How Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thakura preached amidst nationalism and impersonalism

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Jai I fervently seek the blessings of all the devotees especially His Grace Radheshwaram so that I can speak something in glorification of the illustrious personality Shreela Bhaktasiddhanta Sri Thakur whose appearance we are celebrating today so during the time of Bhaktasiddhanta Sri Thakur at one of his last Vyasa pujas there is a book that was offered to him called Saraswati Jayashree that is an anthology, that is a compilation of both the offerings by his disciples as well as other biographical information and pastimes so this was this has not yet been translated into English so one of my devotee scholar friends it had two parts Shree Parva and Vaibhav Parva so the second part was lost the Gaudiya Mutt has been searching for it for more than 50 years they couldn’t find it somehow this devotee found it in a house in Navadvip so I will speak some pastimes from there mainly another devotee friend of mine, he has just completed his PhD in Bhaktasiddhanta Sri Thakur from Oxford so so I got his thesis before it got published so I will speak mainly from that I will be focussing on four main points of course I had an acronym ready BHAKTI but I decided not to speak on that, I had already spoken on that earlier last year as well as this year in the ICFC class I will focus on how the Gaudiya Vaishnava Sampradaya continues and adapts to different time, place, circumstances and what role Bhaktisiddhanta Sri Thakur played in that now every tradition has two aspects to it one is the fidelity and the other is the flexibility fidelity means how it stays faithful to its core and flexibility means how it is able to adapt itself, not necessarily change but present itself or represent itself according to the specific socio-cultural circumstances that are there and in the Bhaktisiddhanta Vaibhav Bhakti Vyasa Maharaj mentions that scripture is omniform, it’s like we have the word omnipotent, that means all powerful omnipresent, present everywhere so omniform means that actually scripture contains instructions of all types and it is the prerogative of the Acharya to according to the situation that is present before him to teach the instructions within the scripture accordingly so we’ll discuss a few of these aspects now the biggest challenge that Bhaktisiddhanta Sri Thakur faced in his preaching was of course impersonalism now if you see there is a dance performance and the dancer performs very nicely for 10 minutes, 15 minutes half an hour and on the dance stage somebody performs for 6 hours it’s certainly wonderful but if you find out that somebody has been performing a dance for 15 minutes you found that actually the dance floor was made of broken glass then even that 15 minute dancing is far more glorious than dancing for 6 hours isn’t it? because the floor was very very painful very difficult to dance on so actually because of various historical circumstances you know the period from around 1815 till almost 1960, 1970 was the time when the non-dualism or impersonalism became the single strongest philosophy within India and it was at that time when impersonalism was at its peak that Bhaktisiddhanta Sri Thakur had to preach Bhaktivinoda Thakur before him but especially Bhaktisiddhanta Sri Thakur so basically in history the period from 1814 to 1950 is called the period of British imperialism when the British culture was maximum dominating India and initially when the Britishers came to India they kept business and religion apart they said we don’t want to disturb the religious sentiments of the Indians because these religious sentiments are very powerful but eventually the protestants when they came to power in Britain they said what is the use of having a kingdom if you don’t spread the gospel of Christianity and they came to India and they started vigorously preaching and their main preaching was basically anti-preaching their main preaching was criticism and among the many accounts that they criticised Hindu religion for, the first of course was idolatry, they worshipped stones and the second was excessive emotionalism the Christian if you go to church, I was in a convent school so prayers are very silent and sober and grave and people go to a temple and people are dancing and singing and loud musical instruments are playing and then of course this also got mixed with pseudo-emotions so excessive emotionalism and of course third was immorality because of sahajiyas and other things and this criticism was so strong that a few influential people actually converted to Christianity but in order to defend against that many Hindus tried to what they call as reform Hinduism and in the process of reforming Hinduism they tried to distance what they considered as the real Hinduism from that which was the object of criticism of the Christian missionaries so there were several leaders who did this, it started from Ram Mohan Roy, then there was Dayanand Saraswati and there was of course Ramakrishna Swami Vivekananda and then it went on right up to Gandhi and Radhakrishna but all of them they had one common attribute they were all impersonalists ultimately, they may have been worshipping some personal form and all of them found that adopting impersonalism was the best way to defend what they considered as Hinduism and if you see those three things among all the different varieties of religions that were present whatever went on in the name of Hinduism idolatry, emotionalism and immorality all these three were present maximum in Vaishnavism so Vaishnavism at that time became the target of combined attack both of the Christian missionaries and the Hindu reformers so you can imagine what a difficult task it is to present Krishna consciousness or Vaishnavism at that time so basically among all these idolatry in fact many of these leaders like Ram Mohan Roy he wrote books condemning idolatry he wrote books and the Christian missionaries