VEDABACE

Chapter fourteen

Struggling Alone

I used to sit in the back and listen to his meetings silently. He was speaking all impersonal nonsense, and I kept my silence. Then one day he asked if I would like to speak, and I spoke about Kṛṣṇa consciousness. I challenged that he was speaking manufactured philosophy and all nonsense from Śaṅkarācārya. He tried to back out and said he was not speaking, Śaṅkarācārya was speaking. I said, “You are representing him. That is the same thing.” He then said to me, “Swamiji, I like you very much, but you cannot speak here.” But although our philosophies differed and he would not let me speak, he was kind, and I was nice to him.

– Śrīla Prabhupāda in conversation

PRABHUPĀDA KNEW NO one in New York City, but he had a contact: Dr. Ramamurti Mishra. He had written Dr. Mishra from Butler, enclosing the letter of introduction Paramananda Mehra had given him in Bombay. He had also phoned Dr. Mishra, who welcomed Prabhupāda to join him in New York.

At the Port Authority Bus Terminal, a student of Dr. Mishra’s met him as he arrived from Philadelphia and escorted him directly to an Indian festival in the city. There Prabhupāda met Dr. Mishra as well as Ravi Shankar and his brother, the dancer Udai Shankar. Prabhupāda then accompanied Dr. Mishra to his apartment at 33 Riverside Drive, beside the Hudson River. The apartment was on the fourteenth floor and had large windows overlooking the river. Dr. Mishra gave Prabhupāda a room to himself.

Dr. Mishra was a dramatic, showy personality, given to flashing glances and making expressive gestures with his hands. He regularly used words like “lovely” and “beautiful.” Presenting an artfully polished image of what a guru should be, he was what some New Yorkers referred to as “an uptown swami.” Before coming to America, Dr. Mishra had been a Sanskrit scholar and a guru, as well as a doctor. He had written a number of books, such as The Textbook of Yoga Psychology and Self-Analysis and Self-Knowledge, a work based on the teachings of the monistic philosopher Śaṅkara. After he came to the United States, he continued with his medical profession, but as he began taking disciples he gradually dropped his practice. Although a sannyāsī, he did not wear the traditional saffron dhotī and kurtā, but instead wore tailored Nehru jackets and white slacks. His complexion was dark, whereas Prabhupāda’s was golden, and he had thick, black hair. At forty-four, he was young enough to be Prabhupāda’s son. Dr. Mishra had been suffering from bad health when Śrīla Prabhupāda came into his life, and Prabhupāda’s arrival seemed the perfect medicine.

Ramamurti Mishra: His Holiness Prabhupāda Bhaktivedanta Goswamiji really knocked me down with love. He was really an incarnation of love. My body had become a skeleton, and he really brought me back to life – his cooking, and especially his love and his devotion to Lord Kṛṣṇa. I was very lazy in the matter of cooking, but he would get up and have ready.

Dr. Mishra appreciated that Prabhupāda, cooking with the precision of a chemist, would prepare many dishes, and that he had a gusto for eating.

Ramamurti Mishra: It was not bread he gave me – he gave me prasādam. This was life, and he saved my life. At that time I was not sure I would live, but his habit to eat on time, whether I was hungry or not – that I very much liked. He’d get up and say, “All right, this is bhagavat-prasādam,” and I would say, “All right.”

Joan Suval, an old student of Dr. Mishra’s, often saw Śrīla Prabhupāda and her teacher together at the Riverside Drive apartment.

Joan Suval: I have a memory of Swamiji as a child, in the sense of his being very innocent, a very simple person, very pure. The impression I have from Dr. Mishra is that he regarded Swamiji as a father figure who was kindly and good. But basically the words most often used referring to Swamiji were “like a child,” meaning that he was simple in a classical, beautiful sense. Dr. Mishra mentioned to me when I was first introduced to Swamiji that he was a very holy man, very religious, rapt in God consciousness.

Swamiji was very sweet. I myself remember him as a very, very good man, even in the practical details of living in New York, which seemed to involve him very much, because he was a practical man and was looking for the best place to begin his work. I remember very well that he was always careful about washing his clothes out every night. I would come in and find a group of students in the living area of Dr. Mishra’s apartment, and in the bathroom would be hung Swamiji’s orange robes.

