Chapter Sixteen

ROOM 307 WAS never meant for use as a residence or āśrama or lecture hall. It was only a small, narrow office without furniture or a telephone. Its door held a large pane of frosted glass, the kind common in old offices; above the door was a glass-paned transom. Prabhupāda placed his blankets on the floor before his metal footlocker, which now became a makeshift desk where he wrote. He slept on the floor. There were no facilities here for cooking or even for bathing, so daily he had to walk to Dr. Mishra’s apartment.

When he had lived in room 501 at Dr. Mishra’s yoga-āśrama, Dr. Mishra had financed his needs. But now Prabhupāda was on his own, and whatever he could raise by selling his books, he would have to use for his daily maintenance and for the monthly rent of seventy-two dollars. He noted that for a little powdered chili the West End Superette charged twenty-five cents, ten times what he would have paid in India. He had no guaranteed income, his expenses had increased, and his physical comforts had reduced. But at least he had his own place. Now he was free to preach as he liked.

He had come to America to speak about Kṛṣṇa, and even from the beginning he had found the opportunity to do so, whether at an informal get-together in the Agarwals’ living room or before a formal gathering at the Butler Lions Club, Dr. Norman Brown’s Sanskrit class, Dr. Mishra’s Yoga Society, or the Tagore Society. But he did not attach much importance to lecturing where the people who gathered would hear him only once. This was the main reason he wanted his own building in New York: so that people could come regularly, chant Hare Kṛṣṇa, take prasādam in his company, and hear him speak from Bhagavad-gītā and Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam.

Moving out of the yoga studio into the small office downstairs gave Prabhupāda what he was looking for – his own place – but not even euphemistically could that place be called a temple. His name was on the door; anyone seeking him there could find him. But who would come there? By its opulence and beauty, a temple was supposed to attract people to Kṛṣṇa. But room 307 was just the opposite: it was bare poverty. Even a person interested in spiritual topics would find it uncomfortable to sit on the rugless floor of a room shaped like a narrow railroad car.

One of Dr. Mishra’s students had donated a reel-to-reel tape recorder, and Prabhupāda recorded some of his solitary bhajanas, which he sang to his own accompaniment of hand cymbals. He also recorded a long philosophical essay, Introduction to Gītopaniṣad. “Even if no one attends,” Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī had told him, “you can go on chanting to the four walls.” But since he was now free to speak his message in the new situation God had provided, he decided to lecture three evenings a week (Monday, Wednesday, and Friday) to whoever would come.

His first audiences consisted mainly of people who had heard about him or met him at Dr. Mishra’s yoga studio. And despite the poverty of his room, the meetings became a source of new life for him.

March 18

  He expressed his optimism in a letter to Sumati Morarji:

I was very much encouraged when you wrote to say, “I feel that you should stay there until you fully recover from your illness, and return only after you have completed your mission.” I think these lines dictated by you are the words of Lord Bala Krishna expressed through your goodness.

You will be pleased to know that I have improved my health back to normal, and my missionary work is nicely progressing. I hope my project to start a temple of Sri Sri Radha Krishna will also be realized by the grace of the Lord.

Since I came to New York from Butler, Pennsylvania, I have rented the above room at seventy dollars per month, and am delivering lectures on the Bhagwat Geeta and Srimad Bhagwatam, accompanied by sankirtan, and the American ladies and gentlemen come to hear me. You will be surprised to know that they do not understand the language of sankirtan, yet they hear with attention. The movement which I have started here is completely new to them, because the Americans are generally acquainted with the Indian yoga gymnastics as performed by some Indian yogis here. They have never heard of the bhakti cult of the science of Krishna before, and still they are hearing me. This is a great success for me.

Outside the closed windows of room 307, the late winter night has fallen. Prabhupāda’s words are punctuated with the muted sounds of car horns and occasional sirens from the street, and sometimes by the startling chords of a lonely foghorn on the Hudson. Although bare, the room is warm. Prabhupāda is speaking on the Second Chapter of Bhagavad-gītā.

Now Arjuna is perplexed. He is perplexed about whether to fight or not to fight. After seeing in front of him his relatives with whom he was to fight, he was perplexed. And there was some argument with Kṛṣṇa.

Now here is a point: Kṛṣṇa is the Supreme Personality of Godhead. …

Prabhupāda’s voice is earnest, persuading. Sometimes his speech becomes high-pitched and breaks with urgency. His cultured British diction bears a heavy Bengali accent.

Suddenly he pauses in his lecture and addresses someone in the room.

Prabhupāda: What is that?

Man: What?

Prabhupāda: What is this book?

Man: Well, this is a translation of the Bhagavad-gītā.

Prabhupāda is obviously displeased that while he is speaking someone is looking through a book. This is hardly like the respect offered to learned speakers described in the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam.

Prabhupāda: Well, no, you can hear me.

Man: I am hearing.

Prabhupāda: Yes, don’t turn your attention. Just hear me.

He is taking the role of a teacher correcting his student. Of course, there is no compelling reason why any of his casual guests should feel obliged to obey him. He simply begs for their attention, and yet demands it – “Just hear me” – as he attempts to convince them of Kṛṣṇa consciousness.

You have heard that one must accept the spiritual master after careful examination, just as one selects a bride or a bridegroom after careful examination. In India they are very careful. Because the marriage of boys and girls takes place under the guidance of the parents, so the parents very carefully see to it. Similarly, one has to accept the spiritual master. It is necessary. According to Vedic injunctions, everyone should have a spiritual master. Perhaps you have seen a sacred thread. We have got sacred thread. Mr. Cohen? You have seen? Sacred thread.

