19830916 Arrival Address

The following is an arrival address given by His Holiness Jayapatākā Swami on September 16, 1983 in Atlanta, Georgia.

Jayapatākā Swami: I wanted to… one year ago we had a plan that I would come here for Rādhāṣṭamī, so I am sorry that I am just a couple of days late. Without asking me, my regional secretary from Malaysia changed the days of a major function there… put me back a few days… put me back a week.

How is everybody here?

Devotees: Jaya!

Jayapatākā Swami: The… after I left New Pānihāṭi, we… from Miami, I had to race back to Calcutta for the Ratha-yātrā festival, and although I had no reservation at any point, and there were 178 people on the waiting list from London to Calcutta, somehow the computer appeared with my name on it! How it came, only Jagannātha knows. (Devotees laughing) But I was able to get on that flight and I reached the 11th night, the 12th was the Ratha-yātrā.

So I brought some slides of the Calcutta Ratha-yātrā festival, it was a wonderful festival. So this year, it coincided with the Mohemmadan Eid festival, so all the offices were closed. So that means there were no… normally Calcutta has a population of 7 million, but during the day it increases to about 12 because there are 5 million commuters that go in and out every day in trains and buses, that have the capacity of about half that. In fact there are so many people just coming in and out; most of them walk about 3 miles from downtown to the train stations, there’s not adequate…. So we normally would get that big crowd. So we were afraid that because all the offices are closed we would get less people,  but by Jagannātha’s mercy there was full capacity. Over a million people.

The difference was that everyone was there just to see Śrīla Prabhupāda's festival, the Ratha-yātrā. So they were specially dressed in their best clothing and they came with a very devotional mood. So there was the nicest Ratha-yātrā in terms of the mood of all the people, very orderly, very enthusiastic devoted people all came. Not that, we don’t mind the office crowd, we got them on the return ratha. Our festival is 9 days, first going, then 7 days we build a big temple and have a big top tent and whole fairgrounds we make. Anyway you will see that in the slide show. And we come back on the ninth day. On the 9th day we got all the office crowd also.

So normally on the way back we don’t get half a million people, but because all the office crowd had missed, so also on the way back it was equally huge crowds, if not even a little bigger. So that is right here. So I was very fortunate that I could be present and next year we are trying to expand it even bigger. Śrīla Prabhupāda had requested us to make Calcutta the biggest Ratha-yātrā in the world. And by his mercy now, we have had the 12th year Ratha-yātrā there, since 1971. Now gradually that is actually taking shape.

Then I had to go to Malaysia, it is a new part of my zone. And in a nutshell, the preaching there… a very big potential. It is the second largest… (not largest, it is a small country), but second richest country in Asia. So there is no economic problem per se, but there is also a different kind of wealth. About 20% of the people there are Indians, from South India mainly. And they are very receptive to Kṛṣṇa consciousness. And the Chinese are very receptive. It is a little touchy because the other 50% of the people are Muslims, who have a very strict law that you cannot preach to any of the Muslims.

In fact, if any Muslim converts to any other religion there, they are exiled from the country. But apart from them you can preach to anyone else. So we have to be very discreet. We have to preach in indoor type preaching, or in specific areas of the town where those won’t be offended. But, there I gave sannyāsa to Vrajendra Kumāra - Bhakti Vrajendra Nandana Swami - on the order of the GBC, and he is preaching there along with Prabhaviṣṇu Mahārāja and many other devotees. And it looks… we have a new temple, looks very nice for preaching in the future. I have some disciples there already.

It is a place that Śrīla Prabhupāda visited in 1971 on the invitation of one family there. That family is quite unusual because everyone in that family has a personal experience with Śrīla Prabhupāda. I met three of the sisters. All three are barristers at law from England. The one who and her husband who brought Śrīla Prabhupāda to… they had the only Kṛṣṇa temple in Kuala Lumpur. They brought Śrīla Prabhupāda there in 1971 and Śrīla Prabhupāda immediately said, “Make a temple here, make a ISKCON center.” But at that time his desire could not be maintained for more than a few months. The devotees didn’t stay on.