appreciated he said we could not have written such a good book about idolatry as he has written he is doing our work for him so like that the attack was so strong and especially what had happened was Krishna’s activities can be very easily misunderstood be immoral and unfortunately because of the accumulation of Sahajiyaism the devotees those who claim to be devotees of Krishna they were also engaging in immoral activities so the whole idea was that God is immoral and his devotees are also naturally immoral and that’s why you see if you read the writings of most of these particular leaders all of them were criticising Vaishnavism both the Christians as well as the Hindus and at that time to even get a foothold into preaching at that time was difficult so when Bhaktivinod Thakur wrote his Krishna Samhita that’s the book he tried to get in so at that time Bipin Chandrapal wrote a book called Krishna Charita and in that book what he did he said that all the so called immoral aspects of Krishna were all interpolations which have been later added and the only real Krishna is the Krishna who is like a warrior and he said the whole concept of Nandavan Krishna is a concoction and that is not there only they rejected the Bhagavad Purana and they accept only the Bhagavad Gita so it was in this context where the personality of Krishna, the complete understanding of Krishna was either being criticised, rejected or compromised that Bhaktisiddhanta Suresh Thakur inherited the legacy of Bhaktivinod Thakur now when Bhaktivinod Thakur, he was known as Kedarnath Dutta when he was preaching and he started preaching Vaishnavism it was completely bewildering to the Bengali intelligentsia at that time he is such an intelligent person he is so moral and in fact it was Bhaktivinod Thakur who actually introduced the four regulatory principles and he had a fifth regulatory principle he says no lying or stealing so that was because that was commonplace so before that there was no need for the four regulatory principles because people easily understood that if you have to be religious you have to give up all these things but the sahajiyas they had actually misused scripture to actually say that even if you do sinful activity the holy name is so powerful that it can actually free you from all sinful reactions and that’s why in Bhaktisiddhanta I would have said that it would not be uncommon in Bengal to see a person you know coming from the market with a bead bag in one hand and with fish in the other hand that was what the situation was so there was no idea that there has to be some moral discipline if one has to be a devotee if you just chant the holy names that’s good enough that was the idea they presented the whole concept of namaprad was completely removed by the sahajiyas there is something called namaprad or apradhanam that was not told only so it was in this particular culture on one side Vaishnavism was being highly criticised extremely criticised and on the other hand historically speaking initially the Britishers gained control of India so the initial resistance to British culture was a combined resistance by Hindus and Muslims till almost 1930s or 1940s all the leaders of the Muslim League were part of the Congress and later on there was a fracture so when the Hindus and Muslims had to unite together what happened was that they felt that the Muslims were very much against idolatry and the Hindu leaders also felt that if we had to unite with Muslims we should also not have idolatry so both because of the Christian attacks and both because of the planning of the resistance they felt that this worship of deity should be removed and they also felt that there is so much multiplicity of Gods who are there so it’s best if we remove all these Gods or make all these Gods subordinate to that one Supreme God who is Brahman so that particular idea is called as Hinotheism Hinotheism means there is one impersonal truth who manifests in many many different truths many many different forms and they quote one Rig Vedic verse for that that Brahman has many faces yes, Brahman has many faces but Brahman also has an original face that’s why Prabhupada would use the word demigods they are also manifestations of the supreme energy but they are partial manifestations anyway, so because of these different historical factors the concept of deity worship and overall the principles of Aishnavism were being very seriously challenged and criticised and so when Bhaktivedanta Thakur started preaching at that time he had to actually take this circumstance and that’s why if you see in his writings the enemy’s enemy is your friend it’s like that, sometimes we may wonder nowadays we wonder why other organisations don’t criticise ISKCON only criticises everyone it’s not like that at that time practically everyone was criticising Aishnavism and the devotees are basically defending so the enemy’s enemy is your enemy so actually Bhaktivedanta Thakur to a large extent allied and cooperated with the British government because the British government was against both these people it was against the Christian missionaries in the sense that they didn’t want them to inflame their religious passions and they were obviously against the Hindu reformers because they felt these are nationalists so several times when he would open a Gaudiya Mutt or when the first big temple was made in Mayapur at that time the Viceroy of India came there and Bhaktivedanta Thakur personally greeted him and Bhaktivedanta Thakur had very good relationships with the British government in fact when the first mission went to Europe at that time the devotees had got recommendation letters the devotee preachers were going they had got recommendation letters from the Viceroy of India and they had four governor generals for the four provinces and all the four provinces they had got recommendation letters that this is a non-sectarian universal religion and please help them in preaching that’s how they got a foothold over there so now Bhaktivedanta Thakur