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Śrīla Prabhupāda Līlambṛta
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Volume 2 — Planting The Seed
<< 21 Beyond the Lower East Side >>
 | But we were shocked that he was going to leave. I never thought that Kṛṣṇa consciousness would go beyond the Lower East Side, what to speak of New York City. I thought that this was it, and it would stay here eternally.
— Brahmānanda
| | | HARE KṚṢṆA WAS becoming popular – regular kīrtanas in the park, newspaper coverage. Hayagrīva called it “the Hare Kṛṣṇa explosion.” The Lower East Side hippies considered the chanting of Hare Kṛṣṇa “one of the grooviest things happening,” and that the Svāmī’s disciples didn’t take LSD didn’t seem to affect their popularity. The devotees were accepted as angelic people, carrying the peaceful chanting to others and offering free food and a free place to stay. You could get the most interesting vegetarian food free at their place (if you went at the right time). And in their storefront, on the shelf by the door, were books from India.
| | | In the clubs, local musicians played the melody that they had picked up from the Svāmī when he chanted in the park and at the temple. The Lower East Side was a neighborhood of artists and musicians, and now it was also the neighborhood of Hare Kṛṣṇa.
| | | Burton Green: Musicians were influenced by it – the Kṛṣṇa chant, Govinda jaya jaya, and other chants. I used some of those chants when I recorded. A lot of musicians reached out for this in different ways. We would explode in a short time and blow off, but then keep the chant underneath as a basis. A lot of people found that spiritual vibration even in the midst of the heavy music they were doing. They were becoming devotee-musicians.
| | | Evening kīrtanas were always big. Brahmānanda used to stand by the back door every night and watch the room fill up until there was no place left to sit. There was a lot of interest in the group chanting and music making, but after the kīrtana, when the talk was to begin, people would start to leave. It was not uncommon for half the audience to leave before the talk began, and sometimes people would leave in the middle of the lecture.
| | | One evening, Allen Ginsberg brought Ed Sanders and Tuli Kupferberg of the Fugs to the meeting. The Fugs, a local group that had made a name for themselves, specialized in obscene lyrics. Among the popular songs of Ed Sanders were “Slum Goddess of the Lower East Side,” “Group Grope,” and “I Can’t Get High.” Ed had wild red hair and an electric-red beard, and he played a guitar during the kīrtana. The devotees were happy to see their prestigious guests. The night of the Fugs, however, Prabhupāda chose to speak on the illusion of sexual pleasure. “Sex pleasure binds us to this material world birth after birth,” he said, and he quoted, as he often did, a verse of Yāmunācārya: “Since I have become Kṛṣṇa conscious, whenever I think of sex life with a woman my face at once turns from it, and I spit at the thought.” The Fugs never returned.
| | | To speak ill of sexual pleasure was certainly not a strategic move for one who wanted to create followers among the Lower East Side hippies. But Prabhupāda never considered changing his message. In fact, when Umāpati had mentioned that Americans didn’t like to hear that sex was only for conceiving children, Prabhupāda had replied, “I cannot change the philosophy to please the Americans.”
| | | “What about sex?” asked the ISKCON attorney, Steve Goldsmith, one evening, speaking out from the rear of the crowded temple.
| | | “Sex should only be with one’s wife,” Prabhupāda said, “and that is also restricted. Sex is for the propagation of Kṛṣṇa conscious children. My spiritual master used to say that to beget Kṛṣṇa conscious children he was prepared to have sex a hundred times. Of course, that is most difficult in this age. Therefore, he remained a brahmacārī.”
| | | “But sex is a very strong force,” Mr. Goldsmith challenged. “What a man feels for a woman is undeniable.”
| | | “Therefore in every culture there is the institution of marriage,” Prabhupāda replied. “You can get yourself married and live peacefully with one woman, but the wife should not be used as a machine for sense gratification. Sex should be restricted to once a month and only for the propagation of children.”
| | | Hayagrīva, who was seated just to Svāmīji’s left, beside the large, dangling cymbal, spoke out suddenly. “Only once a month?” And with a touch of facetious humor he added loudly, “Better to forget the whole thing!”
| | | “Yes! That’s it! Very good boy.” Svāmīji laughed, and others joined him. “It is best not to think of it. Best just to chant Hare Kṛṣṇa.” And he held up his hands as if he were chanting on a strand of beads. “That way we will be saved from so much botheration. Sex is like the itching sensation, that’s all. And as when we scratch, it gets worse, so we should tolerate the itching and ask Kṛṣṇa to help us. It is not easy. Sex is the highest pleasure in the material world, and it is also the greatest bondage.”
| | | But Steve Goldsmith was shaking his head. Prabhupāda looked at him, smiling: “There is still a problem?”
| | | “It’s just that ... well, it’s been proved dangerous to repress the sex drive. There’s a theory that we have wars because ... ”
| | | “People are eating meat,” Prabhupāda interrupted. “As long as people eat meat, there will be war. And if a man eats meat, he will be sure to have illicit sex also.”
| | | Steve Goldsmith was an influential friend and supporter of ISKCON. But Prabhupāda would not change the philosophy of Kṛṣṇa consciousness “to please the Americans.”
| | | Judson Hall, on West Fifty-seventh Street, cost two hundred dollars to rent for one night. Rāya Rāma thought it was time Svāmīji tried reaching some of the more sophisticated New Yorkers, and since Judson Hall was near Carnegie Hall and sometimes had interesting concerts and lectures, he thought it would be a good place to start. Svāmīji agreed to the idea, and Rāya Rāma printed an announcement, which he distributed in the midtown bookstores. On the night of the event the devotees paraded through the midtown entertainment areas, beating a bass drum and handing out leaflets. Then they returned to Judson Hall for the program. Only seven people attended.
| | | The devotees felt terrible – they had misled Svāmīji and spent the equivalent of a month’s rent. “We can cancel the program if you like, Svāmīji,” Rāya Rāma said. But Prabhupāda replied, “No, let us chant and speak.” So the devotees took the stage and chanted with Svāmīji and danced, and then sat beside him as he lectured, his voice echoing through the empty hall. Afterward, Svāmīji called for questions, and a young man, about fifteen vacant rows back, asked whether he was correct in understanding that the Svāmī’s philosophy was primarily for reforming destitute young people.
| | | “No,” Prabhupāda replied. “Everyone in this material world is lost and destitute, even the so-called successful person, because everyone has forgotten Kṛṣṇa.”
| | | After the program, Svāmīji sat in a chair by the exit as the few members of the audience were leaving. A respectable-looking couple introduced themselves, and Svāmīji sat up very straight with folded palms and smiled. Brahmānanda’s mother was present, and Svāmīji was very cordial toward her. But in general the devotees were depressed at the small turnout. “I’m sorry, Svāmīji. We invited you here and almost no one came,” Rāya Rāma apologized. But Prabhupāda raised his eyebrows and said, “No one? You did not see Nārada? You did not see Lord Brahmā? When there is chanting of Hare Kṛṣṇa, even the demigods come to participate.”
| | | Back at the temple, Prabhupāda chided Rāya Rāma: “I told you we should have charged money. When something is free, people think it is worthless. But just charge three dollars or five dollars, and people will think, ‘Oh, you are offering some very valuable thing.’ In Bengal there is the story of a man who went house to house offering free mangoes. And no one would take his mangoes, because everyone thought, ‘Oh, why is he giving away these mangoes? There must be something wrong with them.’ So he charged three rupees, and then they thought, ‘These look like good mangoes. The price is only three rupees – all right.’ So, when people see that something is free, they think it is worthless. Charge them some money, and they will think it is very nice.”
| | | Burton Green was a musician, fond of the Svāmī and fond of banging on the innards of the piano in the temple during kīrtana.
| | | Burton Green: We had a really explosive thing to break out of, with this capitalistic, materialistic egg sitting on us. So there was so much ferocity in the music to break out of. But spinning out like that, you could have a nervous breakdown. So it was great to go to the Svāmī’s and chant in his small storefront on Second Avenue. The streets were full of māyā and perversion – and his was a place to really mellow out. It was great to chant there, to balance my life. It was great to sit and have prasādam with the Svāmī and get some real authentic Indian cooking and capātīs and talk about things, especially when I had very little money in my pocket. It was always nice to go.
| | | When Burton asked Prabhupāda to attend his piano recital at Town Hall Theater, Prabhupāda agreed.
| | | Brahmānanda: About seven or eight of us in our sneakers and jeans had ridden on the subway with Svāmīji to Town Hall. We went in and took our seats, and the concert began. Burton Green came out, opened the piano top, took a hammer, and began wildly hitting on the strings inside the piano. And it went on for an hour and a half. We were all sitting there with Svāmīji, and we all began chanting on our beads. There were only about two dozen people in the whole theater.
| | | Then the intermission came, and Svāmīji wanted to go to the toilet room, and I went along and helped him – turning on the water in the sink, getting a paper towel for him. Doing these little services for Svāmīji seemed like the perfection of my life. There was something so great about him that just doing those things was my perfection. And I felt like I was protecting him, like I was his personal bodyguard. Coming up on the subway, I had shown him how the subway worked and answered his questions. It all seemed very intimate.