In fact, ISKCON only has reestablished its center recently within four-five years. The other sister is the wife of the police chief for the whole state, the Inspector General of Police. And she met Śrīla Prabhupāda at the Kumbha Mela. And another sister was… when she was going to law school in England, met Śrīla Prabhupāda in Amsterdam and England three times. And even their grandchildren all have autographed Kṛṣṇa books and Bhagavad-gītās from Śrīla Prabhupāda. So somehow this whole family has got some… in different places, they have all had some kind of a relation with Śrīla Prabhupāda and he has encouraged them. And they are actually helping us a lot in expanding the preaching there, in Malaysia.

So I hope I won’t have to spend so much time there. I had to spend quite a bit of time, as a result of which my normal tour of India had to be compacted. I had to visit the 18 temples I have in India in about a period of 24 days. So it was…doesn’t have to say any more than that. It was quite a busy tour.

So I went to Nepal and there, in the Tribhuvan University, the government university in Kathmandu, we had a big program which was published in all the papers. There also, the curator of the New York Museum happened to be a Nepali, when Śrīla Prabhupāda had the temple in Brooklyn. And he used to go and take prasādam at the temple, and he witnessed Śrīla Prabhupāda perform a wedding ceremony. And now he has gone back and he is the head of the department of Zoology there. So he came forward and he is helping our movement there.

So apparently the program had such a strong effect on the students, the faculty and the media that the next day, I had to cut my stay short and leave for other places. But an hour after I left, the queen of the country, one of the only Hindu ruling queen in the world, sent her car to pick me up to ask if I would come and have an audience. She wanted to discuss some things about Kṛṣṇa consciousness, just after I left.

So anyway, next time I go there they said she definitely wants to meet. She recently went to our temple in London. Her son had to go for an operation, the Crown Prince, and they feel that Kṛṣṇa has blessed their son or something. He recovered very quickly.

Śrīla Prabhupāda wanted, he said to make Nepal a stronghold of Kṛṣṇa consciousness. It is the only Hindu kingdom in the world. They have a complete ban on all types of cow slaughter - bull or cow. And they don’t allow any conversion… forceful conversion to any other faith. Of course, there are some voluntary ones to take any faith, but that is another thing. But many ways they have a very… and the whole country chants Hare Kṛṣṇa from centuries. So just requires a little bit of divine dispensation and it could be actually made into a stronghold of Kṛṣṇa consciousness.

Then from Nepal I went to Guwahati. Guwahati is in the trouble-stormed state in India, called Assam. I think everyone probably read in the newspaper. There were riots there, over hundreds and thousands of people were killed in the last few years. In the midst of that, Bhavabhūti Dāsa Adhikāri and his assistants, they have been working very hard in the midst of all these riots and built a beautiful temple, bigger or about the same size as our Vṛndāvana Kṛṣṇa-Balarāma temple. And I moved the deities Rukmiṇī-Kṛṣṇa, Vaidharbhī-Kṛṣṇa, because Rukmiṇī is said to come from that valley of Guwahati. In the Vedas, it is described as Prāgjyotiṣapura and Kṛṣṇa personally visited Pragjyotiśpura and that is where he took… the 16,108 queens I believe were taken from there also or nearby there, the 16000 he rescued from that area. Bāṇāsura… or Narakāsura? Narakāsura comes from that area. Narakāsura. Was it Bhaumāsura or Narakāsura? One of those asuras. (laughter) Had his… maybe that Bhaum-asura is slightly north of there, but Narakāsura, I believe, is the one who had his capital there and Kṛṣṇa defeated him and then went on to the other.

Anyway Kṛṣṇa’s lotus feet, when He raced to get to that valley, there is a big rock on one side of the Brahmaputra river. And there it is called Aśvakleśa. ‘Aśva’ means horse and ‘kleśa’ means tired. So the hooves of the horse were so hot from running, that when they stood on the rock they left hoof prints all over the rock and those hoof prints are still there. And there is also a footprint of Lord Kṛṣṇa’s lotus feet. So people go there and do pūjā on that rock, do worship.

