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Śrīla Prabhupāda Līlambṛta
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Volume 7 — Additional Passtimes
<< 65 A World Tour >>
 | January 1975
| | | FROM BOMBAY ŚRĪLA Prabhupāda planned a world tour beginning January 25 that would take him to twelve major cities within fifty days, ending back in Bombay. His journey would not only completely orbit the planet eastward but would dip into the Southern Hemisphere, as far south as Venezuela. It would be the eighth time Śrīla Prabhupāda had traveled around the world in his ten years of preaching since going to America from India in 1965. He would enter seven different countries and travel thirty-four thousand miles (54,700 km).
| | | Due back in India by March for the second international gathering of his disciples at Śrīdhāma Māyāpur, Śrīla Prabhupāda would have to move quickly. Almost one thousand ISKCON devotees from all over the world were planning to be in India for this year’s festival. This year was very special, because after years of work and two prematurely announced openings, Śrīla Prabhupāda would at last hold the grand opening of the ISKCON Kṛṣṇa-Balaram temple in Vṛndāvana and install the Deities of Gaura-Nitāi, Kṛṣṇa-Balarāma, and Rādhā-Śyāmasundara.
| | | Śrīla Prabhupāda had come to Vṛndāvana in September 1974 desiring to open the temple on Kṛṣṇa’s appearance day, but he had been disappointed by delays in construction. At that time Śrīla Prabhupāda became seriously ill in Vṛndāvana. His fever dangerously high, he had given permission to devotees in all the ISKCON temples to hold twenty-four-hour kīrtana to pray for his recovery. He had gradually regained his health, and he was now eating and translating again after several weeks.
| | | Śrīla Prabhupāda wanted to travel before the Māyāpur-Vṛndāvana festival, but he had been delayed in Bombay, waiting for the local government to grant the No Objection Certificate so construction of his temple could begin. When Śrīla Prabhupāda’s Governing Body Commission secretary for South America, Hṛdayānanda Gosvāmī, wrote asking him to please visit South America, he replied,
| | | “Yes, I want to come there very much. Now we are in Bombay trying to get permission from the government to build our temple. And it appears that we will possibly be getting the permission next week. If this works out then I will immediately be going to Honolulu and from Honolulu I can go directly to Mexico City then Caracas … If the Bombay situation is not settled up I may have to stay until mid-January.”
| | | But not until the end of January did the Bombay municipality finally grant the No Objection Certificate; Śrīla Prabhupāda was then free to travel. Prabhupāda had said on different occasions that he traveled to keep his devotees spiritually alive. Although sometimes Śrīla Prabhupāda would say he wanted to stay in one place and write his books, he regularly felt compelled to oversee personally the growth of his Kṛṣṇa consciousness mission on each continent. His time was limited, he felt, and he wanted to strengthen his disciples in their execution of Kṛṣṇa consciousness so they could continue in his absence. He had to travel. But even while traveling, he would continue his translation and commentary of the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam wherever he stopped. Despite his advanced age of eighty years, despite the disruptive travel hours, the jet lag, and the inconveniences of waiting in airports and of customs delays, Prabhupāda was determined to maintain his writing schedule wherever he went.
| | | Śrīla Prabhupāda’s literary paraphernalia was a dictating machine and reference books. A secretary, Paramahaṁsa Svāmī, a personal servant, Śrutakīrti, and a Sanskrit student, Nitāi, were Prabhupāda’s traveling entourage. In this way he was prepared to preach and write anywhere and everywhere.
| | | His first stop was Hong Kong.
| | | Paramahaṁsa Svāmī: It was always funny to be in the airport with Prabhupāda. People would just come up and without any introduction say, “Hi. What are you doing?” And Prabhupāda would start speaking with them on that level. It was really different than hearing him talk with the devotees. Sometimes they would come up with a weird question. Prabhupāda would give a humorous answer, and often the person wouldn’t understand and would leave.
| | | Only one disciple, Trivikrama Svāmī, was stationed in Hong Kong, but just before Śrīla Prabhupāda’s arrival, Pañcadraviḍa Svāmī arrived from Bangkok to greet Śrīla Prabhupāda. Sudāmā Vipra Svāmī, who had disassociated himself from ISKCON, also showed up for Prabhupāda’s arrival; these three sannyāsīs greeted Prabhupāda at the airport.
| | | Trivikrama Svāmī had rented a luxury suite at the Hong Kong Hilton for Śrīla Prabhupāda and had arranged a speaking engagement in the Hilton’s convention hall. About two hundred Indians and a few Chinese attended. After speaking forty minutes from the first verse of the seventh chapter of Bhagavad-gītā, Śrīla Prabhupāda concluded, If you want to get out of māyā’s activities, then you have to take to Kṛṣṇa consciousness. There is no other way out. This is a scientific movement. Anyone intelligent, any thoughtful person, he must take to Kṛṣṇa consciousness. Otherwise, he is doomed.
| | | During Śrīla Prabhupāda’s two-day stay the devotees took him to a park in the heart of the city. It was so crowded with people that Śrīla Prabhupāda declared it “hellish.” When they passed people doing tai chi exercises, Trivikrama Svāmī called such activity useless. Do not criticize, Śrīla Prabhupāda said. As they walked on, Sudāmā Vipra Svāmī told Prabhupāda of the floods in Māyāpur. The devotees had lived on the roof of a shack and had had to fight off the snakes seeking shelter there. Śrīla Prabhupāda appreciated, Yes, you did much service at that time. Prabhupāda asked of another devotee the difficulties he had faced in Kṛṣṇa consciousness. Each told of some incident of austerities.
| | | What was your most troublesome time in Kṛṣṇa consciousness, Śrīla Prabhupāda? Trivikrama Svāmī asked. Prabhupāda became silent, then said, Better you don’t ask.
| | | In the devotees’ small apartment Prabhupāda affirmed that Hong Kong was an important place to preach. Even if only one man remained, they should still develop the center there. We can print Chinese Bhagavad-gītā, Prabhupāda said. Someday China will open, and we can go in.
| | | Pañcadraviḍa Svāmī had only come to visit Prabhupāda, but Prabhupāda told him, You shall become our new manager for the Hong Kong center. When Prabhupāda said this, the other devotees responded, Jaya! Jaya! But Pañcadraviḍa Mahārāja felt bewildered. I have to stay in Hong Kong? he thought. But then he remembered the letter Prabhupāda had just written him. Prabhupāda had stated that a devotee must be like a reaping machine – the Bengali saying is that a reaping machine will reap wheat in heaven or hell. So the devotee must serve Kṛṣṇa in heaven or hell. Pañcadraviḍa had considered returning to India, but now Prabhupāda said, It is not very important if you go back to India. The only thing that is important is to continue service. The important thing was to distribute books in Hong Kong, Prabhupāda told him; it doesn’t matter whether people came to the programs. Somehow he should publish books in the Chinese language and distribute them. In this way the work would go on.
| | | Tokyo, January 27–28
| | | Suspicious Japanese immigration officials delayed Śrīla Prabhupāda and considered not giving him a visa. Granting no more than a two-day transit visa, they finally allowed him to enter. After such a poor reception, Prabhupāda was royally greeted by Dai Nippon Printers of Tokyo. Their white-gloved, uniformed chauffeur picked up Śrīla Prabhupāda at the airport in a Mercedes and drove him to the ISKCON center. Even though Śrīla Prabhupāda’s BBT was printing with American printers by 1975, Dai Nippon was still competitively bidding for their work. The BBT was an important contract for any printer to gain, and Śrīla Prabhupāda was the BBT’s sole author and publishing director.
| | | A seasoned traveler familiar with the sights and sounds of almost every continent, Śrīla Prabhupāda was accustomed to these short stops in the Orient. When in India, he could tell his Godbrothers and friends about lands and peoples they had only read of in books. Yet, wherever Śrīla Prabhupāda went, he remained fixed in transcendental consciousness. His lectures on the Bhagavad-gītā in Tokyo were the same as in Hong Kong or in America; the message – Surrender to Kṛṣṇa – was universally and urgently applicable in every town and village. But sometimes Śrīla Prabhupāda would spice his talks with local references.
| | | Everyone is suffering, that’s a fact, Śrīla Prabhupāda said during a class in the small Tokyo ISKCON temple. He was describing the inherent miseries in material life. Just like now, Prabhupāda said, two big directors of Dai Nippon Company came to see me. We have got business with them, so they are meeting so many problems for their printing work. They are maintaining about two hundred thousand people to carry on their business. They have a huge establishment, huge responsibility. But there are problems also. So this material world is full of problems. One who understands this is called sura, or a civilized man.
| | | Citing the alternative miseries of heat and cold, Prabhupāda referred to Tokyo’s cold climate, which was so severe that it prevented him from taking his morning walks. This winter season comes, and we do not want chilly cold; therefore we are covering our body, Prabhupāda said. The cause of our covering is that we are suffering. But after covering, if we feel some pleasure, what is this pleasure? It is only for the time being some arrangement that we stop suffering. This is the nature of material enjoyment. Japanese students were attending Prabhupāda’s classes, and Prabhupāda addressed them directly. When we are in danger in Japan, Prabhupāda said, – you have got many times the experience of earthquake, do you not? So what do you do at that time? Hmm? You all Japanese boys and girls, what do you do? Have you experienced earthquake? You have? What do you do at that time?
| | | Prabhupāda paused in his talk, inviting the Japanese boys and girls to speak out and tell him something, but they sat still, looking at him silently. When there is earthquake, Prabhupāda continued, what do you do? Hmm? But I have seen in America, they all, everyone, they scream.
Prabhupāda’s audience broke into laughter.
| | | And perhaps they remember about God, Prabhupāda said. Naturally they will remember, ‘God save us.’ That means that we do not wish to die, that’s a fact. You cannot say that death is a very good thing; no one will say. But we have to die. But you don’t want death. This is suffering. And not only in death but even in lifetime. Just like we are an old man. Who wants to become an old man? Everyone wants to remain youthful. This is undesirable. This is suffering. Actually we are suffering because we are an old man. We are suffering so many diseases, so many inconveniences. If I am not helped by three or four men, then I cannot move even. So this is suffering.
| | | Just like now in Tokyo City, Prabhupāda continued, you are making very big, big buildings everywhere, all over the world, to live very comfortably. But that comfortable life is also not assured, because you will have to die. Therefore it is called aśāśvatam, ‘not permanent.’ This is to be understood first. Those who are intelligent, they are very pessimistic. And one who is satisfied with this temporary so-called happiness, he is called asura. “By the grace of the Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement, the asuras were becoming suras, Prabhupāda concluded. For this he was traveling – To give them education to understand what is Absolute Truth. Only if one took to Kṛṣṇa consciousness could he become sura, the perfect man, and make his life successful.
| | | Prabhupāda gave two lectures in Japan. In his second talk he argued that because there is design in nature, there must be a designer. His logic and his examples were precise and vigorous. He referred to local governmental organization within a city and how it is controlled by persons. Similarly, when I see that the cosmic order is working so nicely and systematically and reasonably, how can I say there is no controller? How can you say logic? Tell me anyone. Can you say, anyone? How can you say there is no controller? Jagad āhur anīśvaram. What is their logic? You tell me. Prabhupāda wanted a challenge from his audience, so he pointed to his secretary. You are sometimes on their side. What is their logic?
| | | Paramahaṁsa: Well, no controller is ever seen.
Prabhupāda: But you have not seen who is the Japanese government’s president. How can you conclude there is no government? You have not seen the president or the supreme head. But how can you say there is no government? Otherwise, how is it going on so nicely? You may not see so many things, but that does not mean anything. That is not good logic, that ‘I have not seen.’ ” Someone in the audience put forward the theory of chance, and Prabhupāda responded with great enthusiasm to defeat the nonsense theory.
| | | Kṛṣṇa is not alone, Prabhupāda said. ‘Kṛṣṇa’ means that He has got many energies. Just like a tiny person like me, Bhaktivedanta Svāmī. I have this movement, and I am not alone. I have got so many assistants all over the world. I was the originator, I was the founder, so I am not alone. Similarly, as I have expanded with my disciples in so many ways, in so many places, I can expand. I am a common man. But how can Kṛṣṇa expand? We can just imagine. He is the Supreme Lord. Advaitam acyutam anādim ananta-rūpam. He can expand Himself. But He is the only person. He is doing everything. Just like I am replying to dozens of letters from all over the world and trying to manage. Similarly He is also maintaining alone, ananta-rūpam, by unlimited assistants. Parasya śaktir vividhaiva śrūyate. You have to understand like that.
| | | Among the “dozens of letters” and the worldwide managerial problems Prabhupāda referred to, a particularly disturbing bit of news arrived during his two-day visit in Japan. The police in Germany had raided the ISKCON temple in Frankfurt and confiscated money from the bank accounts. They had trumped up charges of solicitation fraud, and a mass propaganda war was mounting against Kṛṣṇa consciousness through inimical German media. When Prabhupāda received a distressed letter from his leader in Germany, Haṁsadūta, he asked that Haṁsadūta come and meet him in Hawaii.
| | | Now while in Japan Prabhupāda received a telegram from Bhagavān dāsa, the G.B.C. for southern Europe, who would temporarily manage affairs in Germany. Prabhupāda replied, “Try to manage Germany, London, and Paris. The main business in Germany is to reply to the charges and rescue the frozen money. In England, we have to revive the Ratha-yātrā festival, which has now stopped by the police intrigue. In Paris, you require a larger place to accommodate devotees, so find out a suitable place.” In this way, even while traveling rapidly, staying only a day or two in faraway places, Prabhupāda received and replied to messages regarding the urgent affairs of his worldwide movement. These affairs were always on Śrīla Prabhupāda’s mind in one way or another. He alone was the ultimate judge of the affairs of ISKCON, and he knew best ISKCON’s inner workings. As he had said in his class, he was assisted by many expansions, and yet he was still the single supreme person in ISKCON. In this case supreme not only meant the most exalted and worshipable personality, but the person who had to take the most anxiety and whose deliberations were the most demanding. This also confirmed the need for Prabhupāda’s traveling. By traveling and inspiring the leaders in each city and country, he could avoid disasters and irregularities and keep his armies strong on all fronts against the invasions of māyā, which were liable to occur, and which were occurring from day to day.
| | | Hawaii, January 29–February 9
| | | Śrutakīrti: On the Pan Am Airlines from Tokyo to Hawaii Prabhupāda was reading something about women’s liberation. He said, “If these women want to be liberated, then tell them to shave their heads like us and they can be liberated.” Prabhupāda asked Nitāi dāsa to call one of the stewardesses over and tell her, “If you want to be like a man, then shave your head.”
| | | Go ahead, Prabhupāda nudged Nitāi. Cut a joke. Call her over here. Tell her. Nitāi hesitated, but Prabhupāda seemed serious. Tell her to shave her head. Then she can be a man if she wants to be liberated. Although Prabhupāda repeatedly asked that he call the stewardess and make the joke, Nitāi wouldn’t do it. So Prabhupāda finally let it go.
| | | It wasn’t the first time Śrīla Prabhupāda was faced with a controversy when he arrived in Hawaii. Hawaii was such a place where groups of devotees gathered who did not want to follow strictly the rules and regulations and who supported their deviancy from the ISKCON norm with their own philosophies. One such devotee, after breaking away from ISKCON, had gathered his own followers and preached to them and to newcomers that it was best not to live in the temple. He did not advocate that one follow the rules and regulations strictly, nor did he conduct any organized preaching activity – only casual chanting of Hare Kṛṣṇa. Prabhupāda tolerated this leader and his splinter group, even though it was his own ISKCON they were criticizing. He wanted to encourage anyone who was chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa or desiring to be his follower. If they chanted Hare Kṛṣṇa, he said, they would gradually be purified. Those living outside the temple and following the principles loosely said that Prabhupāda approved of their activities and of their leader, while those devotees living faithfully in ISKCON criticized the divergent group. Arguments went back and forth, and Śrīla Prabhupāda’s arrival became an occasion for direct confrontation. That Prabhupāda was traveling to all his ISKCON centers, including the ISKCON in Hawaii (and not to the other group’s headquarters), was in itself conclusive. When there were threats to his one and only temple when ISKCON was located at 26 Second Avenue in New York City, he had been like a worried father. But now Prabhupāda’s transcendental worries had expanded as his family spread out into a hundred centers in countries all over the world.
| | | After Prabhupāda arrived in Hawaii some of the persons involved in the controversy brought their philosophical issues before him. He once again clarified his position and the position of his true followers.
| | | While walking one morning with devotees on Waikiki Beach, Prabhupāda answered their questions about the nature of pure devotional service.
| | | Devotee: I’ve heard there is a philosophy here among some of the devotees that if you chant Hare Kṛṣṇa you can go back to the spiritual world, even if you do not give up your independence.
Prabhupāda: So what is your philosophy?
Devotee: Well, it seems that’s somewhat hypocritical. Because chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa means that you are praying to Kṛṣṇa to please be engaged eternally in His service and to become completely dependent on Him. So we try to explain like that. We try to follow all the teachings and instructions, attend maṅgala-ārati, and morning and evening class.
Prabhupāda: So they are doing that or not?
Devotee: No, they’re not even following regulative principles.
Prabhupāda: Then?
Devotee: They think that just by chanting they will go back to the spiritual world. That is enough.
Prabhupāda: Then what is the meaning of the ten kinds of offenses? If he is chanting without offense, then it is all right. But if he is committing offenses, then it will not be effective. There are ten kinds of offenses; whether he is strictly offenseless, then he is all right. If he is offender, then it will not be fruitful. Or it will be fruitful, but it will take a long time. Because first of all you must become offenseless. So if they are committing offenses, how can they be perfect? He is committing the offense of not following the rules and regulations. That means he is thinking that ‘Whatever I can do will be adjusted by chanting the name.’ Is it not?
Devotee: Yes, that’s one of the offenses.
Prabhupāda: That is called the greatest offense. Nāmno balād yasya hi pāpa-buddhiḥ. ‘I can go on committing sinful activity, but by chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa mantra it will be adjusted.’ That is the greatest offense. So explain it to them.
| | | The devotees then asked if such chanting without following the regulative principles strictly was just a waste of time. It was not a useless thing, Prabhupāda replied, but it was a very slow process. He compared it to kindling a fire and at the same time pouring water on it.
| | | Another devotee protested that all devotees living outside the temple weren’t breaking the regulative principles. He knew many who were following. Prabhupāda replied, It doesn’t matter that you have to live in the temple. Not that everyone has to live in the temple. If he does not agree with his other Godbrothers, friends, he can live separately. But he must follow the rules and regulations. That is wanted. But if you live with the devotees, it will automatically be done.
Devotee: Yes, then it is easy.
Prabhupāda: Therefore it is recommended that you live with devotees. But if you cannot agree with the devotees, you have got your own opinion, then you still can’t make a new opinion as far as following the process is concerned. It is not a good idea to say, ‘Whatever I do, that is my independence, and I will chant.’ Prabhupāda admitted that even if one was living in the temple but his mind was not absorbed in Kṛṣṇa consciousness, then he also could not advance quickly. But the great advantage of living in the temple could not be denied.
| | | Prabhupāda: It is just like even in ordinary business. If you transact business in the stock association, you get good business. And outside the stock association you don’t get good. Because the association is there. There are many purchasers and many sellers. So if you have to sell, you get an immediate purchaser. And if you have to purchase, there is an immediate seller. Therefore the stock exchange is there. So if we live together in the stock exchange of devotional service, then you can help me and I can help you, so our business will go on nicely. And outside the market you can live three hundred miles (5 km) away from the stock exchange, but you will not get so many business opportunities.
Devotee: You’ll miss the opportunities.
Prabhupāda: Yes. Therefore, if you want to do business, you must take the first opportunity, the greatest opportunity. That is intelligence. And if we think, ‘All right, I shall do it slowly, and in seven hundred lifetimes I shall become perfect,’ that is another thing.
| | | Devotee: It is riskier to stay outside.
Prabhupāda: Oh, yes. Otherwise, why are you opening so many centers and making arrangements that we shall provide you with shelter, with food – ‘These are the facilities, you live here. Do whatever is your capacity in the temple. Don’t sleep but work.’ That is our teaching. Satāṁ prasaṅgāt. And Rūpa Gosvāmī also says, sato vṛtteḥ, sādhu-saṅgāt, bhaktiḥ prasidhyati. If you live with the association of the devotees, then it will be quickly fruitful. And if you live with these ordinary men, then whatever you’ve got will be finished very soon. In another verse it is said that it is preferred to live within a cage surrounded by fire than to live with the nondevotee.” The essential thing was to follow the order of the spiritual master, Prabhupāda stated, whether in or out of the temple. He recalled that he also did not live within the temple, but still he always strictly followed his spiritual master’s order. “Wherever you live,” Prabhupāda said, “if you follow strictly the instruction of the guru, then you remain perfect. But if we create concocted ideas against the instruction of the guru, then we go to hell. Yasya prasādād bhagavat-prasādo yasya prasādān na gatiḥ kuto ’pi. There is no more shelter; finished. If the guru thinks, ‘This person, I wanted to take him back to home, back to Godhead, but now he is going against me, he is not following’ – aprasāda – then when he is displeased, everything is finished.
| | | One of the devotees asked further how one can serve the spiritual master while working at an outside job. Say I have some outside job, I’m living outside, but I’m not giving fifty percent of my income. So then that job I’m doing, is it actually under the authority of the guru?