especially emphasised that the absolute truth is not impersonal and traditionally the words that were used to differentiate between personalism and impersonalism were sagun and nirgun so with qualities and without qualities but actually the scriptures do talk about the word nirgun with respect to the absolute truth and Bhaktivedanta Thakur also explained that yes the personality of God and his qualities are not material that’s why nirgun so Bhaktivedanta Thakur accepted that the Supreme Lord is nirgun and he coined a new terminology to differentiate between personal and impersonal and that was savishesh and nirvishesh that’s why when we say nirvishesh so this nirvishesh as being used to designate the impersonalist was actually the terminology coined by Bhaktivedanta Thakur and the purpose of that was that actually the word vishesh in Hindi it just means special but in Sanskrit Madhvacharya had first introduced this word of term vishesh and that means it refers to inherent qualities as opposed to acquired qualities just like this glass is there on this table so the table is one object and the glass has been put there or you take this table now it is painted a particular colour you can paint it with another colour and the colour which is painted is actually an external quality that has been given to that table so the impersonalist idea is that even if you accept that god has a form his form is external to his being so the form is an external attribute given to him whereas Madhvacharya explained and Baldevidya Bhushan uses this in his Gita Bhushan commentary that the qualities of the lord are not external to him they are inherent to him that means if you have a red rose the redness of the rose cannot be separated from the rose the redness is an inherent quality of the rose similarly the naama roopa guna of the supreme lord are not external to him they are inherent to him and that is the meaning of sa vishesh sa vishesh means that the lord is actually having qualities having form, having attributes and they are non-different from his personality and that’s why that verse from the Brahma Samhita becomes very important that means the lord has different limbs to his body but that doesn’t differentiate him that doesn’t create duality in him because all his limbs are equipotent his hand is as good as his eyes and his ears are as good as his mouth therefore the differentiation in the lord’s form for example these are his legs, these are his hands, these are his eyes they are a difference in reference they are not a difference in essence that means everything is the satchitananda vigraha and yes because he is a person we refer to him differently but that doesn’t cause any differentiation in him so this was a subtle but very important difference which he used he said that the mayavadis they are nirvisheshavadi that means they may also accept temporary worship of the supreme lord in a form but their ultimate philosophy is nirvishesh so their idea is that now you worship saguna and later you come to nirguna no, the absolute truth itself is nirvishesh similarly to explain the concept of personalism it was he the term bhagavan bhaktivinoda thakur first used the word the personality of godhead bhaktisiddhanta sevakur would use the word the personality of transcendental godhead and he would also 2-3 times he used the word the supreme personality of godhead and prabhupada standardised it and used the word supreme personality of godhead to refer to the absolute truth why? this terminology itself was very important because the term god was used even by christians was used even by impersonalists but the christian idea of god is something very primitive it’s mostly of a god who punishes the sinful and he rewards the pious by taking them to heaven and the the impersonalist idea of god is an entity whom you worship so that you can merge into him so the vaishnavacharya has considered impersonalism to be atheism because actually they are not really worshipping god they are worshipping themselves but the mayavadis they have coined their own term for it they call it transtheism that means you believe in god and then you transcend your belief in god to merge in god so this word god was used by so many different people for so many different things and that’s why right from the acharyas to emphasise the philosophical difference so as we know the supreme personality of godhead what that means is the word supreme indicates monotheism because actually one of the criticisms of hinduism was that it’s polytheistic that it worships many gods the supreme very clearly brings out that he is having a there is one supreme being and the word personality brings out the point that he is a person and he has his own personality that personal aspect comes out and none of these actually come out in the word god and then of course what bhaktivedanta swarupakurya used was of transcendental godhead now the word godhead if you look in english that says actually it means the kingdom of god the personality of godhead means personality of the kingdom of god so transcendental godhead or godhead refers that he is in the kingdom and he is the supreme in that kingdom supreme personality of god similarly it was bhaktivedanta swarupakurya who first used the word devotional service for bhakti prabhupada extensively used it subsequently but he wanted to differentiate that devotion is not just sentiment it is actually practical activity and so both by both the sadhan and the sadhya sadhan is the activity of devotional service and sadhya is the goal of devotional service both he very clearly differentiated it from both the mayavadis and the christians of his time and there were many confrontations at different times bhaktivedanta swarupakurya was philosophically very fierce and uncompromising and culturally he was very gentle man so sometimes when he would be going on streets and if he would see a mayavadi he would go and slap the mayavadis bhaktikas maharaj specifically said that he was always very gentle manly in his dealings