19790917 Śrīla Prabhupāda's Appearance in America Numerous Pastimes (Part 2)

Following is a class given by His Holiness Jayapatākā Swami Mahārāja recorded on September 17th, 1979 in Los Angeles, California. The class is Part 2.

Today we heard how Śrīla Prabhupāda was personally preaching to the public, to the neophyte guests, trying to bring them to the platform of surrendering to Kṛṣṇa. That time nobody had any understanding how to see Śrīla Prabhupāda, how to deal, what is the meaning of spiritual master?

In those days the devotees or what, I do not know what you can call them, the guests who were aspiring to be devotees; they would listen to to Śrīla Prabhupāda’s lecture, walk outside and smoke a cigarette. They didn’t know that that wasn’t alright. And Śrīla Prabhupāda would personally cut the vegetables, cook the prasādam, feed them and then he’d go back and wash all the dishes. It took many months, even years, before they, people could understand, who were coming there, even they thought that they were great yogis, by hearing Prabhupāda’s lessons. They had not the slightest idea what was Śrīla Prabhupāda’s position, what was their responsibility.

One day Śrīla Prabhupāda was sitting on his vyāsāsana, and he asked whether they knew what the position of spiritual master is. What is the meaning of initiation into spiritual life? Of course, everybody was very interested, they were amazed, they were enthralled, what is this dīkṣā? What is initiation? What is this spiritual entrance? They were very curious to find out. In fact one person asked, “What is the meaning of this initiation?” Then Śrīla Prabhupāda, looking at them, he changed his mannerism, and he simply told them that initiation means to accept the spiritual master as you would accept God Himself, to do whatever he says. And he got up and walked off, left them to think about that one.

Later he explained, you want to know what initiation is. It means no more free will, whatever the spiritual master says that you do, that is initiation. Spiritual master is the svarūpa of Kṛṣṇa; he is the representative of God. One respects him just as one would respect had God Himself come personally present. Prabhupāda taught the girls how to wear saris, taught the boys how to wear dhotis... what didn’t he teach? How to cook Prasad, how to worship deity--- spoon-feeding the babies. Who had that kind of patience to come, great gentlemen and aristocratic people from India, to come?

The previous people who came over, they only wanted to deal with aristocrats, but when they approached the aristocrats, they said, “Give up meat, give up drinking, give up intoxication!” “I’ll die! It’s not possible to live without these things.” This was the reply they got in Europe and England.

Prabhupāda, for months, over a year simply, very patiently, how perseveringly, day by day, week by month, just coaxing along, preaching, gladly trying to bring these souls into the fold of Kṛṣṇa. That type of patience and perseverance, is so austere, to get the chance for a big push. It’s so ecstatic to be able to just run, to be able to jump, to be able to go at full pace. But when we consider how Prabhupāda was simply taking practically no advancement, simply if someone came to hear about Kṛṣṇa he was happy, somehow trying to bring them to the standard, trying to get them to give up meat, to get them to give up intoxication, gambling, then seeing their situation, giving them spiritual marriage.

There is no sannyāsī in history who ever gave marriage that we know of. But in America if people get married it’s a great advancement over what goes on ordinarily. So he had to teach them what is the meaning of marriage? Nobody even knew what is the Vedic meaning of marriage.

Still many may not have realized the obligation. So that kind of patience coupled with a tremendous drive. I think at that point of that patience, we would have crashed. Years and years together, how many years? Two, over a year, year and a half, two years struggling with hardly any sign of…You would have said this is city deprived, better try someplace else. After a year they are still not even giving up smoking. But Prabhupāda was so pleased when he saw so many devotees fixed up in Kṛṣṇa consciousness.

Once there was the example, once he had some devotees strong in Kṛṣṇa consciousness, then from that other people could see '‘Oh, this is how I should be. This is how I should act. Here is the spiritual master, here are his disciples. All the disciples are working so hard, they are distributing books, they are preaching.” You see that made it so much easier. Before Prabhupāda had to give association, be the spiritual…had to be everything, all in one. So then when so many disciples were here in the western world preaching so nicely, then Prabhupāda, he didn’t have to give so many criticisms here in the west. He would simply encourage.