So it is a very spiritually historically valley, blessed. And on all sides, there are hills, the biggest hill being the Kāmākhyā hill, the ancient temple of Kāmākhyā Devī, who’s is mentioned in the Mahābhārata, whose devotee married… was it Bhaumāsura or Narakāsura? I am quite sure that it was Narakāsura, that one. Narakāsura had…

The demons you see, their mood is quite different, although they are devoted to demigods. He worshipped Kāmākhyā Devī according to the puranic evidences that are revealed by the devotees there. He worshipped Kāmākhyā Devī, and when finally Kāmākhyā said, “Alright what do you want? You can have your wish.”

And then he said, “I want to have sex with you.”

She says, you know, “I am married to Lord Śiva and all...”

And he said “This is my desire.” The demon you know, their idea is completely different.

So she said, “Alright since this is your desire, but then how do I know you are worthy? So you have to build up to the temple… you have to in one night, from the sunset to the sunrise, if you can build a stone path so wide…” and gave a measurement about 10 feet wide, “…and if you finish before daybreak, then you can have what you want.”

So then this demon, the whole night, as soon as the sun set he was lifting these big boulders and building. And it’s a huge mountain, I mean it is maybe 2000 feet high, I mean a big hill. And even today you can still see the… I don’t remember if it was Bhauma or Narakāsura, I thought it was Narakāsura… the huge… There is this big path going straight up the side of the hill. Of course, just before daybreak, he had one big rock to lift and his strength failed, because of course she’s the mother of all the living entities in the universe and he couldn’t get it there in time, the cock crowed and, “Thank you for the nice road.” (laughter).

So now all the devotees can come up there. And now they built the motorable road. But anyway, we can talk so many things about Kāmākhyā Devī. She told her devotees to worship Kṛṣṇa, she has a special dispensation. That’s on the far western side of the valley, and there’s mountains… there’s hills all around. And on one side comes the Brahmaputra River, where Kṛṣṇa’s lotus feet are there. And our temple is on a small hill right in the middle of this Brahmaputra valley, and on the top of that is our temple. So it is an incredible situation. You can see the Kāmākhyā temple, you can see Kṛṣṇa’s rock, you can see the whole city on all sides, about half a million people, small city. And the beautiful Brahmaputra, the largest river in the world I believe, or one of the largest, the only male river in the Vedas. It is not a nadī. It’s not a female. Rivers are normally female, like Yamunā, Gaṅgā. But Brahmaputra, putra means son, son of Brahmā, it is a male river, one of the few male rivers, if not the only one in the world.

So then we finished moving our Deity from the old temple to the temporary place, to the new temple. Then that very afternoon I took a flight to Māyāpur, to Calcutta, then drove out to Māyāpur and for Janmāṣṭamī, that was on Janmāṣṭamī, two ministers from the communist coalition government of West Bengal, they came out and were guest speakers at the Janmāṣṭamī festival. The whole guest house was completely packed and people from all over the villages came. And I got there just as one of the ministers was speaking at six or seven at night. One of the ministers was saying that how Śrīla Prabhupāda had actually shown the way and that no political system in the world, including communism (even though he was in that government, he was including communism) can ever succeed without God consciousness. And with God consciousness, Śrīla Prabhupāda has shown that the whole world can actually be united. Very fiery speech, was very… shocked everyone. They couldn’t expect that this person would say something like this. I don’t know. Apparently he has made his own little party which is part of the coalition, but then the other minister who is the Public Works Department Minister, he also spoke very highly of Kṛṣṇa and Kṛṣṇa consciousness, and thanked everyone, the temple. Said he was completely overwhelmed by the Māyāpur Candrodaya Mandir, and unofficially he said he would try his best, as the Public Works Department Minister, which was in charge of all roads, building of bridges, building of any government structures, to try to improve the infrastructure of roads and other things out to Māyāpur, including bridges across the rivers to Māyāpur etc. And as a sign of his sincerity, already, in the short time, he has put every ten miles signboards, on the way to Māyāpur. When it says so many miles to Darjeeling or to Bombay or whatever, it says so many… underneath that or over it depending on the sign, it says Māyāpur, so many miles, 10, 20, 30, 40 whatever. And he is giving us permission to put three big hoardings on the way to Māyāpur.