Śrīla Prabhupāda would sometimes discuss with Dr. Mishra the aim of his visit to America, expressing his spiritual master’s vision of establishing Kṛṣṇa consciousness in the West. He requested Dr. Mishra to help him, but Dr. Mishra would always refer to his own teaching work, which kept him very busy, and to his plans for leaving the country soon. After a few weeks, when it became inconvenient to maintain Prabhupāda at the apartment, Dr. Mishra shifted him to his haṭha-yoga studio on the fifth floor of 100 West Seventy-second Street, near Central Park. The large studio was located in the center of the building and included an office and an adjoining private room, where Prabhupāda stayed. It had no windows.

Philosophically at complete odds with Prabhupāda, Dr. Mishra accepted the Absolute Truth in the impersonal feature (or Brahman) to be supreme. Prabhupāda stressed the supremacy of the personal feature (or Bhagavān), following the Vedic theistic philosophy that the most complete understanding of the Absolute Truth is personal. The Bhagavad-gītā says that the impersonal Brahman is subordinate to Bhagavān and is an emanation from Him, just as the sunshine is an emanation from the sun planet. This conclusion had been taught by the leading traditional ācāryas of ancient India, such as Rāmānuja and Madhva, and Śrīla Prabhupāda was in disciplic succession from Madhva. Dr. Mishra, on the other hand, followed Śaṅkara, who taught that the impersonal presence of the Absolute Truth is all in all and that the Personality of Godhead is ultimately an illusion. Whereas Prabhupāda’s theistic philosophy accepted the individual spiritual self (ātmā) as an eternal servant of the supreme spiritual being (Bhagavān), Dr. Mishra’s view accepted the spiritual self as not an individual. Rather, his idea was that since each person is identical with God, the Supreme Brahman, there is no need to worship God outside oneself. As Dr. Mishra would put it, “Everything is one.”

Prabhupāda challenged: If each of us is actually the Supreme, then why is this “Supreme” suffering and struggling in the material world? Dr. Mishra would counter that the Supreme is only temporarily covered by illusion and that through haṭha-yoga and meditation one would become enlightened, understanding, “It is all the Supreme.” Prabhupāda would again challenge: But if the Supreme could be covered by illusion, then illusion would be greater than God, greater than the Supreme.

Prabhupāda considered Dr. Mishra a “Māyāvādī” because of his inadvertent acceptance that māyā, illusion, is greater than the Absolute Truth. For Śrīla Prabhupāda, not only was the impersonal philosophy unpalatable, it was an insult to the Personality of Godhead. According to Kṛṣṇa in the Bhagavad-gītā (7.24, 9.11), “Unintelligent men, who know Me not, think that I have assumed this form and personality. Due to their small knowledge, they do not know My higher nature, which is changeless and supreme. … Fools deride Me when I appear in this human form. They do not know My transcendental nature and My supreme dominion over all that be.” Lord Caitanya had also strongly refuted the Māyāvāda philosophy: “Everything about the Supreme Personality of Godhead is spiritual, including His body, opulence, and paraphernalia. Māyāvāda philosophy, however, covers His spiritual opulence and advocates the theory of impersonalism.”

Before coming to America, Śrīla Prabhupāda had written in his Bhāgavatam purports, “The ambitious Māyāvādī philosophers desire to merge into the existence of the Lord. This form of mukti (liberation) means denying one’s individual existence. In other words, it is a kind of spiritual suicide. It is absolutely opposed to the philosophy of bhakti-yoga. Bhakti-yoga offers immortality to the individual conditioned soul. If one follows the Māyāvāda philosophy, he misses his opportunity to become immortal after giving up the material body.” In the words of Lord Caitanya, māyāvādī kṛṣṇa-aparādhī: “Māyāvādī impersonalists are great offenders unto Lord Kṛṣṇa.” Thus Lord Caitanya had concluded that if one even hears the commentary of Śaṅkara, one’s entire spiritual life is spoiled. Dr. Mishra was content to align himself with the philosophy of Śaṅkara and allow Prabhupāda to stay with Lord Kṛṣṇa and the Bhagavad-gītā. But Śrīla Prabhupāda pointed out that even Śaṅkara accepted that the Personality of Godhead, Kṛṣṇa, or Nārāyaṇa, exists eternally beyond the material world. Therefore, He is a transcendental person – nārāyaṇaḥ paro ’vyaktāt.