Sometimes he would become very angry and say, “You must increase book distribution. If you don’t increase book distribution, then I’ll no longer translate, then I won’t stay here.” He would push to get out the books. In India, he would come and he said that, “Please build my residence during the life of the resident.” But we were so incapable that we could not achieve. So many changes of design, so many architectural this and that, ultimately we could not even provide him a residence during his residence.

So in India, Prabhupāda used to come and simply yell at us. I didn’t know how, I heard that he didn’t yell so much in the end here because I guess everyone’s service was so wonderful he was appreciating. We could have spoken to him when he came to Māyāpur, that for the first day he would say all kind of nice things, he would smile and then we are waiting. What thing would kick off, what thing would initiate the severe criticism which would extend for the next two months or one month of his stay without cessation?

He’d be walking around and he’d go in to the kitchen and the kitchen had being scrubbed spotless. On the steps there was some cement had fallen from plastering. So it appeared to be like a piece of dirt but actually it was just cement on top of the colored cement. Prabhupāda was walking, suddenly it was spotted. “What is that dirt? You cannot see, are you blind? This is like washing the coal. Wash, wash always more black. You are still not cleaning although I am standing standing here.”

Immediately we started, its cement, it doesn’t come off. Just see, just see. The sweepings of the sugarcane spitting had been swept right by the bhoga sugarcane. Prabhupāda, he called the Indian that was standing by and he said, “You have simply come here to go to hell. You are born in this country, you don’t know any better. You are taking these spitting and sweeping them right by the unoffered, uncut sugar cane. And this will be crushed and given to Kṛṣṇa. You are simply coming to the ashram to go to hell!”

Then some gṛhastha devotee, there was some little two-year-old kid going by with a sugarcane. Immediately he goes and starts to grab the sugar cane from the kid. Then Prabhupāda said, “Oh! Now you have become the coach, now you have become the expert. I am yelling at you, now you are going and grabbing a candy from the baby. Simply rascaldom!” (laughter)

Wherever he went heads were simply(gesture). I heard Jaya Tīrtha Mahārāja, he had just arrived that morning about three hours earlier. He was going on the morning walk and there were about fifty guests. So Prabhupāda decided just to go over to, we had a circular out house type of latrine arrangement and he took his, maybe he wanted to pass urine, maybe he just wanted to see, so took his cane opened one door. There someone had not washed or flushed the toilet. Immediately he turned to Jaya Tīrtha and said, “Look! Look at this! And you call yourself a brahmin! Where there is brahmin everything must be goodness, there must be cleanliness. You are present, you call yourself a brahmin and how this is going on? In the presence of a brahmin how this dirtiness can go on?” Jaya Tīrtha was like (gesture) (devotees laugh). So we saw a different mood.

Śrīla Prabhupāda… I never realized, because I was so stupid, that actually he was teaching us as Rāmeśvara Swami pointed out. He was teaching us that he wanted the highest standard to be maintained. Unless we really cared about it, unless we are really involved in it in a deep emotional way, in a deep conscious way, it wouldn’t happen. If he didn’t press the point no one would take it seriously. Śrīla Prabhupāda pressed it.

I remember sometimes Prabhupāda, he would(pause) there was so many GBCs present, he was giving me some very serious rhythm about the Gobar-Gas plant I built. Because Gobar-Gas there, we had a too thin s pipe, now we put a thicker pipe. So actually now works very well, but that time when he came to see only one or two little burners, little flame came out from this huge Gobar-Gas contraption. So sometimes he would say “How’s the Gobar-Gas working?” “Working all right.”

Most of the other GBC’s have been there for few days. So they already realized the mood that it was…. When you are in India you have to be very quiet, because if you started to stick your head too much, you also might get it. Best to just watch and kind of enjoy from a distance. But there was someone, just newly come. He heard that, he started laughing and laughing. Prabhupāda just kind of looked at him like a laser-beam (laughter) And the next night the person got very sick.

Prabhupāda demanded that, we had to build the big building in, you know like, it had to be finished in two months or something. Of course, we were amazed how in two months Los Angeles printed 17 books. That was the mood that Prabhupāda used in India. That was the way.

I’m sure everyone can remember, we still preach to our book distributors, how fired up Los Angeles BBT was to publish 17 books in two months. So, that kind of mood Prabhupāda would apply, sometimes. That was his mercy. He always would say that “I am having a transcendental competition, I want to…” especially because, see, his god-brothers didn’t co-operate with him. So, there was really a state of whether, they didn’t really follow as correct, anyway we cannot say, you know, because they are much senior people. But, they really didn’t co-operate up to Prabhupāda’s satisfaction. I mean, he begged them just to give him one guest house to keep the devotees. He wouldn’t probably have built the whole Māyāpur temple, had they just given a guest house.

