20220304 Śrī Śrī Rādhā Mādhava Golden Jubilee Festival Address Day 3

The following is an address given by His Holiness Jayapatākā Swami Mahārāja on March 4th, 2022 in Śrī Dhāma Māyāpur, India. The address was given on the occasion of the Śrī Śrī Rādhā Mādhava Golden Jubilee Festival Address Day III.

Jayapatākā Swami: So you heard Śivarāma Mahārāja, Lokanātha Mahārāja, Devāmṛta Mahārāja, and Śacīnandana Swami, and many others. You understand how Śrīla Prabhupāda got the order of Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura. Of course, I wasn’t present then, but I was here in Māyāpur 1972. And I saw that Śrīla Prabhupāda, he was very much committed to building the Temple of Vedic Planetarium. He asked different devotees to give their models for the TOVP. And Surabhi Mahārāja and many others gave their ideas. Śrīla Prabhupāda whenever he would travel around the world, he would look at the architecture and say what he wanted. Apparently, he said something praising a particular architecture in America. So, His Grace Ambarīṣa Prabhu took that and had the Temple of Vedic Planetarium designed accordingly.

And Lord Nityānanda in talking to Śrīvāsa Ṭhākura and Jīva Gosvāmī, He had a vision that there would be a temple. He said, eka adbuta mandira haibe prakāśa, gaurāṅga-nitya-sevā haibe vikāśa. Meaning that there will be a temple which would be amazing, beautiful, extraordinary and in the temple the message and personality of Lord Caitanya Mahāprabhu would be expanded all over the world. They put up some small mūrtis of Pañca-tattva and Rādhā Mādhava and Aṣṭa-sakhis and the guru-paramparā. So we get a little bit of the feeling of the Temple of Vedic Planetarium. So, just I wanted to say how Śrīla Prabhupāda at the time, right from the very beginning, he was always talking of this Temple of Vedic Planetarium. And we are grateful that it was started by Ambarīṣa Prabhu and Vraja-vilāsa Prabhu. So now we want to thank them, but they don’t want a gold medal. They want to finish the temple. That is the gold medal for them.

So we can think as Lokanātha Mahārāja said, how we can work together to finish this Temple of Vedic Planetarium. On the West side we are the Exhibition of the Vedic Cosmology. The idea is that this temple is more than a temple, actually it is a Museum of the Vedic Planetarium. And so we would like to see that people who visit are actually changed. And I mean, Lokanātha Mahārāja had said 50,000 visitors. You see, Śrīla Prabhupāda was saying 50,000 residents. And right now we have about 7,500. As Vraja-vilāsa had revealed we get about 6 million visitors in a year. And Vraja-vilāsa was predicting that when the temple opens that should multiply to 60 million. So you heard from the various Mahārājas, different people, how we should work together, how Śrīla Prabhupāda was doing the impossible. He went all over the world, spread Kṛṣṇa consciousness, and in Vṛndāvana the other bābājīs and sādhus they said that Lord Caitanya when He said pṛthivīte āche yata nagarādi-grāma sarvatra pracāra haibe mora nāma, he meant civilized world like India, Nepal, I don’t know. But Śrīla Prabhupāda said, no, pṛthivi the means the whole world. Russia, Europe, Africa, South America, North America, Asia, Australasia, everywhere. And Śrīla Prabhupāda did that. At first he was just preaching in the West. But he wanted to make a temple in Vṛndāvana and Māyāpur for devotees to visit. But the Deities in Los Angeles talked to him, they told him that he should also preach in India. Now we have book distribution and various projects all over the world. We need to finish the Temple of the Vedic Planetarium. We heard from Devāmṛta Swami that it may be illogical or impossible, but Śrīla Prabhupāda said that impossible is a word in a fool’s dictionary. So now we can see how the temple is coming up. Thank you for your cooperation. Do whatever you can and remember that Śrīla Prabhupāda desired this. Hare Kṛṣṇa!