Atma Tattva: In 1977, Ravi das and I were in Kanpur distributing Back to Godhead magazines when we came to a little building with a Bengali signboard saying the marriage registration officer, Mr. Chatterjee, worked there. I told Ravi, “There’s a Bengali here so let’s try to give him a magazine.” We went up the narrow staircase to the third floor, and inside a first-class Bengali-looking apartment, with old paintings, a big bookshelf and an easy chair, there was Mr. Chatterjee. We greeted him and I gave him a Back to Godhead magazine. He said, “Do you know that when Prabhupada was distributing his Back to Godhead magazines, he stayed in this place?” Mr. Chatterjee showed us around the house, “This is where Prabhupada used to sit, this is where he used to cook.” There was a separate clothesline on the roof, and he said, “We never used this clothesline. Only Prabhupada’s clothes dried there.” Then we sat in Mr. Chatterjee’s study and he brought me a brick-red edition of the Bhagavatam, signed by Prabhupada, which had some translations underlined about the Lord’s personal form. Mr. Chatterjee said that as a follower of the Arya-samaj he observed yajna performances and chanted Rig Veda verses but did not observe Deity worship. Prabhupada used to joke, “I know what you Arya-samajis do. When you see a Vishnu temple, you make sure no one is looking at you, then you offer your obeisances and say to the Lord, ‘I am sorry for offending You.’” Mr. Chatterjee said that he told Prabhupada, “In public I have been following Arya-samaj and in private I have been worshiping the five murtis—Vishnu, Siva, Durga, Ganesh, and Surya. But I don’t get satisfaction from either of these processes.” For over an hour that day Prabhupada spoke to him about the personal and impersonal features of the Lord. Then later, after printing the Bhagavatam, Prabhupada came, underlined a certain translation, and gave the book to Mr. Chatterjee. Prabhupada said, “You are not experiencing satisfaction because you think the Lord is impersonal.” Mr. Chatterjee was moved and said, “Swami Maharaj didn’t return to Kanpur. But I became a personalist,” and he showed us the Radha-Krishna Deities in his study. He said, “After talking with Prabhupada I came back to our grandfather’s line. Now I am worshiping Radha and Krishna.” He said, “Prabhupada used to take my daughter on his lap and feed her the tomato rice he had cooked. She is here now with her children for the holidays.” He called his daughter, and she said, “Prabhupada told me, ‘You should just take prasad. Don’t worry about anything that your father says.’” Her father, Mr. Chatterjee, used to preach to her that God has no form and that she was not to worship the Deity. She told us, “I was a personalist all the time.”
In the early ’80s in Bangalore, I was required to make at least two Life Members a month. I was a bad Life Membership maker and one month I had only ten days left. I was looking in the telephone directory for Bengali names and I found a ‘Ganguly.’ I called and said, “I’m speaking from the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. I want to come and see you today.” Mr. Ganguly sounded positive. He said, “Oh, you are from the Hare Krishna Movement? Please see me at eleven o’clock.” I took the membership form, a small set of books, a poster and so on, and I went to see him. To my surprise, I found that his was a huge place, almost equal to the aeronautical engineering place in Bangalore. I lost hope—there was no way this man was going to become a member. I went to one secretary, then another, then another, and when my appointment time came I was still with secretaries. Ganguly was the top man. I thought, “Since I came all this way, I should see him.” Finally they brought me into a big air-conditioned cabin where a meeting was going on. Ganguly told everybody, “I have to talk to the Hare Krishna now, so you all go,” and he closed the meeting. I came in, spread the books on his table and put the poster up. I knew that I wouldn’t have much time with him, so I was brief. I said, “I’m sure you know about this movement. We have a branch here and we have applied for land. You are a Bengali, you should be proud of this because our Guru Maharaj is also a Bengali and he has spread the Hare Krishna movement all around the world. I’m sure you appreciate this service, so would you become a Life Member?” and then I was silent. He got his checkbook and