Can a disciple disagree with his or her spiritual master? This is a much more complex point than it may seem at first.
First of all, there is the question of preferences and personal habits. We are all individuals and we have different personal tastes and preferences. This exists not only here but also in the spiritual world. The spiritual master may like rice and sabji, while the disciple may like pasta, and that’s perfectly fine.
Then there is the question of philosophical interpretations. Here the disciple must be in line with the spiritual master. If the spiritual master teaches that God is a person, but the disciple is convinced that he is an impersonal light, then there is no point in the relationship. The whole idea of a guru-disciple relationship is to learn the scriptures and their practical application from the spirtual master. If the disciple thinks he or she knows better, then there is no point in the relationship with the guru.
A third sphere is opinions around mundane topics. Here we have a giant gray area.
In general, the disciple should respect all the opinions of the spiritual master, even if they appear to disagree with his internal beliefs because by definition the spirtual master is accepted as a wiser person and a representative of Krsna. He has more experience, more knowledge, and a deeper spiritual vision than the disciple, therefore when the spiritual master gives an opinion that is contrary to the disciple’s beliefs, he should take it respectfully and try to understand this different side. It may be that the disciple is actually not correct in his belief, or it may be that there are multiple sides to the question.
For example, a disciple may believe that the best for him is to join the army and go to fight for his country in a war, based on ideas like patriotism, or even Vedic principles like the right to kill an invasor. The guru, however, may have a different opinion based on the principle of non-violence, the idea that practicing and spreading Krsna Consciousness should have precedence over mundane causes and so on, which are higher principles. In such cases, the disciple can avoid serious mistakes by listening.
It may be also that the differences in opinion are just not important, and the disciple may just choose to ignore it and focus on more important topics. This is probably also an acceptable instance.
What to do however if there is some disagreement on some important point, philosophical or otherwise? The process then is paripraśnena, to ask questions. The disciple may just respectfully submit his enquire and share whatever information he has that makes him think differently. The whole idea of accepting a spiritual master is to be able to adjust our vision of the world and bring it closer to Krsna Consciousness. By asking questions the disciple can gradually clarify differences in opinion and acquire a higher understanding of things. If however the disciple consciously disagrees with the spiritual master, this will weaken the relationship. Once, a senior devotee who is now serving as an initiating spirtual master in our movement mentioned to me that actually, most devotees in our society leave the shelter of their spiritual masters over time. They may not formally reject the guru, but they do this indirectly by just finding other guides and gradually stopping listening to them. This is a gradual process that starts by having unsolved doubts and gradually grow into open disagreement and finally break the faith in the competence of the guru.
Self-realized souls not only have a deeper knowledge of the scriptures (based on direct experience, and not just on book knowledge) but often they can also offer higher insights even on mundane topics because they process such topics through the filter of Krsna Consciousness, offering a higher understanding.
When disciples showed footage of the moon landings to Srila Prabhupada, he immediately exclaimed: “See, I told you they would not go!” Some could not understand how Prabhupada could say that the men did not go to the moon even when seeing the video footage on TV, but Prabhupada had a higher understanding of the topic, being sure that the moon is a celestial planet, and not a piece of rock orbiting our planet. It doesn’t matter if the Apollo program landed or not in the gross representation of the moon that orbits our planet, they didn’t go to the celestial planet mentioned in the Vedas.
Similarly, Srila Prabhupada used to speak against woman’s liberation, something that was very dear to the hearts of many women in the 1970s. This was not based on chauvinism, but on a higher understanding of how women are exploited in modern societies.
We come then to the center of the question. Many in our society don’t see their spiritual masters as self-realized souls. It may be due to doubts raised by the fact that people posing as spiritual masters did terrible things in the past, due to the devotee who one trusts not being allowed to accept disciples, or due to one’s own conditioning, but in any case, it doesn’t change the outcome. The fact is that many just take the acceptance of a spirtual master as an unavoidable chore that everyone has to do to be accepted as a member of the group. Because of peer pressure or institutional norm, they accept someone who they don’t have faith in, and who they don’t accept as a self-realized soul. Such so-called initiation is analogous to someone who marries someone just for the sake of gaining a surname. People who accept a spiritual master on this basis actually remain disconnected from the parampara, and the fact that some openly disagree with the views of their so-called spiritual masters is just a symptom of it.
Accepting a spiritual master is actually not so easy, especially nowadays, because it demands one to accept the existence of someone superior to himself. Nowadays the fashion is to see everyone on the same level. Teachers are called “facilitators”, and so on. There is no principle of authority and this is of course very comfortable since it gives one the freedom to think and do whatever he wants. The problem is that this concept doesn’t work very well in the high spheres of spirtual practice.
Once a very senior devotee spoke (to a group of Brazilian devotees) about how Brazilians never go back to Godhead. If you go to Goloka and ask where is the Brazilian community there, he said, they will send you back to the material world. Of course, this was a little concerning to me, since I was born there, so I decided to enquire about it. He explained that as long as one identifies with a material culture and all the faults related to that, there is no possibility of going back to Godhead, since going to the spiritual world includes giving up material labels and accepting one’s original position as a servant of Krsna. There are no Brazilians in the spiritual world, just like there are no Americans, Russians, or Indians. They are all in the material world.
Accepting a spiritual master demands one to abandon his previous conditioning and gradually accept his original identity as a servant of Krsna. One who clings to his old believes and values stop this process and just prolongs his stay in the material world.