Action and karma in the hot seat

Didn't Srila Prabhupada enjoin his disciples to preach in order to positively change the world, in apparent contradiction with the sensibility of his guru —as we shall read below— who considered such a revolutionary initiative to be heretical?

Who, then, will answer this existential question, since his spiritual master insisted, bis repetita and with great common sense, on the impossibility of us even thinking for a moment that we could compete with God, the Supreme Ordainer?

Honestly, I have always been of this opinion: even the blinking of my eyelids happens beyond my control. What can be said, then, of falling off a ladder or a nuclear bomb exploding in France by the decision of who-knows-who? By God's decision!?!

Here, then, is his master's way of thinking.

'The Lion Guru' (as his disciples nicknamed Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Maharaja) taught, if I have understood his philosophy correctly, that it is impossible to rectify history or societies, and that the course of karma is inescapable. Only pure devotion to Kṛṣṇa is both admissible and coherent if one wishes to reform society and our individual selves. All attempts to deliver man from his suffering condition and fallen nature —as Kant or Rousseau imagined and desired— are but a fatal illusion, an absurdity. We shall see this as well a little further below.

This is, therefore, a radical and uncommon perspective that deserves our attention. Read by yourself:

From the Harmonist, issue 11 May 1932, is an article by His Divine Grace Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thakur Jagad Guru Prabhupada, originally titled "Sri Caitanya in South India".

The world does not need any revolution as it is well backed by someone very competent to guide even the smallest events. Whoever asserts the need to reform the world, himself lacks reform. The world is on its perfect course and no one has the power to divert it, not even by the thickness of a hair, from the established course.

When we think that some deviation in the natural course of the world is occurring due to the intervention of a particular individual, we must remember that this individual never had independent will. Rather, he was driven by a force beyond his jurisdiction. The course of the world does not need anyone's intervention.

However, it is our worldview that requires adjustments. And this is currently being done by the compassion of Sri Caitanya. This idea can only be deeply understood by the recipients of His mercy. The scriptures state that the only requirement is to have a heart open to the names of Krishna that come from the lips of a genuine devotee.

Once Krishna enters your ears, He begins to restore vision. Suddenly, he no longer wishes to act as a reformer for anyone else, as he recognizes that no one lacks the highest guidance. It is self-reformation, therefore, whose nature and urgency are gradually assimilating, thanks to God’s everlasting and continuous mercy. ▪︎

Kant writes about Rousseau in relation to civilization and evolution. Both believed that humans descend from animals through the workings of nature. He wrote [in his Conjectural Beginning of Human History]:

“In his essays On the Influence of the Sciences and On the Inequality of Men, J.-J. Rousseau very rightly shows the inevitable contradiction between civilization and the nature of the human race as a physical species, in which every individual must fully realize his destiny; but in his Émile, in his Social Contract, and other writings, he attempts to solve an even more difficult problem: that of how civilization must progress in order to develop the dispositions of humanity as a moral species in accordance with their destiny, so that the one no longer opposes the other as human nature.”

From this arises the prevailing idea that humans possess instincts. Kant and Rousseau imagined that the more humans detached themselves from the state of nature and from the instincts proper to the animal condition, the more civilized they became. As a Vaiṣṇava panentheist, I do not subscribe to their ideas. I have always opposed them. Therefore, can I be labeled as a reformer, the one that is criticized by Bhaktisiddhanta Maharaja? 

Think twice before speaking out, for I am in fact defending the position of Srila Prabhupada, and it would be unacceptable to accuse him of such a flaw. Prabhupada founded his mission on the reform of America, Europe, and the rest of the world. Is it not? I am his follower.

Curiously, the devotees of Kṛṣṇa hold, following the Guru-Lion Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Maharaja, that all this —reforming societies and humanity— is mere vanity. One may agree or disagree with this view; yet it remains that his disciple, the founder of the Hare Kṛṣṇa movement, sought with great determination to reform American society when he arrived there in the 1960s. The problem today is that there are practically no discussions aimed at understanding what to make of these two apparently contradictory positions.