Ramesvara das Remembers Srila Prabhupada

Prabhupada Memories

Interview 01

Ramesvara: Karandhar met me in 1970 at the Portland temple and decided that he wanted me to become his assistant to work for the book publishing. So in 1971 he brought me to New Dvaraka and he personally trained me throughout ‘71, ‘72 and ‘73. Then the unimaginable happened. Karandhar left at the end of 1973, which was a shock. Jayatirtha and I flew immediately to Hawaii to visit with Srila Prabhupada. At that time Prabhupada was asking us how would things go on, and the conclusion was that Karandhar’s jobs would be split. Jayatirtha would handle the zonal responsibilities and I would handle the BBT responsibilities. In 1974 I made an official BBT visit to our Brooklyn temple where ISKCON Press was located. I had been to the temple a number of times as a book distributor and as a preacher, but not in the capacity of a BBT manager. We were getting ready to reprint two books, The Teachings of Lord Chaitanya and the Krsna Book. One of the artists had been working for the better part of a year on line drawing sketches that would appear in every chapter of the Teachings of Lord Chaitanya. The other devotees had been regularly painting for the Srimad-Bhagavatam, and they had this idea to replace some old paintings with new ones in the reprint of the Krsna Book. The original paintings were done in 1968 and 1969 and the early ‘70s. The artists’ technique had gotten much better and they thought that the new paintings looked more realistic. So it was my task to fly back to Los Angeles and present all of this to Srila Prabhupada as my first official act as a BBT manager. Prabhupada was in his room and we started off by showing him the drawings of the Teachings of Lord Chaitanya. One by one, Prabhupada was commenting and rejecting them for various reasons. Prabhupada liked the original drawings, as simple as they were that had been done by Govinda dasi and Gaurasundar. These drawings, while technically I think superior, lacked in so many ways according to Srila Prabhupada. In one drawing the Goswamis, Rupa and Sanatana, were absent. In another drawing one of the Goswamis was sitting on the same level as Lord Chaitanya. On and on, Prabhupada would tear apart these drawings, and as he kept going through them he was getting angry. I don’t know if any devotee had ever seen Srila Prabhupada angry before but I certainly had not. It was a shock and it was scary. I was frightened. The conclusion was we weren’t going to use any of those drawings. Then I had to bring out the Krsna Book and show Prabhupada the paintings that the artists wanted to take out and the new ones that they wanted to insert. I introduced the topic and Prabhupada said, “They want to add paintings?” I said, “No, Srila Prabhupada, they want to replace paintings, not add. In some cases they are the same scene but they think they painted it better. In other cases they want to take out paintings that they think were painted too long ago and were not painted in a serious way and insert other paintings, not of the same lila.” Prabhupada said, “What? You have no authority to do that. You have no authority here. Once a painting has been approved, you can’t remove it. If you want to repaint that pastime and if the new painting is better, shows more detail, shows more lila, more character, then that might be considered. But just to take one painting out to put a different one in? No. You cannot do that.” He said, “Once I have approved something in my books, it is eternal. Once a painting is approved, it is eternal. You have no authority.” I said, “Oh, okay.” So I said, “Do you want me to show you what they are proposing?” Very unhappily he said, “Okay.” So I started to show Srila Prabhupada the paintings one by one that they wanted to insert. One of them was a painting of Krishna killing Putana. Now we had a painting of Krishna killing Putana, so this I think would have fit the category of taking an old one out and putting in a better one. Prabhupada looked at it and made a face. He said, “That is an ugly black mass. That is not superior. Rejected.” Next I showed Prabhupada a painting of Krishna sitting on the rocks that I thought was beautiful. Prabhupada thought His hair was too long and wild. “Rejected. And besides you want to take, you don’t want to add? You want to take out a painting that I have already approved for that? No. Rejected.” As I kept showing Srila Prabhupada these paintings, the anger that had started with the line drawings for TLC had grown to almost like roaring proportions. At one point he was pounding his fist on the desk, saying, “This is what I’m afraid of, that you will make changes in my books that will ruin them. No. You have to get permission. You cannot do this.” Finally I had one last painting to show Srila Prabhupada. I said, “Prabhupada, they want to take out the painting of the rasa-lila and insert this new painting of the rasa-lila that appeared in the Third Canto.” Prabhupada didn’t say a word for a moment. From his sitting room he could look into his bedroom where he saw this beautiful painting of the original rasa-lila, that Devahuti did, hanging on his wall. He was looking at that painting and he looked back at the print of the painting that we at the press wanted. He said, “You think this is better? This is a hippie dance. Their heads are not covered. Krishna’s hair is wild. The gopi’s hair is wild. Hippie seeds. Hippie dance. Rascals. They are all rascals.” Prabhupada was so angry that he was banging his fist and yelling at me. At that time his servant, Sudama, came running in because he heard the yelling. He couldn’t imagine what it was. He opened the door and saw Prabhupada like Lord Nrsimhadeva. He couldn’t even get down to offer his obeisances because he was so terrified. He stood trembling in the doorway and covered his eyes. He couldn’t bear to see the scene. Then Prabhupada said, “Get out!” And he threw us both out. It was the first of many lessons that Prabhupada gave me about making changes to his books.