A mendicant, Prabhupāda was temporarily dependent on the good will of his Māyāvādī acquaintance, with whom he regularly ate and conversed and from whom he accepted shelter. But what a great inconvenience it was! He had come to America to speak purely and boldly about Kṛṣṇa, but he was being restricted. In Butler he had been confined by his hosts’ middle-class sensibilities; now he was silenced in a different way. He was treated with kindness, but he was considered a threat. Dr. Mishra could not allow his students to hear the exclusive praise of Lord Kṛṣṇa as the Supreme Personality of Godhead.

Spending most of his time in his new room, Śrīla Prabhupāda kept at his typing and translating. But when Dr. Mishra held his yoga classes, Prabhupāda would sometimes come out and lead a kīrtana or lecture.

Robert Nelson (one of Prabhupāda’s first young sympathizers in New York): I went to Dr. Mishra’s service, and Dr. Mishra talked. Swamiji was sitting on a bench, and then all of a sudden Dr. Mishra stops the service and he gets a big smile and says, “Swamiji will sing us a song.” I think Dr. Mishra wouldn’t let him speak. Somebody told me Dr. Mishra didn’t want him to preach.

Every morning, several hours before dawn, Prabhupāda would rise, take his bath, chant Hare Kṛṣṇa on his beads, and work at his translating, while outside his closed-in, windowless chamber, dawn came and the city awoke. He had no stove, so daily he had to walk the seven blocks to the Riverside Drive apartment to cook. It would be late morning when he would come out onto the busy street. He would walk north on Columbus Avenue amid the steady flow of pedestrians, pausing at each intersection in the sweeping breeze from the river. Instead of the small-town scenery of Butler, he passed through the rows of thirty-story office buildings on Columbus Avenue. At street level were shoe repair shops, candy stores, laundries, and continental restaurants. The upper stories held the professional suites of doctors, dentists, and lawyers. At Seventy-fifth Street, he would turn west and walk through a neighborhood of brownstone apartments and then across Amsterdam to Broadway, with its center-island park. The greenery here could more accurately be described as “blackery,” since it was covered with soot and city grime. Broadway displayed its produce shops and butcher shops, with their stands extending onto the sidewalk, and old men sat on benches in the thin strip of park between the northbound and southbound traffic. The last block on Seventy-fifth before Riverside Drive held high-rise apartment buildings with doormen standing. Thirty-three Riverside Drive also had a doorman.

Sometimes Prabhupāda would walk in Riverside Park. Still careful for the condition of his heart, he liked the long stretches of flat walking area. Sometimes he would walk from Dr. Mishra’s studio down Seventy-second Street to Amsterdam Avenue, to the West End Superette, where he would buy produce and spices for his cooking. Sometimes he would wander through Manhattan, without any fixed direction, and sometimes he would take buses to different areas of the city.

On weekends, Prabhupāda would accompany Dr. Mishra to his Ananda Ashram, one hour north of the city, in Monroe, New York. Joan Suval, who used to drive them, would overhear their animated conversations in the back seat of her car. Although they spoke in Hindi, she could hear their discussions turn into loud, shouting arguments; afterward they would again become friends.

At Ananda Ashram Prabhupāda would usually hold kīrtana, with Dr. Mishra’s students joining him in the chanting, and even in dancing. Dr. Mishra was particularly fond of Prabhupāda’s chanting.

Ramamurti Mishra: I have never seen or met any devotee who sang so much. And his kīrtana was just ambrosial. If you pay attention and become relaxed, that voice has very electrical vibrations on your heart. You cannot avoid it. Ninety-nine percent of the students, whether they liked it or not, got up and danced and chanted. And I felt very blessed to meet such a great soul.

Harvey Cohen (a visitor to Ananda Ashram): Everyone got up early and went to morning meditation. Dr. Mishra was dressed in a golden Indian-style jacket, and his students were already deeply into it when I entered the room. All the cushions were taken, so I picked a spot in the back of the room where I could lean against the wall to facilitate my meditation. Seated at one side was an older Indian man in saffron cloth and wrapped in a pinkish wool blanket. He seemed to be muttering to himself, and I later discovered that he was praying. It was Swami Bhaktivedanta. His forehead was painted with a white V-shaped sign, and his eyes were half shut. He seemed very serene.

Harvey tried, but he couldn’t do the rāja-yoga. He was new to Ananda Ashram and had only come up for a weekend retreat. During his morning meditation, he found himself more attracted to the green mists above the lake outside the window than to the circle on the wall he was supposed to be meditating on.