said, “What is the amount?” I said, “Two thousand two hundred and twenty-two.” He said, “I’ll give you a donation, and you can also make me a Life Member.” He wrote a check for ten thousand and gave it to me. I was moved. I said, “Thank you very much. This is a nice gesture.” He said, “I wasn’t convinced by your preaching.” I said, “I didn’t think I convinced you either.” He said, “I want to tell you something. My father grew up in Calcutta and was a classmate of your Founder Acharya. Every day Abhay came to our house on his bike, carrying his little lunch tiffin, and he and my father played chess. The stake for the chess game was lunch —whoever lost the game had to feed the other. Almost every day Abhay won. Later this man’s father received a Ph.D. in Sanskrit and became a professor in the local university. He would tell people, “The Maharaj who founded the Hare Krishna movement was my classmate and he came to my house every day when we were growing up.” He said that Abhay told him, “You should help me later on when I do something.” He would ask, “What is that something?” but Abhay did not explain what he meant. Years later this senior Ganguly learned that the same Abhay became Bhaktivedanta Swami, went to New York and so forth, that there was a local Calcutta center on Albert Road and that Prabhupada was coming to visit. By this time, the junior Ganguly, who I was speaking with, was in high school and for three days he came to see Prabhupada in the Calcutta ISKCON temple. Since he looked like his father, Prabhupada recognized him. The junior Ganguly said, “I am the son of such and such.” Prabhupada said, “Where is he? He didn’t come? Tell him I want to see him.” Later, the son told the father, “Maharaj wants to see you.” His father said, “How can I go and see him? He is the guru of the world and I am a grihamedhi.” His son said, “But he wants to see you and tomorrow he is going to ask me, ‘Why didn’t you bring your father?’” Feeling shy and small the father said, “Tell him that I am sick.” The next day Prabhupada asked the junior Ganguly, “Your father didn’t come?” “He is feeling sick.” “Oh, he’s sick. Okay, I will come and see him.” When the junior told his father that Prabhupada would come, his father said, “How will he come to our house?” The next morning instead of his usual route, Prabhupada, followed by some disciples, walked down one alley after another, arrived at the Ganguly house and rang the bell. The son came to the door and saw Prabhupada, his disciples and a huge crowd of onlookers in front of his house. Prabhupada and a couple of devotees went in and Prabhupada went straight to the bedroom where the senior Ganguly was laying down, not sick, but tired and broken. Prabhupada sat next to him, poked him like a friend does, and said, “Hey, you didn’t come to see me,” in Bengali. The senior Ganguly was shocked to see the Hare Krishna devotees in his house. He asked his wife, “Please bring something for them.” Prabhupada said, “My disciples need to learn Sanskrit. I told you, you should help me. Come and teach them Sanskrit. You can travel around the world with me and teach them. Why don’t you do that? You come, I will take you”. Ganguly said, “Oh, Swamiji, I am very old and I don’t have any spiritual energy.” “No, you have the spark. The same quality that’s in me is also in you. You should join this movement. It is very important. Bharata-bhumite manusya janma haila yara. You should perfect your life. Better late than never.” Prabhupada took a rasagulla and drank water. He told his disciples, “I used to come in the morning and from here we took that road to go to school. He was a very intelligent student. He used to score higher than me.” Around three o’clock that afternoon, when junior Ganguly came back from school, his father asked for some water. Then the senior Ganguly leaned back and said, “Bhaktivedanta Swami will take me,” closed his eyes and passed away. Junior Ganguly said, “In the morning, when Prabhupada said to my father, “You come, I will take you,” I thought Prabhupada was saying, ‘You come to ISKCON and I will take you to America or something. We understood what Prabhupada actually meant after my father passed on.” Junior Ganguly said to me, “When you called I asked you to come because I wanted to share this with you. In fact, we are already Life Members.” After that, even though he was a busy man, he would regularly come to our Sunday programs.