In 1974 the artists and I had thought for the reprinting of the Isopanisad that we would have a new picture on the cover. Instead of Lord Vishnu we would have a picture of Krishna on the cover. Again I had the good fortune to present that idea to Srila Prabhupada. He rejected it. He was angry. He said, “I have specifically chosen Lord Vishnu to be on the cover of the Sri Isopanisad. I want this book to be attractive to people of all philosophical persuasions, even Mayavadis and Vedantists. All the different philosophical schools have to see Vishnu on the cover of Isopanisad. Krishna they won’t buy. What is wrong with you? Whose idea is this?” Prabhupada was so involved in selecting the artwork, choosing the size, the number of pages per book, the design of the book. Prabhupada’s genius was that he was taking books of the highest philosophy and making them popular. Philosophy books aren’t popular. Philosophy books don’t sell anywhere in the world. But Prabhupada’s genius was to have these gorgeous art paintings, carefully chosen, to insert in philosophy books to sell them to average persons all over the world. This was genius marketing on Srila Prabhupada’s part. He was in charge. He planned this. You could not make a change if he didn’t approve it.

A few weeks before Srila Prabhupada’s visit to Los Angeles in 1976, I had come back from India with hepatitis and jaundice. I was as yellow as you can imagine. I was deathly ill. I could not get out of bed. Some of my GBC God-brothers knew this at the time, and Kirtanananda had connected me with an Indian doctor who was part of the congregation from New Vrindavan. He prescribed a specific diet to cure me of hepatitis. Srila Prabhupada heard that I was sick and had his secretary at the time, Pusta Krishna Maharaj, call to find out what diet I was on. When Srila Prabhupada heard the diet, he called the doctor a bogus rascal and gave me a new diet. Within a week I was completely cured and ready for Srila Prabhupada’s visit. I thought it was astounding that Prabhupada had perfect knowledge of so many things. When Prabhupada did arrive in New Dwaraka, one of our leading artists, Jadurani, had also gotten very sick. She had gotten so sick that she couldn’t even feed herself. We had assigned a devotee to spoon-feed her. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t walk. We didn’t know what she had. She was in a wheelchair. She had been seeing a doctor that a number of devotees in 1976 had been going to. He was a wellknown iridologist, a doctor that prescribes by examining your eyes for various conditions in the body. He had given Jadurani all kinds of medications and diet instructions. Prabhupada heard this and he wanted to see her. We carried her up the stairs to Prabhupada’s quarters in her wheelchair. When we got to the top of the stairs we helped her crawl out of her wheelchair. She literally had to crawl through the door of Prabhupada’s sitting room and up to his desk. When Prabhupada saw Jadurani he told her, “Come here,” and we watched her crawl up to Srila Prabhupada. Srila Prabhupada put his hand on her forehead, but it was much more than just a parent touching a child’s forehead to see if they had a fever. We were watching how intense this was. Prabhupada was holding her head as if it was an instrument that was measuring all the disease in her body. He was diagnosing her. After a few moments, Srila Prabhupada looked at her and said, “You will be all right. And this doctor you are seeing, this Dr. Benish down in Laguna Beach, he is a quack.” Jadurani crawled back through the sitting room to her wheelchair. We carried her down the stairs and as we were carrying her down the street to her quarters, she was yelling at the top of her lungs, which she didn’t have the strength to even whisper before, “Dr. Benish is a quack. Dr. Benish is a quack.” She was announcing it to the world. Within three days, Jadurani was completely well. She was walking, talking, feeding herself and she went back to painting. She had been cured. It was a miracle health cure like something out of the New Testament. That’s exactly what happened. Srila Prabhupada had the ability to cure on every level imaginable.

In January of 1977 I was traveling with Srila Prabhupada as his personal secretary. I had a lot of opportunities to have intimate conversations with him especially when we were traveling by train to the Kumbhamela. One particular conversation was about the topic of nuclear war. Prabhupada had spoken about this over the last two years predicting that America and Russia would start a nuclear war through their proxy states, India and Pakistan. This had been a topic of great concern, and katha all over ISKCON for some years. I asked Srila Prabhupada if there was any chance of this war bring averted? At first he said, “No.” He said, “Communism is so evil, we must force this war to happen. Communism has to end.” In fact, Srila Prabhupada said, “Just as Krishna appears to protect the devotees and annihilate the demons, so this Hare Krishna movement has arisen to annihilate the two great demons of our age - Godless communism and Godless science. So there must be a war to end it.” Then Prabhupada sat back and thought for a moment. Then he said, “But there is a possibility that this war may be averted. It depends on your book distribution.” He continued to say, “Your book distribution is creating a spiritual environment throughout the whole world. And that will awaken spiritual sentiments in everyone’s heart. And as that awakens, as you continue this book distribution, that spiritual sentiment may bring down communism from within.” Then Prabhupada said, “Yes, and future historians will note how communism failed because of your book distribution. They will note how a revolution, a spiritual revolution throughout human society took place.”