but yes the mayavadis were afraid of him and in fact even today there is a ramakrishna mission library in kolkata they have more books on gaudiya vaishnavism than any gaudiya vaishnavism library has why? because they were so afraid of gaudiya vaishnavism such fierce attack bhaktivedanta swarupakurya and his disciples would do that they wanted to study the philosophy what is this philosophy? so even now when this pranaprabhu most of his research is from the ramakrishna mission library pranaprabhu is a devotee who has done the PhD in bhaktivedanta swarupakurya he is a european devotee so the point is that they would study our philosophy so deeply because they found this philosophy completely different from what our understanding of vaishnavism was and then eventually when bhaktivedanta swarupakurya departed from this world then actually one of the main leaders of the ramakrishna mission came there and he said that actually he was very mellowed down earlier he used to criticise a lot but he said actually the vedic philosophy is so multifaceted there is dvaitavad and there is advaitavad there is personalism and impersonalism so the personalist impersonalist voice had got so many speakers, so many spokesperson till today but in the modern times the personalist understanding had no spokesperson and bhaktivedanta swarupakurya was the first person and therefore we offer our tribute to him that he has actually revealed to the world the broadness of the vedic tradition they did not accept that the personal is the highest but the point was they recognised they recognised that what he did was significant so this contribution in establishing personalism in an era before him and after him the impersonal idea was very strong so it was really remarkable and that’s why when bhaktivedanta swarupakurya wrote that verse absolute is ancient thou has proved impersonal calamity thou has removed so bhaktivedanta swarupakurya was so pleased because that was the greatest opposition that he was facing and of course that opposition that it bore its results gradually because what happened for the political purposes the impersonal idea sounded more unifying you know whichever god you want you can worship but we are all hindus and we will all oppose together the british rule but what happens with respect to the impersonal idea is that there is not much higher taste available and because of that eventually originally the rebellion against the britishers was spiritual was intellectual and spiritual and that spiritual became social spiritual that you know you have to reform Indian society and eventually the whole independent struggle when India became independent was just a social struggle and independent India had nothing spiritual more than the dependent India in fact India became secular and that is why when Shila Prabhupada came back to India it was there were many other spiritual leaders whatever so called spiritual leaders who had gone to America and preached and brought back some followers but what was so special about Shila Prabhupada when he brought back western devotees was these western devotees had fully adopted the culture of India for example you know shaving their heads or wearing saree and wearing dhoti kurta wearing tillak so all the other previous leaders they had gone they were impersonalists and they said actually the ultimate truth is impersonal the way you dress, the way you talk the way you what you eat all those things are not important ultimately it is what you believe that is what is important so their success was not as dramatic in the public eye in India as Shila Prabhupada’s was so interestingly actually the very same factors so I was talking about the stage Bhakti Sahasrara Thakur had to face a very very difficult stage in which he had to preach but the very same factors which created this difficulty for Bhakti Sahasrara Thakur in India those same factors worked to the advantage of Shila Prabhupada in America how was that? that actually all these impersonalists spiritualists went to Europe and America before Shila Prabhupada and they created a favourable curiosity about India and they created a favourable curiosity about India and Indian culture and intellectually the whole thing was very appealing I was an atheist till I discovered that I was God so intellectually it was very appealing but with respect to the practical application what do you do? there was no clear sadhana and no higher taste so when Shila Prabhupada went in 1965 in one sense the curiosity had already been created about Indian culture but the popular aspect of Indian culture, the popularly appealing aspect, the chanting of the holy name the Harinam Sankirtan, nobody had done that and exactly 1965 three different developments took place Bhakti Sahasrara Thakur had told Shila Prabhupada, you go and preach in the west and although the sceptical mind said, Indians are not taking up, how will Americans take up, how will westerners take up but Prabhupada had that faith the first thing that happened was that the American government changed its immigration rules earlier they had found that many foreigners are coming to America and that’s why Americans are losing their jobs now something similar is happening now the American government is doing like that now but at that time in just 1965 one week after Shila Prabhupada landed in America the American immigration government changed its rules and opened itself to foreigners and that’s why you see in 1970,1980 there were so many Indians who went to America at that time there were practically no Indians as Radhan Maharaj says in his autobiography the first Indian he met was when he came to India the first Indian he met was that security lady who was threatening to shoot him but he had heard so much about India but there were no Indians in America at that time practically so now if that immigration law had not changed Prabhupada would not have been allowed to stay he would stay for two months and he had to go back but he could keep extending his visa again and