I had a Krishna book and on the back cover was a picture of Prabhupada looking at a champak flower he was holding. I showed the man this picture and said, “This is our Guru Maharaj, he has translated these books.” The man looked at that picture and then brought some thread and things from a little box and for ten or fifteen minutes measured Prabhupada’s forehead, ears and so on. Then he said, “This person’s features show me that all the four Vaishnava acharyas are present in him. I wish you had a picture of his full form.” So I showed him a photograph of Prabhupada’s full form and he did another study, this time with a lens. Then he said, “I was not wrong. They are all working through this person. You are very fortunate to be with him. I would like to be part of a movement like that in my next life.” I said, “But I thought your ultimate goal is to go to Kailash,” because he was a Shaivite. He said, “Yes, if I go there I can tell Lord Shiva that I want to join some movement like this, and I want to spread dharma everywhere.” He was happy and said, “Please give this book to me. It has given me the highest experience of studying a person’s features. I want to keep this book.” So I gave him a complimentary copy.
Once I showed a movie of Prabhupada lecturing to Dhananjaya and his wife, who were dance experts in Madras. Dhananjaya looked at that footage three times and then, in terms of Bharatnatyam, he explained Prabhupada’s movements to his students. In his lecture, Prabhupada spoke intensely about the power of devotion and how, if somebody is chanting the holy name, it means that in his previous lives he has performed all sacrifices and austerities. While he spoke, Prabhupada’s moods changed every two minutes. He was sometimes jubilant and sometimes frustrated that people were not taking to Krishna consciousness. It was like a dance except that Prabhupada was making mudras instead of moving his limbs. Dhananjaya pointed out these mudras to his students and quoted from the Niti-sastra of Bharat, “These are the different ecstasies that we learn in theory. In 28 minutes, this gentleman went through all that.” Later, in the Nectar of Devotion, I found three or four subheadings describing ecstatic symptoms that Prabhupada manifested while he explained the philosophy of chanting the holy name. He was not talking about rasa lila or any intimate pastimes, but simply about how one should chant the holy name and what happens when one does. It appeared like preliminary teachings, but Prabhupada manifested ecstasy while he explained it. When Dhananjaya finished his explanation, I said, “There is a famous verse in the Brahma-samhita stating that in the spiritual world every word is a song and every movement is a dance.” Dhananjaya took this so seriously that he began having that Brahma-samhita verse sung before his performances. This is how people were inspired, from an Arya-samaji to a business magnate to a dancer. We know Prabhupada inspired the devotees in our movement but this is how he has inspired others as well.
One Ekadasi during the Kumbha-mela in Allahabad, Prabhupada was sitting back with his eyes closed, his legs stretched under his desk, talking about Ekadasi. Prabhupada said, “Lotus pods fried in ghee are very good on Ekadasi.” Somebody immediately ran to the market to arrange for lotus pods, but just two minutes later a Ramanandi brahman and his 9 year-old son arrived, both of them wearing Ramanandi tilak. They paid their obeisances, and the father put a cloth bag from his shoulder on Prabhupada’s desk. Prabhupada put his hand in it and said, “Just see, it has come.” It was lotus pods fried in ghee. He looked at the Ramanandi and said, “How are you?” This man happened to be the priest of a Bengali family in Firozabad, U.P., where Prabhupada used to stay. Even though this person was a Ramanandi, he did the Gaura-Nitai Deity worship for this family. Prabhupada ate some of the pods, distributed the rest and said to the Ramanandi, “You haven’t taken bath in the confluence, the sangam?” The Ramanandi said, “Swamiji, I have come to take bath in the sangam,” and he put a plate under Prabhupada’s feet. Prabhupada adjusted his feet on the plate and this man bathed Prabhupada’s feet in sangam water from his pot while he chanted mantras. Prabhupada looked at him, smiling. During that time, December 1976, it was rare to get Prabhupada’s charanamrita and all of us