In 1976 I had been flying with Srila Prabhupada to different cities. Once I was sitting with Srila Prabhupada and his servant/secretary in the airport past the security checkpoint. We were talking about war in Kali-yuga and whether or not these happen by chance, like a fire in a forest, or whether or not they are deliberate, caused by a small group that controls governments and oligarchs and so on. As usual, Prabhupada had an amazing and ingenious insight as he did with every topic. He started off by telling us, “Yes, take for example your Vietnam War. Your President, from Texas, Johnson, a state where they kill cows, a great meat-eater. So whatever he tried to do to end that war, because of his sinful activities, he simply became more and more entangled in the war and it kept going on and on.” And then Prabhupada said that actually they wanted that war to go on and on. Prabhupada said, “After Johnson was your Nixon and they were afraid of the American youth, hippies, drugged hippies in revolution against society, blacks in revolution against society. And they thought, ‘Let this war go on and we will draft these hippies and we will draft these black activists and let them all be killed off in this war.’” That’s what Prabhupada told us.

Srila Prabhupada said, “And after communism is defeated, we must attack and defeat Godless science, the demons of Godless science, Darwin. We must attack. We must defeat.” We were traveling on the train and Prabhupada looked out the window and said, “There is so much illiteracy in India right now, and that is Krishna’s blessing.” I said, “Why?” Prabhupada said, “So they don’t have to hear the nonsense atheistic philosophies of Darwin.” Srila Prabhupada’s last instruction to me as a BBT trustee was to publish books that defeat Godless science and sell them to the temples at cost. They were going to be exempt from the markup that every other book had. He carved out an exception for the science books, and he ordered me to take money from the BBT as a budget for the science preaching - ten, twenty thousand a month, whatever they needed. That’s how much Srila Prabhupada was determined that through the BBT we were going to defeat Godless science.

Srila Prabhupada was a genius in every sphere of life. His vision for he Bhaktivedanta Book Trust was unique. For example, let’s say a book costs a dollar. You sell it to the temple for two dollars. When the two dollars come in, one dollar goes into the book fund, one dollar goes into the temple construction fund – fifty-fifty. That was his vision. That was his plan. Starting in 1973, Srila Prabhupada started giving out loans to temples from the temple fund. And the genius of this was that as the loan payments came back in, that money paid for the entire BBT overhead. The temples were repaying loans with interest, and that money was not part of the formula. In 1973, if a book cost a dollar, you still sold it for two dollars. But meanwhile the loans you had made in 1972 were starting to come back in, in 1973. That money covered the entire BBT overhead. So that’s how we were able to stick to this brilliant formula of fifty-fifty.

It was 1976 and Srila Prabhupada was coming to visit New Dvaraka for the last time. Every morning we would drive Prabhupada to his morning walk either to Venice Beach or Santa Monica. This particular morning, Tamal Krishna Maharaj and myself along with Prabhupada’s servant were driving Srila Prabhupada to his morning walk in Santa Monica. It was typical that we would either ask philosophical questions or we would talk about something in the world news or current events that we found controversial or exciting and have Prabhupada comment on it. This particular morning, a news story had broken the day before that was, to us, somewhat astonishing. There was a group of demented artists in New York that had captured headlines all over the world by having a party in which they served and ate the flesh of aborted fetuses. This artist, the leader of this group was Andy Warhol who was famous for sensational shock. We told Srila Prabhupada this story and I expected Prabhupada to comment on the demonic nature of the living entity and the horror of slaughtering anyone for food. But instead he leaned back on the back seat of the car and said, “Yes, they have not yet learned in this Kali-yuga that human flesh is the tastiest of all meats. That will come in the future of Kaliyuga.” Tamal and I were astonished at Prabhupada’s response to this story. It was not what we were expecting. And in that instant I realized Prabhupada knew everything. He knew what the future of Kali-yuga was. How did he know what meat tastes like, what to speak of which meat is the tastiest is? Our minds were literally I guess you could say, blown. We were just amazed that Prabhupada knew everything and I blurted out, “Srila Prabhupada, you know everything about everything. You see the future, you comment on things that are current, but also talk about the future.” I said, “This is what makes your books so unique. Previous great acharyas have written commentaries on Bhagavad-gita and Srimad-Bhagavatam, but your commentaries are not only perfect for the time that we’re living in, but they’re perfect for the future because you have the ability to see the future. It’s just amazing to me how unique and special your books are.” Srila Prabhupada smiled and said, “Yes. My books will be the law books for humanity for the next ten thousand years. That is how I think as I write each word.”

Some time in 1971, Srila Prabhupada had told Karandar that his vision for New Dvaraka went way beyond just the building that we had bought for the world headquarters. He wanted us to buy the residential buildings and start buying up the block. He told Karandar, “You buy the first building and then you go to a bank and take out a mortgage on that building. Use that money to buy the second building. That second building doesn’t have a mortgage because you just bought it with the other money. So now you take out a mortgage on the second building and you use that to buy the third building. In this way you buy up the block.” Prabhupada told Karandar, “This is called ‘frying the fish in its own oil.’” And that’s how we bought all these buildings that make up the New Dvaraka community. Between 1972 and 1975 we had bought six or seven buildings. Prabhupada was a genius.