| | | Anyway, we went back upstairs to our seats, and Burton Green came right up to Svāmīji saying, “Svāmīji, are you happy? Are you comfortable? Do you like it?” And Svāmīji was very polite and said yes. Then Burton said, “Now the second part is coming.” I interrupted and tried to say that Svāmīji is very tired and he takes rest at ten. It was already after ten, so I said we had to go back. But he pressed Svāmīji to stay for the second half, and so we had to stay.
| | | Then the poets came out and recited poetry. We were there until eleven-thirty, and then we had to ride back on the subway. But a few weeks later I learned that Prabhupāda had another reason for going to Town Hall – he was thinking of renting it for a temple, and he wanted to see it.
| | | The Gate Theater was a small auditorium on Second Avenue about ten blocks north of the storefront.
| | | Satsvarūpa: We rented the Gate Theater for one night. It was a dark place, painted all black. The theater was almost empty. We had an easel on stage with a painting of the Pañca-tattva. Svāmīji spoke, and his talk became very technical. Pointing and referring back to the painting, he described each member of the Pañca-tattva. He first explained that Lord Caitanya is the Supreme Personality of Godhead appearing as a pure devotee. Lord Nityānanda, to the right of Lord Caitanya, is His first expansion, and to the right of Lord Nityānanda is Advaita, who is the incarnation of the Supreme Lord. To the left of Lord Caitanya, he said, is Gadādhara, the internal energy, and Śrīvāsa is the perfect devotee.
| | | During the talk, I was thinking that this was maybe too elevated for the audience. But I was sitting close beside Svāmīji, and like the other devotees I was really enjoying being with him.
| | | After the Gate engagement, Svāmīji and his disciples agreed that it was a waste of time trying to rent theaters. It was better to go to Tompkins Square Park. That was the best place for attracting people, and it didn’t cost anything.
| | | It was 11:00 P.M., and only one light was on in Svāmīji’s apartment – in the kitchenette. Svāmīji was staying up, teaching Kīrtanānanda and Brahmānanda how to cook, because the next day (Sunday) they would be holding a feast for the public. Kīrtanānanda had suggested it be advertised as a “Love Feast,” and Svāmīji had adopted the name, although some thought it sounded strange at first to hear him say “Love Feast.” The devotees had put up posters around the neighborhood and had made a sign for the window of the storefront, and Svāmīji had said he would cook enough for at least fifty people. He said the Love Feasts should become an important part of ISKCON. As he had explained many times, food offered to Kṛṣṇa becomes spiritual, and whoever eats the prasādam receives great spiritual benefit. Prasādam meant “mercy.”
| | | His two helpers stood respectfully beside him, sometimes stepping back out of his way as he moved and sometimes looking over his shoulder as he mixed spices or set a pan over the flame or called for another ingredient. He was stirring a big pot of sweet rice with a wooden spoon – it had to be stirred constantly – and slowly adding milk. If the sweet rice burned, it would be ruined, he said, and he handed the spoon to Kīrtanānanda. He next showed them how to make ghī by heating butter in a wok and separating the milk solids from the butterfat. And he simultaneously taught them how to make apple chutney.
| | | Prabhupāda was silent as he cooked. But when Brahmānanda asked him how he had learned so much about cooking, Prabhupāda said that he had learned by watching his mother. He laughed and said it had not been like it is in the West, where you take a lump of flesh from your refrigerator, throw it in a pan, boil it, sprinkle it with salt, and then eat like an animal. And in Korea, he said, they eat dogs. But human beings should eat grains, fruits, vegetables, and milk; and the cow, especially, should not be killed.
| | | While Brahmānanda cut the apples for the chutney and put them in a pot for steaming and Kīrtanānanda stirred the sweet rice, Svāmīji prepared masālā – the basic mixture of spices – which he would soon add to the steaming apples. The familiar smell of red pepper and cumin seeds entered their nostrils sharply as the masālā crackled and smoked in the hot ghī in the tiny frying pan. With three separate operations going at once – sweet rice, steaming apples, and masālā – Prabhupāda cautioned Kīrtanānanda to stir the sweet rice steadily and scrape the bottom of the pot, and he took the spoon for a moment from Kīrtanānanda’s hand and demonstrated how to stir it properly. Sweet rice, chutney, and certain other dishes could be made in advance of the feast, he explained, but many things would have to be done the next morning.
| | | Prabhupāda rose early, despite having kept late hours the night before, and after the morning class he was back in the kitchen. Now, half a dozen disciples sat in his front room making dough for purīs and samosās. He had shown them how to make the dough, and Umāpati had kneaded for a while by pounding the soft dough with his fists. But Brahmānanda was better at it, socking the weight of his wrestler’s body onto the large lump of dough.
| | | As Svāmīji entered the room to examine the quality of the purīs, his disciples looked up at him respectfully. They were always serious when he was present. He picked up a purī and examined it. “It is not to the standard,” he said, “but it will have to do.” Then, amid crumpled rejects and oddly shaped pieces of dough, he squatted down beside his helpers, who were trying as best they could, though making a mess. He took a small ball of dough, pressed it flat with his fingers, and then deftly rolled it out until it curled around the wooden pin and then fell off – a perfectly round purī. He held it up, displaying a translucent, thin (but not too thin) patty of dough. “Make them like this,” he said. “But hurry.” On discovering that the dough was too stiff, Svāmīji added a little ghī and then a little milk and kneaded the dough to a softer texture. “Everything should be just right,” he said, and his disciples took to their menial tasks with concentrated earnestness. Who among them had ever heard of these things before – purīs and samosās? It was all new, and the challenge something very important; it was a part of devotional service.
| | | Svāmīji did much of the cooking as he simultaneously supervised his helpers. He was always near, walking barefoot back to the kitchen, then to the front room, then to his own room in the rear. And even when he went to his back room, his disciples could see him through the window in the wall.
| | | Svāmīji saw each of the nearly one dozen dishes through its final stages, and his disciples carried them into the front room in pots, one by one, and placed them before the picture of Lord Caitanya. There was halavā, dāl, two sabjīs, fancy rice, purīs, samosās, sweet rice, apple chutney, and gulābjāmuns, or sweetballs – ISKCON bullets. Prabhupāda had personally spent much time slowly deep-frying the sweetballs on a low heat, until they had turned golden brown and full. Then, one by one, he had lifted them out of the ghī with a slotted spoon and put them to soak in sugar syrup. He recognized that these golden, ghī-fried milk balls soaked with sugar water were his disciples’ favorite prasādam treat. He called them “ISKCON bullets” because they were weapons in the war against māyā. He even allowed that a jar of ISKCON bullets, floating in their syrup, be always on hand in the front room, where his disciples could take them without asking permission and without observing any regulated hours. They could take as many as they liked.
| | | Kīrtanānanda brought in the samosā filling, which he had prepared from spinach and green peas cooked to a paste and which the Svāmī had heavily spiced. Stuffing the samosās was an art, and Svāmīji showed them how to do it. He took a semicircle of dough, shaped it into a cone, stuffed it with a spoonful of filling, and then folded the top over and sealed it – a samosā, ready for the hot ghī.
| | | Acyutānanda carried the imperfectly shaped purīs into the kitchen, where he and Kīrtanānanda deep-fried them two at a time. If the temperature of the ghī, the consistency of the dough, and the size, shape, and thickness of the purīs were all just right, the purīs would cook in only a few seconds, rising to the surface of the ghī, where they would inflate like little balloons. The cooks then stood them on edge in a cardboard box to drain off the excess ghī.
| | | As they completed the last preparations for the feast, Svāmīji’s disciples washed the stiff dough from their hands and went down to the storefront, where they set out the straw mats and awaited the guests and the feast. Upstairs, Svāmīji and a couple of his cooks offered all the preparations to Lord Caitanya, reciting the paramparā prayer.
| | | The first few Love Feasts were not very well attended, but the devotees were so enthusiastic about the feast prasādam that they showed no disappointment over the scarcity of guests. They were prepared to eat everything.
| | | Satsvarūpa: There was something called “brāhmaṇa spaghetti,” which was rice-flour noodles cooked in ghī and soaked in sugar water. And there was halavā, puṣpānna rice with fried cheese balls, samosās, split mung beans fried into crunchy pellets and mixed with salt and spices, purīs, gulābjāmuns. And everything was succulent – that was the word Hayagrīva used. “Yes,” he would say, expressing it waggishly, “everything was very succulent.”
| | | Eating the feast was an intense experience. We were supposed to be subduing our senses all week, following strict regulations, controlling the tongue. And the feast was a kind of reward. Svāmīji and Kṛṣṇa were giving us a taste of full spiritual ecstasy, even though we were still beginners and still in the material world. Before taking my plateful, I would pray, “Please let me remain in Kṛṣṇa consciousness, because it is so nice and I am so fallen. Let me serve Svāmīji, and let me now enjoy this feast in transcendental bliss.” And I would begin eating, going from one taste sensation to another – the good rice, the favorite vegetable, the bread, and saving the gulābjāmun for last, thinking, “I can have seconds, and if I like, thirds.” We would keep our eyes on the big pots, confident that there was as much as we wanted. It was a time of rededication. We all enjoyed with completely open relish and sense gratification. Eating was very important.