desired it. This Ramanandi sprinkled that water on his head, drank some, and then sprinkled some on all of us. He said to Prabhupada, “Your feet are the actual sangam. What will we get in bathing that sangam? Your feet will purify the Ganges and since you are not going to the Ganges, I brought the Ganga here. I will mix some of this charanamrita in the Ganga.” Prabhupada smiled and said, “Give me your son. I will make him an acharya.” The man said, “He is yours, Swamiji, you can take him any time.” Prabhupada said, “No, no, any time means no time. You give him to me now. I will make him an acharya.” The Ramanandi said, “Swamiji, now he is learning Sanskrit grammar. To study the bhasyas, the commentaries, he must know some grammar. Once his vyakarana is over, then I will hand him over to you. He is yours.” Prabhupada insisted for the fourth time, “No, no, what grammar? We don’t need grammar. Give him to me. I will make him an acharya.” This man said, “Swamiji, I am not saying no. Everything mine is yours. But he is too small. He will only be trouble for you. In a few years I will hand him over to you.” Prabhupada said, “Okay, tike, tike,” and he rubbed the boy’s head. After that there were other visitors to see Prabhupada, and this man and his son left. Years passed and the Ramananda sampradaya broke into many inimical sects. Then one year I was taking ten gurukula boys to the Allahabad Kumbhamela and I was surprised to learn that the Ramanandas had elected one young sannyasi to lead their whole sampradaya and that they had a huge Ramananda stall at the festival. I told the gurukula boys, “We will have this leader’s darshan. That one sadhu united a whole sampradaya is unheard of, and you boys should meet the person who has this potency. God knows, tomorrow you may become a guru.” So we went to see him. We were given priority because some of the boys were from South America, Australia, and so on. There were about a hundred people with this young sannyasi, men with long beards and matted locks of hair, all three times older than him and leaders in their own right. This young sannyasi was sitting on a big seat and people were fanning him with a chamara. We paid obeisances, and a gurukula boy from South America loudly chanted the sannyasa-sukta, which is a traditional way to greet a sannyasi. As he started chanting, everyone became silent and after he had finished, this young Maharaj composed a Sanskrit poem about Prabhupada. He recited, “If I say that neither in the past nor in the future will there be an acharya equal to the acharya of the Hare Krishna movement, I won’t be committing an offense to the founder of my line, Ramananda, because in his commentary Ramananda himself predicted that Vishnu worship would spread around the world and that the whole world would take to it.” As he was talking, I realized that this was the same person who, as a small boy, had his head rubbed by Srila Prabhupada. He finished four slokas glorifying Prabhupada and ended with the glorification of Lord Jagannatha. Then he honored each boy separately and when I went up to him he said, “Atma Tattva Prabhu, do you remember me? You used to carry me on your back.” When I traveled on padayatra we had stayed at his father’s house. At that time I was a brahmachari and I used to carry this boy on my back. He used to call Lokanath Maharaj an “old man” because he had white hair. He said, “Prabhupada spoke about me becoming an acharya. My father never brought me to the Hare Krishna movement, but before he passed away he told me that I had to study the Sankara-bhasya so that I could defeat it. That was his last wish. So for four years I stayed with the mayavadis in Benares and studied the commentary of Sankara. It was painful. Our whole sampradaya had split up over misunderstandings and I thought that since I had Prabhupada’s blessings, maybe I could unite us. I tried for nine years and this year it has happened. By the blessings of your Guru Maharaj we are united. Ramananda said that as long as we were broken, we would never be able to fulfill his prediction. But Ramananda also said, ‘We don’t have to fulfill that prediction because it has already been fulfilled by these people.’ We simply have to join and preach with them. Their movement is spreading around the world”. Using us as a catalyst, this young sannyasi preached to everyone assembled there in that way. It was great to hear from him.