Harvey: I went to my room. The rain was increasing and beating against the windows. It was peaceful, and I was glad to be alone. I read for a while. Suddenly I sensed someone standing in the doorway. Looking up, I saw it was the Swami. He was wrapped in his pink blanket, like a shawl. “Can I come in?” he asked. I nodded yes, and he asked if he could sit in the chair in the corner. “What are you reading?” He smiled. “Kafka’s Diaries,” I replied, feeling a little embarrassed. “Uh,” he said, and I put the book down. He asked what I was doing at the āśrama and if I was interested in yoga.“What kind of yoga are you studying?” “I don’t know much about it,” I answered, “but I think I’d like to study haṭha-yoga.” This didn’t impress him. “There are better things than this,” he explained. “There are higher, more direct forms of yoga. Bhakti-yoga is the highest – it is the science of devotion to God.”

As he spoke, I got the overpowering realization that he was right. He was speaking the truth. A creepy ecstatic sensation came over me that this man was my teacher. His words were so simple. And I kept looking at him all weekend. He would sit so calm and dignified with warmth. And he asked me to visit him when we got back to the city.

Dr. Mishra would give lectures carrying the impersonal interpretation of Bhagavad-gītā according to Śaṅkara, and Prabhupāda, when allowed to speak, would counter them. Once Prabhupāda asked Dr. Mishra to help him in spreading Lord Caitanya’s movement, but Dr. Mishra sidestepped Prabhupāda by saying that he considered Prabhupāda an incarnation of Caitanya Mahāprabhu and therefore not in need of help. Prabhupāda replied that since “Mishra” was also the name of Lord Caitanya’s father, Dr. Mishra should help spread Lord Caitanya’s movement. Śrīla Prabhupāda offered to engage him in checking the Sanskrit to his translations of Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, but Dr. Mishra declined – a decision he later regretted.

Hurta Lurch (a student at Ananda Ashram): My direct encounter with him was in the kitchen. He was very particular and very definite that he would only eat what he cooked himself. He would come and say, “Get me a pot.” So when I brought him a pot, he’d say, “No, bigger.” So I brought a bigger pot, and he’d say, “No, smaller.” Then he would say, “Get me potato,” so I’d bring him a potato. He prepared food very, very quietly. He never spoke very much. He prepared potatoes and then some vegetables and then capātīs. After cooking, he would eat outside. He would usually cook enough to go around for Dr. Mishra and about five or six other people. Every day he would cook that much when he was there. I learned to make capātīs from him. He usually stayed only for the weekends and then went back to the city. I think he felt that was where his main work was to be done.

That was certainly true, but what could he do there with no money or support? He was thinking of staying for only a few weeks and then going back to India. In the meantime, he was working on his Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam manuscripts, walking in Manhattan, and writing letters. He was studying a new culture, calculating practically and imagining hopefully how to introduce Kṛṣṇa consciousness to the Western world. He expressed his thoughts to Sumati Morarji:

October 27

So far as I have studied, the American people are very much eager to learn about the Indian way of spiritual realization, and there are so many so-called yoga ashrams in America. Unfortunately, they are not very much adored by the government, and it is learned that such yoga ashrams have exploited the innocent people, as has been the case in India also. The only hope is that they are spiritually inclined, and immense benefit can be done to them if the cult of Srimad Bhagwatam is preached here. …

Śrīla Prabhupāda noted that the Americans were also giving a good reception to Indian art and music. “Just to see the mode of reception,” he attended the performance of a Madrasi dancer, Bala Saraswati.

I went to see the dance with a friend, although for the last forty years I have never attended such dance ceremonies. The dancer was successful in her demonstration. The music was in Indian classical tune, mostly in Sanskrit language, and the American public appreciated them. So I was encouraged to see the favorable circumstances about my future preaching work.

He said the Bhāgavatam could also be preached through music and dance, but he had no means to introduce it. The Christian missions, backed by huge resources, were preaching all over the world, so why couldn’t the devotees of Kṛṣṇa combine to preach the Bhāgavatam all over the world? He also noted that the Christian missions had not been effective in checking the spread of Communism, whereas a Bhāgavatam movement could be, because of its philosophical, scientific approach.

He was deliberately planting a seed of inspiration in the mind of the devoted, wealthy Sumati Morarji.