| | | Gradually, attendance picked up. The feasts were free, and they were reputed to be delicious. Mostly local hippies came, but occasionally a higher class of experimenting New Yorkers or even the parents of one of the devotees would come. When the small temple was filled, guests would sit in the courtyard. They would take their prasādam-laden paper plates and their wooden spoons into the backyard garden and sit beneath the fire escape or at the picnic table or anywhere. And after eating, they would go back into the storefront for more. Devotees were stationed behind the pots of prasādam, and the guests would come by for seconds. The other tenants were not very happy about seeing the courtyard full of festive guests, and the devotees tried to pacify them by bringing them plates of prasādam. Although Svāmīji would not go down to the temple, he would take a plate in his room and hear with pleasure about the success of his new program.
| | | One time the devotees were eating so ravenously that they threatened to eat everything available before the guests had all been served, and Kīrtanānanda had to admonish them for their selfish attitude. Gradually, they were understanding that the Sunday feast was not just for their fun and pleasure but to bring people to Kṛṣṇa consciousness.
| | | Prabhupāda had begun Back to Godhead magazine in India. Although he had been writing articles since the 1930s, it was in 1944, in Calcutta, that he had singlehandedly begun the magazine, in response to his spiritual master’s request that he preach Kṛṣṇa consciousness in English. It had been with great difficulty that through his pharmaceutical business he had managed to gather the four hundred rupees a month for printing. And he had singlehandedly written, edited, published, financed, and distributed each issue. In those early years, Back to Godhead had been Prabhupāda’s major literary work and preaching mission. He had envisioned widespread distribution of the magazine, and he had thought of plans for spreading the message of Lord Caitanya all over the world. He had drawn up a list of major countries and the number of copies of Back to Godhead he wanted to send to each. He sought donations to finance this project, but help was scarce. Then, in 1959, he had turned his energies toward writing and publishing the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam. But now he wanted to revive Back to Godhead, and this time it would not be done singlehandedly. This time he would give the responsibility to his disciples.
| | | Greg Scharf, now Gargamuni since his recent initiation, found a press. A country club in Queens was trying to sell its small A.B. Dick press. Prabhupāda was interested, and he rode out to Queens in a borrowed van with Gargamuni and Kīrtanānanda to see the machine. It was old, but in good condition. The manager of the country club wanted $250 for it. Prabhupāda looked over the machine carefully and talked with the manager, telling him of his spiritual mission. The manager mentioned a second press he had on hand and explained that neither machine was actually of any use to him. So Prabhupāda said he would pay $250 for both machines; the country club did not really need them, and besides, the manager should help out, since Prabhupāda had an important spiritual message to print for the benefit of all humanity. The man agreed. Prabhupāda had Gargamuni and Kīrtanānanda load both machines into the van, and ISKCON had its printing press.
| | | Śrīla Prabhupāda gave over the editorship of Back to Godhead magazine to Hayagrīva and Rāya Rāma. For so many years he had taken Back to Godhead as his personal service to his spiritual master, but now he would let young men like Hayagrīva, the college English teacher, and Rāya Rāma, the professional writer, take up Back to Godhead magazine as their service to their spiritual master. In a short time, Hayagrīva and Rāya Rāma had compiled the first issue and were ready to print.
| | | It was an off night – no public kīrtana and lecture – and Svāmīji was up in his room working on his translation of Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam. Downstairs, the printing of the first issue had been going on for hours. Rāya Rāma had typed the stencils, and during the printing he had stood nervously over the machine, examining the printing quality of each page, stroking his beard, and murmuring, “Hmmmmm.” Now it was time to collate and staple each magazine. The stencils had lasted for one hundred copies, and one hundred copies of each of the twenty-eight pages and the front and back covers were now lined up along two of the unvarnished benches Raphael had made that summer. A few devotees collated and stapled the magazine in an assembly line, walking along the stacks of pages, taking one page under another until they reached the end of the bench and gave the assembled stack of pages to Gargamuni, who stood brushing his long hair out of his eyes, stapling each magazine with the stapler and staples Brahmānanda had brought from his Board of Education office. Even Hayagrīva, who usually didn’t volunteer for menial duties, was there, walking down the line, collating.
| | | Suddenly the side door opened, and to their surprise they saw Svāmīji looking in at them. Then he opened the door wide and entered the room. He had never come down like this on an off night before. They felt an unexpected flush of emotion and love for him, and they dropped down on their knees, bowing their heads to the floor. “No, no,” he said, raising his hand to stop them as some were still bowing and others already rising to their feet. “Continue what you are doing.” When they stood up and saw him standing with them, they weren’t sure what to do. But obviously he had come down to see them producing his Back to Godhead magazine, so they continued working, silently and efficiently. Prabhupāda walked down the row of pages, his hand and wrist extending gracefully from the folds of his shawl as he touched a stack of pages and then a finished magazine. “ISKCON Press,” he said.
| | | 
Jagannātha had designed the cover, using a pen-and-ink drawing of Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa similar to his painting in the temple. It was a simple drawing set within a pattern of concentric circles. The first page opened with the same motto Prabhupāda had used for years on his Back to Godhead: “Godhead is light, nescience is darkness. Where there is Godhead there is no nescience.” And on the same page, Hayagrīva had not been able to resist giving a quotation from William Blake, approved by Svāmīji, which substantiated the philosophy of Kṛṣṇa consciousness:
| | | God appears, and God is Light
To those poor souls who dwell in Night,
But does a Human Form display
To those who dwell in realms of Day.
| | | Although the editorial spoke of Blake, Whitman, and Jesus Christ, it stressed:
| | | ... it is to teach this science [of devotion to God] that Svāmī Bhaktivedanta has come to America. His message is simple: the chanting of the Holy Name of God: “Hare Kṛṣṇa, Hare Kṛṣṇa, Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa, Hare Hare ...”
| | | Following the orders of his spiritual master, His Divine Grace Sri Srimad Bhakti Siddhanta Saraswati Gosvāmī Prabhupad, Svāmī Bhaktivedanta began the initial publication of Back to Godhead in 1944. This bi-monthly, published from 1944 to 1956 in Vrindaban, India, ... established Svāmī Bhaktivedanta as the leading Personalist in India. This issue marks the first publication of Back to Godhead in the West.
| | | The main article, a summary of a lecture given by Prabhupāda, was based on notes taken by Umāpati.
| | | It has been said that when we wake up and when we go to sleep, we should beat our mind a thousand times with a shoe. When the mind says things like, “Why sing ‘Hare Kṛṣṇa’? Why not take LSD?” we should beat it with the same shoe. However, if we always think of Kṛṣṇa, no beating will be necessary. The mind will be our best friend.
| | | And there was an article by Hayagrīva: “Flip Out and Stay.” Hayagrīva had quoted liberally from Hart Crane and Walt Whitman.
| | | No wonder so many young collegiates are trying to flip out permanently on superdrugs … Perhaps this is their way of saying, “We don’t want any part of this hell you’ve made for yourselves.” So they use psychedelics as a springboard to propel themselves into different realms ... But the drug “flip” is only temporary. It is temporary because it is artificial ... One really begins to wonder where all these “trips” are leading.
| | | Hayagrīva concluded that kṛṣṇa-kīrtana is the quickest way to flip out without coming down.
| | | Your associates will think you mad. That is the first sign of progress. Just let others be mad for māyā, the old ephemeral lures of women and gold … But [you] be mad instead for the Reality.
| | | In the back of the magazine was an ad for Svāmīji’s essays, Kṛṣṇa, the Reservoir of Pleasure and Who is Crazy? and a notice:
| | | Soon to be printed:
Geetopanishad, or Bhagavad-gītā As It Is,
Translated and with commentaries by Svāmī Bhaktivedanta.
| | | Prabhupāda’s first and main instruction to his editors had been that they should produce the magazine regularly – every month. Even if they didn’t know how to sell the copies or even if they only turned out two pages, they had to continue bearing the standard.
| | | He called Hayagrīva to his room and presented him a complete three- volume set of his Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam. On the front page of each volume he had written, “To Sriman Hayagriva das Brahmacari with my blessings, A. C. Bhaktivedanta Svāmī.” Hayagrīva was grateful and mentioned that he had not been able to afford them. “That’s all right,” Prabhupāda said. “Now you compile this Back to Godhead. Work sincerely, and make it as big as Time magazine.”
| | | Prabhupāda wanted all his disciples to take part in it. “Don’t be dull,” he said. “Write something.” He wanted to give his disciples Back to Godhead for their own preaching. Brahmānanda and Gargamuni took the first issues out that same night on bicycles, riding to every head shop on the Lower East Side, all the way to Fourteenth Street and as far west as the West Village, until they had distributed all one hundred issues. This was an increase in the preaching. Now all his students could take part in the work – typing, editing, writing, assembling, selling. It was his preaching, of course, but he wasn’t alone anymore.
