‘clenched teeth’ due to having no other way and some just refuse/d to go thru it preferring to move abroad where they didn’t have to be humiliated in this way. The result is that CZ yatra effectively lost them. They come here only for short visits, if at all. Good, they’re still in ISKCON. But some of them left ISKCON and got initiated by various GM gurus (some taking advantage of this and asking virtually nothing for harinam initiation, we know who). Still good, they’re in the Sarasvata family. But what about those initiated by other sampradayas? Ritviks? Etc. etc.

Historically, this thing is completely new in our tradition. When Srila Prabhupada got many devotee requesting him for diksa, he couldn’t meet all of them to personally examine them (and them him) as required in Haribhaktivilasa. So this formality screening was put into place instead, followed by initiation thru letters and later thru proxies (ritviks) which opened one pretty unpleasant Pandora’s box. The bottom line – it’s an emergency solution and therefore it shouldn’t be in effect too long time otherwise it’ll create more disturbances.

Nowadays, when ISKCON is already established in most countries we should slowly but surely go back to the traditional GV/Vedic model of a local guru with tens or hundreds – but less than physically unmanageable number – of disciples. Currently the counselor efficiently fulfils the role of the traditional diksa guru. The ‘jet age parivrajakas’ should be more like siksa gurus than diksa gurus.

Otherwise we have the current situation of most disciples meeting one’s guru once a year for a five minutes darsan and exchanging few short emails per year. The resulting problems are obvious since such level of communication is insufficient for most devotees. Sastra speaks about pranipata, pariprasna and seva. These were traditionally done in the physical presence of the guru whom disciple approached with fuel in hand (samit panih) and got onsite training for a prolonged time.

From my study of sastra and history I’m convinced that we can’t come up with anything better than age-old tradition.

Hope this helps and all the best.

ys abhakta Jan, NE-BBT