Prabhupāda: Then you are not following the instruction of guru. That is plain fact.
| | | Devotee: So that means the whole activity during the day – working – that means that I’m not following the instruction of the guru? It’s unauthorized activity?
Prabhupāda: Yes, if you don’t follow the instruction of the guru then you have fallen down immediately.
| | | Another confrontation took place in Śrīla Prabhupāda’s room, with devotees who insisted they could faithfully obey Śrīla Prabhupāda but could not follow his G.B.C. representative or his ISKCON. One dissenter had devised an intricate philosophy that Śrīla Prabhupāda was all-knowing and expert spiritually, but not materially. Prabhupāda can’t build a jet engine, he said. He can’t build a nuclear reactor. Therefore he is not expert materially. But he is expert spiritually.
| | | Most of the devotees rejected this concoction. According to śāstra, the pure devotee, unlike the yogī, completely depends on Kṛṣṇa for his ability. The yogī tries to develop powers to do wonderful things like walking on water or becoming invisible, but a devotee’s powers come through his surrender to Kṛṣṇa, who creates his devotee’s expertise.
| | | According to this new theory, since Prabhupāda had to depend on his own men, his disciples, to know what was going on in ISKCON, he was unaware of how badly the G.B.C. were mismanaging, of how they were misconducting the book distribution, and of how they were mistreating the devotees. Prabhupāda was not aware, because these activities were occurring on the material platform. In this way, they reached their conclusion of faith and trust in Prabhupāda but refused to work within his society with his representatives.
| | | The devotees in Prabhupāda’s room had formerly been leaders of ISKCON Hawaii but had left and were now threatening to use the funds and properties in their own name. Prabhupāda kept asking them simply, “Why did you leave? Why don’t you stay? Why don’t you surrender?” But they insisted that while they trusted Prabhupāda, they could not trust the G.B.C.
| | | One of the G.B.C. members in the room became exasperated with their refusal to accept Prabhupāda’s simple request of surrender. You say that you accept Prabhupāda?
Yes, they replied.
And you say you have faith in him?
Yes.
You say that whatever he asks, you can follow?
Yes.
So, then, if Prabhupāda asks you to follow the G.B.C., will you do it? The room became tense and silent.
No, we cannot follow.
When they uttered that no, Śrīla Prabhupāda dropped his fist on his table and pointed to the deviant devotees, declaring, Just see the hypocrisy!
| | | Even after Prabhupāda’s stark conclusion, they maintained their we-surrender-to-you-but-not-to-lSKCON philosophy until Prabhupāda asked them to leave. To the other devotees remaining in the room Prabhupāda remarked, When they say they don’t like ISKCON and the G.B.C., they are really saying they don’t like to follow my order. That means they don’t like my order. That means they don’t have faith in my order. That means they don’t have faith in me. That means guru-aparādha. To say they have faith in me is just hypocrisy.
| | | Śrutakīrti: Finally Prabhupāda was ready to leave. Just before he was ready to go, he said he wanted to see me. He said, “Śrutakīrti, so now you are going to stay here? Your wife is here and child?” I said, “Yes, Prabhupāda.” He said, “Yes, so stay here as householder and manage the temple.” But all along I was thinking I really should go with Prabhupāda. He had no one with him. He had no servant or anything. But I said, “Yes, Prabhupāda, I think I should stay.” And he replied, “So that is good. Yes, you stay here with your wife.” But one of the sannyāsīs in the room started laughing and said, “Yes, you know what they call the wife and child? They are known as the tigress and jackal.” Then the sannyāsī asked Śrīla Prabhupāda, “Prabhupāda, I know why the woman is called a tigress, but why are the children considered jackals?” Prabhupāda replied, “Well, the children, in so many ways they create so many inconveniences for the father. They are always requiring things, and sometimes disturbing him, and he cannot sleep. In this way, it is like eating the flesh of the father. This is the business of jackals, eating flesh. So the children are like jackals. They are always putting the father in so much disturbance and difficulty.” So I was sitting there, thinking, “Gee, here I am, and Prabhupāda is telling me to stay with the tiger and jackal.” So then I said, “Prabhupāda, I think I should come with you.” And Prabhupāda simply said, “All right.”
| | | Los Angeles, February 9–10, 1975
| | | Hṛdayānanda Gosvāmī: When we would get in the car to go on the morning walk, Śrīla Prabhupāda would always smell like sandalwood, and there would also be the aroma of flowers, because he would always wear flower garlands. Prabhupāda was always very clean, with fresh tilaka, so immediately when he would sit in the car, the car would become spiritualized and sanctified. All illusion would be gone. And many times, as we would pull away from the curb, Prabhupāda would look out the window, and he would see the particular Los Angeles neighborhood we were in and would often recite this verse, harer nāma harer nāma harer nāmaiva kevalam. He would recite it with great feeling, almost like a mother seeing her child in a dangerous or diseased situation. With great intensity Prabhupāda would recite this, urging them all to take to Kṛṣṇa consciousness.
| | | ISKCON Los Angeles, New Dvārakā, the Western world headquarters, was burgeoning with many Kṛṣṇa conscious projects. Book distribution was booming. The devotee population was growing. Money was available and was utilized in various technological and cultural preaching departments. Śrīla Prabhupāda visited for the first time the spacious BBT warehouse, where his books were stored and shipped out to the ISKCON centers around the world.
| | | A trail of devotees in several cars followed Prabhupāda’s car as he pulled up in front of the large warehouse. He entered the front reception office. On the wall were framed color reproductions of the covers of Back to Godhead magazine in consecutive issues. Śrīla Prabhupāda stopped before a large framed painting of Sītā-devī, the wife of Advaita Ācārya, as she came to pay respects to the newborn baby Nimāi, Lord Caitanya Mahāprabhu. Śrīla Prabhupāda asked who had painted it and, when told the name of one of his disciples, remarked, She has good talent.
| | | Rāmeśvara, the manager of the BBT, was acting as Prabhupāda’s tour guide through the warehouse.
| | | We have two warehouses, Rāmeśvara said, and he led Śrīla Prabhupāda onto the floor of a vast storage room with its ceiling three stories high. Everywhere stood stacks and stacks of books in cartons.
| | | So are they going out or simply stacking there? Śrīla Prabhupāda asked.
Rāmeśvara: They’ve been greatly reduced since they first arrived.
| | | Wearing his swami cap pushed jauntily back on his head and walking regally with his cane, Śrīla Prabhupāda surveyed the warehouse with pleasure.
| | | So, Haṁsadūta, he said, turning, you have to make a godām like this.” Haṁsadūta smiled and agreed. “Then you will defeat these charges,” said Śrīla Prabhupāda. “When the German nation will accept these books, then that will be the proper reply to the charges.
| | | This forklift lifts the pallets high up to the ceiling, Rāmeśvara pointed out. Prabhupāda asked for a demonstration, and the driver hurried to start up the engine. Meanwhile, Rāmeśvara pointed out special racks holding five hundred copies of each of Prabhupāda’s books for the library party, which was traveling and selling full sets to university libraries across the country.
| | | As the forklift began moving, Prabhupāda remarked, I first saw this machine in the Commonwealth Pier, Boston. The boy driving the truck became so nervous before Prabhupāda that he could not operate it properly. Usually he is very careful, Rāmeśvara apologized.
| | | Rāmeśvara explained that the rent was eighteen hundred dollars a month, a good price for that area. He told Prabhupāda that a speaker system played Prabhupāda’s lectures in the warehouse throughout the day. Prabhupāda remarked, Acchā, and chuckled with pleasure. They then entered the second warehouse, which stored Back to Godhead magazines. Prabhupāda asked about the arrangement for fire, and the devotees told him they had fire insurance and fire alarms. He saw where the Bhagavad-gītās were stored as well as Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam and Caitanya-caritāmṛta volumes. Some of them had just arrived from the printer.
| | | While walking in the warehouse Prabhupāda mentioned the dramatization some of the devotees had performed for him the previous evening. “Now we have got Caitanya-caritāmṛta and Bhāgavatam. If such demonstrations are done very nicely, it will be very much appreciated, even by the public. We can collect some money.” Standing in the midst of the bound volumes, Prabhupāda elaborated on the theatrical possibilities of their dramatization. The devotees could act in pantomime, he said, and sound tracks could narrate plays in many different languages. In this way they could tour India and specifically attend the upcoming Māyāpur and Vṛndāvana festivals. Theatrical talents, all talents, were acquired from austerity and should be used to glorify Kṛṣṇa.
| | | Kṛṣṇa is Uttamaśloka, Prabhupāda said, as the devotees crowded around in between the aisles of stacked books. So we have got so many of Kṛṣṇa’s pastimes, Caitanya Mahāprabhu’s pastimes. We can overflood. Just like you can overflood with this literature, we can overflood. This is art. Art, music, everything we can utilize – in any way one is addicted. Let him eat only, let him sing only, let him paint only, let him dance only. We have got everything. That is Kṛṣṇa consciousness. Let him do business only. Yes, engineering, construct temples. It is an all-perfect movement. That is Kṛṣṇa. All-attractive. Everyone can become attracted and give up everything. He will be attracted by Kṛṣṇa in such a way that he will give up all nonsense. That is Kṛṣṇa consciousness. All other attraction finished. Anyābhilāṣitā-śūnyam. Simply Kṛṣṇa. Prabhupāda walked on until he faced an especially large area of tall stacked cartons. What are these? he asked.
| | | Back to Godhead magazines, said Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja.
Rāmeśvara: These boxes have come from the printer all ready to go to different countries, and they stamp the address on it. These are those newspapers you saw yesterday called Spiritual Revolution.
Prabhupāda: I think this Revolution is not very important. Make revolution with magazine, this Back to Godhead. And what are these?
Rāmeśvara pointed out the Caitanya-caritāmṛtas. One after another, Prabhupāda examined the stacks and then the individual books on racks. Sometimes he handled them, leafing through their pages, and sometimes he touched the cartons with his cane.
| | | Just before Christmas, Rāmeśvara exclaimed with exuberance, this wall was filled up, and now it is practically empty. We have sold so many books just in a few months. All up to the ceiling it was filled. Now we have to reprint.
| | | Prabhupāda: Now this is only the English language. In every language we should have such a big godām. Turning to Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja, he said, You have taken Spanish. And turning to Haṁsadūta, he said, And you in German. Let them overflood. No other literature. Devotees surrounding Prabhupāda burst out in triumphant laughter. Prabhupāda then quoted a Bengali phrase, They’ll say, ‘No, no, we don’t want any other literature.’
| | | In the presence of his books Prabhupāda was exhilarated, and the thought of how more and more books could be written, printed, and distributed in many different languages made him ecstatic. Although the present warehouse in L.A. was awesomely large, Prabhupāda envisioned beyond it to other countries and other warehouses.
| | | I think no religious publisher has seen such big godām in their life. Hmm? Prabhupāda widened his eyes and looked at the others. Throughout the whole world, he continued, as soon as they will hear about religious books, they immediately avoid it. Especially the Communist country. Bring some Communist country man. Show him that ‘You are trying to avoid God. Now see how we are preaching God.’
| | | Prabhupāda was next shown to the office of Kīrtirāja dāsa, who was in charge of sending out the orders received from the college libraries around the country. Kīrtirāja showed Prabhupāda how a well-known Christian magazine had recently reduced the quality of its printing from an expensive color magazine to a plain paper edition. They have degraded, Prabhupāda remarked.
| | | Now we have almost 125 standing orders for Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, said Kīrtirāja, and 100 for Caitanya-caritāmṛta.
That’s nice, Prabhupāda replied. The devotees then showed him the Golden Avatar studios, where tapes of his lectures were kept as masters and duplicated by high-speed equipment. This is a complete library of all your lectures, Rāmeśvara explained. We keep it carefully because we know it is very important. They are cataloging it according to the title of the book, so if someone wants to see what Your Divine Grace has lectured on the Bhagavad-gītā, they can find it, or from Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, First Canto, or whatever. They have an index system. Prabhupāda approved: Very good. Rāmeśvara introduced the technician for duplicating the tapes and pointed out the extensive equipment. “This makes four copies of the cassette every three minutes,” Rāmeśvara continued, so we are mass-producing your lectures.
| | | Prabhupāda: Less than a minute for one copy.
Rāmeśvara described how devotees were buying Prabhupāda’s tapes on a subscription rate of three a week, and orders were coming in from all over the world.
American organization, Prabhupāda proudly said.
| | | He next met Svarūpa dāsa, the corresponding secretary. Rāmeśvara explained how he answered all letters regarding Prabhupāda’s books and encouraged the people to become life members.
I was also doing that, Prabhupāda reminisced, when I was Dr. Bose’s manager. Any inquiry coming from the outside, I must continue correspondence with him until he becomes a customer. That I was doing.
| | | Prabhupāda saw one office after another until he had completely toured all the warehouse facilities. Nice, well-equipped godām, he remarked. And they then left the building, walking through a light rain to their waiting car. Rāmeśvara pointed to Prabhupāda’s name printed on the building.
Prabhupāda looked up. Yes, that’s nice. They will be inquisitive, ‘What is that book?’
| | | Riding back to the temple in the car, Prabhupāda reflected, I have said that there is no happiness in this material world, and that’s a fact. But if there is a little happiness, that is in America. So you are favored by Kṛṣṇa. Utilize this favor of Kṛṣṇa in glorifying Kṛṣṇa. Then it is successful. Avicyuto ’rthaḥ kavibhir nirūpito yad-uttamaśloka. To become extraordinary in any branch of facilities requires austerities. So when one has acquired that, he should engage it for glorifying the Supreme. Yad uttamaśloka-guṇānuvarṇanam.
| | | As BBT manager, Rāmeśvara went to Śrīla Prabhupāda when the BBT could no longer afford to print the hardbound Kṛṣṇa book in two volumes. Since Śrīla Prabhupāda had already authorized the paperback version’s three volumes, Rāmeśvara hoped he would give permission to print the hardbound in three volumes also. Otherwise, Rāmeśvara could see no way they could afford to reprint the Kṛṣṇa book in two volumes, and the book would have to go out of print.
| | | Śrīla Prabhupāda replied that he had originally planned Kṛṣṇa book in two volumes; he didn’t want to change it. Rāmeśvara presented the economic arguments. Because of an oil embargo, the printing industry had suffered badly; prices had gone up fifty percent. The BBT already had a contract with Dai Nippon to reprint the book. They had already bought the paper, so they were obliged to go ahead. Yet Dai Nippon had just raised their prices and would not honor their original contracts. After discussing the various economic difficulties for over an hour, Śrīla Prabhupāda unhappily consented to reprint the hardbound Kṛṣṇa book in three volumes.
| | | Rāmeśvara then mentioned that Dai Nippon had said the book would be much cheaper if the BBT printed it the same size as the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, instead of the larger size. When Prabhupāda heard that, he banged his fist on the desk. He had planned it in that size. Nothing would change it. He would hear no more of it. He then told Rāmeśvara to leave the room.
| | | Staggering down the stairs, Rāmeśvara realized that he had just been thrown out of the room by his spiritual master. But he also felt ecstatic in appreciation of Śrīla Prabhupāda. For the first time, he began to appreciate how meticulously Śrīla Prabhupāda planned every detail of his books. Not only did Prabhupāda carefully prepare the translations and purports, but he also considered the market, the cover pictures. Everything about the book Prabhupāda had considered deeply. As a humble servant, Rāmeśvara was surprised and awestruck as he began to understand how deeply Prabhupāda was involved in all decisions regarding his books.
| | | Rāmeśvara: One time I was up in Prabhupāda’s room, and we were talking again about BBT printing. It was an involved conversation, but suddenly, right in the middle of it, Prabhupāda’s prasādam arrived, placed by his servant on a little table Prabhupāda ate from in his bedroom. As soon as the prasādam arrived, Prabhupāda rose from his seat, moved to that room, sat down, and became totally immersed, almost like in a trance of honoring Kṛṣṇa’s prasādam. It was so transcendental, it was as if I suddenly ceased to exist. Prabhupāda did not say even a word. It was just the prasādam, and Prabhupāda became absorbed in Kṛṣṇa. So I very quietly offered my obeisances and hurriedly left the room.
| | | During this visit Śrīla Prabhupāda saw the first completed diorama by the artists engaged in doll-making. In 1973 he had requested several of his disciples to visit India and learn the ancient art of making lifelike figures from earth and straw. He wanted to create artistic exhibits showing the pastimes of Kṛṣṇa and Lord Caitanya as well as scenes depicting the Kṛṣṇa conscious philosophy, such as the transmigration of the soul and karma. Prabhupāda’s disciples Bharadvāja, Ādideva, and others had gone to Bengal and had, with great endeavor, mastered the art of creating these dolls. Now, returning to Los Angeles, they had set up a studio for mass production and had finished their first diorama, a miniature of Lord Kṛṣṇa and Arjuna on the chariot at the battle of Kurukṣetra.
| | | Prabhupāda entered the artists’ studio, followed as usual by as many people as could fit into the room. He stood before the diorama. The models were exquisite, the figures as realistic in detail as figures in the best wax museum, and they were dressed and bejeweled like temple deities. The horses and chariots were startlingly lifelike. The scene was that depicted on the cover of Śrīla Prabhupāda’s Bhagavad-gītā As It Is. Prabhupāda’s response was spontaneous delight. His face broke into an ecstatic smile.
| | | The horses are more beautiful than Kṛṣṇa, Prabhupāda commented. There was a groan from the devotees. That is because they are the servants of Kṛṣṇa, he said, smiling.
| | | Later Śrīla Prabhupāda instructed the Los Angeles leaders to give the doll-makers full financial support. His spiritual master, Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī, had been very keen to create such doll exhibits on the teachings of the Bhagavad-gītā and Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, and that was how Śrīla Prabhupāda had received the idea. Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī had also been willing to spend big sums of money to put a large collection of dolls on exhibit in Calcutta. In collecting for this project, he had introduced a system of keeping his temples in debt. He would get his disciples to collect for a specific project, but when they gave him the money, he would spend it on dioramas. Then he would again return to those same disciples and request money for the same project they had already collected for.
| | | But we gave it to you, Guru Mahārāja.
No, Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī would reply. That which you gave me has already been spent on dioramas. Now I need it for the original purpose. He had been convinced that these artistic exhibits could attract and convert people in the West, and so Śrīla Prabhupāda was intent to open diorama museums and exhibits all over the world.
| | | Śrīla Prabhupāda spent two days in Los Angeles. It was the ideal center for his headquarters, with the largest number of his disciples in one city, many of whom were also leaders in book distribution. No other center at that time had as many departments and expansive projects. His own living quarters were also comfortable, a pleasantly decorated three-room apartment and a private garden with many varieties of aromatic flowers. He enjoyed sitting in that garden in the early evening with just a few disciples while one of them read aloud from the Kṛṣṇa book. The climate of Southern California was also to Śrīla Prabhupāda’s liking. And as for the temple worship of the Deities, Śrī Śrī Rukmiṇī-Dvārakādhīśa, Śrīla Prabhupāda considered the standard perhaps the highest of all the centers in his ISKCON. And yet, he could only spend a few days before moving on.
| | | Kṛṣṇa has given me hundreds of nice places of residence, Śrīla Prabhupāda laughed. But His order is you cannot stay. Prabhupāda was explaining his transcendental predicament to a few disciples gathered in his room on the last day of his visit in Los Angeles. I’ll tell you one humorous story in this connection which is a little long, Prabhupāda said, and he appeared to hesitate. I don’t wish to divert your attention, but it is an interesting story. That is also mentioned in the Bhāgavatam, aniketana: one may have many nice places to live, still he should think, ‘I have no place to live.’ That is one of the spiritual items.
| | | What is that story? Haṁsadūta asked, and the other devotees laughed. They were eager to hear the story and didn’t want Prabhupāda to avoid it.
| | | Prabhupāda smiled. The story is, he said, that there was a joker. His name was Gopāla Ban. He was the joker of a king, Rāja Kṛṣṇa. You know that place, Kṛṣṇanagar, near Māyāpur? He was the king of that place. So the kings used to keep a joker to please them by words. So this joker, Gopāla Ban, was constructing a new building for himself. It was almost finished, but there was as yet no opening ceremony. So the Rāja advised one of his friends, ‘If you can go and pass stool in that new house of Gopāla’s, then I will give you so much prize. Go and pass stool there.’ Prabhupāda chuckled. So the man said, ‘Yes, I’ll do it.’ So one day the man made his plan. As he was passing the new house, all of a sudden he entered.