Watching the loans that Srila Prabhupada made gives you an idea of how this movement grew in many ways. In 1973, about $250,000 was loaned out to temples. In 1974 it was just under $500,000 that was loaned out to temples. In 1975, it was a little over one million dollars that was loaned out to temples. At the end of 1975 we had just finished the seventeen book Caitanya-caritamrita marathon. Now we knew we could do anything. There was no such thing as “impossible”. We got a letter from Srila Prabhupada stating that they have finally gotten permission to build the beautiful Bombay temple, hotel, theater, and cultural center in Juhu Beach. Prabhupada wrote in the letter, “We have just signed the contract with a major construction managing company. As a result, I will need you, in addition to the loans you are making, in addition to the books you are printing, to send to Bombay every month $70,000 in order to fulfill this contract and build the Bombay temple.” So in 1976, the loans plus the Bombay money totaled almost two million dollars. Again, it doubled. As a result, when the Bombay temple had its grand opening in 1977, Los Angeles became the sister city to Bombay.

Srila Prabhupada came for one visit to New Dvaraka starting in March of 1973. We had just completed the first Christmas book distribution marathon in 1972. So this was a very exciting time. I was the sankirtan leader at the time. Every day I would compile a report on how many books were distributed devotee by devotee. At night I would bring that report over to Prabhupada’s quarters. I’d wait at the bottom of the stairs and either Brahmananda or Srutakirti would come down around 9:30 p.m. to collect it from me as they were going to read it to Prabhupada either that night or the next day during his massage. I would go back every day at around eleven in the morning to meet them at the stairs and find out what Prabhupada had to say because we lived for any instruction, any word, any encouragement. We saw Srila Prabhupada as giving his whole life to writing these books and we saw ourselves as giving our whole lives to distributing these books. So there was a phenomenal relationship going on with the sankirtan devotees and Prabhupada at that time. One day Srutakirti came down and told me that they had read it to Prabhupada the night before and as he was lying in his bed he was rolling from side to side in ecstasy, exhibiting ecstatic symptoms. Srutakirti said Prabhupada uttered the words, “We will smash all these bogus incarnations.” Finally on March 20th, 1973, after his massage, Prabhupada hand wrote a note to the sankirtan devotees: “My dear boys and girls, you are all working so hard to broadcast the glories of Lord Krishna’s lotus feet. Because of that, you have pleased my Guru Maharaj so much that he will bestow his mercy upon you thousand times more than me. And that is my satisfaction. Your ever well-wisher, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami.” And then he wrote NB, note below: “Everyone must join the sankirtan party as soon as possible.” We have that note in Prabhupada’s handwriting.

To view the entire unedited video go to Memories 56 - Pragosh, Ramesvara

Interview 02

Ramesvara: The first time I met Srila Prabhupada was through his book. Lochan had given me a book to read. It was the Sri Isopanishad. By reading that book, I realized here are all the answers. Everything I have been looking for, searching so hard for, it’s right here. When I moved into the temple I was introduced to Srila Prabhupada in the form of some of his other books; Krsna Book, and especially Bhagavad-gita and the Bhagavatam, First Canto, the original version that Prabhupada had brought. It was the brown bound version with Prabhupada’s unique style of English writing, which was so charming and enchanting. Srila Prabhupada’s books intoxicated me.

I remember my first morning walk with Srila Prabhupada. It was when he came to New Dwarka in 1973 and I remember I had just written the sankirtan scores for the day before. I asked Karandar to give it to Srila Prabhupada, which he did. Prabhupada wrote back a handwritten note saying, “Thank you boys and girls. I give you so much thanks, because you are helping me serve my guru maharaj. Surely he will give his blessings, pour his blessings thousand times more than me on you, and that is my satisfaction.” And then he wrote, “n.b.,” “note below”. “Everyone should join the sankirtan party as soon as possible.”

There was a very important instruction in the very first letter that Srila Prabhupada ever wrote to me. He was so amazed at the first Christmas marathon. He could hardly believe the distribution of seventeen thousand books in three days from one temple. He wrote throughout this letter how important it is to distribute books and to save others. Then I came to the very last sentence of the letter where Prabhupada wrote, “But more important still is to save yourself.” It seemed like it was just put in there at the very end, yet the whole letter was just building up to saving others. I reflected on this for a long time. I still do. Gradually what I came to understand was that if you are spiritually pure, you could save others. Book distribution is not a material activity and if you’re not pure you will not be successful. Once I asked Prabhupada in a letter, “Would we be contaminated by so much association with the non-devotees?” Prabhupada wrote back, “No. If you are spiritually pure, if you are following the regulative principles, chanting your rounds, living in the association of devotees, attending the classes and mangal aratik, then you are not of this world. When you go out you will be protected.”

Prabhupada always found a way of dealing with devotees to bring out the most service that they were capable of. That’s how he dealt with me and that’s how he dealt with every devotee when I was able to see Prabhupada’s exchanges. That’s how he dealt with Harikesh. He sent him to Europe when he didn’t want to go, and look at all the success that followed. Srila Prabhupada knew exactly how to deal personally and perfectly with every one of his disciples. The morning when I arrived to be his secretary, we were talking about these things and he said, “Now you must be tired, go take rest.” I said, “No, I’m not tired.” He said, “Go take rest.” I said, “Prabhupada, I’m not tired.” Gopal Krishna said, “He’s not tired.” I said, “Srila Prabhupada, now that I am here and just being with you, I don’t feel tired at all.” Prabhupada said, “That is the principle of love, that when you love someone you will not be tired. You will just want to be with them. That is love.” Prabhupada was encouraging me like that. But there was this principle that whenever you went with Prabhupada, because everyone with Prabhupada loved him so much, they were able to go without sleep.