Then of course we had the Vyāsa-pūjā of Śrīla Prabhupāda the next day, they offered one thousand preparations!

Devotees: Jaya!!

Jayapatākā Swami: …of prasādam. And I heard there was a very nice Janmāṣṭamī. In Madras I wasn’t there, they had a very nice Janmāṣṭamī. I heard they had Vaijayantimala, who was a guest speaker there, and they had about 5000 people there. 3000 in Bangalore, they went to the big hall and everyone came. Here in New Orleans, they had nice festivals. They had nice festivals in Malaysia and Kathmandu they had complete, packed. Everywhere, very nice Janmāṣṭamī festivals. Calcutta there were so many people, the people were lined down the street, took 20 minutes to get up to just see the Deities.

So at Māyāpur when we did the abhiṣeka, the television that had come up from Calcutta, the All-India television, they just have one government television authority, and they televised the Janmāṣṭamī festival, including fire yajña, bathing of the Deities, worshipping of Śrīla Prabhupāda and everything, nationwide next day at 7:45 in the evening.

So even in Madras some life members said they saw the video of me doing the abhiṣeka of Rādhā-Mādhava, they saw Rādhā-Mādhava. So Śrīla Prabhupāda was very kind. So then I went on a South Indian tour. Our Hyderabad farm now is a 600-acre farm that Prabhupāda had wanted to show practically Kṛṣṇa consciousness in India. How to do simple living high thinking in the real practical sense. So that place was like a desert. It was all thorn bushes, barren land, and Prabhupāda said if you just do chanting here, you will get enough rain. I had been there before. I had been there many times, but during my Vyāsa-pūjā celebration, I told everyone you just do kīrtana and Śrīla Prabhupāda will certainly have his mercy on us. And when I said that, we were discussing, suddenly just over the land a big black cloud came. You could see all sides. It was blue sky, that time it was in April. It was the middle of the drought season. But a big black rain cloud started pouring rain on the land. So we were all dancing in the rain. It was, you see… that was like a very nice sign. But then I came back. Now it is the rainy season. Normally you get little rain there, enough. You can grow some corn, cactus or something, I mean… (laughter). …but uh, maybe a few small plots of rice you can grow. But this year was a flood of rain.

They had done for one and a half months before I was there, before they’d done non-stop saṅkīrtana in the villages every night. And there was so much rain, they said there had never been in the history that much rain in that area. This flooded…. now we are thinking of building dams. There’s so much. There was a little pond in the back that has become a huge lake over miles and miles. In fact, it’s just everywhere there is green now. It is incredible. I… we… it’s rain-showers of mercy. So we were trying to spend so much money for irrigation. It seems we should just spend more for saṅkīrtana! Kṛṣṇa will do the rest… Prabhupāda.

This is the basic principle, guru-paraṁparā, that we try to… we worship the guru of course only as he’s the representative of the previous ācāryas, of Kṛṣṇa. Not that guru is God. But he is respected as a representative of God. And by following the disciplic succession, the previous ācārya's instructions, then know we have the faith and understanding that this is the desire of Kṛṣṇa. And factually we we’re seeing immediately, just by following the blueprints that Śrīla Prabhupāda has given us, in every respect, that things are just coming true. That things are developing very nicely.

So there the problem, they had grown all these dry crops and… like corn and all that, there was too much rain, so they got water logged. So they had to plough the land up again. They grew all rice, which is good for making khichdi. So that program is going on nicely. There they are giving about 250 kilos of milk every day and delivering it to the city there. People that are… we also give the Deities and the devotees as much as they need, and then they deliver the rest to the city, and they have regular people who get the milk from our farm on a, you know, contract basis. Individual people, you know, families. They sign up because they know that our milk is pure and it’s reliable.

In India milk usually has a little water in it. They never lie. If you ask the milkman, “Did you put water in it?”

He says, “No, I never put any.”

You say, “But there is water in the milk. You must have put water.”

He says “No, I will swear on the Bhagavad-gītā I did not put any water in the milk.” Maybe his brother did or his wife (laughter). Maybe he put the water in first, put the milk in the water (laughter). They don’t lie, but somehow there is water there. You know it. So up to now we have been able to keep the water out of our milk, so people like it very much.