‘Gopāla, I am very much called by nature. Kindly show me where I can pass stool.’ Gopāla was intelligent, and he could understand there was some trick.
‘Yes, yes,’ Gopāla said, ‘there is the lavatory. Come here. You can use it.’ But then he made so many conditions. ‘The door must be opened so you may pass stool, but I will see that you are passing stool.’
‘How is that possible?’ the man asked. ‘Can I use it or not?’
‘No, it is possible,’ Gopāla said. ‘You can pass stool here, but you cannot pass urine. If you pass urine, then I shall kill you.’ So, passing stool, Prabhupāda commented, without passing urine, how is it possible? ‘You have come to pass stool,’ Gopāla said, ‘and I will allow you. That you can do here. But don’t pass a drop of urine.’ ” Prabhupāda laughed heartily and said, “So that is my position. Kṛṣṇa says, ‘You may have hundreds of centers and places, but you cannot live anywhere.’ That is Kṛṣṇa’s order. It is a plan not to become attached.
| | | Devotee: Just like Nārada Muni got that curse from Lord Brahmā.
Prabhupāda: Yes, not Lord Brahmā but Dakṣa Rāja – he cursed Nārada Muni that he cannot stay anywhere more than three minutes. Nārada Muni’s business is preaching, so every one of us, we have to become disciples of Nārada Muni.
| | | And thus Śrīla Prabhupāda, the greatest living disciple of Nārada Muni, made plans to travel next to Mexico and then to Venezuela on his world tour for preaching Kṛṣṇa consciousness. His disciple in charge of South America, Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja, had joined Prabhupāda in Hawaii and come with him to Los Angeles to ensure Prabhupāda’s keeping his promise to visit South America. So Prabhupāda’s promise was firm. As he said, Lord Kṛṣṇa had arranged it that he should go constantly from place to place. And wherever he went, Prabhupāda tended expertly the delicate creepers of devotional service growing in the hearts of his disciples. He also stoked the fires of Kṛṣṇa consciousness and fanned them into blazes. And in each place he left behind more dedicated followers than before. He gave further orders to be executed, and he redefined and clarified directions for guiding and expanding his Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement.
| | | February 1975
| | | Śrīla Prabhupāda returned to Mexico in February of 1975. During the three years that had passed since his first visit, more centers had opened in the Caribbean and South America. In Trinidad, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico, American disciples had worked with local devotees to establish centers. Also in Caracas and Buenos Aires many people had contacted Prabhupāda’s disciples and began chanting and reading his books. In 1974, Śrīla Prabhupāda appointed Hṛdayānanda Gosvāmī the Governing Body Commissioner for all of Latin America, and from that point the Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement in Latin America began rapidly expanding. Prabhupāda wrote to his newly appointed G.B.C. secretary,
| | | “Just as Hansadutta and Bhagavan have gone to foreign countries and arranged for a solid program of translation, printing and distribution of my books by sankirtan party, so you will also find the devotees in South America willing to help you in this noble project which is for the benediction of the suffering humanity. My own guru maharaj stressed the printing and distribution of literature even over gorgeous temple construction, and I also was printing even before I had big temples in the U.S. So you may follow the footsteps of the previous acaryas, while always strictly following the regulative principles for spiritual strength.”
| | | With Śrīla Prabhupāda’s blessings and with intense, youthful energy, Hṛdayānanda Gosvāmī traveled constantly from one South American country to another, preaching the message of Śrīla Prabhupāda and organizing the distribution of his books in Spanish and Portuguese. Śrīla Prabhupāda was pleased to hear of his disciple’s progress.
| | | “I have received the copy of the Spanish Back to Godhead and it is done very nicely. The printing is very beautiful and I thank you very much for doing such a nice job. I am very glad to hear you have printed 100,000 copies of this magazine. Now give them to everyone. Also I am very happy to hear the other books will be coming out very soon. If you can finish Bhagavad-gita As It Is in Spanish and show me at the Mayapur festival that will be very sublime. Please print as many books as possible, this is my real pleasure. By printing these books of our Krsna conscious philosophy in so many different languages we can actually inject our movement into the masses of persons all over the world, especially there in the western countries and we can literally turn whole nations into Krsna Conscious nations. Thank you for representing me there in South America by stressing the importance of attendance to the morning and evening programs and following all of the spiritual practices. This is wanted. Without these things there is no devotional life.”
| | | In all of his letters to Śrīla Prabhupāda, Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja humbly requested Prabhupāda to visit the centers most ready to receive him, Mexico City and Caracas. Prabhupāda replied that he wanted to visit and would do so on his next Western tour.
| | | Leaving Bombay in January 1975, Śrīla Prabhupāda made his way west by his usual route – Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Hawaii. Hṛdayānanda Gosvāmī flew to Hawaii just to make sure Śrīla Prabhupāda would come to Mexico. Two or three times between 1972 and 1975, the devotees in Mexico had thought Śrīla Prabhupāda was definitely coming. Once they had been within two hours of his expected arrival – with the temple fully decorated with flowers – when his secretary had phoned and said Prabhupāda would come later. On that occasion, the devotees had become overwhelmed and had thrown flowers and handfuls of cake at one another while crying and laughing.
| | | When Śrīla Prabhupāda finally came in February 1975, Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja arranged for a first-class reception at the airport. He convinced the airport and police officials that Śrīla Prabhupāda should be met with a special car just as he came down the ramp from the airplane, that he and his party should bypass immigration and customs formalities, and that police on motorcycles should escort his car all the way to the temple!
| | | Śrīla Prabhupāda smiled with pleasure to see all this take place. He was prepared to undergo difficulties, but he also often complained about immigration officers who were so ignorant of spiritual etiquette as to question a sādhu at the border. He sometimes compared the immigrations men to watchdogs. “Ruff! Ruff! Where is your visa?” Formerly a sādhu would be allowed to enter even the king’s palace, Śrīla Prabhupāda said. But Śrīla Prabhupāda was often delayed, searched, quarantined, and even refused entry into a country. Therefore, the proper reception by the government and police of Mexico was a pleasant surprise. With sirens wailing, two police motorcycles led the way onto the highway as Śrīla Prabhupāda, profusely garlanded, sat in the rear of the black limousine, chanting on his beads and discussing Kṛṣṇa conscious plans with his leading disciples.
| | | For this visit the devotees at the temple were fully prepared. Some of them remembered how Śrīla Prabhupāda had arrived in 1972 to find the temple almost empty, most of the devotees being en route to the airport to greet him. This time they had been rehearsing his arrival for weeks.
| | | Tonio Fernandez: We practiced the conchshell, the karatālas, everything. Someone would even go on the top of the roof and say that he saw the car of Prabhupāda. In this way we rehearsed. I was in charge of the sound control, and I had to run from there to the gate. It had been decided beforehand where everyone would sit when Prabhupāda gave a class. But when Prabhupāda actually came, someone blew the conchshell out of time, and all the devotees started to run.
| | | Kṣiti-mohana: It was a scene with players, and the play was that Prabhupāda was coming. We had practiced, but now it was the real thing. The first car that came was Prabhupāda’s servants’. The devotees were having ecstasies because they thought it was Prabhupāda. As soon as they saw a devotee that didn’t look Mexican, they started to feel that Prabhupāda was here. Prabhupāda’s servants said to the devotees in charge of the program, “Take it easy, now Prabhupāda is going to arrive at any moment.” Then two of Prabhupāda’s servants went up to look at Prabhupāda’s room to see if it was ready or if anything was missing. After that, the kīrtana calmed down a little so we could hear the conchshell. But we had to wait half an hour because Prabhupāda’s car was coming slowly. The boy on the roof finally saw Prabhupāda’s car, but he forgot to blow the conchshell and began to yell, “Prabhupāda is coming! Prabhupāda is coming! Have kīrtana! Jaya Prabhupāda, jaya Prabhupāda!” It was a very exciting moment. Prabhupāda’s car then appeared and slowly moved onto the property. It stopped a little before the front door. Then Prabhupāda got out, and everyone threw petals from the roof. Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja opened the car door, and Prabhupāda, in a very particular way, came out and stood up and looked all around. Everyone was giving his obeisances to Prabhupāda, but at the same time no one knew exactly what was happening.
| | | Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja was more excited than anyone else. He was telling the devotees, Kīrtana, kīrtana!
| | | Nanda-prāṇa: When Prabhupāda came to the temple, he was besieged with a rain of petals. There were two lines of devotees and karmīs mixed, and Prabhupāda passed through. Everything was well organized. People were throwing petals. The lines started from the beginning of the entrance all the way to the temple house. Everyone was throwing petals, and Prabhupāda went all the way into the main hall where they had his vyāsāsana. But instead of going to sit down, he went into the small temple room to see the Deities. After Prabhupāda saw the Deities, he looked at the temple room. “Oh, much improved.” Then Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja invited him to go to the vyāsāsana, where Prabhupāda sat and they washed his feet and did a guru-pūjā. It was a better standard than the first time.
| | | Roberto Ruiz: I had never seen Śrīla Prabhupāda before that. I was seeing him in pictures and in the magazine, but I had never seen personally. So I was very nervous. As soon as he will see me, I thought, he will know I am a cheater. He will look through my demoniac nature. Then finally Śrīla Prabhupāda arrived at the temple. The devotees received him with a shower of flower petals. The reception was nice, because as soon as he arrived at the airport, someone had called the temple and told us, “Prabhupāda is here. He has put his lotus feet in Mexico.”
| | | Kṣiti-mohana: The big windows in the main hall were painted with plastic yellow paint, and the sun was shining through on Prabhupāda’s face like amber. One man was on the left side, and another strong man was on the right. They were the kṣatriyas of Prabhupāda. They were looking after him if someone wanted to cross in front of them. Prabhupāda started to sing “Vande ’ham,” and the devotees and guests tried to follow, but most of them just let it go.
| | | After guru-pūjā, Prabhupāda spoke in English to the assembled devotees. As usual, after every few sentences his words were translated by one of the devotees.
| | | My dear devotees, ladies and gentlemen, Prabhupāda began. I am very glad to see you again, I think after four years? I was trying to come here again. I like this place, but due to various engagements and due to my old age also, I could not come earlier. But this time, by arrangement of our Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja, I have been forced to come here. At these words the devotees burst into appreciative laughter. So I must thank you for your nice reception. I was received by police escort very nicely, and I remember once I traveled with the governor of U.P. in 1962 from Lucknow to Kanpur. So exactly we were driving in the same fashion, escorted by the police motorcycle.
| | | So anyway, I am so pleased to see you, that you are interested in this Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement. So the Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement is very, very important for the human society. It is not exactly a religious movement as it is understood in the Western countries. Religion is described in the English dictionary as a kind of faith.
| | | And once again the pure, transcendental message was coming from Prabhupāda’s lotuslike mouth in the company of the devotees of Mexico. Their great, saintly spiritual master, the spiritual master of the whole world, was now again with them in ISKCON Mexico, and the devotees listened and watched him with rapt attention.
| | | It is very simple and easy, Prabhupāda said, describing Kṛṣṇa consciousness. If you do not know, if you are not educated, if you have no asset, you can simply chant the Hare Kṛṣṇa mahā-mantra. And if you are educated, a logician, a philosopher, you can read our books, which are already fifty in number. There will be about seventy-five books of four hundred pages to convince the philosopher, scientist, and educationist what is Kṛṣṇa consciousness. They are published in English as well as other European languages. Take advantage of this.
| | | Along with the Deity worship in this temple, hold classes at least five hours. As in the schools and colleges, there are regular classes, forty-five minute class, then five or ten minutes recess, again forty-five minute class, in this way.
| | | So we have got enough subject matter to study, and if we study all these books, to finish them it will take at least twenty-five years. So you are all young men, I request you to engage your time in reading books, in chanting, in Deity worship, in going to preach, selling books. Don’t be lazy. Always remain engaged. Then that is Kṛṣṇa consciousness.
| | | Prabhupāda spoke briefly, then he asked for questions. A guest asked, If everyone is spirit soul, then isn’t sex life also spiritual?
Prabhupāda: There is no sex life in the spirit soul. Sex life is in the material body. We are not this body. But because we are in this body, therefore we are thinking pleasure of the body is pleasure of the soul.
| | | The second question: Who are we, why are we here, and where are we going?
Prabhupāda: You are all living entities. You wanted to come here. Just like I wanted to come in your city. I have come here. Similarly, you wanted to come to this material world and enjoy. So because you wanted to enjoy this material world you have come here. Kṛṣṇa has allowed you to come here, and you are trying to enjoy this material world. This is called struggle for existence. But you will never be happy with this material world. It is simply a struggle for existence. Therefore, you should go back to home, back to Godhead, then you’ll be happy. That’s all.
| | | At the end of the questions-and-answers session, a Mexican lady stood up spontaneously and said in English, In the name of all the guests and all the Mexico City temple, we welcome you.
| | | One of Prabhupāda’s sannyāsī disciples, Hanumān, had fallen down from the sannyāsa standard and had married. Such a thing had never before happened in ISKCON. But now, on Prabhupāda’s first day in Mexico, Hanumān, dressed as a householder, came to see his spiritual master.
| | | After the crowd of guests had left Prabhupāda’s room, only Hanumān and a few senior men remained. “Śrīla Prabhupāda,” Hanumān began, Lord Caitanya Mahāprabhu had one disciple in the renounced order, Choṭa Haridāsa, whom He rejected from His association because he became too much lusty after a woman. I was also one of your sannyāsa disciples, and I too became lusty after a woman. I was wondering if you have also rejected me from your association.
| | | A heavy silence followed as everyone looked at Prabhupāda, who sat with his head down. After a long pause, Prabhupāda looked up at Hanumān and said quietly, Lord Caitanya is God. He can spread this movement all over the world in one second without the help of anyone if He likes. I am not God. I am simply a servant of God. I require so much assistance to help me spread Kṛṣṇa consciousness all over the world. If someone renders even some small service to help me, I am eternally indebted to him. You have rendered so much assistance to me, how could I reject you?
| | | The devotees were moved, amazed at the depth of Śrīla Prabhupāda’s compassion. Then Hanumān began to tell Śrīla Prabhupāda about his family, about his son named Bhaktivedanta.
That is not very good. Śrīla Prabhupāda shook his head. Sometimes you may have to chastise your child, and you should not be chastising your guru.
| | | Hanumān became a little disturbed. But Śrīla Prabhupāda, he said, we have already grown accustomed to calling him that. What will we call him now?
Prabhupāda thought and then explained that actually it was all right because his name was Bhaktivedanta dāsa. Just like we name all our disciples Kṛṣṇadāsa, Prabhupāda said. Not Kṛṣṇa, but servant of Kṛṣṇa. Just like you are not Hanumān, but servant of.
| | | On the first evening of his visit, Prabhupāda lectured from the Bhagavad-gītā. After the lecture, he asked for questions. Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja, seated on a cushion at Prabhupāda’s feet, translated the inquiries from Spanish into English for Prabhupāda and then translated Prabhupāda’s reply into Spanish for the audience.
| | | Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja: He asks, ‘What if we’ve already committed so many offenses to chanting? At this point, how can we purify?’
Prabhupāda: If we don’t commit offense. Why do you voluntarily commit offense? You should not commit offense, then it will be all right – purified.
| | | Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja: We don’t know how we can increase our desire for chanting.
Prabhupāda: By performing saṅkīrtana. Just like if a man drinks, and if he drinks and drinks, then he becomes a drunkard. The example amused the audience, and they broke into laughter. Drink more and more and you become a drunkard, Prabhupāda continued. Similarly, chant more and more and you become – perfect chanter.
| | | Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja: What is the greatest offense?
Prabhupāda: Yes, that is the first offense, guror avajñā, śruti-śāstra-nindanam. Śruti-śāstra-nindanam, guror avajñā. If you accept a guru and then again disobey him, then what is your position? You are not a gentleman. You promised before guru, before Kṛṣṇa, before fire, that ‘I shall obey your order. I shall execute this.’ If again you do not do this, then you are not even a gentleman, what to speak of a devotee. This is common sense.
| | | A man asked in Spanish, Excuse me, sir. Before, in your previous life as a karmī, what were you doing? Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja didn’t translate the question to Śrīla Prabhupāda but immediately asserted strongly, The pure devotee has never been a karmī. He is never a karmī. A pure devotee is always a transcendental person, right from his birth. He just came from the spiritual world to save us, to teach us this transcendental knowledge given out thousands and thousands of years ago by Lord Kṛṣṇa. Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja continued glorifying Śrīla Prabhupāda. What does he say? Prabhupāda asked Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja. But he didn’t want to say anything to Śrīla Prabhupāda. He said, Nothing, Śrīla Prabhupāda, nothing. He would speak strongly to the man asking this question, and when Śrīla Prabhupāda would question him, Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja would be like a little child, Oh, Śrīla Prabhupāda, it doesn’t matter. Don’t worry about it. He’s just talking some nonsense. Then finally Śrīla Prabhupāda just laughed and took the next question.
| | | Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja: He asks, ‘How can we control the tongue?’
Prabhupāda: You can take prasādam. Prabhupāda smiled, and his answer was so pleasurable for everyone that they began to laugh. Prabhupāda continued, Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura has said like that, out of all the senses the tongue sense is very powerful. So it is very difficult to control it. Therefore, Kṛṣṇa has given us one weapon. What is that? Kṛṣṇa is very kind; therefore He has given us His remnants of foodstuff. So if we make this promise, that I shall not take anything which is not offered to Kṛṣṇa, then your tongue will be controlled. The tongue’s business is two-fold: one is the tongue will speak and vibrate sound, and another business is to taste nice foodstuffs. So if you engage the tongue in the matter of Kṛṣṇa’s service by vibrating Hare Kṛṣṇa mantra, and if you don’t allow your tongue to touch anything which is not offered to Kṛṣṇa, then you become immediately Kṛṣṇa-realized. When the tongue is controlled, all other senses are automatically controlled. This is the process. Now again engage your tongue chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa.
| | | On his cue, the devotees began a kīrtana. Śrīla Prabhupāda had given them everything – kīrtana, prasādam, Bhagavad-gītā, Kṛṣṇa’s service – and now, at least for a precious week, Prabhupāda was giving them himself. Every morning and night he was chanting with them and being with them, strengthening their faith in Kṛṣṇa consciousness.
| | | Śrīla Prabhupāda liked his quarters in the temple. The devotees had divided one big room with a curtain – one side for preaching and one side for resting – and had painted it pastel blue, after the color scheme Śrīla Prabhupāda had requested for his room in Los Angeles. And in their own way, the devotees had tried to make it artistic and Vedic. They had decorated a beautiful āsana for him to sit on while meeting with guests. Beside his sitting place was a display of his books, and above the bookcase a silver vase of flowers.
| | | Prabhupāda continued to work persistently at his Bhāgavatam translation and purports. During his last visit to Mexico, in 1972, he had been working on the Fourth Canto. Now he was on the Fifth. That he could concentrate on translating while traveling almost constantly was a remarkable achievement. Perhaps only a writer can appreciate how extremely difficult it is to expect to make serious literary composition while at the same time moving continually from room to room, country to country, climate to climate – one week after the next. But Prabhupāda had been doing it for years. And he was able to do it because he was completely surrendered to the task and because Kṛṣṇa was directly collaborating with him. Devotees had come to expect that Śrīla Prabhupāda would live a very busy life all day, dealing with internal management, with devotees, guests, letters, lectures, travels – and then at night, instead of collapsing for eight hours of hard-earned rest, that he would lie down for a couple of hours and then rise, unaided, when almost everyone else was asleep, and execute the most demanding task of his entire day, translating and commenting on the Sanskrit verses of Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam. That his Bhāgavatams were so masterfully rendered could only mean that his work was, as a prominent American professor had described it, “God-sent.” Many professors, librarians, and scholars were appreciating Śrīla Prabhupāda’s books. Prabhupāda wrote the devotees in America who were circulating his books in universities and getting reviews,
| | | “Thank you very much for sending the book reviews. Send more if you can. These are very, very encouraging. I am keeping a collection of these reviews and I show them to big, big scholars and professors when they come to see me. They are very impressed.”
| | | But how, at the age of seventy-eight, could he write such transcendental literature, which was praised and worshiped by all devotees and appreciated by religious and Sanskrit professors, and at the same time travel and tend to several thousand initiated disciples? One can only begin to understand and appreciate his endeavor.
| | | Nanda-prāṇa: Prabhupāda was very busy with the translation. Some of us devotees took care of Prabhupāda and would stay outside his room all night. We could hear the dictating machine. At 10:00 Prabhupāda would stop the dictating machine and turn the lights off. Then about 2:00 he would rise without an alarm clock and turn the light on. He would keep going with his translations.
| | | Devotee: I could see every night Śrīla Prabhupāda very regularly just turned off his light. I couldn’t see inside his room, but from a little space underneath the door I could see he was working until late at night. Every devotee would take rest, but he was working until 10:00. At exactly 10:00 he would turn off his light. Then automatically, very regularly, he would turn on the light at 1:30 in the morning. I was very surprised how he could just rest for three and a half hours and work all day long. I think during the daytime he would take another nap, but from 1:30 A.M. until the morning I would see the lights on. Then in the morning after maṅgala-ārati he would go on his morning walk.
| | | In Chapultepec Park Śrīla Prabhupāda liked to walk on the narrow Road of the Philosophers. The early mornings were cold, and he wore his long saffron coat with hood. The simple canvas shoes he wore would become wet from the dew on the grass. His rapid pace made his younger disciples hustle to keep up. Often Prabhupāda’s words would go untranslated, and the Mexican boys could catch only a phrase or two. But they were happy to be with their spiritual master. He was interested in the many varieties of trees and sometimes asked about them. Once, stopping before a large dead tree, he examined it carefully.
| | | What is the difference between this dead tree and the others? he asked. One disciple replied, This tree is dead because its time is over.
