​Appreciating Srila Prabhupada’s transcendence in sharing bhakti

​Prabhupada disappearance day offering

is strengthened by which they don’t succumb to such things.
Thank you. Just for example, if we see a person with pale fingernails, if we are just lay people, then we would say, oh, this person has discolored fingernails. But if you are medically trained, say if you are doctors, then we would see those same fingernails and see in them the signs of anemia.
So both the layperson and the doctor see the same fingernails, but what we know, what we can know depends not just on what we see, but what we can know depends on what we already know. This principle of our capacity to know being determined by our prior knowledge, I would like to apply to considering Shila Prabhupada’s sharing of Krishna Bhakti all over the world in his advanced age. Over the last 2-3 years, I have started sharing Krishna Bhakti in various parts of the world and I have come to know to some extent the challenges in sharing Krishna Bhakti in various parts of the world.
And coming to know of these challenges has increased my appreciation of how Shila Prabhupada met those challenges and how his capacity to meet those challenges signifies his transcendence. One challenge which those who travel over large distances face is jet lag. I had heard how Shila Prabhupada never exhibited any jet lag, but just got into the activities at whichever place he visited without the sign of jet lag.
I had heard this in talks by Prabhupada’s disciples, especially those of Shila Prabhupada’s disciples who lived close to him, who acted as his personal servants. They have spoken that Shila Prabhupada was practically never jet lagged. The significance of this capacity to transcend jet lag, that significance struck me recently when during my travels, I started getting affected by jet lag.
So, I found that when the body is traveling, body, we travel over large distances, say from London to Mumbai or New York to Mumbai, then the body remains where we were earlier. The body’s biological cycle remains where we were earlier, although the body has now come to the next destination. So, it disrupts the, disturbs the body functions and that affects the service, whatever we want to do.
But Shila Prabhupada was never affected by this. Another far more consequential way in which Prabhupada was able to transcend normal bodily limitations was in his capacity to write his books after just a few hours of sleep. Prabhupada was prodigiously productive in terms of being able to have so many literary contributions.
And the way he did this was by cutting down on his sleep. He would sleep for just a few hours and then wake up and dictate which was his way of writing his books. Throughout the night, as an author, I can appreciate how difficult this is.
I have so many writing commitments and I have frequently resolved that if only I could cut down on my sleep a little bit, then I would be able to write. But I find that even if I do manage to wake up very early, still the lethargy that is there in the body that makes the brain fuzzy and I end up on most occasions simply struggling against sleep and not be able to think clearly enough to write anything productively. And similar is the experience of most writers in whatever writing books I have read.
I found that writers are unanimous in stating that, in stating the vital necessity of adequate sleep for effective writing, that Shri Prabhupada. Now, in one sense, we could say that we need adequate sleep for doing any activity. And that is true.
And the body is the vehicle for doing all activities and the body needs to be rested. But bodily rest becomes more of a factor in an activity like writing because writing is both sedentary and solitary. If we are involved in some activity which involves moving about, then that physical activity helps us to ward off sleep in case we have not had enough sleep.
And similarly, if we are interacting with people, then talking with them, hearing them, discussing things, again gives a certain simulation that helps us to ward off sleep. But in the case of writing, there is neither activity nor conversation, there is neither motion nor conversation. So, it is sedentary and it is solitary.
And that is why during writing, sleep often attacks with full force. And that force of sleep attacks becomes all the more when we are not given the body’s due quota of sleep. And that Shri Prabhupada could do such a sedentary and solitary activity with very little sleep that indicates his transcendence, that indicates his sheer commitment to the service of writing by which he could transcend that which is necessary for most writers.
Now, another point from the writer’s life is that writers are creative artists. And creative artists manifest their creation for a variety of reasons, the primary of which is they just have a longing to manifest that creation and they feel the world is missing something without that creation. They cannot tolerate living in a world where that creation is not present.
That is the most forceful drive for a writer to manifest their creation. And Shri Prabhupada manifested his books because he could not tolerate the thought that Krishna’s glories were not available for millions, even billions, because those glories had not been made available in today’s primary language for mainstream communication, that is English. And for Shri Prabhupada, his writing was not simply a matter of artistic expression.
It was a matter of devotional compassion. Prabhupada could see through the eyes of scriptural knowledge that millions or billions of people were suffering because they did not know about this life spiritual side. So, Prabhupada gave the most comprehensive, most profound, most esoteric spiritual knowledge, knowledge of Krishna’s glories through his books so as to fill this lacking in the social body of knowledge today.
But it was Shri Prabhupada’s intolerance towards people’s suffering that empowered his tolerance towards his own body’s suffering, when he had to deprive his body of basic needs, when he had to cut down on his body’s quota of sleep so that he could write. So, each day when I sit down comfortably to write after having had enough rest, I hope and pray that the remembrance of Shri Prabhupada’s sacrifice fill me with gratitude. I have comfort to write because Shri Prabhupada gave up his comfort to write.
And Shri Prabhupada gave up his comfort not just to write, but also to establish, to lay the foundation for a global movement, which spiritually elevated thousands and thousands of people all over the world and which has today given me the comforts, the basic comforts by which I can write. So, on Shri Prabhupada’s disappearance day, I offer my eternally prostrated obeisances at his lotus feet and beg for his mercy so that I can do my small part in sharing the legacy of bhakti that he has brought to the world. Thank you.
Shri Prabhupada ki Jai.