I remember one time Prabhupada met with some reporters. Prabhupada was explaining that this movement is presenting the science of God, the absolute truth, the absolute knowledge, the highest knowledge to mankind, and this will save mankind. They were asking, “Well, how do you know it’s the absolute truth? Are you telling us that you hear God speak and you know what God wants?” Srila Prabhupada said, “Yes.” Now, I was in this room thinking that these reporters are going to take this the wrong way because they’re not devotees to really understand that that’s Prabhupada’s position. So I said, “What Prabhupada means is that the message of God is coming down through parampara, this disciplic line, unbroken, and so when Prabhupada repeats it, that is the message of….” Prabhupada interrupted and said, “No! That is not what I mean.” The reporters said, “So you are saying you directly see God and speak to God?” Prabhupada said, “Yes.” So apart from me being revealed as an utter fool, for even trying to interject, I understood that Prabhupada had a way of knowing how he wanted to preach to reporters, to the scientists, to philosophers, to scholars, to priests and religionists. There were also times when he would call someone a rascal to their face. Prabhupada knew what he was saying and doing perfectly. This was one of those times where he was actually willing to reveal himself to a non-devotee.

I have a letter from Srila Prabhupada as he was on his way to Australia and then Hawaii. “Why are my books not being published? I have written these books, I have worked so hard, I have sacrificed, I have given up sleep, and I have given up everything to write these books. You are not printing. Why are you not doing this?” I had no idea of the magnitude of the problem. I had heard from Radhaballabha before Mayapur that there were a few books that hadn’t been printed yet. I had no idea until I got this letter that specifically said, “There are seventeen books that haven’t been printed. What are you doing?” It was shocking. Harikesh, Prabhupada’s personal secretary, called me as soon as they got to Hawaii and said, “You better be ready. Srila Prabhupada is angry. I haven’t seen him angry like this. He is coming to L.A. and he has called for sannyasis and GBC. He has called for many devotees to fly into L.A. to meet him there so that this problem can be straightened out. You better be ready because he is mad.” I nearly died on that telephone call. To hear that your spiritual master is mad at you because you have let him down is the worst thing that anyone could ever hear. Your life is over. Well, it’s either over or you correct it. So I started discussing with Radhaballabha to come up with a plan. Srila Prabhupada arrived and gave a very famous arrival address in 1975 when he described how his spiritual master acquired a great temple. His disciples, however, were fighting over which room they were going to get. Srila Bhaktisiddhanta told Srila Prabhupada he was disgusted by this and wished he could just sell the temple and sell the marble and get money to print books. Prabhupada was telling us this in his arrival address from the vyasasana. “Therefore,” he said, “I am requesting, where are the books? Where are the books?” Then Prabhupada said, “So, I ask you, please help me. Print and distribute these books throughout the whole world. And in that way the Krishna consciousness movement will expand. Thank you very much.” We were all just frozen with those words. It was electric. Prabhupada was personally, not just in a letter now, but personally pouring into us this command to print and distribute books. And whenever we get money use it for books. That’s how the movement will expand. That was always Prabhupada’s plan, that through distributing his books, everything will come. Money will come, temples will come, devotees will come, and other things will come. The money paid for the Bhaktivedanta Institute, FATE project, the restaurant and for so many things. As temples were selling books, they were also getting money. So the books were the basis of everything and here was Prabhupada ordering this. The very next morning, as always when Prabhupada was here in New Dwarka and the weather was okay, we would drive him to Venice Beach where he would like to take his morning walk. At a certain point in the walk Prabhupada turned and asked me, “So, why are there seventeen books not published? What are you going to do?” Now Radhaballabha and I had worked out how we were going to respond. We first told Srila Prabhupada that we had a plan. We said, “Right now it’s taking four months. We have a plan to bring it down to two months.” Then I blurted out, “We can do it. We can double our work. Somehow we’ll figure we can do it in one month, a book a month.” Prabhupada was walking but was thinking, and said, “A book a month, that is seventeen months.” He said, “No. I want all the books published in two months, not seventeen months.” I knew what our capabilities were so I just blurted out, “Prabhupada, that’s impossible.” Prabhupada became like a lion. A spiritual burst of anger and compassion all at the same time. He put his cane down in the sand, stopped walking and looked at me. “Impossible? Impossible is a word in a fool’s dictionary.” This was just like a thunderbolt through the heart. How stupid. I said to Prabhupada that something was impossible. I said to someone who has come from the spiritual world that something is impossible. I said to someone who knows how God is having all the planets held up and stay in their orbits, and who is all-pervading that something is impossible? I felt so stupid. Then Prabhupada paused enough for it to hit me really hard. The challenge had been thrown down and Prabhupada had been waiting, “What is your answer?” I responded, “Srila Prabhupada, we can do it. We’ll do it.” You had to accept this as divine faith. His potency would make it happen. We just have to believe that nothing is impossible. So we told Srila Prabhupada that we could do it. I did ask Prabhupada if he could spend a little more time in Los Angeles because I felt we were going to need some help since these books were the Caitanya-caritamrta and our men would need help with the Bengali. Prabhupada said, “Yes, whatever it takes I will do. But I want these books in two months.”