No, Prabhupāda said and tapped his cane on the ground.
Another devotee ventured, This tree has a certain karma different from the others.
No. Prabhupāda again tapped his cane on the ground. The difference is that there is not a soul in this tree.
| | | While walking among the trees in Chapultepec Park, Prabhupāda spotted a certain eucalyptus twig above his head. He stopped. From as early as 1967 in San Francisco, he had used the twigs of eucalyptus trees as toothbrushes, a Western substitute for the antiseptic nīm twigs of India.
| | | Kṣiti-mohana: Prabhupāda pointed to the tree and told Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja, “I want that stick.” It was a very small one. Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja heard Prabhupāda. He said, “Prabhupāda wants that. Come on, bring it down, bring it down.” He wanted to give it to Prabhupāda. So we made a pyramid of men, with three men on the bottom then two men on top of them, and one skinny devotee climbed on top. When the devotee stood and reached up, he was still about fifty centimeters short. But when he made an effort to reach it, the whole pyramid fell to the ground. Prabhupāda was watching them, smiling and laughing. Again they made the pyramid bigger, and the devotee tried to reach it again, but again they fell down. Then more devotees tried. They became wet because of the grass, and Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja was very excited, saying, “Come on, Prabhupāda wants that. Prabhupāda wants that. Keep moving.” Prabhupāda was smiling at the fun, sometimes watching the twig and sometimes watching the devotees. A third time they tried the pyramid, and it fell down. But the fourth time it worked, and the devotee stood up and broke the twig from the tree. He gave it to Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja, who gave it to Prabhupāda. Prabhupāda held it in his hand, inspected it for a minute, and then threw it away.
| | | Often during his morning walk Śrīla Prabhupāda would only chant Hare Kṛṣṇa, the universal language in which all the Spanish and English-speaking devotees could participate without difficulty. For many of the Mexican disciples this was their first personal contact with Śrīla Prabhupāda, and they were awed. Occasionally, on a walk Śrīla Prabhupāda would suddenly sit on a bench, and as many as fifteen disciples would quickly gather at his feet, looking up to him.
| | | Munipriya: Prabhupāda sat down in the park. The people around Prabhupāda also sat and came to see Prabhupāda. People were sitting and looking to Prabhupāda, and he was also looking at all the devotees. And all the devotees were waiting to hear from Prabhupāda. Nobody makes a sound. Prabhupāda looked at all the devotees and then said, “Chant Hare Kṛṣṇa!” Then all the devotees came to love him. Because all the people were waiting for Śrīla Prabhupāda to talk about philosophy. These boys don’t expect Śrīla Prabhupāda to suddenly say, “Chant Hare Kṛṣṇa!” And they came to love him, because Prabhupāda said this in the middle of a silence.
| | | When Prabhupāda saw the joggers he remarked, If they say they don’t care about the ultimate meaning of life, why are they running? They are running, he said, because they are all afraid of death. They passed a martial arts class – two rows of men in black leotards, gesturing aggressively in unison. Who are they fighting? he asked. He said that when he explains philosophically that everyone is afraid of death, people reply, No, I’m not afraid. But if they are not afraid of death, then why are they doing all this? And he gestured toward the mock fighting and laughed.
| | | One morning he stopped at a large garbage container and asked about the sign on it. Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja replied, It says, ‘Put the garbage in this place.’
Then the whole material world will be there, Śrīla Prabhupāda replied. But it is too big to put into this container.
| | | Another morning, riding back to the temple in the car, Prabhupāda asked the driver, Nanda-prāṇa, to go faster. Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja translated Prabhupāda’s order to the driver, who sped up slightly. Śrīla Prabhupāda then astonished them by asking, Que pasa, Nanda-prāṇa? And when the ride was over, he added, Muchas gracias.
| | | There was no scarcity of flowers in Mexico City, and every morning during guru-pūjā over a hundred devotees and guests would come one by one before Śrīla Prabhupāda to offer a palmful of flower petals at his lotus feet. By the end of the guru-pūjā a small hill of flower petals spilled over Śrīla Prabhupāda’s legs, until finally he would gather up handfuls and throw them out to the ecstatic devotees, who continued their chanting and dancing with even greater rigor.
| | | On Prabhupāda’s second morning in Mexico City, he spoke from Bhagavad-gītā 2.12 on how the soul is eternally individual. When you actually understand, Śrīla Prabhupāda said, that you are not American or Indian or Mexican, but that you are spirit soul, then your spiritual life begins. He said the symptom of identifying oneself with the soul is that one becomes jubilant, jolly. And to attain this, one has to undergo a process of purification. Without purification, you cannot understand God. But Lord Caitanya’s prescription, which we are simply propagating, is ‘Chant Hare Kṛṣṇa.’ So I am very glad to see that you Mexican young boys, girls, ladies, and gentlemen are coming here and joining and chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa. I request you to continue this procedure. Please come here, join this chanting of Hare Kṛṣṇa mantra, and take prasādam and go home. And surely you will be purified and qualified for going back to home, back to Godhead.
| | | Questions and answers followed, with Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja translating.
| | | Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja: He wants to know if within marriage it is possible to achieve perfection.
Prabhupāda: Yes. Human being is meant for marriage, not the cats and dogs. If you can remain without marriage, without sex life, that is very good, but if you can’t, then marry and be gentleman and remain peaceful.
| | | Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja: He wants to know if one can achieve Kṛṣṇa consciousness outside the temple.
Prabhupāda: Oh, yes. You have to follow the rules and regulations, that’s all.
| | | Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja: What about when one breaks the principles? Can Kṛṣṇa forgive him?
Prabhupāda: Yes, Kṛṣṇa can forgive you once, twice, but not regularly. Prabhupāda smiled, and the devotees laughed with him.
| | | Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja: Sometimes people come and join our movement and follow the four principles, but there appears to be a fault in their character. So he says that by following the process gradually the defects will be diminished. But is there any way to more rapidly –
Prabhupāda: If a man comes and follows the regulative principles even for some time and again he falls down, so long as he has followed, that asset is permanent. Anything spiritual asset is never lost. So little, little, little … when it is complete cent percent then you become liberated. Spiritual asset is never lost. Even if a person comes to the temple, follows the regulative principles for some time, and again falls down, he is not a loser – he is a gainer. Others, who do not take this lesson, who keep outside and perform their so-called material duties very perfectly, they are losers.
So at least for some time let every one of you come here and follow the restriction. If you become perfect, it is all right. But even if you go away, whatever you have done, that is your permanent asset. That is stated in the Bhagavad-gītā: svalpam apy asya dharmasya trāyate mahato bhayāt. Even that little asset can help you become freed from the greatest danger. So in the Bhagavad-gītā it is stated even if such a person falls down, he is given a chance in next life to take birth in a very rich aristocratic family or in a very pious brāhmaṇa family. A little spiritual asset in this human form of life will at least guarantee your next life in a very nice family. But without spiritual life there is no guarantee whether you are going to become human being or cat or dog.
| | | Since Śrīla Prabhupāda’s last visit, the devotees had received his permission and had installed Deities of Rādhā-Kṛṣṇa. Śrīla Prabhupāda criticized, however, that Their dress was not up to standard. He said that the opulent Deity worship followed in Los Angeles ISKCON was the standard they should adopt. When he saw a painted backdrop behind the Deities depicting the land of Vṛndāvana, he said that this Vṛndāvana mood of spontaneous love for Kṛṣṇa was too elevated for ordinary devotees. Again he stressed the worship of Kṛṣṇa in awe and opulence as He appeared in Dvārakā; the devotees should study the worship of Rukmiṇī-Dvārakādhīśa in Los Angeles.
| | | One day Śrīla Prabhupāda asked to sample the contents of Rādhā-Kṛṣṇa’s plate directly from the altar. He tasted the prasādam and approved. But on another occasion he went to the kitchen and found that the pūjārīs had put new flowers in the same place as old, rejected flowers. These are the flowers to offer to Kṛṣṇa? he asked with disapproval. He requested Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja to find a qualified devotee to become the head pūjārī and oversee the Deity worship. Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja brought Kṣiti-mohana before Prabhupāda in his room, and Prabhupāda began to talk about how the most important service was to increase the Deity worship. No, Kṣiti-mohana replied, saṅkīrtana is most important.
| | | You should never say, ‘No!’ to Prabhupāda, Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja corrected.
| | | Yes, Prabhupāda, Kṣiti-mohana replied. Prabhupāda then asked him to become the head pūjārī. Kṣiti-mohana, speaking in Spanish, told Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja that he was afraid he would commit too many offenses to the Deity. Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja assured him that he could learn as he went. Because Prabhupāda wanted him to do it, he would gradually become expert.
| | | Śrīla Prabhupāda did not take outside engagements during this visit to Mexico; rather, he asked that interested persons be brought to see him in his room. Each evening, therefore, he would meet with several guests. The first evening several professors and Indian gentlemen as well as Hanumān and Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja all came to Prabhupāda’s room. Hanumān asked Śrīla Prabhupāda why his disciples were so fortunate as to have a genuine spiritual master, whereas many others have bogus teachers.
Every disciple will think his guru is good and that others are bogus, Śrīla Prabhupāda replied. But there is a standard for who is spiritual master. Spiritual master means one who is the best servant of God. But one who does not accept the existence of God, he’s a mūḍha, a rascal. A rascal cannot become a spiritual master.
| | | Professor: Do you have any opinion about some of the other Indian spiritual masters? The professor named several well-known gurus. At the mention of a certain popular young guru, Śrīla Prabhupāda interrupted, He says that he is God himself. Then he is a bogus. How can he be God? God is so cheap? Only the foolish persons will accept him. Those who have no knowledge.
At the mention of a famous meditator, Śrīla Prabhupāda said, I think he doesn’t speak anything about God. He speaks something on material prosperity. At the mention of another guru, Prabhupāda replied, He also says, ‘I am Bhagavān.’ Therefore he is bogus. How can you say you yourself are Bhagavān, God? So even if people accept him as God because he shows some jugglery or creates a little gold, then if by creating some gold he is God, then there is a bigger God that has created the gold mine. Why should I go to this tiny God? I must go to the big God who has created all the gold mines.
| | | Professor: I have great difficulty with the meaning of the term perfect knowledge. Could you –
Prabhupāda: Perfect knowledge means what you say is correct. There is no mistake.
| | | Professor: Under any and all circumstances?
Prabhupāda: Yes, that is perfect knowledge. Not like the scientists. They change. They say, ‘Yes, it was this, and now it is changed.’ This is not perfect knowledge. Perfect knowledge is that which you say, that is correct forever. Just like a man dies. If someone says, ‘Man dies,’ it is perfect knowledge. It is correct forever.
| | | Professor: Suppose he is reincarnated?
Prabhupāda: Dies means the body dies. The soul does not die. Na hanyate hanyamāne śarīre.
| | | The Indian guest asked Śrīla Prabhupāda about varṇa-saṅkara, the rapid increase in unplanned-for, unwanted progeny. Prabhupāda replied that since there was no following of the varṇāśrama system, the world population was going to hell. The varṇa-saṅkara has come to such an extent, he said, that they are killing the child, and that is legal. They have come down to such an extreme position.
| | | The Indian man replied, But surely there is a practical point of view also. If there is nothing to eat, what will happen?
Prabhupāda: Who says nothing to eat? That is also their manufacture.
| | | Indian guest: I meant the figures which are published.
Prabhupāda: Especially we who are Indian know it is advertised that we are poverty-stricken. All over the world that is advertised. Wherever I go they say, ‘Oh, you’re coming from India?’ Because our government is simply begging. But who is dying of poverty? Dying is going on in other countries also – they are committing suicide. And maybe some persons are dying out of starvation. You cannot stop death. Suppose you have got enough food. That means everything is solved? In America there is enough food. Why are they becoming hippies? There is no shortage of food. Nothing. Everything is abundant. But why are they becoming hippies? They are lying down on the street, in the park. I’ve seen in London, the St. James’s Park. They are sleeping, and the police are screaming, ‘Hey! Get out! Get out!’ So why? The British nation is not poor nation. The American nation is not poor nation.
| | | Indian guest: Poverty is also comparative.
Prabhupāda: No. I saw in Amsterdam – simply full of hippies lying down on the street with no food or shelter. It is going on.
| | | Indian guest: The hippies are not lying in the park because they lack food.
Prabhupāda: They must be wanting something. They are in need of something.
| | | Indian guest: But not necessarily food.
Prabhupāda: One body is in need of food, another body is in need of something else. They are needy. Everyone is needy. That you have to accept. I have seen in Los Angeles. I was walking in the Beverly Hills quarter, and one hippie boy is coming from a very nice house. Beverly Hills, that quarter is resided by all rich class. And he has got very nice car, but he is hippie. Why? His father is very rich man. He has got nice car. He might be very educated. Then why he is hippie? What is the answer?
| | | Indian guest: He’s frustrated.
Prabhupāda: That means he is in need. That is the question. You may be in need of food, I may be in need of some woman, he may be in need of some money. In this way everyone is needy. Therefore, ultimately everyone should search after God. Then every need will be fulfilled.
| | | One night some priests visited. They expressed appreciation for Prabhupāda’s work in Mexico but questioned if his mission could also be done through their own church. Prabhupāda answered that he never said the Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement was the only way. If anyone strictly follows his own true religion, he can achieve success. But Prabhupāda added, It is very difficult to find a real Christian these days. Although Jesus Christ upheld the scripture and quoted, Thou shalt not kill, the Christians, he said, were very expert in killing. They take pride in bullfighting, Prabhupāda added. This is their position. So it is very difficult to find out a real Christian. The priests became uneasy and soon excused themselves.
| | | Another evening a former Miss Mexico came to see Prabhupāda. Accompanied by two sophisticated, wealthy-looking men, ex–Miss Mexico was very glamorous, fluttering her eyelashes as she talked. Although not quite in her element, she tried to be diplomatic and was effusively appreciative of everything. I really like your center here, she told Prabhupāda through a translator. And I think I would like to come back and learn more about it. Prabhupāda was unaffected. Why do you want to come here? he asked. You don’t understand this Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement. Have you read my books?
What? What?
Have you read my books?
No, I haven’t.
Well, do you know our philosophy?
Ah, no.
If you want to come here, then you listen and understand this philosophy. It is most important. Then you can say you want to come back. Prabhupāda then turned his attention to other people in the room, and ex–Miss Mexico and her friends sat in silence, listening.
| | | Devotee: I was the doorkeeper outside Śrīla Prabhupāda’s room, and I was very concerned about my job. I was taking it as my life and soul, guarding the door of Śrīla Prabhupāda. Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja told me, “If you get the opportunity, just go into the room and see how Prabhupāda is talking to the guests. It is very important for you.” So I thought, “Well, I have permission for that.” So when a man in the government working in the educational program came and got an interview with Śrīla Prabhupāda, I got the opportunity to go inside the room. I thought, “Well, maybe Śrīla Prabhupāda will not be angry with me if I go inside the room. Let me try.”
| | | I went into the room, and I was listening to the talk. At that time my English wasn’t nice, but I could get some of the matter they were talking about. Śrīla Prabhupāda was explaining the importance of the Vedic point of view in the educational program. He was explaining that the main point in the Vedic system was to teach that we are servant of God. I thought maybe Śrīla Prabhupāda would be very diplomatic. He will not go directly to the point. But he was preaching very, very directly. He was making all the points to this man. He was telling him how we teach our children from the very childhood in the Vedic standard of waking the children early in the morning, taking bath, attending maṅgala-ārati.
| | | But the most surprise for me occurred when the man finally had to leave. He was saying, “Oh, Your Divine Grace, I am very glad I could have the opportunity to speak with you.” Śrīla Prabhupāda was talking in a very friendly way with him. The man was receptive. It was not an atmosphere of challenging. Śrīla Prabhupāda was very nice with him. Prabhupāda then told the man, “We have a lot of books. You are working with books in the government. You are giving books to the schools. So I will be very glad if you can take some of these and read, and then you will see in a more broad way all the topics we were discussing today.” The man said, “Oh, yes. I would like to.”
| | | At that time I was doing book distribution as my full-time engagement. I thought, “Oh, I don’t know if Prabhupāda wants to ask him for some money. I think Prabhupāda is not going to ask him for money because he is a guest.” I thought that Prabhupāda was probably going to say, “Yes, keep the books and good-bye. Hare Kṛṣṇa.” I expected that he would let the other sannyāsīs take care of selling any books.
| | | It was a surprise to me just to see how Śrīla Prabhupāda didn’t miss an opportunity. He was the teacher of all of us, an expert at making transcendental saṅkīrtana. I learned from that incident that I will never feel embarrassed in front of anyone just to ask for a donation for Śrīla Prabhupāda’s books. I felt at that time that Śrīla Prabhupāda himself had a lot of respect for his books, not because they were his books, but because the books – as he told us, and as we could see by his practical example – the books were his whole life.
| | | Since Hṛdayānanda Gosvāmī was Prabhupāda’s direct representative for Latin America, Prabhupāda called to see him frequently while in Mexico. He wanted his G.B.C. men to understand fully the importance of the Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement and to know practically how to conduct it and propagate it. He wanted them eventually to do all the managing of the institution’s affairs, freeing him to translate the Bhāgavatam. He had written about this responsibility in a letter to Hṛdayānanda Gosvāmī in 1972, shortly after awarding him sannyāsa.
| | | “Now you must all, sannyasis, GBC members, and other leaders become very serious to actually give the human kind the greatest welfare, namely this Kṛṣṇa Consciousness movement. Your task ahead is very huge, but it will be quite simple and easy if you simply do as I am doing. You must become conversant in every feature wherever it is needed throughout the society. Our first business is to preach to the devotees and to maintain the highest standard of Vaishnava education. Management must be there as well, just as I am preaching daily from Srimad-Bhagwatam, Bhagavad-gita, but I am also going to the bank, making investments, seeing the trial balance, making letters, seeing how things are going on, like that. So you must become expert in all these matters, just as I am giving you example...”
| | | One evening, after lecturing in the temple room, Prabhupāda was talking in his room with Hṛdayānanda Gosvāmī. Sitting on Prabhupāda’s desk was a world globe, and Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja was showing Prabhupāda the extent of his Latin American preaching field. Śrīla Prabhupāda sat, gently spinning the globe, finally stopping it with his finger on Mexico. What do you know about this country? he asked. Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja began telling him as much as he knew about the culture, government, and history of Mexico. Then Prabhupāda gave the globe another spin, stopping it with his finger on Argentina, and Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja told what he knew about the people and life of Argentina.
| | | Now we will give you some information about India, said Prabhupāda, smiling. And he named India’s exports and the provinces from which they came. He spoke of the relationship between ancient India and South America, of Lord Rāmacandra, who millions of years ago had gone to Brazil. From Śrī Laṅkā to Brazil had been a tunnel, and all the gold of Rāvaṇa’s kingdom had come through that tunnel from Brazil. Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja was thrilled that Śrīla Prabhupāda was including him in such an intimate, friendly talk, and they continued exchanging information while pointing to the places on the globe.
| | | One day Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja came into Prabhupāda’s room looking unhappy. What is the difficulty? Prabhupāda asked him. Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja took pride in never complaining to Prabhupāda or bringing him bad news and disturbing him. But having almost reached his breaking point, he confessed, Prabhupāda it’s impossible here. They are always stealing!
| | | Prabhupāda consoled him. Yes, in one of our Indian centers also they have stolen a rug. What can I do? Prabhupāda said, as if sharing his disciple’s helplessness. But then he said, Actually, my father had a friend who owned a factory. He would pay the factory workers a small wage. Once someone complained, ‘Why do you underpay your workers?’ Then he said, ‘No, I pay them so much and they steal so much. It comes out to the proper amount.’ Prabhupāda began to laugh. My father told me that if you have a servant and he does not steal from you, then he is not bona fide. He’s not a bona fide servant. Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja laughed along with Prabhupāda, and his unhappiness vanished.
| | | Once Prabhupāda sent a message for Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja to come immediately. When Hṛdayānanda ran into Prabhupāda’s room and offered obeisances, he found Prabhupāda sitting in a leisurely position, reading the Kṛṣṇa book. Prabhupāda looked up with great happiness and asked, Have you read these books? Prabhupāda was enjoying his own book, not because he had written the book but because the book was Kṛṣṇa. Have you read these books? Prabhupāda repeated.
