Beware false gurus at holy places who take money but prevent disciples from seeing God.Listen — Srila Prabhupada Uvaca
Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: ...been seeing this one person there by the name of Bhagavan Shringari Das, Bhagavan Shringari. He's the pūjārī of Lord Jagannātha. So he's claiming that when anyone goes to a holy place like Jagannātha Purī that they have to get initiated by a tīrtha-guru. So these foolish disciples, they're going and they're accepting initiation from him, and he gives them some mantra, and then he...
Naturally there's an exchange of money. They have to promise to send money regularly for Lord... He says it's for Lord Jagannātha. Obviously Lord Jagannātha will never see the money.
He also gets them to write a letter. And one of the letters reads something like that "I came to India blind, but now Bhagavan Shringari Das has opened my eyes." Doesn't even mention Your Divine Grace. And this boy, he was telling me this... When he asked about the holy places...
This devotee, who—he's doing a little assistance to me—he refused to have anything..., take any initiation 'cause he said that he could understand that something was wrong. He asked him, "What about Māyāpur?" He said, "Oh, Māyāpur is nothing. That is not the dhāma." Then he said, "Dhāma means...," and he named the four dhāmas. So in this way some of the devotees are...
Apparently they're even going back to America and they're encouraging others to send money to this cheater. This man is a big cheater. Govinda dasi, she took this initiation, and some other people, he mentioned... When he was there, there were already four devotees there, some householder devotee from Los Angeles, Govinda dasi,...
He sells them things like the flag from the top of the temple for a hundred rupees. You know, different types of thing he sells them. So I said, "So why didn't you ask him, 'Now that we're your disciple and you're our guru, now take us into the temple'?" [Note: It was determined that this claim was unfounded and merely a rumor.] Prabhupāda: Hmm? Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: I told him that he should have said that "I will become your disciple, but you take me into the temple with you. Because disciple means the son, so if you're my father, so I'm your son.
You take me into the temple." But he... One of the devotees asked that, but he said, "No, no, that will not be possible, but you will see Lord Jagannātha in the Ratha-yātrā time." The man is such a cheater. Of course, none of the more serious devotees, I think, are taking this man very seriously, but some of the devotees are a little less intelligent, so they are being fooled. Prabhupāda: So the cheaters are there. If our men are cheated, if they agree to be cheated, how can I stop them?