In 1974 I was reporting to Bali Mardan and to Srila Prabhupada, as there were some issues at that time where I didn’t feel comfortable with the requests that I was getting out of our New York branch of the BBT. It got to such a discomfort level that I wrote a letter to Srila Prabhupada stating that I couldn’t follow the orders I was getting. I knew that it was my duty to follow these directions but I told Prabhupada that I thought they would negatively affect BBT money and that I would have to resign. I didn’t realize that some other senior devotees had written to Srila Prabhupada and were discussing this situation. Prabhupada wrote back saying, “We’ll discuss your situation at the Mayapur festival in 1975, but I hope by then that you will come to your sound condition of mind, because this request to resign is insane.” Prabhupada wrote, “There is no such thing in spiritual life as resignation. Once having surrendered, it can never be withdrawn.” I’ll never forget those words. Only one other time did I fail to follow that statement to my great regret. Since that time, by Prabhupada’s mercy, I’ve been slightly reawakened from my comatose condition and I am able to pray that he’ll let me serve him again. Now I am trying to repent. I fully regret it and I’m begging for him to let me come back and serve him again. But that is the order; “Once having surrendered it can never be withdrawn.”

There were actual cults in America at one time like a religious group that had started from Korea that parents could have a legitimate concern about. Prabhupada would present all these wonderful arguments about brainwashing, “Of course their brain has to be washed, because look at what they are doing otherwise. What is your objection?” At one point two of our devotees were indicted by a grand jury in New York under a false charge that they had kidnapped and brainwashed somebody’s son or daughter and that they would only give the son or daughter back if they were paid money. At this time professors who had gotten our books from the BBT Library Party and met our preachers were outraged. They were beginning to speak out in favor of the Hare Krishna movement, not being a cult but being a wonderful bonafide religious movement. They were attributing the most amazing things to Prabhupada and his books and to the Hare Krishna movement. This was becoming a huge phenomenon in the media as we were being asked to be on talk shows, on national radio, on syndicated television programs, and of course, in the newspapers for debate whether we were a cult and had brainwashed people. There was a great sankirtan devotee in Los Angeles, Lilashakti, whose mother, Rose Forkash, went on all these shows and described how her daughter was saved by the Hare Krishna movement from drugs, from illicit sex, from being a hippie. She constantly mentioned how grateful she was to the Hare Krishna movement for what it did for her daughter and concluded by saying, “If I had known about this Hare Krishna movement when I was young, I would have joined it myself.” Upon learning all of this, Prabhupada would first talk about Lilashakti being such a great devotee who could do anything. Then he would talk about her mother and what a great service she was doing. Prabhupada was especially appreciative that a parent would share their positive impressions of the movement and he bestowed his blessings on Lilashakti and Rose.

In one letter he wrote that the temples are not places for eating and sleeping, but they are bases from which we send out our devotees to fight with maya. Just like during wartime the bombs are raining down from the sky like anything. Letters like that made us realize we were Prabhupada’s army. We were completely under the control of the general of the universe for sankirtan, Srila Prabhupada. We are his army and this is what we do.

Once I wrote a letter to Srila Prabhupada about competition. Prabhupada wrote back that there is competition in the spiritual world. There is competition in Krishnaloka amongst the gopis for Krishna’s affection. But there is a difference between material competition and spiritual competition. Prabhupada was very clear about this in his letter. He stated that in material competition you want to bring down the person you are competing with. In spiritual competition everyone is trying to please the same person, Krishna, and if someone exceeds you, you are not interested in bringing them down. You are glorifying them because they’ve pleased the One you love. He said, “Yes, competition, like everything, it exists in the spiritual world in its pure form.”