again and then stay on for almost 11-12 years because that law changed but more important than that was before that till 1965 the Catholic Christian Church had a policy that actually Jesus is the only way even now officially they had a policy but officially in 1965 the church said that we appreciate that which is holy and true even in other traditions and there can be deliverance there can be salvation even through other religious traditions that was the statement that they made and because of that the church became open to studying other religions of course the protestants have still now not done that and that’s why in 1972 when the devotees made the Bhaktivan institute Prabhupada told them we have to defeat this revolution so they wrote to the creation research institute and they said you see we may have differences philosophically but scientifically both of us agree that evolution is wrong so let us work together and defeat evolution and they wrote back unless you accept that Jesus is the only way you are the same agents of the devil who has created the devilish theory of evolution and we will not work with you the protestants still had that idea but the Catholic Church became a little broad and because of that the Christians started studying what is similar between the Hindu tradition and the Christian tradition and till then the only idea of Hinduism was the impersonalist idea and just at that time when the Christian Church opened up that was the time when Prabhupada landed in America and he presented the monotheistic Vaishnav understanding of Hinduism and that’s why Prabhupada got an opportunity now if you say that we go to a college and we want to give some lectures it’s so difficult to get permission but the devotees would do book distribution the devotees would arrange for lectures they would get Prabhupada to be invited I agree when Prabhupada was as a lecturer in Ohio State University he invited Sri Prabhupada and there was a big auditorium and there was something like 2000 students and all of them were dancing in kirtans and there was no space to dance so some of the students climbed up on the chairs and started dancing on the chairs so how was this possible officially in a college because there was this openness so anyway the point is that the Lord has his own plan and that plan manifests and different Acharyas they do their best according to the time, place, circumstance they are in so when Sri Prabhupada came to India with his foreign disciples two things happened one was that because these foreign devotees had adopted the culture of Krishna Consciousness not just the philosophy which many other spiritual leaders had so called been able to do but the culture, Indian culture so the appeal that they had and the influence that they had on Indians was tremendous and secondly because impersonalism had never been able to provide a higher taste so overall after India became independent the spiritual culture of India had started going down and that’s why when Sri Prabhupada went and preached so in Times of India sorry in Mumbai there was that big sammelan and the devotees started dancing right in the middle of the kirtan and they jumped down and thousands of people who had assembled they all started dancing in the kirtans so at that time the Times of India editor was present and he said actually maybe this is the way India will be able to redress historical grievances I don’t know if the Indians were conquered but maybe it is by this Krishna culture that India will conquer the world and that’s what Sri Prabhupada specifically said we will conquer the world by the Krishna culture Krishna philosophy is important but the Krishna culture that is what actually satisfies the heart so the seed that Bhaktisansur Thakur laid of fighting against impersonalism now increasingly in India as well as in the West the personal understanding is spreading very rapidly and people are finding it much more appealing so even in India as well as in the West especially in India what Bhaktisansur Thakur wanted that the personalism, Vaishnavism should spread it is happening quite rapidly everywhere, all over the country so we see that the cause for which he struggled nirvishesha shunyavadi pashyati deshitarini what he is saying that was what Srila Prabhupada himself did and Srila Prabhupada’s followers are continuing with that so that was with respect to impersonalism the second aspect was with respect to the Gaudiya Vaishnav sadhana and sadhya we know that within Gaudiya Vaishnavism there is the Vaidhi Bhakti and there is the Raganuga Bhakti so now if we see Bhaktisansur Thakur himself ultimately he took Babaji Vaish and he also did talk about Raganuga Bhakti quite a bit but when Bhaktisansur Thakur came up he completely in one sense didn’t reject Raganuga Bhakti but he placed it on a very high pedestal and to many people to many Gaudiya Vaishnavas this was incomprehensible because their idea was that they had this idea that if you do only Vaidhi Bhakti you will go to Vaikuntha only if you do Raganu Bhakti you will go to Goloka so they couldn’t understand why Bhaktisansur Thakur is doing like this but what Bhaktisansur Thakur emphasises that you know the he had a very interesting statement he says the transsexual the transcendental cannot be experienced as long as there is even the slightest desire for the mundane so he said that as long as we are not fully purified to talk about Raganuga will only create problems and Bhaktisansur Thakur himself said that but you cannot fight too many enemies at the same time so Bhaktisansur Thakur did not alienate other Vaishnavas when Bhaktisansur Thakur said that let us print Gita Govinda so he said no no we will not print it later and then again he went can we print Gita Govinda he said yes you can print two copies one for you one for me and preserve it preserve it for posterity but don’t distribute it this esoteric literature they cannot be very easily understood so what Bhaktisansur Thakur did was he actually said that we should focus on