Yes, Prabhupāda, a little.
Aren’t they wonderful? asked Prabhupāda. Especially Caitanya-caritāmṛta. They are so wonderful. Having said this, Prabhupāda returned his attention to the Kṛṣṇa book, reading silently to himself. After sitting for a few minutes, Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja gratefully left the room, desiring to follow Prabhupāda’s example.
| | | One evening, when several professors came to visit Śrīla Prabhupāda, one of them asked, Why does anything exist? Śrīla Prabhupāda replied that the purpose of existence is ānanda, pleasure. At first the professor resisted; he was seeking an answer referring to a “higher plane.” But Śrīla Prabhupāda insisted that ānanda exists on the higher plane. When we have got this body changing, he said, there is no ānanda because we are sometimes diseased, and then we have to become an old man. But we are eternal, so we are seeking after something which is eternal, ānanda. … That is the purpose of life.
| | | In his Bhagavad-gītā lectures, Śrīla Prabhupāda was methodically proceeding through the Second Chapter, now discussing the distinction between the eternal soul and the temporary body. Sometimes he lectured both morning and evening. When beginning his explanation of the fourteenth verse, he said, So from last night’s discussion it is to be concluded that we are not going to die. But in preparation for the next life, Prabhupāda explained, we have to tolerate material pains and pleasures. Sometimes the rules and regulations are there. They may be painful, but we cannot give them up. We have to learn how to tolerate. Prabhupāda quoted a Bengali proverb that said, Anything you practice with your body you can learn to tolerate. So if by practicing Kṛṣṇa consciousness you can go back to home, back to Godhead, why should you neglect? That will solve all your problems. After the lecture someone asked, What are the characteristics of a person who has realized that he is not this body?
He’s engaged in Kṛṣṇa consciousness, Śrīla Prabhupāda replied. He doesn’t know anything but Kṛṣṇa. That is normal condition.
| | | One evening, after an unusual number of impertinent questions, Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja stopped translating and instructed the crowd not to ask nonsensical questions. Immediately one of the ladies raised her hand. I’ve heard from the devotees, she began, that at the time of leaving my body it will be a very important test for my life for getting my next body. I’ve also heard from the devotees that it is important for us to think of Lord Kṛṣṇa at that time of passing away of our body. What I want to ask Your Divine Grace is: Is it as good as thinking of Kṛṣṇa at the time of my death to think of you?” Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja presented her question to Prabhupāda. Śrīla Prabhupāda smiled. “Yes, that is very good. You will get the same result.
| | | In the morning for his breakfast Prabhupāda ate lightly of fruit and cashews. He especially liked a local fruit known as guavana, and he drank guavana juice every day. At noon he also ate lightly, avoiding the samosās and pakorās and eating mostly dāl, rice, capātīs, and the sabjī. The Mexican devotees would wait eagerly outside Prabhupāda’s door to take the remnants from his plate. They were particularly eager for a bite of anything Prabhupāda had tasted.
| | | Kṣiti-mohana: One morning Śrutakīrti gave me the plate remnants of Prabhupāda. It contained milk, oranges already sucked, and skins of chickpeas. There was also ginger. At that time there was a Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam class going on, but when the devotees saw me with the plate some of them left the class and ran toward me. They started to take pieces of orange and ginger. One devotee got pushed and fell down. That disturbed the class, and the devotee giving the class was very upset. Some of the devotees kept sitting, but some of them, when they saw the remnants, left the place and ran upstairs and started to fight also. Then Śrīla Prabhupāda opened his door because of the noise, and he saw everything. He smiled and went to his room again.
| | | Most of the Mexican devotees got little direct association with Śrīla Prabhupāda because they could not understand English and because they had other services to render. They were never demanding, since they knew Śrīla Prabhupāda was busy translating and working to save all the fallen souls around the world. Moreover, Prabhupāda was a very great personality, and his disciples did not think themselves worthy to push forward and demand his special attention. Nevertheless, sometimes the devotees who took turns keeping guard outside Prabhupāda’s room would have a special encounter with him.
| | | Nanda-prāṇa: One of the devotees was a bodyguard when he was a karmī, taking care of important people in the government, so he was already involved in these things. Mostly in the nighttime there were some of us who were just taking watch three or four hours outside of his room, taking care of him. We were thinking that maybe some dangerous man or some crazy man is coming, and they would want to make something with Śrīla Prabhupāda. We wanted to put Śrīla Prabhupāda very secure. Every night I was doing the schedule from 9:00 at night until 2:00. At that time I was supposed to go and wake up the next guard.
| | | Ṛtu: I was taking care of Śrīla Prabhupāda’s sleep security. I used to chant rounds during the night. So it was midnight and I was chanting, and this devotee, Jagannātha Miśra, told me that I should not chant so loud because it would bother Śrīla Prabhupāda. I said no, Prabhupāda doesn’t mind if we chant loud. I kept on chanting loudly, and then I saw Śrīla Prabhupāda open the curtains in his room. He was standing there very humbly, not angry, but smiling. He made a motion to me, meaning please do not chant so loudly. Then he folded his palms and was smiling.
| | | Kṣiti-mohana: I was like a helper. If the servants needed something, we were right there to get it. We would rest, taking care of the door, day and night. Once they had a problem with Prabhupāda’s tape recorder. At that time Prabhupāda had to stop translating. So Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja called me and told me that he heard that I knew how to fix tape recorders and electricity. I went into Prabhupāda’s room, and Prabhupāda was reading the Caitanya-caritāmṛta. He was moving his toes. There was a tulasī there on his desk. By using his hands Prabhupāda was showing me that the tape recorder didn’t work. He wanted to be busy with his service. When I looked at it, the only thing wrong was that the plug wasn’t very well plugged in. I fixed it and put the tape on, and Prabhupāda’s voice started to come out. Then he said, “Everything is all right. Thank you. Hare Kṛṣṇa.” Then he asked me some questions through Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja’s translating. He asked, “Are there cows here in Mexico? Do you kill them and eat them?” Also he asked what is the coin in Mexico. When he asked about the cows, I answered that. And when he asked about the coin, I said it is a peso. When Prabhupāda heard about the cows, he shook his head. Then he was explaining that everywhere they have cows and they kill them off and eat them, and that’s why civilization is as it is now, in crisis. Now society is paying reactions, and they are going to pay more reactions because of that. Then he told me, now you can leave. I had to leave because my service was to take care of the door, and Prabhupāda had other services.
| | | Munipriya: I was a guard at the door. After 2:00 in the morning Prabhupāda came out in a gamchā. I said, “Jaya Prabhupāda, Haribol!” I wanted to get down and offer him my obeisances. Prabhupāda said, “No, no, just chant Hare Kṛṣṇa. Chant Hare Kṛṣṇa.”
| | | Tonio Fernandez: I was in charge of the microphone. One time I was adjusting it right in front of Prabhupāda, and he saw me and smiled. I felt very happy. I had no time to dance with the other devotees because I was in charge of the sound system. One day I put aside the sound and started dancing. Prabhupāda saw me, and I felt that he was thinking, “You must go back to your sound,” and so I went back, because that was my service.
| | | Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja: We were very anxious to serve Śrīla Prabhupāda nicely because he so very rarely ever came to Latin America. Therefore whatever he wanted, whenever he said, “Why don’t you bring this?” we would have three or four devotees standing by like firemen, and they would practically slide down the banister and jump into two or three different cars and tear out of the driveway on two wheels with tires screeching. They would have a race to see who could bring it back first. Usually within ten or fifteen minutes they would have it, whatever Prabhupāda wanted. One time I brought Prabhupāda his breakfast plate, and he said, “Aren’t there any cashew nuts?” I immediately ran out to the banister and shouted, “Cashew nuts!” Immediately they started jumping down the stairs, and cars were screeching out of the driveway. While Prabhupāda was still eating his breakfast, we brought in the nuts. Then he said, “No, never mind, I don’t need them.”
| | | The last Bhagavad-gītā class Prabhupāda gave in Mexico was on the seventeenth verse of the Second Chapter. If you simply become interested in this small span of life, Prabhupāda said, say fifty or sixty or a hundred years at most, but you neglect your eternal existence, is that intelligence? We are teaching that science, and the Bhagavad-gītā is there. Take advantage of it.
| | | As always there were questions.
Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja: He would like to become Kṛṣṇa conscious, but he wants to know if you believe in God. The absurdity of this question made the devotees laugh.
Prabhupāda: Hm? What is that?
Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja: He wants to know if you believe in God.
Prabhupāda: I don’t believe in God? You believe in God. Why I’ll not believe? If you can believe, I can believe also. It is not believing though – it is fact. We are explaining the fact, how the existence of God is there. There is no question of believe or not believe – the fact is fact.
| | | Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja: When we offer something to you, for example to your picture, he wants to know if spiritually, simply by the act of offering, do we become purified, or is the spiritual master actually aware of the offering?
Prabhupāda: Yes, yes. The spiritual master is the representative of God. Whatever you offer to the spiritual master, it goes to God.
| | | Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja: His point is, is the spiritual master actually conscious of our activities?
Prabhupāda: The spiritual master may not be conscious, but God is conscious, and through God he is also conscious.
| | | February 17, 1975
| | | After seven full days in Mexico City, Prabhupāda was ready to leave for Caracas. Everyone gathered in the temple to hear his last talk. As usual, Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja, sitting at the feet of Prabhupāda’s vyāsāsana, translated his talk.
| | | We have left our home and our father, Prabhupāda began, and we are in this fallen material world. And we are suffering too much. It is exactly like a very rich man’s son who leaves home for independence and wanders all over the world unnecessarily taking trouble. A rich man’s son has nothing to do. His father’s property is sufficient for his comfortable life. Still, as we have got examples now in the Western countries, many rich men’s sons become hippies, leave home, and unnecessarily take trouble. Our position as living entities within this material world is exactly like that. We have voluntarily come into this material world for sense enjoyment. And in sense enjoyment we have forgotten our supreme father, God. The material nature’s duty is to give us simply miserable condition of life.
| | | Kṛṣṇa bhuliya jīva bhoga-vāñchā kare – pāśate māyā tāre jāpaṭiyā dhare means as soon as the living entity wants to enjoy life without Kṛṣṇa, without God, immediately he becomes under the clutches of māyā. So this is our position. We are under the control of māyā, and we can get out of it also, as it is said in the Bhagavad-gītā, mām eva ye prapadyante māyām etāṁ taranti te: ‘Anyone who surrenders unto Me, he gets out of the control of māyā.’
| | | We are therefore preaching all over the world Kṛṣṇa consciousness, or God consciousness, and teaching the people how to surrender to Kṛṣṇa and thus get out of the clutches of māyā. We have no other desire or ambition besides this. We plainly say, ‘Here is God. You surrender unto Him, you always think of Him, offer your obeisances, then your life will be successful.’ But the people in general, they are exactly like madmen. Simply for sense gratification they are working so hard day and night. So devotees are very sorry to see their plight. Prahlāda Mahārāja said that ‘I am very sorry for these persons.’ Who are they? Śoce tato vimukha-cetasa indriyārtha-māyā-sukhāya bharam udvahato vimūḍhān. These rascals, vimūḍhān, they have created a civilization, gorgeous civilization. What is that?
| | | Just like in your country – a gorgeous truck for sweeping. The business is sweeping, and for that they have manufactured a gorgeous truck. The sweeping can be done by hand – there are so many men. But they are loitering in the street, and a huge truck is required for sweeping. It is creating huge sound, and it is very dangerous also. But they are thinking this is advancement of civilization. Therefore Prahlāda Mahārāja said, māyā-sukhāya. Just to get relief from sweeping. But there is no relief. They have got other troubles. But they are thinking, ‘Now we haven’t got to sweep. It is a great relief.’ Similarly, a simple razor can be used for shaving, but they have got so many machines. And to manufacture the machines, so many factories.
| | | So in this way, if we study item by item, this kind of civilization is called demoniac civilization. Ugra-karma. Ugra-karma means ferocious activities. So there is no objection for the material comforts, but actually you have to see whether they are comforts or miserable conditions. Therefore our human form of life is meant for saving time to develop our Kṛṣṇa consciousness. It is not meant for wasting unnecessarily. Because we do not know when the next death is coming.
| | | And if we do not prepare ourselves for the next life – because at any moment we can die – then we have to accept a body offered by the material nature. Therefore I wish that all of you who have come to join this Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement live very carefully so that māyā may not snatch you from the hand of Kṛṣṇa. We can keep ourself very steady simply by following the regulative principles and chanting minimum sixteen rounds. Then we are safe. So you have got some information about the perfection of life, don’t misuse it. Try to keep it very steadily, and your life will be successful.
| | | So if we follow the regulative principles and chant sixteen rounds, then our life will be perfect. I think this instruction you will follow; that is my desire. Thank you very much.
| | | Tonio Fernandez: The last time Prabhupāda spoke was in the morning. He said, “I wish all of you will go back to Kṛṣṇa.” I remember those words very nicely, because I understand that all the desires of a pure devotee are fulfilled. So I think his desires must be fulfilled. But when Prabhupāda left, I personally felt alone because I was practically with him only for eight days. It was a different style of life.
| | | Nanda-prāṇa: When Prabhupāda was leaving the house, he was coming down the stairs, and they helped this one boy, Govinda dāsa, who was four years old, to make a garland. He was waiting for Śrīla Prabhupāda downstairs. When Prabhupāda came down, this boy was going to put the garland, but he was too little and could not reach Prabhupāda’s head. So Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja took the child and lifted him up so that Govinda dāsa was going to put the garland on Prabhupāda’s head. But before he could put it, Prabhupāda took his hands and made the boy put the garland on himself.
| | | Roberto Ruiz: After coming from Chapultepec Park and chanting his rounds, then Śrīla Prabhupāda went away. It was wonderful because all the devotees went out. When the car was leaving the temple, it looked like a rug, like a carpet, all the devotees were offering obeisances. It was ecstatic. They were waiting for Prabhupāda to come again, but it wasn’t possible.
| | | Tonio Fernandez: When we start talking about Prabhupāda’s visit to Mexico, we remember a lot of things. And when we start talking, we can go on talking and we can remember a lot of things. Talking about Śrīla Prabhupāda is very hard because really we can’t know him in eight days. The eight days passed so quickly, like a minute. It was the best thing that happened in our life, to meet with Śrīla Prabhupāda and his devotees. The whole mercy was given to me also because I stayed closely. The devotees were struggling always to see Prabhupāda – the mātājīs, the brahmacārīs – but I also stayed with him. When Prabhupāda left, all of us stood at the gates looking at the car, and the atmosphere was very sad. I can’t tell by words, but only feel it. It is a feeling of separation. When one serves the spiritual master one serves Kṛṣṇa. It was the most sad farewell for me.
| | | Caracas, February 18, 1975
| | | It was late at night. For years the devotees had been hoping Prabhupāda would visit. Every year they heard he was coming, but every year he didn’t. But now he had come. In the temple conchshells sounded, and the kīrtana was uproarious. Because of the government restrictions, the devotees had not publicized Prabhupāda’s arrival, which didn’t seem to matter, since the temple was more crowded than ever before, with dozens of guests, a reporter, and a television news crew with bright floodlights and cameras.
| | | The leading book distributor in the temple washed Prabhupāda’s feet as Prabhupāda sat on a raised vyāsāsana overlooking a hundred persons. The devotees, many of them from other countries in South America, and the guests, friends, seekers, and the curious, filled every inch of floor space. As Śrīla Prabhupāda sat, he beheld the two golden forms of the Gaura-Nitāi Deities. He made obeisances to Them when he first entered the room, and now he spoke of Their mercy. You are very fortunate, he said. These two Prabhus, Caitanya Mahāprabhu and Nityānanda Prabhu, are present with us tonight. There is a song. You can follow? And he began to sing.
| | | parama karuṇa, pahū dui jana
nitāi-gauracandra
| | | No instruments or voices accompanied his singing, which carried through the still room. Everyone sat in hushed silence, fixed on him, as he sang alone.
| | | saba avatāra-sāra-śiromaṇi,
kevala ānanda-kāṇḍa
| | | Now that Prabhupāda was in Caracas, seeing so many devotees and seeing Gaura-Nitāi, presiding from Their simple altar, he was most impressed and moved by the mercy of Gaura-Nitāi. These two Lords, he sang, were the essence of all incarnations and the most merciful. In this particular incarnation the Lord said He would go everywhere to distribute His love, and here was the proof. They had come so far from Their original place in Nadiyā in Bengal. Prabhupāda himself was traveling far – even on this day he had already traveled hundreds of miles – and yet the two Prabhus were already here waiting, with arms upraised, shining effulgently. They had come to this distant place, Venezuela, and Prabhupāda was deeply touched at how They had extended Their mercy to the whole world. Tears glided down his cheeks, and his voice broke.
| | | The devotees became wonderstruck, appreciating Prabhupāda’s vision of the two Deities on the altar. Prabhupāda wasn’t thinking that he was in South America with some Spanish-speaking people, but he was seeing his beloved Lords and feeling how They were delivering love of God to the fallen souls. Seeing Prabhupāda’s tears and hearing his choked voice, the people themselves became thrilled to behold genuine, transcendental ecstasy. It was like the ecstasy of Akrūra on his way to Vṛndāvana. Akrūra had been thinking of Kṛṣṇa the whole time he was traveling, but when he arrived in Vṛndāvana and saw the actual imprints of Kṛṣṇa’s feet in the dust, he suddenly became mad in ecstasy and fell to the ground, crying, How wonderful! Similarly, Śrīla Prabhupāda was always living within the mercy of Gaura-Nitāi and Their mission, but suddenly seeing Them with arms upraised in this particular place, where They were encouraging the people of South America to take to this simple, joyful process – a process which does not even require knowledge or understanding, but simply to chant Kṛṣṇa’s holy names – seeing this mercy Prabhupāda himself was far more impressed than anyone by the mercy of these two Prabhus.
| | | Although the Deity, the temple, and the devotees had only become manifest through Prabhupāda’s preaching, the fact that they were all here, flourishing before he had ever come, moved him to a visible ecstasy of love as the servant of the Lord. He was awed by the potency of Gaura-Nitāi.
| | | The Caracas temple was situated on a hill overlooking the city. From his garden, Prabhupāda, sitting in his rocking chair, could see the whole city of Caracas, the city of eternal spring, spread out before him, shimmering in the valley below. Beyond the city loomed a tall green mountain. It was a spectacular vista. As the morning air warmed, Śrīla Prabhupāda removed his sweater and placed it on the branches of a nearby tree. He sat, chanting on his beads. Later, he took off his shirt, placing it on another branch, and sat basking in the sunshine, chanting.
| | | Prabhupāda’s traveling servant and secretary were glad to see him sitting so restfully in the sunshine, since he traveled rapidly and his body was advanced in years. After only a few days here, he would quickly visit Miami, Atlanta, Dallas, New York, London, Tehran, Bombay, Calcutta, and then preside over the international gathering of his disciples in Māyāpur. After Māyāpur, Prabhupāda would go to Vṛndāvana for the grand opening of the Kṛṣṇa-Balaram temple. In connection with the Māyāpur festival and the Vṛndāvana temple opening many matters were still pending, and all over the world ISKCON affairs and devotees were awaiting Prabhupāda’s scrutiny and direction. But Prabhupāda’s traveling servants thought that if for a few days he received no mail or phone calls, then that was good. They were satisfied simply seeing their spiritual master sitting and chanting in the sunshine.
| | | Jagajīvana: There was a little balcony above Śrīla Prabhupāda’s garden. I would go and sit there and just look at Prabhupāda, because in that way my eyes could become purified. I was also thinking how in Navadvīpa-dhāma there is a place called Nṛsiṁhapallī, where Lord Nṛsiṁhadeva rested on His way back to the spiritual world after killing Hiraṇyakaśipu. Did the Lord need to rest? No, but it was part of His pastime, and His devotees reciprocate with the Lord according to the Lord’s desire. So I thought if my spiritual master wants to sit and overlook the city in a relaxed mood, let me worship him in that setting.
| | | The devotees of Caracas were delighted that Prabhupāda was gazing upon their city. They felt that he was blessing the poor-hearted people of Caracas just by glancing down upon their homes as he chanted. While Prabhupāda was present at their temple, the saṅkīrtana devotees of Caracas continued going down daily to the city to distribute Śrīla Prabhupāda’s books to the conditioned souls. But just knowing he was there looking over the city gave them strength.
| | | In Caracas, Śrīla Prabhupāda took his morning walk in a nearby park, Parque del Este. When he passed a relic of an old ship, the Cologne, dating back to Christopher Columbus, Prabhupāda asked to go onboard. The boat tour had not yet opened, however, and they could only view the ship from a distance. A devotee picked lilies from the lake and gave them to Śrīla Prabhupāda.
| | | From nature’s study, Prabhupāda said, we can see one tree is producing a particular type of fruit and flower. There is no revolution. It is standard. But these people, because they have no standard, they change every moment, every year. Nature’s way is that the sun is rising from the eastern side, and that is standard. Prabhupāda chuckled. They will say, ‘Let the sun rise from the north.’ It is childish, simply childish. Eastern philosophers, Western philosophers – what are these different philosophies? Philosophy is philosophy.
| | | While walking, Prabhupāda spoke of the wonders of Mount Sumeru, the celestial mountain of the demigods. On the top of the Sumeru Hill, he said, there is a big tree, and the juice, after falling down, turns into a river of mango juice. And the blackberries, they are just like the bodies of elephants, but with small seeds. They also turn into rivers like the rivers of the jambū fruit. Both banks of the river, being moistened by this juice and dried by air and sunshine, it becomes gold. And that gold is used by the denizens of heaven for their ornaments, helmets, bracelets, and belts. But where is gold here? Just paper. They cannot make even gold coins. Everything is reducing to poverty. In our childhood we have seen gold coins and silver coins. Now there is no such thing. Plastic and paper. As he walked, Prabhupāda observed the beautiful park. Yes, he said, it is a nice garden.
| | | Devotees crowded near Prabhupāda as he walked, sometimes too near, almost bumping him. Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja translated questions from the devotees.
| | | Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja: He wants to know the relation between the Vedic culture of India and the cultures that were originally in Latin America. There seems to be some similarity.