| | | “Over a short four months, the society has expanded sufficiently to warrant larger quarters than the small Second Avenue storefront temple,” stated the editorial in the second issue of Back to Godhead. Prabhupāda had not abandoned his idea for a big building in New York City. Greenwich Village real estate was too expensive, and midtown was out of the question, but Prabhupāda still said he wanted to buy a building. It was difficult for his followers to think of Kṛṣṇa consciousness as anything more than a Lower East Side movement, because who but the people of the Lower East Side would be interested in Kṛṣṇa consciousness? And anyway, who had money to buy a building in Manhattan?
| | | But one day, Ravīndra-svarūpa had happened to meet someone – a wealthy Jewish heir who was sympathetic toward youth movements – who agreed to loan Svāmīji five thousand dollars. Ravīndra-svarūpa had arranged the loan, and Svāmīji had designated the money as his building fund, to which he had gradually added another five thousand dollars that he had collected through incidental donations. But with suitable buildings starting at one hundred thousand dollars, even this sum seemed petty.
| | | Svāmīji went with Brahmānanda to look at a building on Sixth Street that had previously been the Jewish Providential Bank. It had a large lobby with a mezzanine, marble floors, and the atmosphere of a temple. Brahmānanda suggested that the vault area could be remodeled for use as a dormitory, and Svāmīji considered the mezzanine for his own apartment. The large lobby, he said, could be used for kīrtanas and lectures. On leaving the building, however, Prabhupāda noted that it was located on the corner, by a bus stop. It would not be a good location. The Gauḍīya Maṭh branch at Bhag Bazaar in Calcutta, he said, was also located at a bus stop, and the noisy engines of the buses as they started up created a disturbance.
| | | Prabhupāda next looked at the Temple Emanu-El, also on Sixth Street on the Lower East Side. It was even larger than the bank building, and when some of Svāmīji’s disciples walked through the cavernous, empty rooms, they became bewildered to think how, even if they could get such a place, they would be able to manage or use it.
| | | He visited other places: one so neglected and in such poor repair that it looked as though it had been vandalized, and another, in similar condition, filled with lumber stacked almost to the ceiling. He asked Rūpānuga, who had accompanied him, what he thought, and Rūpānuga said, “Too much time and money to fix it up.” So they left. Svāmīji returned to his room and went into the bathroom, where he washed his feet in the tub. He said that it was an Indian custom that after walking outside you wash your feet.
| | | Then the devotees met Mr. Price, an elegantly dressed real estate agent. “You have a handful of stars,” Mr. Price told Brahmānanda. “You’re incorporated as a tax-free religious organization. You have no idea how much money this will save. So many people have to vacate just because they can’t pay their taxes. But ‘someone up there’ is looking after you people, and I have just the place for you and your Svāmī.”
| | | Mr. Price showed Brahmānanda a handsome three-story building near St. Mark’s Place. It was a good downtown location, near the young people, yet in an area where the uptown people would feel safe. The floors were polished hardwood, all the doors were ornately hand-carved, and it had a large hall, suitable for a temple. The Marquis de Lafayette had stayed here during his visit in 1824, a fact that added to the building’s charm and prestige.
| | | One evening, Mr. Price visited Prabhupāda up in his room, Prabhupāda sitting on the floor behind his desk and Mr. Price sitting on a metal folding chair. Mr. Price wore an elegant suit and a white dress shirt with cuff links and starched cuffs. His expensive dress, meticulously tanned face, and blond hair (which some devotees thought was a wig) contrasted strangely with the Svāmī’s simplicity. Mr. Price kept referring to Svāmīji as “Your Excellency,” and he expressed much appreciation of Svāmīji’s work. He spoke optimistically about how, through his connections, he hoped to save Prabhupāda a lot of money and trouble and get him just the place he wanted.
| | | Accompanied by a few disciples, Prabhupāda went with Mr. Price to see the building. While Mr. Price, the devotees, and the custodian of the house were all talking together in a group, Prabhupāda wandered off unnoticed to a corner of the room, where there was an old-fashioned sewing machine. He began pressing the treadle and examining the workings of the machine. As Prabhupāda rejoined the group, Mr. Price said, “If you can just get five thousand dollars down, I can get the owners to draw up a contract. Five thousand dollars down, and another five thousand within two months – that shouldn’t be so difficult.” Prabhupāda liked the building and told Brahmānanda they should purchase it.
| | | Brahmānanda was inclined to turn the money over right away, but Prabhupāda said that first a suitable contract had to be drawn up. Mr. Price talked to the devotees in private, speaking in the Svāmī’s interest and in the interest of the spiritual movement, and he seemed to be promising them something even more than a contract. Perhaps he would give them the building. It didn’t make sense that he could give the building, but he told them something like that. He wanted the devotees to think of him as their friend, and he invited them over to his house one evening.
| | | When the devotees gathered in his house, sitting stiffly on chairs in his living room, which was lined with bookcases filled not with books, but with two-dimensional designs depicting rows of books, he continued to flatter them. He praised Hayagrīva’s writings, and Hayagrīva was obviously embarrassed and flattered. He praised everything about the devotees. He also spoke of how his dog had recently died, and said, “The house seems empty without the little fellow.” He was an unusual man, effeminate, and full of flattery and praises. Prabhupāda remained reserved after his first meeting with Mr. Price, though he was interested in getting the building if the proper arrangement could be made.
| | | Brahmānanda continued to negotiate with Mr. Price, and soon, according to Mr. Price, the owners of the building would be expecting the devotees to give proof of their ability to meet the payments. On Prabhupāda’s direction, the devotees hired a lawyer to go over the contract. “This Mr. Price is causing us so much pain,” Prabhupāda said. “What is the difficulty?” He didn’t see the necessity for Mr. Price at all. “Why don’t we purchase directly from the owners? Why all these agents?”
| | | “It’s just the way it’s done here,” Brahmānanda said.
| | | Alan Kallman was a record producer. He had read the article in The East Village Other about the swami from India and the mantra he had brought with him. When he had read the Hare Kṛṣṇa mantra on the front page, he had become attracted. The article gave the idea that one could get a tremendous high or ecstasy from chanting. The Svāmī’s Second Avenue address was given in the article, so one night in November, Alan and his wife visited the storefront.
| | | Alan: There were about thirty pairs of shoes in the back of the room – people in the front and shoes in the back. We took off our shoes and sat down. Everyone was seated and very quiet. Front and center was a chair, and everyone was staring at this chair. Even then we felt a certain energy in the room. No one was saying anything, and everyone was staring at the chair. The next thing was our first sight of the Svāmī. He came in and sat down on the chair, and there was a tremendous surge of energy. The Svāmī began chanting, and it was a very beautiful sound. Svāmīji had this little drum he was hitting – very penetrating and exciting. One of the devotees was holding up a sign with the chant written on it so everyone could follow. Then the devotees got up and danced in a circle, a special dance with steps to it. The Svāmī was looking around the room, and he seemed to smile as he looked at you, as if to encourage you to join.
| | | The next day, Alan phoned Prabhupāda to propose that he make a record of the chanting. But it was Brahmānanda who answered the phone, and he gave Alan an appointment with the Svāmī that evening. So again Alan and his wife went down to the East Village, which to them was the neighborhood where things were happening. If you wanted to have some excitement, you went down to the East Village.
| | | When they entered the Svāmī’s room, he was seated at his typewriter, working. As soon as Alan mentioned his idea about making a record, Prabhupāda was interested. “Yes,” he said, “we must record. If it will help us distribute the chanting of Hare Kṛṣṇa, then it is our duty.” They scheduled the recording for two weeks later, in December, at the Adelphi Recording Studio near Times Square. Alan’s wife was impressed by how enthusiastically the Svāmī had gotten to the point of making the record: “He had so much energy and ambition in his plans.”
| | | It was the night before the recording date. A boy walked into the storefront for the evening kīrtana carrying a large, two-headed Indian drum. This was not unusual, as guests often brought drums, flutes, and other instruments, yet this time Svāmīji seemed particularly interested. The boy sat down and was preparing to play when Prabhupāda motioned for the boy to bring him the drum. The boy didn’t move – he wanted to play it himself – but Brahmānanda went over and said, “Svāmīji wants to play the drum,” so the boy gave in.
| | | Brahmānanda: Svāmīji began to play, and his hands were just dancing on the drum. Everyone was stunned that Svāmīji knew how to do this. All we had seen was the bongo drum, so I thought it was the proper Indian drum. But when this two-headed drum came out of nowhere and Svāmīji started playing it like a master musician, it created an ecstasy a hundred times more than the bongo drum had.
| | | After the kīrtana, Prabhupāda asked the boy if he could borrow the drum for the recording session the next night. The boy at first was reluctant, but the devotees promised to return his drum the next day, so he agreed and said he would bring the drum the next evening. When he left the storefront that night with his drum under his arm, the devotees thought they would never see the boy or his drum again, but the next day, a few hours before Svāmīji was to leave for the studio, the boy returned with his drum.