Sadhana Bhakti and that’s why we had Dushyamana Tumikishe Vaishnava very important song in which he basically Bhaktisansur Thakur did not write many songs one was this Dushyamana Tumikishe Vaishnava and other was Krishna Hoyte Chatur Mukh and both of them are very important philosophically this actually shows how a Vaishnava should do his Sadhana and that shows about how the Bhagwat Parampara it gives us the lineage so what he did was he said that at the stage of Vaidhi Bhakti if you try to jump to Raganuga he would quote this western saying fools rush in where angels fear to tread so you are saying the great Vaishnava Acharyas are very cautious about approaching these esoteric pastimes and you are going trespassing into this so fools rush in where angels fear to tread and in this way whatever chance that might be that Vaishnavism would be understood as immoral he completely eliminated that chance by focussing on Vaidhi Bhakti and strong morality at that time now you may wonder sometimes like for example there was this mantra which they were chanting Tai Gaura Radhesha Bhaja Radha Hare Krishna Hare Ram and Bhakti Sahaja Yoga was so strong in criticising that and he was so strong in criticising Sahajiyas he was stronger in criticising Sahajiyas than say criticising materialism or criticising empiricism the reason for that was that would create a misunderstanding about Vaishnavism now if empiricism is spreading if say materialism is spreading if Christianity is spreading those who are Vedic followers understand that this is a different school and this is a different school but if in the name of Vaishnavism something which is not Vaishnavism is spreading then that will mislead those who are really seeking for Vaishnavism from understanding what is Vaishnavism and that’s why he very strongly differentiated between what is pure Vaishnavism and what is impure Vaishnavism so that people would have the clear understanding of Vaishnavism and Bhaktananda Thakur was a very vigorous in one sense preacher and writer he himself wrote many things and actually at one particular time they had 12 magazines going on of course one daily newspaper also and that was his clearly differentiated between sadhana and sadhya so that people would not get a misunderstanding about Gaudiya Vaishnavism another thing was his revolutionary thing which he did was the application of Yukta Vairagya western technology at that time was rapidly coming and impressing people and actually western technology was based on western science so Bhaktananda Thakur was not directly critical of science but he did say very strongly that empiricism, empiricism means what you see that is the reality that cannot give you the absolute truth so he had a very interesting way of putting it he said walking in spiritual life begins by walking backwards he says the process of spiritual understanding begins by loyal unlearning submission that means what? your learning will begin by unlearning what you have learnt you have to unlearn everything that you have learnt because modern Bhaktivastu Maharaj writes in his glimpse of traditional Indian life that actually modern society millions of people practise spiritual life and went back to Godhead before the modern culture and modern education came modern culture creates desires and modern education creates doubts and both of them distract people from spiritual life so therefore he says learning begins by unlearning learning begins by unlearning so he said that actually if you want to learn spiritual life you have to unlearn he said the empirical method can never understand the absolute truth as much as a saucer a tea cup, a saucer cannot accommodate an elephant if you put an elephant on a tea cup or a tea saucer the empirical method cannot understand the absolute truth that was his way of presenting Vashila Prabhupada presented as Dr. Frog in the well so he was very strongly critical at the same time he was also he was very intelligent on one side he said that empiricism cannot help you to understand the truth but at the same time he also emphasised like we have Prataksha, Anuman and Shabda so Prataksha is empiricism and Anuman is reasoning so he emphasised reasoning he says if you don’t use reasoning then there will be no way to understand what is real Vaishnavism and what is pseudo-Vaishnavism so he says reasoning along with scripture will help us to differentiate the real truth from the pseudo-truth and of course he said reasoning independent of scripture will lead only to greater darkness and not to light so yes reasoning is important but it is not independent along with scripture if you use it then it can lead to greater illumination so at one time when Bhaktivedanta Thakur was preaching a group of professors from Calcutta University came and they had many questions and many doubts so Bhaktivedanta Thakur said I will answer all your doubts provided you hear me for one hour without asking any questions and they said ok and when he started speaking he proleptically means before only anticipating all the possible doubts and questions that they would have he in his talk answered all the doubts and questions and he went on and spoke not for one hour but one and a half hours and afterwards he stopped and he asked any questions they had no questions they offered his obeisance so they went away so one of the professors he quoted he said fools came to scoff but remained to serve came to scoff, scoff means to criticise to look down upon but they remained to serve that was Bhaktivedanta Thakur had tremendous capacity to transform people so his yukta vairagya had many aspects so one was as I said using reasoning for the service of scripture before that normally reasoning was not used shabda was the only way to understand scripture but he used reasoning and logic in a very strong way in fact you know Bhaktivedanta Thakur when he was in his earlier years when Bhaktivedanta Thakur was still there and when he was preaching so Bhaktivedanta Thakur would go you know he would go and he would go