November 8

Prabhupāda wrote to his Godbrother Tīrtha Mahārāja, who had become president of the Gaudiya Math, to remind him that their spiritual master, Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī, had a strong desire to open preaching centers in the Western countries. Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta had several times attempted to do this by sending sannyāsīs to England and other European countries, but, Prabhupāda noted, “without any tangible results.”

I have come to this country with the same purpose in view, and as far as I can see, here in America there is very good scope for preaching the cult of Lord Chaitanya. …

Prabhupāda pointed out that there were certain Māyāvādī groups who had buildings but were not attracting many followers. But he had talked with Swami Nikhilananda of the Ramakrishna Mission, who had given the opinion that the Americans were suitable for bhakti-yoga.

I am here and see a good field for work, but I am alone, without men and money. To start a center here, we must have our own buildings. …

If the leaders of the Gaudiya Math would consider opening their own branch in New York, Śrīla Prabhupāda would be willing to manage it. But without their own house, he reported, they could not conduct a mission in the city. Śrīla Prabhupāda wrote that they could open centers in many cities throughout the country if his Godbrothers would cooperate. He repeatedly made the point that although other groups did not have the genuine spiritual philosophy of India, they were buying many buildings. The Gaudiya Math, however, had nothing.

If you agree to cooperate with me as I have suggested above, then I shall extend my visa period. My present visa period ends by the end of this November. But if I receive your confirmation immediately, then I shall extend my visa period. Otherwise, I shall return to India.

November 9
(6:00 P.M.)
  While Prabhupāda sat alone in his fifth-floor room in Dr. Mishra’s yoga studio, the lights suddenly went out. This was his experience of the first moments of the New York City blackout of 1965. In India, power failure occurred commonly, so Prabhupāda, while surprised to find the same thing in America, remained undisturbed. He began chanting the Hare Kṛṣṇa mantra on his beads. Meanwhile, outside his room, the entire New York metropolitan area had been plunged into darkness. The massive power failure had suddenly left the entire city without electricity, trapping 800,000 people in the subways and affecting more than 30,000,000 people in nine states and three Canadian provinces.

Two hours later, a man from Dr. Mishra’s apartment arrived at the door with candles and some fruit. He found Prabhupāda in a pleasant mood, sitting there in the darkness chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa. The man informed him of the serious nature of such a blackout in New York City; Prabhupāda thanked him and returned again to his chanting. The blackout lasted until 7:00 the next morning.

Śrīla Prabhupāda received a reply to his letter of November 8 to Tīrtha Mahārāja in Calcutta. Prabhupāda had explained his hopes and plans for staying in America, but he had stressed that his Godbrothers would have to give him their vote of confidence as well as some tangible support. His Godbrothers had not been working cooperatively. Each leader was interested more in maintaining his own building than in working with the others to spread the teachings of Lord Caitanya around the world. So how would it be possible for them to share Śrīla Prabhupāda’s vision of establishing a branch in New York City? They would see it as his separate attempt. Yet despite the unlikely odds, he appealed to their missionary spirit and reminded them of the desires of their spiritual master, Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura. Their Guru Mahārāja wanted Kṛṣṇa consciousness to be spread in the West. But when Prabhupāda finally got Tīrtha Mahārāja’s reply, he found it unfavorable. His Godbrother did not argue against his attempting something in New York, but he politely said that the Gaudiya Math funds could not be used for such a proposal.

Prabhupāda replied, “It is not very encouraging, still I’m not a man to be disappointed.” In fact, he found a little hope in Tīrtha Mahārāja’s reply, so he described to his Godbrother the property he had recently found for sale at 143 West Seventy-second Street. The building, only eighteen-and-a-half feet wide and one hundred feet deep, consisted of the first-floor store, a basement, and a mezzanine. Prabhupāda presented Tīrtha Mahārāja the price – $100,000 with a $20,000 cash down payment – and remarked that this building was twice the size of their Research Institute in Calcutta. Prabhupāda conceived of the basement as a kitchen and dining area, the first floor as a lecture hall, and the mezzanine as personal apartments, with a separate area for the Deity of Lord Kṛṣṇa.

Appropriately, Prabhupāda had described himself as “a man not to be disappointed.” He was convinced that if there were a center where people could come hear from a pure devotee, the genuine God conscious culture of India could begin in America. Yet because he had made his plans dependent on obtaining an expensive building in Manhattan, his goal seemed unreachable. Still, he was persistently writing to prominent devotees in India, though they were not interested in his plans.

