A historic look at the state of the Initiation
In 1998 the process of initiation was under a lot of scrutiny. By then the Zonal Acharya system had been dismantled, and new devotees were advised to get initiated by the senior devotee they felt most in alignment with. The traditional Guru-Disciple system had been in place for over 20 years, but some gurus had fallen away from their vows. This caused a lot of confusion and became one of ISKCON’s most significant unexpected growing pains. The document provided here offers an overview of the current state of affairs at that time and identifies the RtVik option as an intermediary stage to full initiation in ISKCON. This was written as a formal appeal to the GBC offering to act as a neutral 3rd party to help resolve differences if they wanted to engage me in that service. I got NO response from anyone… not even to acknowledge my proposals which went to about 18 of the then 24 GBC members at that time.