As far as book distribution, there was a line that Prabhupada did not want us to cross, but we could go up to that line. The line was not to do anything illegal. But as far as going up to the line, you could tell a person that this will help them become more attractive, this will help a person become more acceptable, achieve great things in their business, take over for their boss – all kinds of things could be said as long as it was not illegal in terms of your dealing with the exchange of books for money. He didn’t want a person saying they wanted change and then you didn’t give it to them. We had some letters back and forth with Prabhupada about the morality of book distribution and how far we could go. He kept pushing us, and even once we told Prabhupada that people were complaining that we were aggressive. Prabhupada said, “Yes, you have to be aggressive to give them. We are desirous of giving to people. Not aggressive to take – aggressive to give.” He always kept our spirit on a pure spiritual platform, and it was very important that Prabhupada was guiding his sankirtan army and his sankirtan movement. These letters were distributed to every temple instantly because they were relevant to every temple. I remember when I was traveling with Prabhupada in 1977 I had stored up a lot of questions. Over the years we heard Prabhupada say different things. One of the things that we had heard Prabhupada talk about was the future of the Hare Krishna movement, and whether or not it would be like a governing body in the world. We had heard so many things that Prabhupada had said about the communist countries, and there was all this speculation. It was the height of the Cold War – whether or not there would actually be a war. Because at one point Prabhupada said if there was a war, it would start between the proxies of America and Russia – Pakistan and India. There was a lot of concern – was there going to be a war, and how was the Hare Krishna movement really going to convince people so that it became a government? Prabhupada did say that people would want a perfect government. The time will come when people are searching for leadership. They will want it so badly and they will see that the Hare Krishna devotees are perfect. They have qualities, spiritual qualities that are so obvious that they will turn to them. And there will be a Hare Krishna government. I asked Prabhupada how this would happen. “Is it going to happen by a vote of the population? Is it going to happen by a revolution? A small group of people takes over?” There are different ways that governments change. “Are people going to literally join the Hare Krishna religion and that’s how it’s going to happen?” I was thinking, “Why else would they vote for us?” Prabhupada said that this would come about not in the way we thought. No, it’s not necessarily that people are going to become Hare Krishna devotees and therefore tens of millions, hundreds of millions of them are going to vote us into power. And it’s not going to be a revolution by a small group. It is going to be by the mass population wanting it. However, they’re not necessarily going to be Hare Krishna devotees. But they will desire it because something spiritual has awakened in them. And they can stay in their own faith. They can be Christians, Jews or whatever they are. Prabhupada said that day would come. I said, “Prabhupada, how is that going to happen?” I was with Hari Sauri at the time. Prabhupada said, “That is the sankirtan movement.” He also elaborated that it was not just the chanting of the Holy Name but book distribution. That was the real ultimate effect of our book distribution. We asked Prabhupada very specifically if the book distribution created some kind of a subtle, spiritual atmosphere in the world, because even though we gave out millions of books, millions of people were not joining from taking those books. Prabhupada said that is exactly what it was. The benefit of taking these books and hearing in public the chanting of the Holy Names on harinam sankirtan was and is creating and will create a spiritual environment that will awaken souls, whatever their denomination. That was the most powerful realization that Prabhupada shared with us about book distribution.

I remember another thing that Srila Prabhupada told me during that time that is very important. He talked about the coming of unemployment in the Kali-yuga. We’re seeing this now and this is 2009, almost 2010. It’s a bad economic time. But Prabhupada was saying that as the Kali-yuga progresses more and more, there will be unemployment. Prabhupada said we must be ready to take these unemployed people into our movement on our farms. Prabhupada said that we need farm communities that can grow food. He predicted that, “One day millions of people would be coming to our Hare Krishna farms because they are unemployed. And we must accept them. We must feed them. We must let them live there and they will gradually become spiritualized. We will put them to work, they will get their food and there will be prasadam. They will hear something about Krishna and they will gradually by the millions become devotees.”

The most amazing thing that I saw in Srila Prabhupada, apart from the fact that when he chanted Jaya Radha Madhava and went to be with Krishna, was how incessantly he was focused on saving every soul. There was such love and compassion. If a God-brother of mine that had done service for Prabhupada had left, Prabhupada would sometimes talk to me or even write me a letter, “I want you to go and get him back. Do not let him leave. I love him so much. He is my son.” So he loved every soul. This is the most amazing thing about Prabhupada. But it’s not just his disciples that he loved, as much as he loved them as his children, he loved every soul. To follow in some small way his footsteps and to bathe oneself in the dust of his lotus feet means to me to follow Prabhupada as he is in eternal lila of saving souls in this universe. Srila Prabhupada at every moment thought of how he could use everything in Krishna’s service, to attract people to Krishna, to bring people to Krishna. That is what I saw in Srila Prabhupada. His vision never stopped working on using things to bring souls back to Krishna. That was Srila Prabhupada’s mood. It is coming directly from Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and Lord Nityananda. He is the absolute shaktyavesa avatar of Lord Nityananda in that respect. There is not one soul that Prabhupada does not want saved. If you think about that vision, that is how you’re going to see everyone as a spirit soul. Going on sankirtan forces you to develop spiritual vision because you will always start seeing people as spirit souls. Of all the things I saw from Prabhupada, that’s what I would want to be in me eternally, because then I will always be Prabhupada’s servant. That is Prabhupada’s mood, as I saw it, to save every soul. And I pray for that.

To view the entire unedited video go to Memories 50 - Patita Pavana, Ramesvara, Soma, Manmohini, Kiba Jaya, Girindra M, Omkara

The full Prabhupada Memories Series can be viewed here and also at www.prabhupadamemories.com