Then from there, I went to Bangalore, and just made a one-day visit there. And one whole family… one son had taken initiation from me. He was going to the MIT of India, so then he came back and his whole family was chanting sixteen rounds, so then they all requested initiation which I gave them later on in the visit.

Then from there I went to Madras, we have a new temple president there. And the temple was before having a little financial difficulty, but he picked it right up and the devotee, there were about 10 or 12 devotees before, there’s now 28 devotees there. There were zero devotees in Hyderabad farm. They have about 40.

So things are looking up very nicely there. A lot of devotees are gṛhastha devotees in Madras, who are doing their businesses and are very active in the temple. And there was a miracle that happened in Madras. There, Kṛṣṇa came on His own to Madras. We had been worshipping Jagannātha there. Little Jagannātha that I had on the traveling bullock cart party at one point. And there was a very ancient temple of Kṛṣṇa in one of the districts in South India, and this temple, the pujārī, the old father, he passed away. The son was a materialist, so he didn't see the value of worshiping the Deity, everything. So he took the Deity and he was trying to sell it off somewhere. They were 400-year-old worshiped Deities. Kṛṣṇa, Rukmiṇī and Satyabhāmā… they say, I mean, I haven’t, as far as, you know that’s there. I mean it’s Kṛṣṇa with the flute and either it’s Satyabhāmā… Rukmiṇī, I believe.

So they happened to go to the person right behind their house, who’s chanting eight rounds and is a life member giving us some land, and they said “You… You please buy these Deities.” He said… “How can you sell these worshipable Deities? You can’t sell Kṛṣṇa like that.”

So he said “But, I need money, this, that. Just, you know I am a materialistic person.”

“Alright listen, you take some… take this as a donation… whatever, and you give the Deities here.” So he had those Deities, and the devotees saw the Deities and then by Kṛṣṇa’s arrangement, he gave those Deities to the devotees, and on Janmāṣṭamī, Their worship was restarted again.

Devotees: Jaya.

Jayapatākā Swami: They are made of a special mix of five metals, of gold, silver, brass. Beautiful deities, about this big, and just exquisite Deities. They don’t… they don’t make… of course Kṛṣṇa is not made. These were worshiped for so long. The Deities have Kṛṣṇa’s special presence. It is very hard to find that type of Deity anyway. But Kṛṣṇa… this is just on His own. We wouldn't have installed a Kṛṣṇa, because we were renting a big house there. But we didn’t own a house, so we wouldn’t install. But Kṛṣṇa is already installed and He walked in the door, then what can you do? (laughter) You have to worship Him.

So then from Madras I flew down to Kerala, to Trivandrum. Just one day stops. Just you know, as I said, was a very quick tour. And I didn’t know it, but this happened to be the national biggest holiday, what’s comparable to Christmas here, the Christmas there is the Onam festival. All the Keralites consider themselves to be the descendants, or the prajā, or the citizens of Bali Maharaja. And this was the time; after Bali was sent to Sutala-loka, he had a boon or some permission to visit his old citizens once in a year.

So he would come at that time, and then all the citizens would wear fresh cloth and give the children good cloth. There would be gifts for everyone and they’d come and they would be greeting… the king is coming and they would be greeting Bali Mahārāja. So it was Onam day, they lit lights in front of the house and so many different festivities.

So I happened to be arriving that day at 11 in the morning. I didn’t even know, unless you are there you wouldn’t. And the Mayor and the deputy Mayor of the town, along with the aldermen and all the people, they were all waiting at the airport with a big red umbrella and the band, the shehnāi band and then they received me, garlanded me, put me in the VIP lounge, the newspapers all took photographs and everything.

Devotee: Jaya!

This part was unexpected. And they were very happy I was coming on that festival day. We did the initiation ceremony the next day, many that were also televised and put in the newspapers.