| | | It was a cold December night. The Svāmī, dressed in his usual saffron dhotī, a tweed overcoat, and a pair of gray shoes (which had long since replaced his original white, pointy rubber ones), got into Rūpānuga’s VW van with about fifteen of his followers and their instruments and started for the recording studio.
| | | Brahmānanda: We didn’t start recording right away, because there was a group ahead of us. So we went out for a walk in Times Square. We were just standing there with Svāmīji, seeing all the flashing lights and all the sense gratification, when a woman came up to Svāmīji and said, “Oh, hello. Where do you come from?” in a very loud, matronly way. And Svāmīji said, “I am a monk from India.” And she said, “Oh, that’s wonderful. Glad to meet you.” And then she shook Svāmīji’s hand and left.
| | | At the studio, everyone accepted the devotees as a regular music group. One of the rock musicians asked them what the name of their group was, and Hayagrīva laughed and replied, “The Hare Kṛṣṇa Chanters.” Of course most of the devotees weren’t actually musicians, and yet the instruments they brought with them – a tamboura, a large harmonium (loaned by Allen Ginsberg), and rhythm instruments – were ones they had played during kīrtanas for months. So as they entered the studio they felt confident that they could produce their own sound. They just followed their Svāmī. He knew how to play, and they knew how to follow him. They weren’t just another music group. It was music, but it was also chanting, meditation, worship.
| | | Prabhupāda sat on a mat in the center of the studio, while the engineers arranged the microphones and assigned each devotee a place to sit according to his particular instrument. They asked for only two pairs of karatālas and they approved of the pairs of rhythm sticks, but they wanted several devotees clapping their hands. Rūpānuga’s usual instrument was a pair of brass Indian bells with the tongues removed, and when the engineer saw them, he came over and said, “Let me hear that.” Rūpānuga played them, and they passed. Since Ravīndra-svarūpa would be playing the drone on the harmonium, he sat apart with his own microphone, and Kīrtanānanda also had a microphone for the tamboura.
| | | When the engineers were satisfied, they cued the devotees, and Svāmīji began chanting and playing his drum. The cymbals and sticks and clapping hands joined him, and the chanting went on steadily for about ten minutes, until an engineer came out of the glass studio and stopped them: Brahmānanda was clapping too loudly, creating an imbalance. The engineer went back into his studio, put on his headphones, balanced everyone, and cued them for a second take. This time it was better.
| | | The first sound was the tamboura, with its plucked, reverberating twang. An instant later Svāmīji began beating the drum and singing, Vande ’haṁ śrī-guroḥ ... Then the whole ensemble put out to sea ... the tamboura, the harmonium, the clackers, the cymbals, Rūpānuga’s bells, Svāmīji’s solo singing – pushing off from their moorings, out into a fairweather sea of chanting ... lalitā-śrī-viśākhānvitāṁś ca ...
| | | Svāmīji’s voice in the studio was very sweet. His boys were feeling love, not just making a record. There was a feeling of success and union, a crowning evening to all their months together.
... Śrī-kṛṣṇa-caitanya, prabhu-nityānanda ...
| | | After a few minutes of singing prayers alone, Svāmīji paused briefly while the instruments continued pulsing, and then began the mantra: Hare Kṛṣṇa, Hare Kṛṣṇa, Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa, Hare Hare. It was pure Bhaktivedanta Svāmī – expert, just like his cooking in the kitchen, like his lectures. The engineers liked what they heard – it would be a good take if nothing went wrong. The instruments were all right, the drum, the singing. The harmony was rough. But this was a special record – a happening. The Hare Kṛṣṇa Chanters were doing their thing, and they were doing it all right. Alan Kallman was excited. Here was an authentic sound. Maybe it would sell.
| | | After a few rounds of the mantra, the devotees began to feel relaxed, as though they were back in the temple, and they were able to forget about making mistakes on the record. They just chanted, and the beat steadied into a slightly faster pace. The word hare would come sometimes with a little shout in it, but there were no emotional theatrics in the chorus, just the straight response to the Svāmī’s melody. Ten minutes went by. The chanting went faster, louder and faster – Svāmīji doing more fancy things on the drum, until suddenly ... everything stopped, with the droning note of the harmonium lingering.
| | | Alan came out of the studio: “It was great, Svāmī. Great. Would you like to just go right ahead and read the address now? Or are you too tired?” With polite concern, pale, befreckled Alan Kallman peered through his thick glasses at the Svāmī. Svāmīji appeared tired, but he replied, “No, I am not tired.” Then the devotees sat back in the studio to watch and listen as Prabhupāda read his prepared statement.
| | | “As explained on the cover of the record album …” The sympathetic devotees thought that Svāmīji, despite his accent, sounded perfectly clear, reading from his script like an elocutionist. “… this transcendental vibration by chanting of Hare Kṛṣṇa, Hare Kṛṣṇa, Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa, Hare Hare / Hare Rāma, Hare Rāma, Rāma Rāma, Hare Hare is the sublime method for reviving our Kṛṣṇa consciousness.” The language was philosophic, and the kind of people who usually walked out of the temple as soon as the kīrtanas ended, before the Svāmī could even speak a word, would also not appreciate this speech on their record album. “As living spiritual souls,” Svāmīji preached, “we are all originally Kṛṣṇa conscious entities. But due to our association with matter from time immemorial, our consciousness is now polluted by material atmosphere.” The devotees listened submissively to the words of their spiritual master, while at the same time trying to comprehend the effect this would have on the audience. Certainly some people would turn it off at the very mention of a spiritual nature. Svāmīji continued reading, explaining that the chanting would deliver one from the sensual, the mental, and the intellectual planes and bring one to the spiritual realm.
| | | “We have seen it practically,” he continued. “Even a child can take part in the chanting, or even a dog can take part in it. … The chanting should be heard, however, from the lips of a pure devotee of the Lord.” And he continued reading on to the end. “… No other means, therefore, of spiritual realization is as effective in this age as chanting the mahā-mantra: Hare Kṛṣṇa, Hare Kṛṣṇa, Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa, Hare Hare / Hare Rāma, Hare Rāma, Rāma Rāma, Hare Hare.”
| | | Alan again came rushing out of the studio. It was fine, he said. He explained that they had recorded a little echo into the speech, to make it special for the listener. “Now,” he pushed back his glasses with his finger. “We’ve got about ten minutes left on the side with the speech. Would you like to chant again? Or is it too late, Svāmīji?” Prabhupāda smiled. No, it was not too late. He would chant the prayers to his spiritual master.
| | | While his disciples lounged around the studio, watching their spiritual master and the technical activity of the engineers behind the glass, Prabhupāda began singing. Again the harmonium’s drone began, then the tamboura and drum, but with a much smaller rhythm group than before. He sang through, without any retakes, and then ended the song (and the evening) with a fortissimo drumming as the hand-pumped organ notes faded.
| | | Again, Alan came out and thanked the Svāmī for being so patient and such a good studio musician. Prabhupāda was still sitting. “Now we are tired,” he admitted.
| | | Suddenly, over the studio sound system came a playback of the Hare Kṛṣṇa chanting, complete with echo. When Prabhupāda heard the successful recording of his chanting, he became happy and stood and began dancing, swaying back and forth, dipping slightly from the waist, his arms upraised in the style of Lord Caitanya, dancing in ecstasy. The scheduled performance was over, but now Svāmīji was making the best performance of the evening from his spontaneous feelings. As he danced, his half-asleep disciples became startled and also rose to their feet and joined him, dancing in the same style. And in the recording booth behind the glass, the engineers also raised their hands and began dancing and chanting.
| | | “Now you have made your best record,” Svāmīji told Mr. Kallman as he left the studio for the freezing Manhattan evening. Svāmīji got into the front seat of the Volkswagen bus while “The Hare Kṛṣṇa Chanters” climbed into the back with their instruments, and Rūpānuga drove them back home, back to the Lower East Side.
| | | The next morning Prabhupāda didn’t get up. He was exhausted. Kīrtanānanda, who was personally serving him, became alarmed when the Svāmī said something about his heart skipping and about not being able to move. For the first time, it became apparent that he was overexerting himself. Kīrtanānanda thought back through the fall and summer, when the Svāmī had led them all on hours-long kīrtanas in the park or on late-evening ventures – they had come to take it for granted. But now Kīrtanānanda saw that there was cause to be worried for Svāmīji’s health. Svāmīji had no appetite for lunch, although by afternoon he regained his appetite and usual activity.
| | | That same day, a letter arrived from Mukunda in San Francisco. Not long after their wedding, Mukunda and Jānakī had left for the West Coast. Mukunda had told Svāmīji that he wanted to go on to India to study Indian music, but after a few weeks in southern Oregon he had ended up in San Francisco. Now he had a better idea. He wanted to rent a place and invite Svāmīji to come and start his Hare Kṛṣṇa movement in the Haight-Ashbury district, just as he was doing on the Lower East Side. He said that the prospects there for Kṛṣṇa consciousness were very good. On hearing this, Prabhupāda began unfolding his expansive plans. They should open temples not only in San Francisco but, one by one, all over the world, even in Russia and China, and print the Bhagavad-gītā in different languages. And he would translate all the volumes of Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam into English and take a party of devotees back to India.