Prabhupāda pauses. His audience has not noted the thin, white cords he wears beneath his shirt across the upper part of his body. For thousands of years, brāhmaṇas in India have worn such threads, placed diagonally across the torso, looped over the left shoulder and down to the right waist. A brāhmaṇa holds his thread in his right hand while chanting the sacred Gāyatrī mantra three times a day. But this is all strange indeed to Americans. Prabhupāda himself is exotic to them. His gray cādara wrapped around his shoulders, he sits cross-legged and erect on a thin pillow, and they sit facing him on the other side of his trunk, which now serves as a desk and lectern. They are close together in the narrowness of the room. He is frail and small and foreign to them, yet somehow he is completely assured, in a way that has nothing to do with being a foreigner in New York. Visitors sense his strong presence. Two white lines of clay run neatly vertical on his forehead. His pale peach clothes are gathered in loose folds around his body. He pauses only a few seconds to inquire whether they have seen a sacred thread.

That sacred thread is a sign that a person has a spiritual master. Here, of course, there is no such distinction, but according to the Hindu system a married girl also has some sign so that people can understand that this girl is married. She wears a red mark so that others may know that she is married. And according to the division in the hair … what is this line called?

Man: Part.

Prabhupāda: Hmm?

Man: Part.

Prabhupāda: What is the spelling?

Man: Part.

Prabhupāda: Part. This parting also has some meaning. (They know English, and he knows the Gītā. But he knows a good deal of English, whereas they know practically nothing of the Gītā, which he has to spoon-feed to them. But occasionally he asks their help in English vocabulary.) When the part is in the middle, then the girl has her husband, and she is coming from a respectable family. And if the part is here, then she is a prostitute. (With a slight gesture he raises his hand toward, but never really reaching, his head. Yet somehow the half-gesture clearly indicates a part on the side of the head.) And then again when a girl is well dressed, it should be understood that she has her husband at home. And when she is not well dressed, it is to be understood that her husband is away from home. You see? And a widow’s dress … There are so many symptoms. So, similarly, the sacred thread is a sign that a person has accepted a spiritual master, just as the red mark symbolizes that a girl has a husband.

Although his audience may be momentarily enamored by what appears to be a description of Indian social customs, a careful listener can grasp the greater context of Prabhupāda’s speech: Everyone must accept a spiritual master. It’s a heavy topic for a casual audience. What is the need of taking a spiritual master? Isn’t this just for India? But he says, “Everyone should have a spiritual master.” What is a spiritual master anyway? Maybe he means that accepting a spiritual master is just another cultural item from Hinduism, like the thread, or the part in a woman’s hair, or the widow’s dress. The audience can easily regard his discussion as a kind of cultural exposition, just as one comfortably watches a film about the living habits of people in a foreign land although one has no intention of adopting these habits as one’s own. The Swami is wearing one of those threads on his body, but that’s for Hindus, and it doesn’t mean that Americans should wear them. But these Hindu beliefs are interesting.

Actually, Prabhupāda has no motive but to present the Absolute Truth as he has heard it in disciplic succession. But if anyone in that railroad-car-shaped room were to ask himself, “Should I surrender to a spiritual master?” he would be confronted by the existential presence of a genuine guru. One is free to regard his talk as one likes.

In every step of one’s life, the spiritual master guides. Now, to give such guidance a spiritual master should also be a very perfect man. Otherwise how can he guide? Now, here Arjuna knows that Śrī Kṛṣṇa is the perfect person. So therefore he is accepting Him – śiṣyas te ’haṁ śādhi māṁ tvāṁ prapannam.

Sanskrit! No one knows a word of it! But there is never any question for Śrīla Prabhupāda – even if they don’t understand it, the transcendental sound of śāstra will purify them. It is his authority, and he cannot omit it. And even at first impression, it presents an air of scholarly authority – the original, though foreign, words of the sages.

“I am just surrendering unto You, and You accept me as Your disciple,” Arjuna says. Friendly talks cannot make a solution to perplexity. Friendly talks may be going on for years together, but no solution. So here, Arjuna accepts Kṛṣṇa as the spiritual master. This means that whatever Kṛṣṇa will dictate, he has to accept. One cannot deny the order of the spiritual master. Therefore, one has to select a spiritual master by whose orders one will not commit a mistake.

Suppose you accept the wrong person as spiritual master and he guides you wrongly. Then your whole life is spoiled. So one has to accept a spiritual master whose guidance will make one’s life perfect. That is the relationship between spiritual master and disciple. It is not a formality. It is a great responsibility, both for the disciple and for the spiritual master. And … Yes?

Student: But if the disciple is in ignorance before …

Prabhupāda: Yes. (Prabhupāda acknowledges a serious question. It is for answering questions like this – from “disciples in ignorance” – that he has left retirement in India and come to America.)

Student: … how does he know which master to choose? – because he doesn’t have the knowledge to make a wise decision.

Prabhupāda: Yes. So the first thing is that one should be searching after a spiritual master, just as you search after some school. You must at least have some preliminary knowledge of what a school is. You can’t search for a school and go to a cloth shop. If you are so ignorant that you do not know what is a school and what is a cloth shop, then it is very difficult for you. You must know at least what a school is. So that knowledge is like this: