What do you think what changed in ISKCON in comparison to the days you joined (1972), and what didn’t?

For those who still go out and try to distribute Srila Prabhupada’s books, nothing changed. Same conditioned souls on the street, same maya and the same struggle to overcome it. Same bliss when the bewildered conditioned soul purchases Srila Prabhupada’s book, same ecstasy one can feel when Srila Prabhupada is pleased. It is like never growing old. It is a taste of eternity.

This is the spirit I grew up with in times where the oldest member of the yatra I joined was maybe 25 years old. Being in the movement for two years, he was indeed an "older devotee”. With all our passion, all our revolutionary spirit, fueled by the atmosphere of the sixties, with all our immaturity and all our foolishness, we took unconditionally bath in Srila Prabhupada’s mercy which came almost exclusively through book distribution and public harinama. Nobody had a "secondary agenda”, at least not initially. Everybody was captured by Srila Prabhupada’s example to give indeed everything and not expect anything for oneself. No thought was given to any sort of security except the one coming from being fully dependent on Krsna’s mercy. The reward was instant. Just looking at the old photos of devotees preaching one can get a glimpse of the bliss they were bathing in day and night.

From organizational point of view, as an institution, this movement being powered by unpaid, occasionally genius and eccentrics, but nevertheless idealistic individuals were always a chaos and it is chaos until today. But Srila Prabhupada gave an organizational structure and already in the early days He expected us to follow it. Studying specially His letters to individual managers we can understand that He also very firmly stated what He expects them to do and how they should be treating those who were under their shelter. What is too much institutional restriction and what is too little is until today under discussion. But what shouldn’t be under discussion is IF there should be an institutional leadership or not at all. 

And here we come to "what changed”. Years passed and what seemed to be entirely "common sense" with the awareness of Srila Prabhupada’s most cherished desires is not anymore common sense for everybody. Book distribution is "on retreat" in most of the areas it used to flourish due to the leadership preference to set priorities in other fields.

As in Srila Prabhupada’s presence spiritual world and Krsna’s personality seemed to be actually in our reach and the vairagya spirit was not something abstract, after His departure step after step this spirit was abandoned and replaced by issues of more social and psychoanalytical nature, leading to times where even some of the leaders play with ideas and expose themselves to association which Srila Prabhupada defines as absolutely 

without poisoning. As merciful He was, He draw a very clear line between illusion and reality and wanted us to keep it in this way. Even in His presence His own followers tried to change it, what to speak after His departure. The important is becoming unimportant and the unimportant important.

And so “old-timers” like myself find themselves sometimes estranged from the present “ISKCON world”, not being able to trace it back to what it once was. For me personally this relates to certain areas only, I can still find "islands" where one can preach and quote Srila Prabhupada freely without fear that one will be instantly ostracized, demonized or isolated. It is hard to understand why some of my godbrothers or their followers left ISKCON for another organizations which obviously suffers from same problems as ISKCON

or operates on basis of personal cult worship which is doomed to collapse. Some even tried to start  in name of Srila Prabhupada their own movements, embarrassing His Divine Grace in public or even insulting Him with their concocted ideas.

The potential bhaktas are still there, even maybe the internet generation is not exactly what one could call "revolutionary”. This media in itself facilitates more the consumer spirit as the producer spirit. It turns young people to passive stupidities onlookers with no strength to resist even to that what they perceive as being wrong.

Meanwhile the preaching field is in many places far more favorable as it was in days where the first "bed sheets dressed Hare Krsna’s" appeared on the street. People in general are far more open to new ideas and sometimes even more idealistic as our own ISKCON leaders who seem to be often more concerned about the MENTAL and EMOTIONAL wellbeing of the devotees as about Srila Prabhupada and His mission.

I was thought that ALL our mental and emotional wellbeing can be achieved ONLY by serving Srila Prabhupada’s mission as it reflects the desire of the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Once He is satisfied, we are satisfied instantly. Some leaders today in ISKCON seem to think differently, and so the simple sadhana program including Shrimad Bhagavatam lectures and Bhagavad-Gita lectures followed by daily preaching schedule, turned into "counseling" and "mediating sessions" and seminars with dubious content in "retreats”, motivated by the fear that if Srila Prabhupada’s preaching mission will be presented as the priority, we may lose much of our followership.

And so looking back, I am grateful for any second spent on sankirtan and I am grateful to all my leaders that they never pushed me to do anything as to serve Srila Prabhupada in the preaching spirit. That they may have had occasionally "strange ideas" how to do it, hats another story and going into details "what went wrong" would be a subject for another short question with a very long answer.

I believe that it is never too late to protect and maintain the preaching spirit Srila Prabhupada injected into us. This spirit is not of such "esoteric nature" as some today believe. They would like to define any kind of concocted activity as "preaching”. I firmly believe that if a true follower of Srila Prabhupada is one way or another fully engaged in

following four kinds of activities, he is fully engaged in Srila Prabhupada’s mission:

1. Distribution of Srila Prabhupada’s books.
2. Distribution of Srila Prabhupada’s prasadam.
3. Distribution of the Holy Name via harinama.
4. Maintenance of temples, preaching centers serving the three above mentioned purposes.

Anybody trying to be part of these four main pillars of Srila Prabhupada’s preaching has enough to do for the rest of His life. Of course once doing so he will find that these preaching activities lead to more preaching activates and involve wider circles of bhakti-candidates. But one should never forget where the "epicenter" of the earth quake is and not get lost in its external effects. Without the center there is no circle and without a circle there is no unity.