| | | The devotees who heard him were amazed. Kīrtanānanda, who had seen the alarming symptoms of Prabhupāda’s ill health, began to forget what he had thought earlier that morning. If Kṛṣṇa desired, Kīrtanānanda thought, Svāmīji could do anything.
| | | When Prabhupāda came down to hold his morning class on November 19, he carried a large red book instead of the usual brown one. But no one noticed the difference. He began as always, softly singing prayers to his spiritual master and accompanying himself with a faint rhythm on his bongo (the neighbors were still asleep).
| | | The weather was cold, but the steam radiators kept the storefront warm. There would be no more outdoor chanting now. In Manhattan, the city opens wide in the summer and shuts tight in the winter, which for the evening classes meant no more noisy children outside the door. And although the morning classes had always been quiet even in the summer, now with winter approaching the group became a tighter, more committed core of sincere students coming together to hear Svāmīji speak.
| | | It was now four months since he had begun ISKCON at 26 Second Avenue. He had held three separate initiations and initiated nineteen devotees. Most of them had become serious, although a few remained casual visitors. Now, in these morning classes, Svāmīji wanted to instruct them more about how to become devotees.
| | | He led the chanting of Hare Kṛṣṇa for twenty minutes, cautioning them to respond softly, so that the neighbors would not pour water through the ceiling again – although they hadn’t done it lately. Prabhupāda always tried to cooperate with the tenants, but occasionally someone would start a petition – which never amounted to much – against the devotees. Sometimes Prabhupāda would help the landlord, Mr. Chutey, by taking out other tenants’ garbage or just giving him a hand.
| | | Mr. Chutey was a husky, beer-bellied Polish refugee who lived alone in an apartment on the first floor. Mr. Chutey respected the Svāmī for his age and scholarship, and Svāmīji was always amiable with him. Whenever Mr. Chutey came to the apartment, he would never take his shoes off, and Prabhupāda would always say, “That’s all right, that’s all right.” And one time, when the plumbing didn’t work in Prabhupāda’s apartment, Prabhupāda went downstairs and took a shower in Mr. Chutey’s apartment.
| | | But Svāmīji also considered Mr. Chutey a classic example of a foolish materialist, because although he had spent his life’s savings to buy this building, he still had to work so hard. Svāmīji said he was a fool for having spent his savings to buy such a run-down building. Because the building was in such poor condition, he had to work like an ass to keep it up. “This is how the materialists work,” Svāmīji would say.
| | | Mr. Chutey, although respectful to the Svāmī, didn’t like the devotees. Prabhupāda told his disciples, “Treat him as if he were your father.” So that’s what they did. Any time they would have to deal with Mr. Chutey, they would approach him saying, “We are your sons.”
| | | Those disciples who lived at the storefront had risen by six-thirty, bathed, and assembled downstairs by seven, while those who lived outside were arriving separately, taking off their coats and piling them on the shelf of the display window. Although women always attended the evening meetings, Jadurāṇī was usually the only girl who came in the morning. After breakfast, she would begin painting upstairs in the Svāmī’s front room. She used a beginner’s technique of dividing the canvas into vertical and horizontal grid lines and transposing bit by bit the corresponding sections of a photograph onto the canvas. The process was painstaking, and sometimes her painting was out of proportion. But Jadurāṇī was sincere, and that pleased Prabhupāda. She had completed several paintings of four-armed Viṣṇu, a new painting of Rādhā-Kṛṣṇa, and a painting of Lord Caitanya and His associates. When the painting of Lord Caitanya was finished, Svāmīji had it hung in the temple. “Now,” he announced, “there should be no more nonsense here. Lord Caitanya is present.”
| | | After the morning kīrtana Svāmī said, as usual, “Now chant one round.” They chanted together, following him. They all had a vow to chant sixteen rounds daily, but they chanted their first round in the morning in the Svāmī’s presence, so he could see each of them. As Svāmīji chanted, he looked out at Second Avenue, which was mostly deserted, or at the pictures on the wall, or, with concerned glances, at the individual devotees. Sometimes he seemed surprised when he saw them chanting so earnestly, giving evidence of the power of the holy name to deliver even the most fallen. Some of the devotees kept their beads in a bead bag like his, but when they chanted the first round together in the morning, they imitated him by holding their beads out in both hands and chanting along with him: Hare Kṛṣṇa, Hare Kṛṣṇa, Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa, Hare Hare, until they finished one round.
| | | Then he held up the unfamiliar red book. “Because you are a little advanced,” he said, “I am going to read today from the Caitanya-caritāmṛta.” Caitanya what? No one was able to pick up the pronunciation. They had heard of Caitanya, certainly, but not of this new book. But in his room the night before, Prabhupāda had informed some of the devotees that he would start reading from a new book, Caitanya-caritāmṛta. He said that Lord Caitanya had told one of His disciples that understanding Kṛṣṇa wasn’t really possible, but that He would give the disciple just a drop of the ocean of Kṛṣṇa consciousness, so that the disciple could then appreciate what the whole ocean must be like. “Be patient as I present this,” he had told them. “It is revolutionary, but you should just be patient.”
| | | In the storefront Brahmānanda turned on the reel-to-reel tape recorder as Svāmīji began reading the Bengali verses, and both Satsvarūpa and Umāpati opened their notebooks and waited, poised for rapid notetaking. It was almost a college classroom atmosphere as Prabhupāda cleared his throat, put on his eyeglasses, and peered over the large open volume, turning to the correct page. Whenever he wore the glasses, he seemed to reveal a new personality of deep Vaiṣṇava scholarship. This feature of Svāmīji emphasized his old age – not that it showed him feeble or invalid, but it emphasized his scholarship and wisdom and his contemplation of the scriptures, in contrast to his vigorous drum-playing in Tompkins Square Park or his alert business dealings while looking for a new building.
| | | Svāmīji began reading and translating the story of Sanātana (Satsvarūpa wrote “Suta” and Umāpati wrote “Sonotan”) and his brother Rūpa, and how they became intimate associates of Lord Caitanya. It was a historical account. Rūpa and Sanātana had been born as brāhmaṇas in India, but they had served in the government under the Muslims, who were in power at that time. The two brothers had even adopted Muslim names. But when Lord Caitanya was touring in their part of the country, they had met Him and had become determined to give up their materialistic ways and follow His path of pure love of God. Rūpa, who was so rich that he had enough gold to fill two boats, left his high government post, divided his wealth, became a mendicant, and joined Lord Caitanya. For Sanātana, however, there were more obstacles.
| | | The Nawab Shah, the chief Muslim ruler of the province of Bengal, was dependent on Sanātana’s managerial expertise. But Sanātana began staying home and submitting sick reports, while actually he had employed a dozen brāhmaṇas, who were teaching him the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam. The Nawab sent his physician to find out the actual state of Sanātana’s health, and when the Nawab heard that Sanātana was not actually ill, he himself arrived one day, surprising Sanātana and the brāhmaṇas. The Nawab demanded that Sanātana return to his government work and leave him free to do some hunting and to leave Bengal on a military campaign. But Sanātana said that he could not, that he was now determined to study the scriptures, and that the Nawab could do with him whatever he liked. At this challenge, the Nawab imprisoned Sanātana. …
| | | Svāmīji looked at his watch. Morning classes were shorter than those in the evening – only half an hour – and Rūpānuga, Satsvarūpa, and Brahmānanda had to go to work. He paused in his narration – “So, we will discuss tomorrow.” Prabhupāda closed the book, and after a few informal words, he got up and left the storefront, followed by Kīrtanānanda, who carried his book and glasses.
| | | Breakfast was served every morning in the storefront. Either Acyutānanda or Kīrtanānanda would cook an oatmeal cereal for the devotees. Satsvarūpa had read in an English edition of the Rāmāyaṇa about some sages preparing a mystical cereal called “Heavenly Porridge.” The name had caught on, and the devotees began calling their own cereal Heavenly Porridge. The popular fare would consist of steaming hot Heavenly Porridge (sweetened to taste with sugar syrup from the gulābjāmun pot), hot milk, and fruit. And each devotee would get an ISKCON bullet.
| | | At breakfast this morning, the talk was of Rūpa and Sanātana. Umāpati said the Caitanya-caritāmṛta was available in an English translation, but maybe the Svāmī wouldn’t want them to read it. “We’ll hear it from Svāmīji,” Kīrtanānanda said. Hayagrīva was amused at the “cliff-hanger” ending of the class. “Tune in tomorrow,” he laughed loosely, “and hear what happened to… what’s his name?” The devotees responded differently: “Santan” … “Sonoton” … “Sanātana.” Hayagrīva: “Yeah, tune in tomorrow and hear. Will Sanātana get out of jail?” They were not the most sober group when together, especially after taking the thick, sweet syrup. Acyutānanda spilled some of the syrup on the rug, and Kīrtanānanda admonished him. Jadurāṇī ate silently and hurried to begin a day’s painting in Prabhupāda’s room. Satsvarūpa adjusted his tie, and he and Rūpānuga and Brahmānanda went to their jobs.