to the local libraries and you know he would not read books he would read the full library you read the full library so then later on when he was sent to Puri when his father was at Puri he was also at Puri so then he went to the Govardhan Math over there Govardhan Math was the peetha of Shankaracharya over there and then he started prolifically reading their books and he was going more often to the Govardhan Math then he was associating with Vaishnavas and the Vaishnavas started doubting whether he is going to become an impersonalist or what and the impersonalist thought oh he is going to come on us and they gave him all their books to read and he took all their books he read them and that’s why later on whenever he had to deal with the impersonalist you know whatever argument they would give him he would have an answer ready for it because he had read all their literature so he was very formidable intellectual it was very difficult for anyone to face him in argument and debate now another thing that he with respect to Yukta Vairagya we of course know that there is a famous debate between Brahmanas and Vaishnavas where he established that Vaishnava is far superior to Brahmana but at the same time he did something quite radical now actually as I said according to time, place, circumstance the Vaishnava Acharyas they present Krishna consciousness accordingly so at the time of Bhaktivinod Thakur the caste system and the discrimination that it was creating was causing tremendous tremendous weakening of faith among the Hindus and Vaishnavism was also being seen as a part of the traditional Hindu system so to emphasise that the Vaishnava is transcendental and Vaishnava does not support this discriminatory caste system Bhaktivinod Thakur Bhaktivinod Thakur was himself in one way revolutionary so he actually disowned the public thread, disowned the sacred thread he said Vaishnava does not need any of the sacred thread, he does not need any of these things but you know every religious tradition has to have a very important thing and that is its credibility so Bhaktivinod Thakur was certainly preaching but Bhaktivinod Thakur was the first person who brought organisational structure so Bhaktivinod Thakur reintroduced the sacred thread, he reintroduced the saffron dress he reintroduced the sannyas because what had happened was by the preaching of Bhaktivinod Thakur and his own preaching and his disciples preaching actually the intellectual respectability of Krishna consciousness of Vaishnavism had been established but at the same time among the masses the masses were completely confused about what is right and what is wrong and among the masses they were feeling that yes that deity worship is right and that it should go on but there were many Hindu reformers who were actually rejecting deity worship so what had happened was because Bhaktivinod Thakur also mostly preached in English and he would also preach to the intellectual class of people so for the common people who could not understand the differences of the philosophy you know he had to visibly differentiate himself from the Hindu reformers who were actually in the name of reforming rejecting most of Hindu culture that’s why he re-adopted the externals which Bhaktivinod Thakur had de-emphasised so he actually had the sacred thread again, he had the saffron dress he had the sannyas and of course there was no because after Chaitanya Mahaprabhu Chaitanya Mahaprabhu took sannyas but subsequently in the Gaudiya Vaishnav Sampradaya there were not many sannyasis so when Bhaktivinod Thakur wanted to take sannyas there was nobody to give him sannyas that’s why he too he did an unprecedented thing of taking sannyas from a photo of a spiritual master and when he took that sannyas it created Bhaktivinod Thakur he was ready to take on not only the whole world but even the pseudo Vaishnavas those who claimed to be Vaishnavas and what he did actually they said that how can you take sannyas yourself who is your sannyas guru so he said that actually my spiritual master is my sannyas guru but you have to have a living guru he was very radical he said there is no living person capable of being my guru qualified to be my guru so he could be blunt at times and he was not afraid to alienate people by that at the same time although he was so blunt you know he was very very cultured in his own way you know it was when the Maharaja of Tripura had invited Bhaktivinod Thakur to come there and to give some talks so initially that king of Tripura he was influenced by the pseudo Vaishnavas and because they had bigger posts they were more elderly, Bhaktivinod Thakur was younger so there were two incidents one was of course the well known incident that three days he was there and he did not take any food over there at all and at the end of the third day the Maharaja came and he brought some fruits and some food he said I know I know that your Vani is Divya that what you speak is divine but still there are many people elderly and senior to you and that’s why I could not give you a chance to speak but I apologise for that but please take this food Bhaktivinod Thakur replied very gravely he said a sannyasi should not take anything from a person to whom he has not been able to do anything for so he says because I have not been able to render any service to you I cannot take any service from you actually he did not take any food he got on the train and at that time the trains were not all that fast from Tripura he came to Calcutta from Calcutta he came to Mayapur and after he came to Mayapur only he took food so that way he was personally very strict and uncompromising in his practise another time when he was there at Maharaja of Tripura Maharaja of Tripura was like a major sponsor for many of his activities eventually what happened was he didn’t speak anything but one of his disciples spoke very strongly and he showed how these different people whom you are supporting they are actually not wishing us and when that person’s eyes opened then he started