Prabhupāda: Formerly the whole world was Vedic culture. They have deteriorated. In India only, a glimpse is still maintained. Prabhupāda then told them how Lord Rāmacandra had once come to Brazil, then the headquarters of Rāvaṇa’s brother and a part of Rāvaṇa’s kingdom. The demons had brought Rāmacandra there to kill. They wanted Him to lean His head over, and when He would do so, they were going to cut off His head. But Rāmacandra told the demoniac soldiers, I don’t know what you mean. You’ll have to show Me. So they all bent their heads over, and He immediately cut off their heads. Prabhupāda said this all happened in Brazil.
| | | Moving further into the park, Prabhupāda suddenly heard the loud screeching of birds. Why they are angry? he asked. Śrutakīrti replied, They’re in a cage. Only birds? asked Prabhupāda. The local devotees replied that it was a whole zoo.
| | | Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja: He has a question that in Latin America there is much belief or superstition in a so-called lost city of Atlantis. It’s very famous all over the Western world that there was a lost civilization called Atlantis that fell down into the ocean.
Prabhupāda simply replied, Maybe.
| | | They approached a large pool recessed about twenty feet (6 m) into the ground and surrounded by protective fencing. Inside lay two crocodiles. In this material world, Prabhupāda remarked, the conditioned souls are always found in pairs. As Prabhupāda and the devotees walked up to the rail, one crocodile opened his mouth very wide. Prabhupāda remarked, Don’t you see? He’s inviting. He’s saying, ‘Just one of you come down here.’ Prabhupāda laughed. He’s inviting us for dinner.
| | | When a devotee asked if industry and technology could be used in Kṛṣṇa consciousness, Prabhupāda said yes, it could continue, but practically it had no real use. He gave the example that a man could sit on the ground just as easily as he could sit on a bench. But to make the bench, so much time had to be spent manufacturing. If the telephone and telegraph and television are used in propagating Kṛṣṇa consciousness, Prabhupāda said, then it is all right. But they are not doing that. We are utilizing the modern press facilities for printing Vedic scriptures, but they are utilizing the press for sex literature, birds’ philosophy.
| | | One devotee said that the world was beset with so many problems like overpopulation and food shortage, and he asked for the Kṛṣṇa conscious solution to these problems. Produce food, said Prabhupāda. But you are producing bolts and nuts. So try to eat them. You are producing motor tires and bolts, so eat them. When Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja translated this phrase, the Caracas devotees laughed heartily. To them it seemed especially appropriate, since they knew Caracas as a town polluted by the automobile industry. The energy is spoiled, Prabhupāda said. Everyone is engaged in manufacturing motor parts.
| | | The devotees on the walk were particularly concerned with world problems, and they asked Prabhupāda how a Kṛṣṇa conscious devotee approached the problem of food shortage.
| | | Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja suggested, Prabhupāda, the food relief program you started in India could also be used in other countries where there are economic problems.
Prabhupāda: Why not? But prasādam, not ordinary food. From all our centers you can distribute food, prasādam, because that prasādam means they will gradually become Kṛṣṇa conscious. Otherwise, if you give them ordinary food, they will get strength and they will increase their sex desire, that’s all.
| | | Someone asked what would happen to the geographic features of the earth as the Age of Kali advanced and also what would be the effect of taking oil and gold from the earth.
Prabhupāda: I think I have explained this. You have got a short duration of life, say fifty or sixty years, so instead of contemplating what will happen to this world, you chant Hare Kṛṣṇa and go back to home, back to Godhead. Don’t consider what will happen to this world. The nature will take care of it. You don’t puzzle your brain with these thoughts. Use whatever time you have got in your possession, and go back to home, back to Godhead. You cannot check it. So the best thing is to mold your life and go back to home, back to Godhead. Fly in your own machine, instead of thinking what will happen. It will happen, because the people will go on with their rascal civilization, and the natural consequences will be there. Better you take advantage of whatever time you have got and become fully Kṛṣṇa conscious and go back to home.
| | | Each evening a small group of intellectuals and seekers gathered to talk with Śrīla Prabhupāda.
| | | The first evening a professor came. Prabhupāda began saying that people are making a huge, frenzied endeavor just to secure money in the daytime and to have sex and to sleep at night. The professor, speaking through Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja as translator, replied, I do know that it is not the aim of life just to spend money on your family, go to bed, and have sex. But it is part of life.
Śrīla Prabhupāda: That I know also. Everyone knows. But beyond that, there must be some aim of life.
| | | Professor: But I think there should be some kind of humbleness.
Prabhupāda: No, humbleness is of course a good qualification, but the humbleness you will find in animal also. He is very humble, and if you cut his throat, he will not tell anyone. So humbleness, that is another thing. But what should be the aim of life? What is the actual aim of life? If we forget the aim of life and simply become humble like the ass, is that a very good qualification? The ass is very humble. You load upon it tons of clothes; it will not protest. Very humble. The professor objected to Prabhupāda’s conclusions. His opinion was that the transcendental search should not be undertaken so wholeheartedly. He felt Prabhupāda was putting himself forward egotistically as a perfect person and making claims on blind faith. Śrīla Prabhupāda answered all these objections with reason, argument, and śāstric evidence. But whatever Śrīla Prabhupāda advocated, the professor disliked, and whatever Prabhupāda disliked, the professor would endorse.
| | | Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja: He asked if we are content just to purify ourselves or if we also want to help the society.
Prabhupāda: No, you do not know what is the self, so how will you purify? You do not know what is the self. Can you say what is self?
| | | Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja: He says it is possible that he could spend his whole life trying to find himself, and at the end of life he might not find himself, but in the meanwhile he will not have helped society.
Prabhupāda: Not only in one life you will not know yourself but millions of lifetimes you will not be able to know. Unless you change your policy. Although it seemed futile, Prabhupāda continued to offer the man spiritual life, defeating his speculative notions and giving him sound arguments for the necessity of self-realization. Prabhupāda’s disciples had presented the professor for an evening of discourse, and so Śrīla Prabhupāda gave the professor what he gave everyone – the opportunity to hear about the Absolute Truth from a pure devotee. Prabhupāda had done the same thing in New York City, in San Francisco, in Calcutta, in Bombay, in Africa, in London – wherever he went and to whomever he met. The professor in Caracas was particularly stubborn, but Prabhupāda was tolerant, answering each argument until the talk grew quite lengthy. Give him prasādam, Prabhupāda finally said. The professor departed, smiling. “It was a great pleasure.”
| | | Another night, the leaders of the Metaphysical Society of Caracas came.
| | | From my point of view, their leader said, you are repeating this Hare Kṛṣṇa mantra over and over again somewhat like hypnotism. For example, in some tribal rituals they chant different things.
Prabhupāda: That is your opinion. But you are not an authority. Śrīla Prabhupāda quoted from Bhagavad-gītā, where Kṛṣṇa says that chanting the Lord’s name is the activity of the mahātmās, or great souls.
| | | In the Western Hemisphere, the man said, the supreme authority is Saint Germain. And he says we should chant ‘I am.’ That is a quote from the Bible. Apparently, when they asked God who He is, God said, ‘I am that I am.’
Prabhupāda replied that I am is not itself the name of God. Moreover, no one can claim to be God also, simply by saying I am.
Prabhupāda: When God says ‘I am’ and I say ‘I am,’ there is a difference. I am particle ‘I am,’ and He is whole ‘I am.’ A millionaire says ‘I am,’ and his servant says ‘I am.’ But what are they saying? For the soul it is all right to say ‘I am,’ but there is a difference between the particle and the whole. That is to be understood. When God says ‘I am,’ that means I am the whole. And when I say ‘I am,’ that means I am the particle. Therefore we should understand that when I say ‘I am’ and when God says ‘I am,’ they are different.
| | | The Metaphysical Society leader persisted. When I say ‘I am,’ the man replied, I don’t mean in the sense of the lower self but in the higher self. I understand that the essence of everyone is the same.
Prabhupāda: That we admitted. God is spirit and I am spirit – both of them ‘I.’ But God’s power and your power are not equal. In the Bible God said, ‘Let there be creation,’ and there was creation. But if you say, ‘Let there be capātī,’ there will be no capātī unless you work. You have to work for it.
| | | The members of the Metaphysical Society couldn’t accept the worshipable chanting of the names of Kṛṣṇa. I always understood from Indian philosophy, the leader said, that you cannot give God a name because that would be limiting Him.
Prabhupāda: No, we don’t give God a name. But God is named by His actions. Just like Kṛṣṇa. Kṛṣṇa means ‘all-attractive.’ That is the quality of God, that He is all-attractive. Similarly, Allah means ‘the great.’ So God is great; therefore He is called Allah. So actually God has no name, but according to His actions He has names.
| | | Another night the psychiatrists came. They also disagreed with Prabhupāda. They thought he was claiming too much and criticizing too much.
Prabhupāda explained, Mental disease is there basically because he is thinking he is the body. He gave the example of the driver and the car. If a man identifies with the damage done to his car, then that is a mental disease. The man is actually different from his car, but he thinks that he has become damaged by the damage of the car. “So if the psychiatrist informs him, ‘Why are you sorry? You are not the car,’ then the man is cured. So the defect of modern civilization is that he is not this body, but he does not know it.
| | | The psychiatrists objected, arguing that even if a doctor was looking for God, that did not mean he should stop trying to cure his patients’ physical ailments with psychiatry.
No, no, Prabhupāda corrected, it is not that I am talking of God. I am talking of the constitutional position of the living being. Although Śrīla Prabhupāda repeatedly hammered out the example of the driver and the car, the psychiatrists kept insisting, in effect, that it was the car that was important. But, Prabhupāda insisted, the insanity is not of the car. The insanity is of the driver. So when we feel the problems of humanity, it means the insanity of the soul, not of the body. To this the psychiatrists replied that Prabhupāda’s points were in common with many philosophies. They said there were many different ways and different philosophies for passing the time of this temporary life.
Prabhupāda: So you are interested only in the temporary life, never mind there may be disaster. The psychiatrists insisted that both body and spirit were important. As for the body, they felt responsibility for curing it through psychiatry; as for the soul, that was a speculative field in which one person’s opinion was as good as another. Finally, after repeated attempts, Prabhupāda made them admit the simplest truth.
| | | Prabhupāda: Just like the dead body. Everything is present in the dead body. The machine is there. Now somehow or other you try to drive it. But you cannot.
Psychiatrist (translated through Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja): The body cannot be driven because the spirit is gone. I admit that.
Prabhupāda: That means the driver is gone. So who is important, the body or the driver?
Psychiatrist: Both are important.
Prabhupāda: Both are there, but comparatively which is more important?
Psychiatrist: The spirit is.
| | | But then a woman psychiatrist spoke, suggesting that Śrīla Prabhupāda was being overly critical of society, without a specific solution. Again Śrīla Prabhupāda referred to the car and the driver. When Prabhupāda said that no educational department was giving clear information of the prime factor, the car’s driver, she said he was a radical, because many groups were doing just that, and she herself had studied theology for two years in college.
As on previous nights, the talk was tense, the guests unyielding in their refusal to accept the most elementary aspects of transcendental science. Śrīla Prabhupāda was offering them instruction in Kṛṣṇa consciousness, but he would not compromise.
| | | Śrīla Prabhupāda intended to initiate many Venezuelan devotees, but there was a controversy over who was eligible. Those first initiates who had been in the movement for a year were expecting brāhmaṇa initiation from him during his visit. But after the candidates had failed both a written and an oral exam on Kṛṣṇa conscious philosophy, the temple leaders decided the devotees weren’t qualified for second initiation at this time.
| | | When a lively discussion of the upcoming initiations occurred outside Prabhupāda’s door, Prabhupāda came out into the hall. The devotees explained the situation, and he asked the temple president the devotees’ qualifications.
Well, Prabhupāda, they go out on saṅkīrtana every day.
Then why don’t you give them your mercy? Prabhupāda said. Prabhupāda was teaching his leaders what it meant. It didn’t mean being lenient or slack or allowing a devotee to break the rules and say it was all right. But it meant seeing the good the devotees were doing. Prabhupāda said that in Kali-yuga if you see a spark of inclination to spiritual life in someone, then you have to fan it. And it is not sufficient either just to turn that spark into a small flame, but the devotee has to keep working with the conditioned soul until the flame is strong and going on its own.
| | | Prabhupāda could understand that the devotees wanted to be initiated in his personal presence. It was not expected that he would come back. So he had asked that they be given mercy. They were distributing his books every day on saṅkīrtana, therefore they were extensions of their magnanimous spiritual master. So why not give them mercy?
| | | Another controversy arose over the candidates for sannyāsa. This time Śrīla Prabhupāda took the conservative position. Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja introduced Jagajīvana and Mahāvīra to Śrīla Prabhupāda as candidates for taking the renounced order.
| | | Jagajīvana: Śrīla Prabhupāda began methodically to defeat all our arguments. He gave the argument that Lord Caitanya said sannyāsa was not recommended in this age. I said, ‘But Prabhupāda, you said in your books that that applies to Māyāvādī sannyāsa.’ Prabhupāda’s main argument was, ‘If you don’t have to take the risk, why take it?’ He gave the names of sannyāsīs who had fallen down. The devotee with me then presented the argument that Lord Caitanya had taken sannyāsa in order to help the people, so that they would respect Him. On hearing that, Śrīla Prabhupāda turned to Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja and laughed slightly. ‘All he wants is fame,’ he said. ‘He’s interested only in fame.” By this time I had forgotten that I even wanted to take sannyāsa. I was completely satisfied just being there with Śrīla Prabhupāda, and I said to him in a fit of devotion, ‘Actually, I wanted to take sannyāsa, but if I could just be your servant, this is enough.’
| | | In his initiation lecture, Prabhupāda stressed śravaṇam, or hearing about Kṛṣṇa, as the most important item in devotional service.
| | | All these devotees present here, he said, they are not Indians. I have not brought them from India, neither have I bribed them. But by hearing only, they are now coming to God consciousness and becoming devotees. Therefore this śravaṇam, or hearing, is very, very important. So all of you ladies and gentlemen present here, take advantage of hearing about God from this institution, and you also will become God conscious. Prabhupāda compared Kṛṣṇa to fire. To enter that state of fire one needs a high temperature, he said. One can transform wood into fire, but if he throws water on the wood, then he cannot ignite it nicely. Prabhupāda compared sinful activities to wet wood; they prevent one from entering the fire of Kṛṣṇa consciousness. Those who are habituated to all these sins, Prabhupāda said, namely illicit sex, meat-eating, intoxication, and gambling – to give up these habits may be a little painful in the beginning. But if you practice and pray to Kṛṣṇa, He will help. It is not difficult to give up these habits. As soon as you give up this wetting process, this sinful life, then immediately you become fifty percent purified to approach God. Then by chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa mantra you make further, further, more, more progress. And when you are completely free from all sinful reaction, then you will understand God and love Him.
| | | As in Mexico, Śrīla Prabhupāda began using Spanish phrases in Caracas. When on a morning walk a woman greeted them saying, Buenos dias, Prabhupāda asked what it meant. A few minutes later, as a group of joggers approached, Prabhupāda called out, Buenos dias, and they replied, Buenos dias. On several occasions he used the Spanish words for soul – alma and Superalma.
| | | One evening Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja entered Śrīla Prabhupāda’s room and found him alone, carefully reading the Spanish edition of the Kṛṣṇa book, Kṛṣṇa, La Suprema Personalidad de Dios. Śrīla Prabhupāda! Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja exclaimed. You are reading in Spanish! Prabhupāda smiled and said, For Kṛṣṇa you can do anything.
| | | After a lecture in the temple, a woman who frequently attended expressed her doubt to Prabhupāda.
Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja: She says that at the temple there is much māyā and that the people who live in the temple are faulty.