| | | The next morning, the Caitanya-caritāmṛta seminar began with Sanātana in jail, planning how to get free to join Lord Caitanya. His brother Rūpa sent him a note saying that he had left a large sum of gold for Sanātana in the care of a grocer, and Sanātana offered the gold to the jailer as a bribe. He told him, “Sir, I know you are a very learned man, and in your Koran it says that if you aid someone in going to spiritual life, then you will be elevated to the highest post. I am going to Lord Caitanya, and if you will assist me in escaping, it will be spiritual gain for you. Also, I will give you five hundred gold coins, so it will be material gain as well.” The jail keeper said, “All right. But I am afraid of the king.” So Sanātana advised him, “Just say that when I was passing stool by the river, I fell in with my chains and was washed away.” For seven hundred gold coins, the jailer agreed to help Sanātana and sawed off the shackles. Sanātana, accompanied by his servant, then fled by the back roads until by nighttime he came upon a hotel.
| | | Now this hotel was kept by thieves, and an astrologer at the hotel read Sanātana’s palm and judged by the stars that he had money. When Sanātana asked for assistance in passing over the jungle mountains, the hotel keeper said that he would help Sanātana leave, in the dead of the night. They treated Sanātana with great respect, which made him suspicious, since he hadn’t eaten in three days and his clothes were unclean. So he asked his servant if he had any money. The servant said yes, he had seven gold coins, and Sanātana immediately took the money to the hotel keeper, who was already planning to kill him during the night and take his money. …
| | | Svāmīji looked at his watch. Again they had gone overtime. “So we will continue tomorrow,” he said, closing the book “–how Sanātana manages to escape the dacoits.”
| | | Kīrtanānanda, Brahmānanda, Acyutānanda, Gargamuni, Satsvarūpa, Hayagrīva, Umāpati, Jadurāṇī, Rūpānuga, Dāmodara (Dan Clark) – their lives had all been transformed. Over the months they had transferred the center of their lives to Svāmīji, and everything revolved around the routine of classes and kīrtana and prasādam and coming and going to and from the storefront.
| | | Brahmānanda and Gargamuni had given up their apartment several months ago and moved into the storefront. The ceiling of Acyutānanda’s apartment had caved in one day, just minutes after he had left the room, and he had decided to move to the storefront also. Hayagrīva and Umāpati had cleaned up their Mott Street place and were using it only for chanting, sleeping, or reading Svāmīji’s Bhāgavatam. Satsvarūpa had announced one day that the devotees could use his apartment, just around the corner from the temple, for taking showers, and the next day Rāya Rāma had moved in, and the others began using the apartment as a temple annex. Jadurāṇī kept making her early-morning treks from the Bronx. (Svāmīji had said that he had no objection to her living in the second room of his apartment, but that people would talk.) Even Rūpānuga and Dāmodara, whose backgrounds and tastes were different, were also positively dependent on the daily morning class and the evening class three nights a week and in knowing that Svāmīji was always there in his apartment whenever they needed him.
| | | There were, however, some threats to this security. Prabhupāda would sometimes say that unless he got permanent residency from the government, he would have to leave the country. But he had gone to a lawyer, and after the initial alarm it seemed that Svāmīji would stay indefinitely. There was also the threat that he might go to San Francisco. He said he was going, but then sometimes he said he wasn’t. If the negotiations through Mr. Price for the building on Tenth Street came through, then, Svāmīji said, he would make his headquarters in New York City and not go to San Francisco.
| | | But at least in the morning sessions, as his disciples listened to him speak on Caitanya-caritāmṛta, these threats were all put out of mind, and the timeless, intimate teachings took up their full attention. Kṛṣṇa consciousness was a struggle, keeping yourself strictly following Svāmīji’s code against māyā – “No illicit sex, no intoxication, no gambling, no meat-eating.” But it was possible as long as they could hear him singing and reading and speaking from Caitanya-caritāmṛta. They counted on his presence for their Kṛṣṇa consciousness. He was the center of their newly spiritualized lives, and he was all they knew of Kṛṣṇa consciousness. As long as they could keep coming and seeing him, Kṛṣṇa consciousness was a sure thing – as long as he was there.
| | | Seated on the worn rug, they looked up at him, waiting for him to begin the next installment. Prabhupāda cleared his throat and glanced down at Brahmānanda, who sat beside the silently running tape recorder. Satsvarūpa entered the date in his notebook. Prabhupāda began reading the Bengali verses and paraphrasing. ...
| | | Sanātana took the seven gold coins from his servant and gave them to the hotel keeper. “You have eight coins,” the astrologer said. And Sanātana went back and found that his servant was retaining another gold coin. “Why do you carry this death knell on the road?” Sanātana asked. “You are too attached to money.” And he took the gold piece from his servant and told him to return home. Sanātana then brought the gold coin to the hotel keeper. But the hotel keeper, who admitted that he had intended to kill Sanātana for his money, now said, “You are a good man, and you may keep your money.” But Sanātana refused. Then the hotel keeper provided Sanātana with four assistants. They helped Sanātana through the jungle and then left him alone.
| | | Free from his nuisance servant and from the dacoits, Sanātana felt liberated as he passed along the road alone. Soon he came upon his brother-in-law, who was traveling along the same road. His brother-in-law was a wealthy man carrying a great deal of money to buy horses. “Please stay with me at least a few days,” Sanātana’s brother-in-law said. “It’s really bad how you look.” The brother-in-law knew that Sanātana was going to spiritual life, but he requested that he improve his dress by accepting a valuable blanket from him. Sanātana took the blanket and continued on his way.
| | | At last, Sanātana reached Benares, and he went straight to the home of Candraśekhara, where Lord Caitanya was staying, and waited outside the door. Lord Caitanya knew Sanātana had arrived, and He requested Candraśekhara to go to the door and ask the devotee who was waiting there to come in. Candraśekhara went out but saw only the wretched-looking Sanātana, whom he took to be a half-mad Muhammadan fakir. Candraśekhara returned to Lord Caitanya and explained that there was no devotee outside. “Was there anyone at all?” the Lord asked. “Yes,” said Candraśekhara, “some wretched fakir.” Then Lord Caitanya went to the door and embraced Sanātana. The Lord cried tears of ecstasy, for He had at last found a devotee whom He knew was worthy to receive His entire teachings. And Sanātana cried tears of joy that his life’s ambition was being fulfilled; but because he was dirty from his traveling and not worthy, he asked the Lord not to touch him. The Lord replied, “It is I who benefit from touching you; whoever touches a true devotee is blessed.”
| | | Prabhupāda closed the book, ending another morning session.
| | | One of Prabhupāda’s main concerns was to finish and publish as soon as possible his translation and commentary of Bhagavad-gītā, and one day something happened that enabled him to increase his work on the manuscript. Unexpectedly, a boy named Neal arrived. He was a student from Antioch College on a special work-study program, and he had the school’s approval to work one term within the āśrama of Svāmī Bhaktivedanta, which he had heard about through the newspapers. Neal mentioned that he was a good typist, if that could be of any help to the Svāmī. Prabhupāda considered this to be Kṛṣṇa’s blessing. Immediately he rented a dictaphone and began dictating tapes, Hayagrīva donated his electric typewriter, and Neal set up his work area in Svāmīji’s front room and began typing eight hours a day. This inspired Prabhupāda and obliged him to produce more. He worked quickly, sometimes day and night, on his Bhagavad-gītā As It Is. He had founded ISKCON five months ago, yet in his classes he was still reading the Bhagavad-gītā translation of Dr. Radhakrishnan. But when Bhagavad-gītā As It Is would at last be published, he told his disciples, it would be of major importance for the Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement. At last there would be a bona fide edition of the Gītā.
| | | Whatever Svāmīji said or did, his disciples wanted to hear about it. Gradually, they had increased their faith and devotion to Svāmīji, whom they accepted as God’s representative, and they took his actions and words to be absolute. After one of the disciples had been alone with him, the others would gather around to find out every detail of what had happened. It was Kṛṣṇa consciousness. Jadurāṇī was especially guileless in relating what Svāmīji had said or done. One day, Prabhupāda had stepped on a tack that Jadurāṇī had dropped on the floor, and although she knew it was a serious offense to her spiritual master, the major importance of the event seemed to be how Prabhupāda had displayed his transcendental consciousness. He silently and emotionlessly reached down and pulled the tack from his foot, without so much as a cry. And once, when she was fixing a painting over his head behind the desk, she had accidentally stepped on his sitting mat. “Is that an offense?” she had asked. And Svāmīji had replied, “No. For service you could even stand on my head.”
| | | Sometimes Brahmānanda would say that Svāmīji had told him something very intimate about Kṛṣṇa consciousness in private. But when he would tell what Svāmīji had said, someone else would recall that the same thing was in Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam. Prabhupāda had said that the spiritual master is present in his instructions and that he had tried to put everything into those three volumes of the Bhāgavatam, and the devotees were finding this to be true.