“Why should they not help?” he thought. After all, they were devotees of Kṛṣṇa. Shouldn’t the devotees come forward to establish the first Kṛṣṇa temple in America? Certainly he was qualified and authorized to spread the message of Kṛṣṇa. As for the place, New York was perhaps the most cosmopolitan city in the world. He had found a building – not very expensive, a good location – and there was a great need for a Kṛṣṇa temple here to offset the propaganda of the Indian Māyāvādīs. The kṛṣṇa-bhaktas to whom he was writing understood Lord Kṛṣṇa to be not simply a Hindu Deity but the Supreme Lord, worshipable for the whole world. So they should be pleased to see Kṛṣṇa worshiped in New York. Kṛṣṇa Himself said in the Bhagavad-gītā, “Give up all other duties and surrender to Me.” So if they were Kṛṣṇa’s devotees, why would they not help? What kind of devotee was it who did not want to glorify the Lord?

But Śrīla Prabhupāda did not judge beforehand who would serve Kṛṣṇa’s mission and who would not. He was fully surrendered and fully dependent on Kṛṣṇa, and in obedience to his spiritual master he would approach everyone, without discrimination, to ask for help.

There was Sumati Morarji. She had helped him in publishing the Bhāgavatam, and she had sent him to America. In a recent letter to her he had only given hints:

I am just giving you the idea, and if you kindly think over the matter seriously and consult your beloved Lord Bala Krishna, surely you will be further enlightened in the matter. There is scope and there is certainly necessity also, and it is the duty of every Indian, especially the devotees of Lord Krishna, to take up the matter.

But he had received no reply. He had not heard from her since Butler, though her words to him had seemed prophetic. And they had stuck with him: “I feel that you should stay there until you fully recover from your illness and return only after you have completed your mission.”

Now Sumati Morarji must do something big. He told her point-blank:

I think therefore that a temple of Bala Krishna in New York may immediately be started for this purpose. And as a devotee of Lord Bala Krishna, you should execute this great and noble work. Till now there is no worshipable temple of the Hindus in New York, although in India there are so many American missionary establishments and churches. So I shall request you to do this noble act, and it will be recorded in the history of the world that the first Hindu temple is started by a pious Hindu lady SRIMATI SUMATI MORARJI who is not only a big business magnate in India, but a pious Hindu lady and great devotee of Lord Krishna. This task is for you, and glorious at the same time. …

He assured her that he had no ambition to become the proprietor of a house or temple in America, but for preaching, a building would be absolutely required:

They should have association of bona fide devotees of the Lord, they should join the kirtan glorifying the Lord, they should hear the teachings of Srimad Bhagwatam, they should have intimate touch with the temple or place of the Lord, and they should be given ample chance to worship the Lord in the temple. Under the guidance of the bona fide devotee, they can be given such facilities, and the way of the Srimad Bhagwatam is open for everyone. …

He informed her that he had located a building “just suitable for this great missionary work.” It was ideal, “as if it was built for this purpose only.”

… And your simple willingness to do the act will complete everything smoothly.
  The house is practically three stories. Ground floor, basement, and two stories up, with all the suitable arrangements for gas, heat, etc. The ground floor may be utilized for preparation of prasadam of Bala Krishna, because the preaching center will not be for dry speculation but for actual gain – for delicious prasadam. I have already tested how the people here like the vegetable prasadam prepared by me. They will forget meat-eating and pay for the expenses. American people are not poor men like the Indians, and if they appreciate a thing, they are prepared to spend any amount on such hobby. They are being exploited simply by jugglery of words and bodily gymnastics, and still they are spending for that. But when they will have the actual commodity and feel pleasure by eating very delicious prasadam of Bala Krishna, I am sure a unique thing will be introduced in America.

Now, according to his plans, he had a week left in America.

My term to stay in America will be finished by the 17th of November, 1965. But I am believing in your foretelling, “You should stay there until you fully recover your health, and return after you have completed your mission.”

TAGORE SOCIETY OF NEW YORK Inc.
CORDIALLY INVITES YOU
to a lecture:
“GOD CONSCIOUSNESS”
by A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami

Date: Sunday, November 28, 1965
Time: Lecture, 3:30 P.M. Tea, 4:30 P.M.
Place: New India House, 3 East 64th Street
A widely respected scholar and religious leader in India,
Swami Bhaktivedanta is briefly visiting New York. He
has been engaged in a monumental endeavor of
translating the sixty-volume Srimad Bhagwatam from
Sanskrit into English.