Prabhupāda: And where there is no māyā? Tell me a place where there is no māyā; we shall go there. No, in the temple there is no māyā. Because I am in māyā, I am thinking the temple is māyā. Let us consider the Bhagavad-gītā: mām eva ye prapadyante māyām etāṁ taranti te. ‘For anyone who surrenders to Me, he overcomes the influence of māyā.’ Therefore, those who are living in the temple are not in māyā.
| | | Fue la última mañana. Prabhupāda se sentó en vyāsāsana, listo para partir hacia el aeropuerto. A su lado, en el suelo, estaba su bolsa de viaje naranja. Pronunció sus últimas palabras, traducidas por Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja.
| | | So I thank you very much for your kindly receiving me in this temple, and I was very happy. My request is that you continue your devotional service very faithfully and rigidly. Then in this life you will be able to see Kṛṣṇa face to face; that is a fact. So you follow the advice as given by Rūpa Gosvāmī. Utsāha. The first thing is enthusiasm that ‘I must see Kṛṣṇa.’ You are seeing Kṛṣṇa. The Deity of Kṛṣṇa and Kṛṣṇa are not different. But even personally you can see, simply we have to continue the enthusiasm. Enthusiasm means to take things very seriously – utsāhāt, dhairyāt – and patiently. We are determined to go back to home, back to Godhead, so we should patiently follow the rules and regulations.
| | | So these are the six principles. Enthusiasm and firm determination and patience and executing the regulative principles. Tat-tat-karma-pravartanāt. And sato vṛtteḥ means behavior must be very honestly, no hypocrisy. Tat-tat-karma-pravartanāt, sādhu-saṅga. And in the association of devotees. If you follow these six principles – namely enthusiasm, determination, patience, and executing the regulative principles, and keep yourself honest and in the association of devotees – if you follow these six principles, then your success is sure.
| | | So these are the six positive principles, ṣaḍbhir bhaktiḥ prasidhyati. By following these six principles, success is assured. Similarly, there are opposite number. What is that? Atyāhāra, eating too much. Atyāhāra, prayāsa – prajalpa, talking nonsense, gossiping some subject matter which has no concern with Kṛṣṇa consciousness. We are accustomed to do that; we should avoid it. Atyāhāraḥ prayāsaś ca prajalpo niyamāgrahaḥ. Niyamāgraha means simply make a show of the rules and regulations but not actually realize them. And laulyam, to become very greedy, and jana-saṅgaś ca, mixing with persons who are not devotees.
| | | These six things should be avoided, and the first things should be followed, then your success in devotional service is sure. Prajalpa, unnecessary gossiping. Just like people are wasting time taking one newspaper and talking for hours. These things should be avoided. And to associate with nondevotees, and greediness – these things should be avoided. Atyāhāraḥ prayāsaś ca prajalpo niyamāgṛhaḥ / jana-saṅgaś ca laulyaṁ ca ṣaḍbhir bhaktir vinaśyati. If you indulge in these six items, then your devotional service will be finished. And the first six principles means utsāhād niścayād dhairyāt tat-tat-karma-pravartanāt / sādhu-saṅgāt sato vṛtteḥ ṣaḍbhir bhaktiḥ prasidhyati. By these six principles you will advance, and by the other six principles you will fall down.
| | | So under the guidance of your leaders in this temple, especially Hṛdayānanda Mahārāja, you follow. One life just take a little trouble. It is not trouble, it is very happy life. But because we are accustomed to these material habits, we think it is trouble. No, it is not trouble. It is very pleasing. Susukhaṁ kartum avyayam. To execute devotional service is very pleasing. Thank you very much. Hare Kṛṣṇa.
| | | Miami, February 25, 1975
| | | The Miami temple was located on two and a half acres in suburban Coconut Grove. On the property were several large banyan trees, and flowers and tropical vines grew along the fencing surrounding the property. To Śrīla Prabhupāda the climate was similar to India.
| | | As he was entering the temple room on his arrival, Prabhupāda noticed an adjoining room housing tulasī plants, and he entered. Śrīla Prabhupāda smiled to see the room crowded with very healthy tulasīs in large pots. He then entered the temple room. Once again Śrīla Prabhupāda beheld Gaura-Nitāi as the worshipable Deity. He had just come from Caracas, where the same two transcendental brothers were the presiding arcā-vigraha incarnations. It was midafternoon, and Śrīla Prabhupāda sat on the vyāsāsana and addressed the twenty or so devotees who had gathered in Miami for his arrival.
| | | It is a great fortune for you, Śrīla Prabhupāda began. Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu appeared for delivering all kinds of fallen souls in this age. Śrīla Narottama dāsa Ṭhākura sings, pāpī tāpī jata chilo, hari-nāme uddhārilo, tāra sākṣī jagāi mādhāi. So, brajendra-nandana yei, śacī-suta hoilo sei, balarāma hoilo nitāi. The same Kṛṣṇa and Balarāma. Kṛṣṇa has appeared as the son of mother Śacī, and Balarāma has appeared as Nityānanda. Their business is to deliver all fallen souls, especially in this age, Kali-yuga. So Caitanya Mahāprabhu’s mission was that He should be present by His name, by His form, by His pastimes, in every town and village of the world. And you are fulfilling His mission. So undoubtedly you will be blessed, and you will get Kṛṣṇa’s mercy through the mercy of Caitanya Mahāprabhu. To understand Kṛṣṇa is not so easy thing.
| | | Śrīla Prabhupāda emphasized the difficulty of attaining spiritual knowledge in the material world. Recalling a recent talk with a psychiatrist in Caracas, he told how the man had adamantly refused to understand the existence of the soul. So the devotees were fortunate.
| | | Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu, Prabhupāda continued, speaking slowly, out of His great compassion for the fallen souls, He appeared. Kṛṣṇa comes also. But Kṛṣṇa is not so liberal. Kṛṣṇa makes conditions that ‘First of all you surrender, then I take charge of you.’ But Caitanya Mahāprabhu is more compassionate than Kṛṣṇa, although Kṛṣṇa and Caitanya Mahāprabhu are the same thing. By Caitanya Mahāprabhu’s mercy we are so easily understanding Kṛṣṇa. That Caitanya Mahāprabhu is present here. You worship Him. It is not very difficult. Yajñaiḥ saṅkīrtana-prāyair yajanti hi sumedhasaḥ. Kṛṣṇa-varṇaṁ tviṣākṛṣṇaṁ sāṅgopāṅgāstra-pārṣadam / yajñaiḥ saṅkīrtana. You simply chant Hare Kṛṣṇa mantra, and whatever you can, offer Caitanya Mahāprabhu. He is very kind. He does not take offense. Rādhā-Kṛṣṇa worship is a little difficult. We have to worship with great awe and veneration. But Caitanya Mahāprabhu has voluntarily come to deliver the fallen souls.
| | | Śrīla Prabhupāda continued explaining the mercy of Lord Caitanya. Lord Caitanya does not accept any offense from His worshipers, and He is pleased just by your dancing and chanting, the easiest process for God realization.
| | | So as far as possible,” Prabhupāda requested, “if possible twenty-four hours – if that is not possible, at least four times, six times – chant the Hare Kṛṣṇa mantra before Caitanya Mahāprabhu, and you will get success in your life. So I am very glad that you are worshiping Caitanya Mahāprabhu, Nityānanda Prabhu. So continue to do this. There is no need of installing Rādhā-Kṛṣṇa, at least at the present moment. When you become more advanced in spiritual consciousness, then you can establish. But even if you do not establish, it does not matter. Caitanya Mahāprabhu is sufficient. Śrī-kṛṣṇa-caitanya rādhā-kṛṣṇa nahe anya. Caitanya Mahāprabhu is combination of Rādhā-Kṛṣṇa. In one place you worship Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa. So I see this place is very nice, and you are also very nice. Take advantage of this opportunity and go on chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa mantra and worship Lord Caitanya Mahāprabhu. He will bless you sufficiently to become successful in getting shelter at the lotus feet of Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa.
| | | Śrīla Prabhupāda stayed in the house next door to the temple, in several rooms prepared for him. In the living room an altar was set up, and to the right and left of the altar were potted tulasī plants in white straw baskets. On the wall hung a large poster of Lord Kṛṣṇa speaking to the despondent Arjuna.
| | | Traveling such a great distance from South America to leave again after a day or two was a real test whether Prabhupāda could follow his usual schedule while in Miami. But he did. As usual, he took rest that evening and rose about 1:00 A.M., translating and commenting on Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam in the same room he had slept in. Wherever he was, Śrīla Prabhupāda was always steady – with Kṛṣṇa. As he had once commented, No place is my home. My home is at the lotus feet of Kṛṣṇa.
| | | Putting aside his books, Prabhupāda took his japa beads and in the still pre-dawn began chanting, pacing back and forth in his room. Śrutakīrti, who had returned as Prabhupāda’s servant, entered, made obeisances, and performed some duties in Prabhupāda’s room. While chanting, Śrīla Prabhupāda gazed at the picture of Kṛṣṇa and Arjuna. Suddenly he smiled and said, “I like this picture very much. It is very instructive.”
| | | What is that, Śrīla Prabhupāda? his servant asked.
Kṛṣṇa is saying, Śrīla Prabhupāda explained, ‘You have to give up everything. Very difficult job. You have to kill your family members.’ Arjuna couldn’t do it, but he had to do it because it was Kṛṣṇa’s order. That is kṛṣṇa-bhajana. One has to be ready to give up everything and do what Kṛṣṇa wants.
| | | Dawn arrived, but the skies remained gray. Prabhupāda went by car to a secluded section of Miami Beach and walked along the shore. He wore a wool cādara against the slight chilliness in the air.
| | | Sureśvara: We were walking right along the edge of the water, and the water would come up, and Prabhupāda’s cane would touch just beyond where the water reached. His cane would make little holes in the sand. Someone would ask a question, mostly Tamāla Kṛṣṇa Mahārāja, and Prabhupāda would sometimes stop walking to answer it. At one point on the walk when Prabhupāda stopped to answer a question, I stopped right in back of him. We would all walk with him, and the positions of the people would change just by the nature of our walking. At one point when he stopped, I was right in back of him, behind his head, and as he answered the question he turned and faced me. I suddenly had an intense understanding that even though I was next to Prabhupāda physically, actually I was a million miles away from him because my consciousness was so un–Kṛṣṇa conscious.
| | | Śrīla Prabhupāda wanted to see the temple room and the grounds. But when he walked into the yard and saw it covered with leaves from the various trees, he showed his displeasure. He reprimanded the temple president, Abhirāma, saying that the grounds should always be kept clean and the leaves raked. Actually, because the yard had no grass, the devotees had carefully gathered leaves and spread them out evenly all over the yard, thinking they would be like a soft carpet for Śrīla Prabhupāda. They imagined he would like to walk on it when he went to the vyāsāsana they had set up for him outdoors under the banyan tree. But Prabhupāda criticized the dirty, unkempt appearance. This was Kṛṣṇa’s property, he said, and should not be neglected. Look at the neighbors’ yards, he pointed out. Their yards are clean. Why do you have leaves on the ground? Abhirāma made an excuse. Under the leaves, he said, there is only dirt. So we thought the leaves would keep the dust from rising.
| | | Prabhupāda replied sharply, There are nice lawns everywhere. Why here you have dirt? Why?
| | | Another Miami devotee made the mistake of replying, Prabhupāda, there’s no one to do it. Śrīla Prabhupāda looked around at the twenty people following him. How is this? No one to do it? He refused to speak in the backyard until they cleared away the leaves. And so, while Prabhupāda went to his room, the devotees began to remove the carefully placed “carpet” that they now saw as piles of dirty, insect-infested leaves.
| | | For breakfast Śrīla Prabhupāda took the juice of local coconuts, which were golden colored, and found it delicious. He also took his favorite fruit, mango, which grew abundantly there. His class was in the evening, and so he took time in the morning to speak with Abhirāma. Abhirāma presented an idea of forming a farm community in Florida. He told Śrīla Prabhupāda about Disney World in Orlando, where māyā was presented expertly.
| | | We should also have a place like that, Prabhupāda replied. It should be called Vaikuṇṭha World. A farm community, Prabhupāda said, should be according to varṇāśrama, and everyone should be engaged according to his propensity and occupation.
| | | The evening class was a treat. It was cool, about seventy degrees (21 ºC), compared to the oppressive heat of the day. The setting was dramatic. Spotlights shone on Śrīla Prabhupāda as he sat on a vyāsāsana under the banyan tree, while guests and disciples sat around his feet. Prabhupāda chose to speak on the first verse of the Thirteenth Chapter of Bhagavad-gītā. Although he lectured regularly on Bhagavad-gītā as he traveled, he did not use consecutive verses from city to city. In each city, he would open the book at a different place and begin from there.
| | | Śrīla Prabhupāda had repeatedly taught that the basis of Bhagavad-gītā and of all spiritual life is to hear submissively from the spiritual master. Our Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement is teaching people how to become submissive to the authority. Again he recalled the psychiatrist who visited him in Caracas. The man’s arrogant unsubmissiveness had made an impression on Prabhupāda; even so-called educated men were too proud to submit themselves to absolute authority.
| | | This psychiatrist’s question was, Prabhupāda said to his audience in Miami, ‘The problems of the world are increasing, so what is your prescription to solve these problems?’ So the problem is very easy to be solved. I gave the example that the body is here, and there is something which is moving the body, the living force. So that living force is the driver of the body, and also the body is described in the Bhagavad-gītā as a machine.
| | | Prabhupāda explained the Bhagavad-gītā verse, commenting that real knowledge was to know the difference between the self and the body. To manufacture a nice car or machine was not education.
| | | “In India,” Prabhupāda said, “he who knows how to join wires and bring current like an electrician is called a mistrī. Mistrī means ‘worker.’ But that does not mean he is educated. Education is a different thing. But at the present moment the education is technical. Formerly this technical education was entrusted to the demons. Formerly they also manufactured big, big airplanes, but that was being done by the demons – not by the great saintly persons or sages, no. That was being done by the demons. The yogīs could also produce wonderful things by their yogic mystic power. That was another thing. But generally, where there was a question of manufacturing, that was being done by the demons. Education, however, means brahma-vidyā, to understand what is the living force within the body – What is his constitutional position? How is it working? Wherefrom it has come?”
| | | On the second night Prabhupāda lectured again. Each talk was lengthy, and he answered all questions. As the last question on the last evening in Miami, one of the devotees asked, Śrīla Prabhupāda, if someone takes prasādam even once, is it true that they are guaranteed at least a human body in their next life?
Yes, Prabhupāda replied. You go on simply eating, that’s all. And all of my devotees, they have come to me simply by eating prasādam. As he said this, Prabhupāda was beaming, smiling, looking all around. When his glance fell on Abhirāma, the temple president, who sat beside him, Prabhupāda said, You, too, Abhirāma? Abhirāma looked sheepish and said, Yes, Śrīla Prabhupāda. Prabhupāda made other devotees admit their attraction for kṛṣṇa-prasādam. You also? he asked one after another. You also? Everyone admitted, until the audience was thrown into laughter and appreciation of prasādam.
Yes, Prabhupāda continued in good humor. “So we give all facilities. If you cannot do anything, please come and eat with us. All right, thank you very much.
| | | Atlanta, February 28–March 2, 1975
| | | The Deities of Lord Caitanya and Nityānanda Prabhu in Atlanta are over four feet (1.22 m) tall and effulgent. Their lotus feet are usually fully visible, transcendentally poised atop the whorls of lotus flowers. Their arms are upraised about Their heads, and They urge everyone to dance and taste the nectar of the holy names of Kṛṣṇa. Their faces show mild, compassionate smiles. And the mode of worship of God They are delivering, as described by Śrīla Prabhupāda, is very, very lenient and easy to perform for the unfortunate people of the present age.
| | | On his arrival within the Atlanta temple, Śrīla Prabhupāda was very moved to see Gaura-Nitāi. Now in three consecutive stops he had entered each ISKCON temple for the first time and taken the darśana of Gaura-Nitāi. This time, as in Caracas, it overwhelmed him.
| | | About three hundred superenthusiastic devotees had gathered to meet him. Aside from the residential devotees of the Atlanta temple, some forty brahmacārīs from Tamāla Kṛṣṇa Gosvāmī’s Rādhā-Dāmodara bus parties, about a dozen brahmacārīs from Satsvarūpa Mahārāja’s traveling library party, about a dozen men from Tripurāri’s airport book distribution party, the devotee-scientists of Svarūpa Dāmodara’s Bhaktivedanta Institute group, and other visitors were present. They had greeted Prabhupāda outside the building as he had pulled up in a black Lincoln, and now they followed him with an uproarious kīrtana into the temple room within the large house that served as the Atlanta temple.
| | | Śrīla Prabhupāda stood before the Deities. The ceiling and walls of the Deity room were mirrored and produced an unusual effect, multiplying the images of the Gaura-Nitāi Deities. Prabhupāda approved of it. He then walked from the front altar to his vyāsāsana, glancing upon the devotees as they parted their tight ranks and allowed him to pass. He sat upon the vyāsāsana, facing the devotees, who quickly hushed into silence.
| | | So I am very glad to see you, Śrīla Prabhupāda began. I am coming first of all from Mexico City, then Caracas, then Miami. I see your temple is the best. At this, the assembled devotees, especially the Atlanta devotees, burst into loud, unrestrained cheers and cries of Jaya! Haribol!
| | | So Caitanya Mahāprabhu is very kind, Śrīla Prabhupāda continued. Parama karuṇa, pahū dui jana. Two Lords, Nitāi-Gauracandra, Nityānanda Prabhu and Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu, They are very kind, you see. They have appeared just to reclaim the fallen souls of this age. So They are more kind than Kṛṣṇa. Kṛṣṇa, He is also very kind. He comes to deliver, but Kṛṣṇa demands, ‘First of all surrender.’ But Caitanya Mahāprabhu does not demand. At this point, Śrīla Prabhupāda became overwhelmed with transcendental emotion. He tried to speak. He uttered, He is so kind, but then his voice broke, and he began to shed tears. He spoke on, but his voice became very high as he was gripped by an ecstasy that made him helpless and inconceivably humble. So take shelter of Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu, he cried out, and be happy. Thank you very much. And then he stopped, unable to say more. The devotees themselves felt carried away and cried out, Haribol! in loud unison. Then, as if commanded, they all bowed down and uttered obeisances, Nama oṁ viṣṇu-padāya... Śrīla Prabhupāda’s arrival address was thus completed in two minutes, and he motioned to his servant that he wanted to go. The devotees were stunned at his brief, powerful entry.
| | | That same evening Prabhupāda came down again from his room. Again he sat on his vyāsāsana and said he would teach a song, “Parama Karuṇa.” He started chanting slowly with his karatālas, and the devotees tried to follow, although few knew the song.
| | | parama karuṇa, pahū dui jana,
nitāi-gauracandra
saba avatāra-sāra śiromaṇi,
kevala ānanda-kāṇḍa
| | | After a few moments, he asked devotees to play along with him on mṛdaṅga. A few tried, but no one seemed able to find the right beat. Śrīla Prabhupāda then stopped them and said he would show the right drum pattern. He had a devotee rewind the tape recorder that had just recorded Prabhupāda playing karatālas and chanting, so that he could accompany himself. The devotees were especially surprised, since no one could remember exactly how long it had been since he had played the mṛdaṅga. The devotees produced one old mṛdaṅga, but it sounded dead. A second drum was passed forward, but it was also dead. Then a boy offered his personal drum, a mṛdaṅga covered with a bright red and gold cloth. Śrīla Prabhupāda placed it on his lap, tested it, and found it acceptable. He then began to play, while devotees taped a complete recording of Prabhupāda playing karatālas, mṛdaṅga, and singing. In another unusual touch, Śrīla Prabhupāda had put on his glasses, adding an air of studious concentration to his playing and singing.
| | | bhajo bhajo bhāi, caitanya-nitāi,
sudṛḍha biśwāsa kori’
viṣaya chāriyā, se rase majiyā,
mukhe bolo hari hari
| | | When Prabhupāda finished singing, he explained. Pahū means prabhu. A shortcut of prabhu is pahū. Prabhu means ‘lord’ or ‘master.’ So these two Prabhus are Caitanya Mahāprabhu and Nityānanda. Caitanya Mahāprabhu is addressed as Mahāprabhu, and others are addressed as Prabhu. So these two Prabhus, Nityānanda Prabhu and Caitanya Mahāprabhu, are very merciful. It was as if Śrīla Prabhupāda was giving a purport to the uncontrollable ecstasy that overcame him earlier when he was unable to speak.
| | | Parama karuṇa means ‘extremely merciful,’ Prabhupāda explained. Extremely merciful because Kṛṣṇa is also merciful, since He is the Supreme Personality of Godhead in His original feature. Caitanya Mahāprabhu is also Kṛṣṇa, but He is acting as devotee. He is not acting as Kṛṣṇa. He is acting as devotee of Kṛṣṇa. Namo mahā-vadānyāya kṛṣṇa-prema-pradāya te / kṛṣṇāya kṛṣṇa-caitanya-nāmne.
| | | Śrīla Prabhupāda then quoted the verse by Sārvabhauma Bhaṭṭācārya further describing the mercy of Lord Caitanya. Lord Caitanya has come to teach us because we are all in the bodily concept of life. He has come to teach us detachment and devotional service to Kṛṣṇa. Prabhupāda recited another verse, the one Lord Caitanya Mahāprabhu offered to Rāmānanda Rāya as the perfection of religion. That verse begins jñāne prayāsam udapāsya namanta eva. The meaning, Śrīla Prabhupāda explained, is that one should give up other processes and just hear about Kṛṣṇa. And to hear about Him you do not require to change your position. Sthāne sthitāḥ. You are scientist, that is all right. You are lawyer, that’s all right. You are fool, that’s all right... But you do one thing. You use your ear and hear from the realized soul. In his explanation, Śrīla Prabhupāda told of different events from the life of Lord Caitanya Mahāprabhu. That Caitanya Mahāprabhu has come here in Atlanta, he concluded. So you worship this Caitanya Mahāprabhu. Parama karuṇa, pahū dui jana. They are very, very merciful. A little service will enhance your devotional service to a larger scale.
| | | The next morning devotees rushed to accompany Śrīla Prabhupāda on a walk in Piedmont Park. Book distributors from Tripurāri’s party as well as the library party men went along to ask Śrīla Prabhupāda questions. The weather was unusually cold. Balavanta, the temple president, had warmed up the car ten minutes in advance so that Prabhupāda would not be cold. This cold is not bad, Prabhupāda remarked. Actually it is pleasant. Nevertheless, Śrīla Prabhupāda wore his full-length saffron coat with hood and lining. He left his head uncovered, and his forehead bore fresh white tilaka marks. Several garlands were draped over his chest. Walking briskly, he strode through the dew-laden park, while devotees ran alongside, covering their heads with cādaras and rubbing their hands together in the invigorating, chilly air.
| | | Tripurāri: Śrīla Prabhupāda, sometimes when we give someone a book, he says, ‘I would never read it.’
Prabhupāda chuckled. You ask him, ‘So you want to remain mūḍha?’
Tripurāri: We say, ‘No, take it home, and some day you will read it.’ But they think they can find out on their own.
Prabhupāda: That is foolishness. They cannot. Mām eva ye prapadyante māyām etāṁ taranti te.
| | | As they walked, Prabhupāda noticed a big sign by the lake marked “No swimming.” Oh, Prabhupāda remarked, who is going to swim now? The devotees laughed, a comic relief to their shivering.
| | | Tripurāri: Once Balavanta was very sick when he was dealing with politicians, and I heard that you said that it was because by touching them and associating with them he accepted some of their sinful reactions.
Prabhupāda chuckled again. I did not say. But it may be.