Of course, he would have taken over all the temples. They realized that, eventually, because he was doing the most active preaching. But that’s why they didn’t want him to have any place. It was like the Kurus and Kurukṣetra and the Pāṇḍavas. They wouldn’t give him one, as much land that you could put a pin through. So he had to purchase his own land and develop his own facilities for his own disciples. He said “I am having a…” Of course he had a transcendental competition with his, his godbrothers.

He had straight out competition with all of the rest of māyā’s representatives. But he said “I want everything done in the American way. Everything must be done in American way. I am known as the American-Guru. So, you all Americans, you must do everything not in Indian way, but American way. You must have not just a single shift but a double shift.” I know we worked day and night on one building, using the lights.

We wrote to Śrīla Prabhupāda, now we are working 16-hour shifts. We have 600 people working. There are over in caravans. It was like The Pyramids. We are digging out the pukur and the people were going up with the head loads, over 200 people, chained out one after the other carrying baskets of mud. And then there was a 150 bullock carts carrying sand from the river and carrying dirt from the man-made lake. And then another 300 people were working on the actual construction. It was something amazing to see.

Actually, that was very blissful. No one in anywhere in the whole district, anywhere in the whole state had ever seen so many people at one time working on so many different projects. So when we wrote to Prabhupāda that we had started double shift, he immediately wrote back, that, “This is our success, this is what I want, working in the American way, double shift, no one has ever done this before in Māyāpur, no one has done this, you should do everything in the American way.”

He would say many times he didn’t want us to imitate the Indians. He wanted us to do everything very fast. Of course, he criticized me that after about 3, 4 years there “Now I think you are becoming Bengalized, Indianized. You must do everything in the American way.”

Of course his idea of American way was so transcendental. So, I’ve just come here to get the association of Śrīla Rāmeśvara swami so I can do everything in the American way and satisfy Śrīla Prabhupāda. He doesn’t want anyone to walk, he just want everyone to stay about a foot off the ground. That was Śrīla Prabhupāda’s idea and of course his speed no one could match. How he would speak right up till 10 o’clock, be up at twelve or one.

Sometimes he’d ring the bell at one o’clock in the morning and call us down and he’d say “Why…where have you been?” “I was sleeping” “Why you were sleeping? I was not sleeping now. Why you were sleeping? Why you were sleeping?” Then he would give some idea he has been thinking about. So of course even at the age of seventy, seventy five, eighty when Prabhupāda went on his morning walk he would leave half the devotees, of course on the end little bit he slowed down for us to catch up but he would walk so fast that the devotees would themselves would be huffing and puffing, they could hardly keep up. He was so energetic and he would immediately be smashing, ask many questions, was smashing the scientists.

One day he was on top of the Māyāpur…he decided to take rest on the roof, because it was a little warm downstairs and then he was, it was like the story of, maybe you know the story of Śrīnivāsa Ācārya where his spiritual master said that, “What is that?” Then the devotee saw, disciple saw rope. “That’s a rope.” “No it’s a snake.” “ What’s there?” “That’s a snake.” “No that’s a rope.”“ What do you see there?” “Oh! It’s a rope.” “Excuse me, what you see there?” “Rope.” “No it’s snake.” “Oh yeah it’s a snake.” Whatever the spiritual master sees that is my own vision. I am blind. I can’t see anything.

I may appear to see something, but my real vision is whatever the spiritual master sees. Prabhupāda, looking up at the moon, he said, “Yes, you know what the moon is made out of?” “No, Śrīla Prabhupāda. Earth or something?” “No, it’s made out of green cheese.” (laughter) “Yes, Śrīla Prabhupāda.” “Actually, it’s made out of one big chunk of ice, so much ice. That is, otherwise, how it is so cooling? If it’s not ice, how are you feeling so cool? Isn’t it very cooling?” “Yes, Śrīla Prabhupāda.”