Then from there, I flew from Kerala, which is near the far southern tip of India, back to Calcutta, and next morning to Bangladesh, which is north east. In Bangladesh all the Hindus’ leaders were waiting for me and they wanted a special discussion. They said they’ve traced out the history of their country, which has got about 15 million Hindus, out of the 85 million people. The rest are converted Muslims. They are converted by Aurangazeb and other rulers in ancient India. Even within the last hundred years many are converted by force. Convert or die, type of… by the sword they were converting people on those days, most of them.

So now in that country the Hindus are the second… the big minority of the country. But they have lost a lot of their morale. When I came there, they said that because ISKCON had been present in Bangladesh, that they got a great inspiration. And actually that because of the presence of the Śrīla Prabhupāda’s movement there, even though we are not so many there, that actually it had rejuvenated the whole Kṛṣṇa consciousness.

They had been told that when after Mohammed Ali was made the… you might have saw in the paper that Mohammed Ali is the Consulate General of Bangladesh. That was like a stunt. They brought him there and said everyone in America has become Mohammedan. And they told the Hindus, you should also, because the whole America and England they are all Mohammedan, and the whole world has become Mohammedan, so what is the use? Yours is a dying religion or something, so you should become Mohammedan. Of course we are not concerned with Hindu, Mohammedan or Christian, something, the sectarian viewpoint, but these are the type of things that go on in these countries. So they had actually become very demoralized that maybe it is true that actually the whole world is becoming Mohammedan and our belief in Kṛṣṇa in Hindu culture, Vedic culture is in fact misplaced something.

Some of the people there are very isolated there, and they are very much economically depressed and prejudiced. So when we came there and showed our Hare Kṛṣṇa people film and World of Hare Kṛṣṇa and so on, how everyone all over the world, people are taking up Kṛṣṇa consciousness, it is accepted by scientific people. Vedic culture, reincarnation, it is not a matter of any kind of… some blind belief and it is very scientific, systematic understanding and people are accepting all over the world.

When they saw that, these leaders said, “This actually was like… gave us a new life.” And as a result now, practically speaking, there is a tremendous revival of Kṛṣṇa consciousness. I mean 15 million people got a complete rejuvenation just by these movies and by the preaching there. So they said they wanted to arrange a program during the Māyāpur festival. Just after that. If they could get men and women devotees, say hundred-or-two to come to Bangladesh or even 50 or 20 or whatever for a big festival, they said they could get about 5000 people to attend it and maybe get the president of the country to inaugurate it. Because the position of the Hindus there has increased a lot in the past few years. So they claim that they see the whole thing as being the preaching of Kṛṣṇa consciousness.

Then I went to a Puṇḍarīka temple, which is an ancient temple, where the birthplace of the guru of Gadādhara of the Pañca Tattva is situated and we have constructed a temple for Radha-Kṛṣṇa there, Vārṣabhānavī-Murāri Deities. And there, there is a complete flood. Everywhere, all around our temple is all water. Just our temple alone is above the water and some few village houses. So we had to go three miles by boat and the boat had holes in it. So while we were going, it just kept filling up with water and just we were simultaneously taking the water out. Sometimes it became a little bit precarious. So we were telling them to pail out little faster (laughter). Somehow we made it and hundreds of villagers came. In spite of all the floods we had a nice program on the veranda of our temple. It was completely packed. There was little initiation ceremony there. The Deities’ worship, everything is going alright. It happens sometimes like this there is a flood. Śrīla Prabhupāda mentions in the Caitanya-caritāmṛta that sometimes Māyāpur also floods, and he said that the significance is that when the holy dhāma floods, that means from that place the flood of love for Kṛṣṇa should be expanded everywhere. So we took it from Bangladesh, from that Puṇḍarīka-dhāma, this is a sign that Kṛṣṇa wants a flood of Kṛṣṇa consciousness to come from there, so we had some nice… in spite of the poor… the bad situation with the rain water, we had some very nice programs.