November 28
  Daoud Haroon had never met Śrīla Prabhupāda. He was a musician living downtown, and he used to attend the meetings of the Tagore Society up on Sixty-fourth Street.

Daoud Haroon: I went uptown and walked into the auditorium, and I noticed that the stage was empty and a few people were sitting toward the rear of the auditorium. I walked forward down the center aisle, because I usually like to sit up front. Then I saw an old gentleman sitting over to the right, and he sort of drew me over to him. So I went over and sat beside him, and then I noticed that he was saying his beads. Even though he had his beads in a bag, I could hear them, and I could see his body moving. And I felt very comfortable, because this was something I was used to.

As I was sitting there looking around the auditorium, he just turned around and smiled at me very nicely. He nodded his head, and I nodded my head, and he smiled and turned around. Then he turned back to me again and softly asked me if I was from India. I said, “No, sir, I’m not from India. I am from here, the United States.” He turned back, and he kept chanting with his beads. Then he turned around the next time and asked if I was a Hindu. I said, “No, sir, I’m not a Hindu. I’m a Muslim.” And he said, “Oh, very good, very good. Yes, many times I hear the children in India reciting the Koran.” And then he turned back around and his body was moving, rocking, and he was working with his beads.

Then there were a few more exchanges of pleasantries, sort of intermittent. And then a lady came up on the stage and announced that the lecture was to begin and if the folks could give the speaker a round of applause they would welcome him to the stage. At that point, the man I was sitting next to put his hand on my shoulder and said, “Excuse me, sir, could you do me a favor?” And I said, “Yes, anything.” He said, “Would you watch over my books?” I looked down on the floor, and he had several boxes of books and an umbrella and several other articles. I said yes I would watch over these. And he said, “Excuse me.” He walked up the aisle, and surprisingly, he walked up on the stage. And it was the man I had come to hear – Swami Bhaktivedanta!

He walked up on the stage and introduced himself to the people and tried to get them to come forward. He said, “Come forward, come forward.” A few of them came up to the front. There were mixed couples, many Indians, male and female, mostly middle-aged and some college-aged, a lot of professor-types and ladies were there.

Then he began his speech. He dove right into it. He just started exclaiming, proclaiming, the greatness of the Creator and that the most important thing is to remember the Creator and remember God. He began to expand on God consciousness, what God consciousness is and how God is everywhere and how it behooves us all to remember God – no matter what we call Him, what names we call Him by, but that we should call Him. He gave a demonstration which was very moving. He chanted Hare Kṛṣṇa, Hare Rāma and spoke about the power and saving grace in the mantra. He took a little break about halfway through and had some water.

The last thing he said as he was coming down from the podium was that he had copies of the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam. He explained that he had been working on them and that they came in three volumes and were sixteen dollars. Then he concluded and came down.

A lot of people went over to him. Some were timid, some were enthusiastic. Some people shook his hand and were asking for books. At first there were about fifteen people gathered around him talking to him and asking questions. With so many people around, he came over to me and said, “Sir, would you do me one more favor? Will you kindly take over the selling of the books? People will be coming to you for the books, so you sell the books and put the money in this little box, and I will be with you in a minute.” I said, “Fine.”

So while he talked to the people, others came up to me. They must have thought I was somehow his secretary or his traveling companion, and people were coming over to me and asking me personal questions about him, which I couldn’t really answer because I didn’t know. Some people were buying the books or looking through them. So this went on, and I was trying to listen to him carry on his conversations with people and carry on the book-selling at the same time.

Some of the people were looking for a guru and trying to find out what he was supposed to be. Some of them were really interrogating him. But he just smiled and answered all their questions simply. I remember he told them, “You will know. There’s no pressure. You will know if I am your guru.” He suggested that people go over and read the books.

And then the group dwindled down to about half a dozen, and the few remaining were just looking at him, and some were too timid to approach him. He walked over to them and spoke to them, putting them at ease. Later he came over, and we counted the collection, and I helped him pack up his box and carry downstairs the boxes of books that were left. As we parted he thanked me very much, and I gave him my name and address and phone number and purchased a set of the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatams.

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