What is the basis of a Krsna-conscious hierarchy?

Most of the residents of Kali Yuga age, being badly disappointed with the fall down of the monarchy, disgusted with the corruption following the bureaucracy and annoyed with the political leadership altogether, welcome spiritual ideas being advertised as free from any hierarchical management or any structure.

They are wrong. Nowhere as in the realm of spiritual science is the command of an authority of an authorized spiritual teacher needed more. Coming from an absolutely confused state of existence, equipped with imperfect senses and always prone to cheat and get cheated, to surrender to a strong spiritual leadership is for the conditioned soul the only way to get out of maya’s clutches. Krsna, the Supreme Authority, demands that command of His pure devotee must be followed. He denies any sort of audience to any spiritual seeker who violates this rule.

As soon a spiritual authority is established, naturally a parampara system follows, transferring the command of the Supreme Command from one instance to another all the way down to the confused listener. Those who are serious get serious commander; those who want to get cheated get a cheater. To follow superior authority is such a powerful principle that even when not represented by a pure devotee it can occasionally, for a brief period, produce immense results as the history of mankind can teach us. If it can demonstrate such a power in mundane sense, what can be said of spiritual power! The results may speak for themselves.

But to judge a result being of positive or negative nature, one has to know what the objective to be achieved is. One has to know what Krsna’s desire and the desire of His pure devotee is so one can appreciate the results achieved by a particular vaisnava.

The parampara hierarchy is simply reflecting that desire and it is the "oneness in desire", as so nicely prayed for by one of my godbrothers, which unites the real followers of Srila Prabhupada and separates them from home made ego-centric pseudo spiritualists.

Those who occupy individual posts in such a bona fide sampradaya are exemplified by purity of desire and not by an institutionally designated status. Ideally, those holding designated posts in a spiritual institution should be also holding in their heart a pure desire to serve the mission of the spiritual master. But this may not be always the case. Ideally the hierarchy, the chain of command, should be derived from the individual purity of the leaders to serve the mission and ignore the personal preferences how to serve or not to serve. To have a spiritual leader who claims the post of leadership while trying to accomplish in name of spirituality his unfulfilled puberty dreams is a highly embarrassing scenario which public will soon discover to be false, powered by vanity and narcissism. As much the conditioned soul is tightly held in maya’s grip, it can still see the pretense of such a "designated dignitary". After all, the history of materially motivated "religions" is filled with such hypocritical fellows.

The spirit Srila Prabhupada and His spiritual master carried is calling for firm opposition to such cheating policies, even at the cost of ostracition and isolation. Truth always comes at high cost in a world of cheaters and cheated. Its never for free and its worth living and dying for.

Those who adhere to such spirit will be designated by illusioned democrats, pseudo-liberals, equalitarian and other proponents of mayavada dogmas as fanatics and carriers of old fashioned concepts, the representatives of antique ideals of bygone times. Nevertheless, the first, highly unqualified disciples of Srila Prabhupada who, bereft of any cultural background and any sort of spiritual intellectuality, demonstrated the power of following the authorized chain of command by placing the only asset they had, their firm faith, into the words of a pure devotee. Their unconditional surrender made them to carriers of immense spiritual power and enabled them to attract others in the same spirit they were maintained by His Divine Grace. Those who later on started to see His instructions in a relative perspective, even up to the point of alternate them, returned to the realm of "shadow like devotional service", becoming simply a replica of their original spiritual glory, or they abandoned devotional service altogether.

But the principle to be followed remains: the hierarchy as established by Srila Prabhupada is finally taking place according to the level of the material or spiritual desires of His followers and not according to the designated posts necessarily. The material nature has its firm way to reveal the reality and expose the illusion. When large number of materially conditioned self designated spiritual dignitaries accumulates a whole parampara can vanish. When even a small number of spiritually rooted, rightly situated, introspective and honest followers of His Divine Grace accumulates, the flow of His immense spiritual power remains unobstructed and manifest in form of incrementation of book distribution, Holy Name distribution and prasadam distribution, followed by spiritual projects based on varnashrama structure.

As birds of the same feather flock together, one sincere follower attracts another as in reverse sense one lunatic attracts another as well. And so finally the level of purity of desire dictates the hierarchy to be followed.