Tripurāri: So I was wondering, sometimes our men on saṅkīrtana are shaking hands –
Prabhupāda: If you are on saṅkīrtana, you cannot be infected. If somebody is infected, then preaching will stop. If a doctor is infected, then treatment will stop. But the doctor is never infected. They have good precautions. Similarly, when you are engaged in saṅkīrtana, māyā cannot touch. Māyām etāṁ taranti te.
| | | One of the devotees from the library party spoke up and told some of their experiences in dealing with professors.
Devotee: When we take your books out on the library party to the professors, they say that they are very surprised that one person has written so many books.
So I am also surprised, Prabhupāda said, how I have written so many, what to speak of them. It is all Kṛṣṇa’s mercy.
| | | Devotee: One professor the other day was saying just like a devotee that you were coming in disciplic succession and were authorized to translate all these books.
Yes, that is right, Prabhupāda agreed. In fact, that authority I have got. I was explaining last evening, Don’t speculate. That is the qualification. All others, they are simply speculating.
| | | For most of the devotees on the walk that morning, it was the first time they had ever been able to approach Śrīla Prabhupāda in person. They had been dedicatedly serving him day and night for years, and this was the chance of a lifetime. In some cases, the questions they asked were calculated to wash away all their doubts and would be the basis of their entire devotional strength in the future. In this mood one of the library party distributors, Mahābuddhi, moved in close beside Prabhupāda.
| | | Śrīla Prabhupāda, Mahābuddhi said, in my service I have to always meet many educated people, much more educated than I am. So we are trying to present the philosophy, but I’m not so inclined to study all your books. I’m just not scholarly inclined.
Prabhupāda laughed and replied, Just pray to Kṛṣṇa then. Teṣāṁ satata-yuktānāṁ bhajatāṁ prīti-pūrvakam. … Pray like this to Kṛṣṇa every day. ‘My dear Kṛṣṇa, please give me the intelligence so that I may be able to become empowered.’
| | | On the second day of Prabhupāda’s jam-packed stay in Atlanta, the devotee-scientists wanted to see him. Śrīla Prabhupāda had already given his Ph.D. disciple Svarūpa Dāmodara many instructions on defeating the atheistic theories of the scientists, and Svarūpa Dāmodara had written a small book, The Scientific Basis of Kṛṣṇa Consciousness, which pleased Śrīla Prabhupāda very much. Now Svarūpa Dāmodara, Sadāpūta, and other Ph.D. scientists who had become Śrīla Prabhupāda’s initiated disciples gathered in Atlanta to get his darśana and further advice. They also hoped to hear Śrīla Prabhupāda talk with some guests they had invited from the scientific world.
| | | In a meeting with these disciple-scientists, Śrīla Prabhupāda expressed his intense desire to see Kṛṣṇa conscious philosophy defeat the bombastic claims of science that life occurs by chance or from matter. These people have no common sense, Śrīla Prabhupāda said. And they all pass as scientists. That we must protest, because we are servants of God. We are not servants of scientists. Call them directly ‘rascal.’ We are not a scientist, but we speak from common sense. That’s all. So many people are being misled by these scientists and politicians.
| | | Śrīla Prabhupāda commented that the creation is already created, and therefore the scientists should get no credit in their latest attempts to imitate the creation with their “test tube babies.”
| | | We have got the test tube – Śrīla Prabhupāda said, Bhagavad-gītā. As soon as you see a man who has not surrendered to Kṛṣṇa, all right, then he is a mūḍha. That’s all.
| | | Like the book distributors, Svarūpa Dāmodara and his scientist-Godbrothers questioned Prabhupāda to their hearts’ content, and with great enthusiasm he urged them to answer as he was doing and expose the rascals.
| | | On the same day, in the presence of his scientist-disciples, Śrīla Prabhupāda met with an Indian scientist who was a specialist in nutrition. The man explained that his work benefited mankind by finding the cause of and treating protein deficiencies. Śrīla Prabhupāda replied, Suppose the birds and beasts have no research institute. Yet there is sufficient protein supplied by nature. An elephant has got a big body and so much strength, but they have not found that by your scientific research. The nature is supplying. Prakṛteḥ kriyamāṇāni guṇaiḥ karmāṇi sarvaśaḥ. It is being done. Why you are wasting time in this way? You study what is prakṛti and what is behind prakṛti. That is real study. The protein supply is already being done. Just like a cow is eating grass. And she is supplying milk, full of protein. So do you think that the protein is coming from the grass? Can you eat grass?
| | | Scientist: Something must be –
Prabhupāda: That is something, that is not perfect knowledge. Everyone knows the cow does not take any protein food. She takes on the grass.
Scientist: Grass is quite rich in protein.
Prabhupāda: Then you take. Why are you searching after protein?
Scientist: Because we cannot digest the fiber in it.
Prabhupāda: Then it is not suitable for you. Therefore nature’s arrangement is that protein can be produced through the body of the cow.
Scientist: I think, Svāmīji, nature’s arrangement was not made for that many human beings as we have now on the earth.
Prabhupāda: Nature was defective, you mean to say?
Scientist: No, sir.
Prabhupāda: Then?
Scientist: I mean nature’s way is designed that the ecological balance of the...
And so it went. When the Indian scientist said that the flesh of the cow was valuable for its protein, Prabhupāda became disgusted. But however much protein you may accumulate, Prabhupāda challenged, can you stop your death?
| | | After debating some forty minutes with the Indian scientist, the devotees abruptly brought a professor of religion from Emory University into the room. It was simply one meeting after another for Śrīla Prabhupāda. The devotees were perhaps not completely aware that they were, in effect, asking Śrīla Prabhupāda to talk nonstop all day. But he did not complain. He immediately asked the professor, “What is your definition of religion?” And then in the silence Prabhupāda launched into a definitive discussion of God consciousness according to Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam.
| | | Along with the professor had come several Orthodox Christians. In the course of the discussion, one of them said to Śrīla Prabhupāda, God is my life. Without Him I cannot live. I understand what you are saying, but I believe that our tradition from the Old Testament says that we were created by God. Śrīla Prabhupāda had been explaining that the living entity is never created but is eternal, just like God.
| | | Prabhupāda: Yes, in one sense we are created. Just like the father creates the sons. It is not that the sons create the father. In that sense we are created. So taking this word, the sons are created; therefore the father existed before our creation.
| | | The Orthodox Christian respected Prabhupāda’s explanation and seemed to sense that behind the apparent differences, Prabhupāda, like he, was a follower of God.
| | | It’s a mystery, the Christian said reverently. We can only bow down before Him then.
That is our business, Prabhupāda said. Prabhupāda had recognized God’s ultimately inconceivable nature in such a simple but sublime way by saying, That is our business that everyone in the room laughed in appreciation – both at the inconceivable nature of God and at the magical moment created before their eyes by God’s pure devotee, Śrīla Prabhupāda.
| | | March 2
| | | Śrīla Prabhupāda’s third and last day in Atlanta, was filled to the brim and overflowing with his distribution of Lord Caitanya’s mercy. It happened to be the appearance day of his spiritual master, Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī, and so in the morning Śrīla Prabhupāda held a special observance. The devotees placed a large picture of Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī on a special vyāsāsana, and they hoped Prabhupāda himself would perform the ārati, although they did not dare ask him. No one else stepped forward to perform the ceremony, however, and Śrīla Prabhupāda could understand the hearts of the assembled devotees.
| | | Maybe I should perform the ārati, he said to Tamāla Kṛṣṇa Mahārāja. I should do it.
All the devotees think so, Śrīla Prabhupāda. They would be very happy if you did.
Yes, I will do it. So Śrīla Prabhupāda performed another rarely seen activity in Atlanta, as he offered each article, the ghī wick flame, the water and the conchshell, and so on, before the picture of Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī.
| | | That morning Śrīla Prabhupāda spoke about serving the spiritual master in separation. You should always pray, Prabhupāda said, that only by the grace of the spiritual master we achieve the grace or mercy of Kṛṣṇa. This is the meaning of Vyāsa-pūjā. As far as possible we have tried to give you instruction, books. But remain always faithful to the spiritual master and try to understand Kṛṣṇa. Any other so-called understanding is simply a waste of time.
| | | Later that day, Tripurāri and other book distributors met with Śrīla Prabhupāda.
Tripurāri: We have been trying harder and harder, Śrīla Prabhupāda, to make our techniques of distribution more honest and to be straightforward and not to cheat so much as some of the methods in the past.
Prabhupāda: No, the thing is that Kṛṣṇa’s service is so sublime that even if we cheat, we are not culprit. But because we have to deal with the worldly men, we have to go according to their rules and regulations on cheating. Otherwise, a devotee of Kṛṣṇa, he never cheats. He never cheats, whatever he does. The mother says to the child, ‘My dear child, if you take this medicine I will give you this laḍḍu.’ The child is deviated. He is not able to digest the laḍḍu, but the mother sometimes cheats, and when he takes the medicine, the laḍḍu is not delivered. Similarly, we have to say so many things very pleasing to him. But our business is let him take this medicine. That is our tactic. That is not cheating. If the mother helps the child drinking medicine, then afterwards she does not supply the laḍḍu, that is not cheating. Somehow or other, that is the instruction of Rūpa Gosvāmī. Tasmāt kenāpy upāyena manaḥ kṛṣṇe niveśayet. Somehow or other let everyone be Kṛṣṇa conscious. The other rules and regulations will act as the servant, but the main business is to bring one to Kṛṣṇa consciousness. We are not meant for cheating anyone; we have no such business. But to lead one to Kṛṣṇa consciousness we may sometimes say some things, and that is not cheating.
| | | Tripurāri: Just by distributing your books we can become self-realized?
Prabhupāda: You are already self-realized. Otherwise how you can push on the books? You love Kṛṣṇa; therefore you are taking so much labor for pushing on. That is self-realization. If anyone tries to establish that Kṛṣṇa is the Supreme Lord, that is self-realization.
| | | Tripurāri: Sometimes the devotees ask if they can take birth again distributing books for you.
Prabhupāda: Very good. That is real devotion. A devotee does not want to go to Vaikuṇṭha or any liberation. They are satisfied with service. That is pure devotion. And distributing books for the benefit of going to Kṛṣṇa, that is selfishness. But I want to simply distribute the books without any remuneration, without any personal desire. That is pure devotee. Prahlāda Mahārāja says, ‘I do not wish to go to Vaikuṇṭha unless I take all these rascals with me.’ That is pure devotee.
| | | Tamāla Kṛṣṇa Gosvāmī: At that time I took the liberty to introduce many devotees from our Rādhā-Dāmodara party to Śrīla Prabhupāda, because I had an intimate relationship with Prabhupāda in India that carried over also in America, and I felt that he would personally want to meet all the devotees on our party. So one by one every devotee from our party – only about half of our party was there, say about forty devotees – was introduced to Prabhupāda. “This person is a mechanic,” I would say, and, “This person is a cook,” or “This person is sewing for the Deities.” In this way Prabhupāda met each devotee, and at the end he said, “Kṛṣṇa has sent you every type of assistant in order to make this program a great success.” Then Prabhupāda proceeded to give a very powerful lecture about remaining brahmacārī, telling the men, “Why bother to get married? When you get married, your wife will immediately say, ‘Where is the house? Where are the children? Where is the clothing? Where is the food?’ In this way there will be so many problems.” He said it was better to stay simple and remain brahmacārī and preach Lord Caitanya’s mission.
| | | Śrīla Prabhupāda passed the rest of the day with the hundreds of devotees and guests who had gathered for the Sunday feast. He gave a long lecture, and then for one and a half hours he answered questions. When a devotee asked, How can we please you the most? Śrīla Prabhupāda replied, By loving Kṛṣṇa.
| | | Afterwards, the devotees performed a play depicting Lord Caitanya’s civil disobedience movement. In the drama one of the smārta-brāhmaṇas was complaining to the Muslim Kazi about the public chanting of the Hare Kṛṣṇa mantra by Lord Caitanya and His followers. The brāhmaṇa said that the potency of the mantra would be lost by the public chanting of Hare Kṛṣṇa. Here Śrīla Prabhupāda interrupted the play, exclaiming, But it has already increased! When Prabhupāda said that, hundreds of joyous devotees began crying out, Haribol! Jaya! as a testimony to Śrīla Prabhupāda’s words. By the grace of Śrīla Prabhupāda, the potency of Hare Kṛṣṇa was expanded more and more.
| | | Before departing Atlanta, Prabhupāda spoke with the temple president, Balavanta, concerning political preaching. Prabhupāda had been attracted previously when Balavanta had run for mayor of Atlanta. Subsequently, Balavanta and others had formed the political party “In God We Trust,” which Prabhupāda had also approved until the devotees showed signs of diverting funds and energy from the mainstream activities of ISKCON. Therefore, for the time being Balavanta had stopped political preaching, neither did he bring it up to Prabhupāda in this visit. But in his room Prabhupāda sat with Balavanta, talking.
| | | Before departing Atlanta, Prabhupāda spoke with the temple president, Balavanta, concerning political preaching. Prabhupāda had been attracted previously when Balavanta had run for mayor of Atlanta. Subsequently, Balavanta and others had formed the political party “In God We Trust,” which Prabhupāda had also approved until the devotees showed signs of diverting funds and energy from the mainstream activities of ISKCON. Therefore, for the time being Balavanta had stopped political preaching, neither did he bring it up to Prabhupāda in this visit. But in his room Prabhupāda sat with Balavanta, talking.
| | | So you want to take again election? Prabhupāda asked, and he chuckled.
Not if you don’t want me to, Prabhupāda, Balavanta replied. I just take it as an opportunity to preach if you want it. But if you’re not very enthusiastic about it, I don’t want to do it.
No, I am enthusiastic, Prabhupāda said, provided you don’t want money.
I think we can get our own. I can get the money. It doesn’t have to cost very much. The whole thing we would need is maybe two men to help. That’s only for two or three months of the year.
Then you can do it, Prabhupāda concluded. If it makes you well known in the city, and you get the opportunity of criticizing the demons.
| | | Balavanta: When Prabhupāda was leaving at the airport, I was determined to stay with him until the last moment. On the way down the hall he had given me a rose. I followed him all the way onto the plane. I was thinking, “I am going to stand here in my post in front of Prabhupāda’s seat and guard against any demons that disturb Prabhupāda.” I saw how insignificant the karmīs were in comparison to him. I was thinking that I will not let them interfere with my service of standing in front of Prabhupāda. So I was blocking the aisle, and people were having to squeeze to get around. Prabhupāda sort of chastised me lightly with his eyes, that I should be courteous to people and mindful, not impolite and disturbing. And I noticed that was the way he was. Although when he walked through the airport he dominated the people’s consciousness, he did not try to do that. That happened automatically. When he was on the plane, he was very nicely sitting in his seat in a gentlemanly way, without creating a big disturbance. From his behavior I gathered how the devotees should go through this material world, not trying to cause a big disturbance, not being neglectful of others’ positions, but being respectful and not causing anyone any mental anxiety, living peacefully but taking every opportunity to preach Kṛṣṇa consciousness in an appropriate way. I could see that here was a representative of God. We have never seen a representative of God before, so immediately it was very important for us to see how he behaved. It was important for everyone to see. But at the same time Prabhupāda was very careful to represent Kṛṣṇa in an appropriate way, because those who don’t recognize him as a representative of God cannot be forced to.
| | | After Atlanta, Śrīla Prabhupāda traveled to Dallas, New York, London, and Tehran, staying only a few days in each place, before flying to Bombay and then on to Calcutta and Māyāpur in time for the annual festival of Lord Caitanya Mahāprabhu’s appearance day. After Lord Caitanya Mahāprabhu’s appearance day came the grand opening of the Kṛṣṇa-Balaram temple in Vṛndāvana, and then Śrīla Prabhupāda set out traveling again on another around-the-world saṅkīrtana orbit.
| | | Śrīla Prabhupāda himself said that he was an old man, hampered by age, and requiring three assistants to help him move about. But actually he was moving transcendentally; otherwise, how was it possible? His around-the-world journey was not a matter of merely moving over the earth by jet or car. Such a mundane journey many ordinary men can make. But Śrīla Prabhupāda’s journey was one in which the traveler – being a pure devotee – gave pure love of Kṛṣṇa to people everywhere.
| | | Kṛṣṇadāsa Kavirāja praises Lord Caitanya Mahāprabhu in the Caitanya-caritāmṛta for possessing kṛṣṇa-śakti – the full power of Kṛṣṇa – because He delivered love of Kṛṣṇa all over the world. Śrīla Prabhupāda’s travels around the world similarly establish his kṛṣṇa-śakti, because wherever he and his movement traveled, the inhabitants took to kali-kālera-dharma, the method of pure religion intended for humanity in the Age of Kali. Inducing sinful people in sinful cultures to take up pure Kṛṣṇa consciousness is not something an “old man” or a “common man” can do.
| | | The śāstras describe the conditioned souls as wandering in the material world, transmigrating from body to body, one after another. In each species they suffer birth, death, disease, and old age. Because there are millions of desires and millions of species of life in which to fulfill those desires, there is little hope that the soul can ever end his journey from one body to another, life after life. Also, because the soul, especially in the human form of life, commits many abominable acts against the will of God, the jīva takes birth again and again to suffer the reactions for the pains he has caused others. That is the stiff, inflexible law of nature. For killing a cow, for example, a human being must take as many births as there are hairs on the body of that cow and be killed himself in each birth. For committing the sin of abortion one has to be killed within the mother’s womb life after life, again and again. Such acts as animal slaughter and contraception are commonplace in the present age; therefore there is little chance for a person to save himself from the continued repetition of birth, suffering, and death.
| | | But Śrīla Prabhupāda’s preaching contained the potency to deliver any sinful person from such perpetual sufferings, and this is the real significance of Prabhupāda’s traveling. Not understanding the facts of karma or the pure devotee’s power to deliver a person from karma, people misunderstood Prabhupāda to be, at best, the pious representative of an Indian religion. Kṛṣṇa declares in Bhagavad-gītā, Give up all religion and just surrender to Me. I will release you from the reactions to your sins. Do not worry. But only by the merciful intervention of the pure devotee does Kṛṣṇa pardon our sins. And because most sinful people are not seeking relief unless the pure devotee comes to deliver them, their lives are hopeless.
| | | If externally it appeared that Śrīla Prabhupāda was suffering from old age and from his constant traveling – or if sometimes Śrīla Prabhupāda described himself as an “old man” unfit for such rigorous traveling, then we should take this as a further indication that Śrīla Prabhupāda endured much austerity to carry the message of Kṛṣṇa throughout the world. But internally he was always thinking of Kṛṣṇa, and therefore he was not disturbed. The order of his spiritual master impelled him to travel.
| | | And his travels bore great fruit, so much so that by 1975 he was traveling not as a lone pioneer but as the founder-ācārya of a large world religion. The International Society for Kṛṣṇa Consciousness was being more and more appreciated as the movement of pure devotional service to God, a movement available for men in all religions and lands who hanker for pure worship and pure service unto the Personality of Godhead.
| | | As the authorized representative of Lord Caitanya, Śrīla Prabhupāda had a special insight into the great leniency and compassion of Lord Caitanya in delivering the fallen. As stated in the Bṛhan-nāradīya Purāṇa, “Only by chanting the holy name, only by chanting the holy name, only by chanting the holy name can persons be saved in the Age of Kali. There is no other way.” Śrīla Prabhupāda realized this verse by practical experience, as he saw firsthand the mercy of Lord Caitanya at work. Therefore, when Prabhupāda would arrive at an ISKCON temple and come before Lord Caitanya and Lord Nityānanda who stand on the temple altar, he would sometimes become overwhelmed by the mercy of the Lord and be unable to check his own ecstatic loving emotions. Śrīla Prabhupāda was very dear to Kṛṣṇa, and certainly Lord Caitanya Mahāprabhu observed Śrīla Prabhupāda’s preaching and traveling activities – perhaps in the same mood in which He heard the compassionate prayer of Vasudeva Datta. As expressed in Caitanya-caritāmṛta,
| | | “When Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu heard Vasudeva Datta’s statement, His heart became very soft. Tears flowed from His eyes, and He began to tremble.”
| | | As Śrīla Prabhupāda has described Vasudeva Datta, who wanted to save all the conditioned souls of the universe, so I would also like to describe Śrīla Prabhupāda, not out of partiality, but on the evidence of Prabhupāda’s life and teachings and on the strength of śāstra:
| | | “A Vaiṣṇava is so liberal that he is prepared to risk everything to rescue the conditioned souls from material existence. … He was a most exalted personality who wanted to show mercy upon conditioned souls. … He was a Vaiṣṇava – para-duḥkha-duḥkhī – very much aggrieved to see others suffer. … One who executes Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu’s mission must be considered to be eternally liberated. He is a transcendental person and does not belong to this material world. Such a devotee engaging in the deliverance of the total population is as magnanimous as Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu Himself. … Such a personality factually represents Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu because his heart is always filled with compassion for conditioned souls.”
[Śrī Caitanya-caritāmṛta, Madhya 15.163, purport]
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