Following Srila Prabhupada

Interview DVD 09

Ramesvara: Prabhupada had become very disturbed. He had learned that his manuscripts that he had written through amazing sacrifice of sleep—he stayed up at night and dictated his books—they had been sent in to our New York BBT office and they had not done the production. He had written so many books with commentaries, and they were just lying there. So Prabhupada had flown into Los Angeles, and it was a very tense beach walk. He was discussing how important it was to publish these books and how upset he was that they were lying there, and he was demanding that they be published right away. He then asked, “How long will it take?” So Radha-vallabha from New York was there because he had been the production manager. So we pulled ourselves back and we discussed, “How long will it take you to get me the books so I can send them to the printer?” And he told me that he thought we could do one book every two months. At this point, we were doing one book every four to six months. So we went back into the walk, we caught up again and we told Prabhupada, “We think we can do one book every two months.” So Prabhupada turned around and said, “I want all 17 books done in two months.” I just blurted out, “Srila Prabhupada, that’s impossible!” At that point, Prabhupada stopped walking and he had a cane and he planted it in the sand, and he turned around and looked at me very gravely and said, “Impossible is a word in a fool’s dictionary.” And there was complete silence. We were all stunned. We were just completely stunned. Here is Prabhupada, perfectly in touch with Krishna, telling us that this can be done. It seemed to defy the physical laws as we knew it. So after some very long moments of silence, Prabhupada started walking immediately and the senior devotees, they just turned and started staring at me like, “So what are you going to do?” So this was a matter of just absolute blind faith. Either you believed or you did not believe. It was that type of moment where you commit, never mind what your intelligence is telling you is possible. So Radha-vallabha and I fell back again and we started talking, “We have to do this, this can be done,” and all of a sudden we started coming up with ideas that we hadn’t thought of. And we started getting ideas of different parallel production lines and turning the production lines into 24-hour production lines with two or three shifts, and recruiting devotees from all over to help us with this and on and on and on. And this was all happening in the span of just a few minutes that we were being flooded with these ideas, and we both realized that in order to do this we all had to be together in one central place. And it seemed more logical to do it in Los Angeles—we have the housing for everybody and we can expand easily. So then we caught up to the walk and we said to Srila Prabhupada, “If we are going to do this, we have to move the entire BBT division from New York to Los Angeles—the art department, the production, everything.” And Srila Prabhupada approved that. He said, “Fine. Do it immediately.” And we started.

So the 17 books got published. The last book came out probably on the last day of the two-month cycle, and we called the secretary and we told him, “It’s done.” We gave up everything, and somehow it happened. This is a very happy time. Everybody is feeling that there’s nothing we can’t do now. We can spread this movement anywhere in the world. There was no limitation on anything. That’s how we were all feeling. Not just the devotees who immediately were involved, but devotees all over the world were feeling that there are no material restraints or limitations. So it was really a great moment for everybody to expand their book distribution and their convincing people to join the temples. It was just one of those great times.

There are so many different sides of Prabhupada and qualities and characteristics, you couldn’t count them all. And you always felt that Krishna was there speaking through Prabhupada, Prabhupada was giving gifts to Krishna, very divine things were happening right in front of your eyes that you knew it was taking place and you were just a witness to it. So in these scenes as I recall, Prabhupada, he had visions of building temples, and they involved the transfer of funds. American BBT had become very successful, and Prabhupada had a formula from the very beginning – 50 percent of the money will be used for books, and the other 50 percent will be used for building temples. We had considered those buses as temples, traveling temples, so we were allowed to do that. But Prabhupada had this great grand vision of the whole world and the future and laying the foundation for the movement throughout the world. And so he would, out of this vision, direct in this case me to understand what he wanted and understand where to transfer money, how to account for it, make sure it got to the right place and was used for the right purpose. So some of this was done in correspondence, some of it was done in phone calls, and some of it, when I was fortunate enough, was done in person. When devotees requested Prabhupada’s help to buy a farm, sometimes then the money would come from BBT. We were sending a lot of money to Mayapur, and we were sending a lot of money also to Bombay. So Prabhupada’s vision was so all-encompassing and global, we didn’t know what was going to come up next. We just knew that he had already seen everything, and now it was just unfolding and he was letting us in on it step by step. That’s how we experienced Prabhupada building up the movement. I wouldn’t even use the word “business” because it just doesn’t do justice to what was really happening. It was this great grand vision and Prabhupada directing like a conductor in an orchestra all the pieces to fall into place gradually. But he had already seen it in its full composition and grand performance, and we weren’t there yet. Prabhupada already saw it completed, and you got that sense that you were dealing with Prabhupada in past and present and future just blended together.

Interview DVD 11

Ramesvara: On the way to the festival, and I think it must have been one or two in the morning, I suddenly woke up, my eyes completely snapped open. So I looked around, expecting to see Srila Prabhupada sleeping, but in fact he was up sitting there and clearly waiting for me to wake up. He somehow made me wake up. And so he gave me the opportunity to talk with him, and we spoke for hours. And every question I could think of about the world and world events and events to come I was asking. We talked about the Cold War and nuclear arms, and we talked about many different things. Prabhupada would explain all from the point of view of absolute knowledge, why the world is always a violent place and why there’s always war and misery and pain. So that was helpful for me to understand that whatever time in history that you live, these characteristics will always be there.

During the festival, I don’t think we really did the things that Prabhupada was planning to do in terms of having kirtans, a big stage and so on because Prabhupada, his body was becoming ill. He was manifesting symptoms of the illness that lasted for those last six or seven months, and so it didn’t appear that he was comfortable. It appeared that there was pain and he was just not being bothered by it because of his transcendence. So there were a lot of mixed emotions at this festival because of that. But there was a constant nonstop parade of all kinds of people, dignitaries, spiritualists who were there and heard that Prabhupada was there and would find their way to where our tents were and come to get Prabhupada’s blessings. That was the whole purpose of this festival is to purify yourself in these rivers, and you get the darshan of the holy men. So the people who knew, they would try to find Prabhupada.