| | | There were no secrets in Svāmīji’s family of devotees. Everyone knew that Umāpati had left for a few days, disappointed with the Svāmī’s severe criticism of the Buddhists, but had come back, and in a heavy, sincere exchange with Prabhupāda, he had decided to take to Kṛṣṇa consciousness again. And everyone knew that Satsvarūpa had resigned from his job and that when he went to tell Svāmīji about it, Svāmīji had told him that he could not quit but should go on earning money for Kṛṣṇa and donating it to the Society and that this would be his best service. And everyone knew that Svāmīji wanted Gargamuni to cut his hair – Svāmīji called it “Gargamuni’s Shakespearean locks” – but that he would not do so.
| | | The year ended, and Prabhupāda was still working on his manuscript of Bhagavad-gītā, still lecturing in the mornings from Caitanya-caritāmṛta and Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evenings from Bhagavad-gītā, and still talking of going to San Francisco. Then New Year’s Eve came, and the devotees suggested that since this was a holiday when people go out to celebrate, maybe they should hold a Kṛṣṇa conscious festival.
| | | Rūpānuga: So we had a big feast, and a lot of people came, although it wasn’t as crowded as the Sunday feasts. We were all taking prasādam, and Svāmīji was sitting up on his dais, and he was also taking prasādam. He was demanding that we eat lots of prasādam. And then he was saying, “Chant! Chant!” So we were eating, and chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa between bites, and he was insisting on more and more prasādam. I was amazed. He stayed with us and kept insisting that we eat so much. He stayed until around eleven o’clock, and then he became drowsy. And the party was over.
| | | Morning after morning, the story of Sanātana Gosvāmī unfolded from the pages of Svāmīji’s big book, which only he could read and explain. Lord Caitanya told Sanātana that he should be very grateful that Kṛṣṇa had been merciful to him, to which Sanātana replied, “You say that Kṛṣṇa is very merciful, but I do not know who Kṛṣṇa is. You have saved me.”
| | | Lord Caitanya had many devotees in Benares, and He sent Sanātana to the home of one of His friends where he could get something to eat, take a bath, shave, and dress in new clothing. Sanātana, however, refused the new clothing, and he also refused to become dependent on one place for his meals. Now that he had entered the renounced order, he preferred to go begging his meals at a different place each day. When Lord Caitanya saw all this, He was pleased, but Sanātana sensed that his valuable blanket did not please the Lord, so he traded the new blanket for an old one. This pleased Lord Caitanya, who said, “Now you are completely renounced. Your last attachment is gone, by the mercy of Kṛṣṇa.”
| | | Sanātana submitted himself at the lotus feet of Lord Caitanya and said, “I have wasted my time in sense gratification. I am lowborn, and I have low association. I have no qualification for spiritual life. I do not even know what is actually beneficial for me. People say that I am learned, but I am fool number one, because although people say I am learned, and although I accept it, still I do not know who I am.” Sanātana presented himself as a blank slate, and he inquired from the Lord, “Who am I? Why am I in this material world? Why am I suffering?” Prabhupāda emphasized that this was the perfect way for a disciple to accept a spiritual master.
| | | After narrating the story of Sanātana’s joining Lord Caitanya, Prabhupāda began lecturing on the Lord’s teachings to Sanātana. Lord Caitanya first explained that the living being is not the material body but an eternal living soul within the body. Then, for two months, Lord Caitanya instructed Sanātana, revealing to him the deepest and most sublime philosophical truths of Vedic wisdom. He enlightened Sanātana regarding the soul and its relationship with Kṛṣṇa, the nature of the material and spiritual worlds, the characteristics of a fully realized soul, and the transcendental nature of Lord Kṛṣṇa and His unlimited forms, expansions, incarnations, and divine pastimes. He explained the superiority of the path of bhakti-yoga over the paths of philosophical speculation and yogic mysticism. And He revealed to Sanātana the esoteric knowledge of spiritual ecstasy experienced by those souls who have achieved pure love for Kṛṣṇa. These teachings of the Lord were like an ocean that overflooded the mind of Sanātana Gosvāmī with its sweetness and grandeur. When Lord Caitanya had finished instructing Sanātana, He gave Sanātana the benediction that all those sublime teachings would be fully manifested within his heart, thus enabling him to compose transcendental literature.
| | | For two months Lord Caitanya had instructed Sanātana Gosvāmī, and for two months, starting in mid-November of 1966, Śrīla Prabhupāda narrated in over fifty lectures the Caitanya-caritāmṛta’s account of those teachings. Although each of his talks covered the subject matter of the verses, his lectures were never limited to his subject, nor were they prepared talks.
| | | Sometimes, during the evening gatherings in his room, Svāmīji would ask whether Mukunda was ready on the West Coast. For months, Prabhupāda’s going to the West Coast had been one of a number of alternatives. But then, during the first week of the New Year, a letter arrived from Mukunda: he had rented a storefront in the heart of the Haight-Ashbury district, on Frederick Street. “We are busy converting it into a temple now,” he wrote. And Prabhupāda announced: “I shall go immediately.”
| | | Mukunda had told of a “Gathering of the Tribes” in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury. Thousands of hippies were migrating from all over the country to the very neighborhood where Mukunda had rented the storefront. It was a youth renaissance much bigger than what was going on in New York City. In a scheme to raise funds for the new temple, Mukunda was planning a “Mantra-Rock Dance,” and famous rock bands were going to appear. And Svāmī Bhaktivedanta and the chanting of Hare Kṛṣṇa were to be the center of attraction!
| | | Although in his letter Mukunda had enclosed a plane ticket, some of Svāmīji’s followers refused to accept that Svāmīji would use it. Those who knew they could not leave New York began to criticize the idea of Svāmīji’s going to San Francisco. They didn’t think that people out on the West Coast could take care of Svāmīji properly. Svāmīji appearing with rock musicians? Those people out there didn’t seem to have the proper respect. Anyway, there was no suitable temple there. There was no printing press, no Back to Godhead magazine. Why should Svāmīji leave New York to attend a function like that with strangers in California? How could he leave them behind in New York? How could their spiritual life continue without him? Timidly, one or two dissenters indirectly expressed some of these feelings to Prabhupāda, as if almost wishing to admonish him for thinking of leaving them, and even hinting that things would not go well, either in San Francisco or New York, if he departed. But they found Prabhupāda quite confident and determined. He did not belong to New York, he belonged to Kṛṣṇa, and he had to go wherever Kṛṣṇa desired him to preach. Prabhupāda showed a spirit of complete detachment, eager to travel and expand the chanting of Hare Kṛṣṇa.
| | | Brahmānanda: But we were shocked that he was going to leave. I never thought that Kṛṣṇa consciousness would go beyond the Lower East Side, what to speak of New York City. I thought that this was it, and it would stay here eternally.
| | | In the last days of the second week of January, final plane reservations were made, and the devotees began packing Svāmīji’s manuscripts away in trunks. Ranchor, a new devotee recruited from Tompkins Square Park, had collected enough money for a plane ticket, and the devotees decided that he should accompany Prabhupāda as his personal assistant. Prabhupāda explained that he would only be gone a few weeks, and that he wanted all the programs to go on in his absence.
| | | He waited in his room while the boys arranged for a car to take him to the airport. The day was gray and cold, and steam hissed in the radiators. He would take only a suitcase – mostly clothes and some books. He checked the closet to see that his manuscripts were in order. Kīrtanānanda would take care of his things in his apartment. He sat down at his desk where, for more than six months, he had sat so many times, working for hours at the typewriter preparing his Bhagavad-gītā and Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, and where he had sat talking to so many guests and to his followers. But today he would not be talking with friends or typing a manuscript, but waiting a last few minutes alone before his departure.
| | | This was his second winter in New York. He had launched a movement of Kṛṣṇa consciousness. A few sincere boys and girls had joined. They were already well known on the Lower East Side – many notices in the newspapers. And it was only the beginning.
| | | He had left Vṛndāvana for this. At first he had not been certain whether he would stay in America more than two months. In Butler he had presented his books. But then in New York he had seen how Dr. Mishra had developed things, and the Māyāvādīs had a big building. They were taking money and not even delivering the real message of the Gītā. But the American people were looking.
| | | It had been a difficult year. His Godbrothers hadn’t been interested in helping, although this is what their Guru Mahārāja, Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura, wanted, and what Lord Caitanya wanted. Because Lord Caitanya wanted it, His blessings would come, and it would happen.
| | | This was a nice place, 26 Second Avenue. He had started here. The boys would keep it up. Some of them were donating their salaries. It was a start.
| | | Prabhupāda looked at his watch. He put on his tweed winter coat and his hat and shoes, put his right hand in his bead bag, and continued chanting. He walked out of the apartment, down the stairs, and through the courtyard, which was now frozen and still, its trees starkly bare without a single leaf remaining. And he left the storefront behind.
| | | He left, even while Brahmānanda, Rūpānuga, and Satsvarūpa were at their office jobs. There was not even a farewell scene or a farewell address.
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