So like this we had our tour. In Bangkok, many people are chanting japa, Chinese and Thai and Siamese people. They have fixed up the temple very nicely. They got about 50 people on Sundays to come for the feast. To preach to Buddhists is completely different. In every place they have a completely different mentality. The Buddhists have a complete, don’t have any concept for God. Their idea is you become nothing. Buddhism. So, to preach to them, you have to adopt a whole different technique, at least in the initial stages to bring them up to at least to understand. But they seem to be… some college students were coming there and they actually were convinced that there was a God by the preaching. And that one boy was chanting 16 rounds. So, it’s difficult… they’re very orthodox, but they respect Kṛṣṇa consciousness and they all know that the whole of India, at one point for some few centuries, had become Buddhist. But they all became again followers of Vedic culture. So in the back of their mind, it’s always there, that “Why did they all become… give up Buddhism?”, you see.

So, that’s good. Some people are therefore envious of us, that “You’ve… Why have you driven off Buddhism from your country, India?”, but then some people, more intellectual, they think, “Well there must be… Why did all the people again accepted Vedic culture?” They want to understand, and when they understand, then they also accept. So, this was the basic, there are a lot more things that happened, but these are the basic things that happened in the period when I was overseas in India.

Māyāpur, the samādhi temple is slowly progressing. Bhavānanda Mahārāja sent off to buy another small elephant, making the second elephant in Māyāpur. And Sundara Kali, she is our first elephant. We’ve been feeding her very nicely, apparently. She grew one foot. She’s 9 feet now.

Devotee: Jaya.

Jayapatākā Swami: At the shoulder they measured her. And she’s become very big. I mean, elephants are big anyway, but she’s become really big, (laughter) and they say she’s still growing. She may get up to be 10 feet, which for a female elephant is quite big… an Indian elephant. Very good disposition. When the ministers came, she was greeting them.

Devotee: Jaya.

Jayapatākā Swami: She salutes. So, this is… of course in ancient… even now, in South India there are… some temples have 50 elephants, and these elephants are used in processions, to take the Deity. Śrīla Prabhupāda said when we were in Kumbha-mela, at that time this Śaṅkarācārya Māyāvādī impersonalist guru, he came into the fair, wearing a loincloth with a big golden helmet, and a big golden scepter I think, riding an elephant. And in front of him there were all naked nāgā-sādhūs dancing.

So, Śrīla Prabhupāda heard about this… was a big thing. All the people would go to see this. Śrīla Prabhupāda said, “These are the Māyāvādīs. Māyāvādīs means that they think they’re God.” Śrīla Prabhupāda says, “We take the Deity on the elephant. Not that… we don’t do these types of things.” And they had elephants which are trained to fan the Deities, and to bow down. In fact, there’s some elephants that have whole pastimes with the Deities. Where they fan their whole life and the day that they’re going to die, the one elephant is there and wouldn’t eat, just stood by the temple. And then when the door opened, he paid his obeisances and died like that.

Devotees: Jaya!

Jayapatākā Swami: So, it’s not… elephants, they have intelligence also, though it might be limited. But some of these elephants, you don’t know who they are, what devotee they were in their past life. There are many… not that everyone is like that… but that was a very renowned elephant in the temple. I believe it was in the temple of… in Kerala, that famous temple...

Devotee: Guruvayur.

Jayapatākā Swami: Guruvayur temple. So our elephant’s a little bit too old to teach to fan. She does obeisances and can do other salutes, and carry the Deity, so they want to get a baby one that can be taught how to fan the Deity in procession with the trunk, with the cāmara they fan. So, Māyāpur is, we have about 45 bhaktas right now. 45 new devotees. Mostly college graduates, very nice. Whole crew of them, a big white squad. In India, they all wear white before. In Calcutta they have about 5 bhaktins, 5 or 7. And in Bangladesh, a lot of bhaktins also. Everywhere, a lot of devotees are coming. Preaching seems to be going on very nicely. Now, we’re trying to organize. In Bhubaneshwar the temple is nearing completion. We’re printing a lot of books. The saṅkīrtana party’s been very active.

But of course we have a lot of plans. So this is just preparatory for the actual bigger things that we actually want to achieve for  Śrīla Prabhupāda.

Anyway, I’m reporting here to Śrīla Prabhupāda, Nitāi Gauracāṅda and all of you.

[end of recording]

Transcribed by Adithya Venugopal
Proofread by Rajeshwari - 10/10/2020 - Bangalore.