In this way Śrīla Prabhupāda would give various conceptions about what the moon was made out of. Then he said, “You have ever seen an ant?” “Yes” “So just like you are looking down upon the ants, they are looking down upon you. Look at those tiny little human beings walking around. Demigods are so intelligent, they are so powerful, they are so far advanced, that they are living so long; they are looking down upon human beings, just like we look down at the ants. So, look at them, they are only living for…how many? 10 days. Our one year is their six months. That means that our life time is their 40 or 60 days. Oh! They live one-month, little bug.”

Prabhupāda’s vision was universal, was transcendental. So his children and grand-children, they are of course greatly fortunate to be in a line of this disciplic succession. And just like Śrīla Prabhupāda untiringly preached to us, preached to his disciples and to the public and tried to establish a new world... actually he’s already established it’s already existing in his mind. By his intense desire the whole world is already saved from this material contamination.

Simply we have to just carry out the order. The battle is already fought. It’s just like Arjuna. He simply had to go out there with his bow and arrow. Kṛṣṇa had already killed everyone. Of course, in the battle field it appeared sometimes very dangerous, it was very tense. But Arjuna actually, although he was in the midst of that tenseness of that battle, ultimately Kṛṣṇa’s will was already done. He simply had to go out there and dedicate himself to the battle. So like that Prabhupāda’s will, the will of Lord Caitanya has been brought down by Śrīla Prabhupāda. Simply everyone has to carry that order to the disciplic succession. And the battle result is already fixed. It’s already known that the whole world, pṛthivīte āche yata nagarādi-grāma sarvatra pracāra haibe mora nāma. Who else has this conception that without a doubt, our system of spiritual science will be in every town and village? Without a doubt, who else has that faith?

Some people are storing that canned food in their basements, waiting for the persecution. People try to spread this no one else has implicit faith that this will spread to every single town and village and every person will hear about the massage of Lord Caitanya. Because we know that this is Lord Caitanya’s desire, this is Śrīla Prabhupāda’s intense desire. Yesterday we read his prayer how he said, that simply by Bhaktisiddhānta’s intense desire already all these people are delivered.

We know that by one particle of dust of the lotus feet of Śrīla Prabhupāda whole universes are delivered. We are simply implementing. Just we are allowed to feel that we are doing some service, although everything has already been done by him. Simply if we can be instruments, surrender ourselves as his puppets, so then he can dance us as he likes according to his sweet will. I am just feeling unfortunate, that I am seeing everywhere I go how wonderfully everyone is surrendered to Śrīla Prabhupāda’s, disciplic succession’s will, dancing as he desired. I am just dragging my feet. So I am just praying for the mercy of Śrīla Rāmeśvara Swami and all the Vaishnavas that one day I may be able to dance according to Śrīla Prabhupāda’s direction, as wonderfully as they all are. Thank you.

We see that everyone is a servant of God. This Kṛṣṇa Consciousness movement; is simply understanding that we are all the servants of God. God is known as... by different names by different people. So we know Him as Kṛṣṇa, as Govinda, as The Supreme Personality of Godhead. So somebody whose converted, you see, they convert for various reasons. In India I’ve seen conversions for economic reasons, I’ve seen conversions just because people came and due to a basic law.

Just like in America if you take a poll, how many Christians have read The Bible? You may find that very few have actually read it cover to cover. Similarly in India if you take a poll of the people, they may be Hindu and worship Kṛṣṇa, but if you ask how many people have actually read the Bhagavad-Gītā from cover to cover, which is the main book of the Hindu dharma or religion, you’ll be surprised to find that a small fraction have actually taken the trouble to read the whole literature.

This basic lack of culture or religious awakening, spirit all over the world is not isolated to America or India, but it is everywhere. Basically, everyone is more interested in things other than God consciousness or in self-realization, today. That’s why we are suffering all the things we are. So if somebody has converted and now he’s changed from Hindu and now he’s become a Christian and he saying, Hare Kṛṣṇas are bad, that doesn’t really bother us much. Anybody is allowed to have whatever opinion he has. Obviously that person has not taken that we don’t say the Christian’s are bad, we don’t say that anybody is bad that is really sincerely following God. So obviously he hasn't understood what is the Bhagavad-gītā? And what is this Kṛṣṇa-consciousness movement all about? He is simply taking out what he heard from some person, who has fed him some misinformation. Our doors are open and if he came in and discussed it, I’m sure that all his questions could be answered. Anybody can say somebody is bad without knowing anything about him. That doesn’t mean anything.