helping Bhaktivinod Thakur quite a bit with respect to financial support but then again those people took control over him but when he was there once with him at that time the famous Rabindranath Tagore came there at that time Rabindranath Tagore was considered like a pride of Bengal because his Gitanjali had won the Nobel Laureate Nobel Prize for Literature but now Tagore family was basically they were followers of Brahmo Samaj so although Gitanjali is actually devotional in one sense but that devotionalism culminates in impersonalism so Bhaktivinod Thakur was strongly criticising but then he had he had there was this Maharaja of Tripura had only one big guest house where Bhaktivinod Thakur was staying and when Bhaktivinod Thakur came to know that Rabindranath Tagore is coming he personally cleaned the house and vacated the house and then he went and stayed in some and when Rabindranath Tagore came to know about this Tagore came and he literally fell at the feet of him he said you are a real cultured Vaishnava I had no idea what a Vaishnava is before I met you so yes a devotee there was another Vaaseman said a devotee was so you know a devotee may be philosophically very strong in condemning others but with respect to culture a devotee is most gentleman a devotee doesn’t want to live in a big palace he doesn’t want to inconvenience his host we see Prabhupada when he was at the Mishra Yoga studio in New York at that time they were philosophically completely loggerheads completely against each other but Prabhupada was cooking for this Mishra and Mishra says that actually if it had not been for Bhaktivinod Swami I was very unregulated he was a yoga teacher I wonder how he was unregulated what kind of yoga he was teaching but still he said if Bhaktivinod Swami had not been there then I would have died because of my weakness and sweetness so Prabhupada was on a one to one level very gentlemanly and cultured so there is a philosophy where we can have strong differences but with respect to culture the devotees they are very cultured and actually by that culture we can melt hearts we see the same thing happen with Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and Prakashanan Saraswati Chaitanya Mahaprabhu just went and sat at a low place and then he actually got him he is offering respect, oh you are all respectable sanyasis I am actually a lower order sanyasi, I am only a Bharati sanyasi so then he lifted him up and brought him in that that culture which he showed that appealed and melted his heart so Bhaktivinod Swami another time he spoke strongly against Sakhi Beris Sakhi Beris was a particular upper sampradaya and then before Bhaktivinod Swami there would be Navadvip Parikrama but Bhaktivinod Swami he for the first time started the Gaudamandal Parikrama Navadvip means just the nine islands but Gaudamandal means you go to all the holy places go to Panihatti, we go to Ekad Chakra and so many other places like that so when they were in the Gaudamandal Parikrama the previous day he had given a very strong talk criticising the Sakhi Beris and then the next evening when the devotees had practically gone, they were exhausted after the whole day of Parikrama and they were doing Harinam and there were 700 devotees and suddenly several hundred attackers came, gundas came and they started attacking the devotees and the devotees as they were trying to run away from there, when they were trying to run away they went to the Tongas nearby they thought we will take the Tongas and go away and to their horror the Tongas were filled with stones and bricks to beat them so at that time Bakhtansar Dacor was there and there were also 700 people they could have retaliated but Bakhtansar Dacor said that we are followers of Hrithyanand Prabhu, if they are acting like Jagahan Madai, we should act like Hrithyanand Prabhu we should not retaliate and the attack went on for quite some time several devotees got injured so next morning when the newspaper reporters came to interview Bakhtansar Dacor he said, you know, they are ignorant they don’t understand what they are doing and they don’t understand what I am doing I forgive them for what they have done and that was published as a headline in the Amrit Bazaar Patrika so when they told that when the devotees and other people they said, you should make a court case against them he said, there is no need for a court case although they have acted as our enemies, unknowingly they have acted as our friends, because of them we got such nice publicity the same thing happened with the Juhu also case Mrs. Ren, she tried to attack the devotees and that attack got media coverage and the whole case turned after that so Bakhtansar Dacor, one perception of him is that he was very strict and strong, that is true at the same time, in the cultural point of view he was very very warm and compassionate at one time the devotees would go out and do programmes of fund raising so they would have some pamphlets especially they would invite people for some programme which is going to be there in the future and then they would ask also please contribute for this programme so they had gone for so one of the devotees had gone to ask funds, and that person said you should go to that house you will get that person will give funds over there so he went over there, knocked on the door, nobody opened the door so the door was partially open so he went inside and when he went inside and suddenly he heard a female voice what are you doing here and then he looked around and he saw that person was there with around dozen people and all of them were laughing at him and he realised that that house was actually a brothel and that he was so embarrassed, he was crushed out from there and he went and told Bakhtansar Dacor and then he said that I cannot go out again so that evening Bakhtansar Dacor called for class so all the devotees came and he said that unless a devotee takes risks to save those who are causing him the risks what is the meaning of his being a devotee if you don’t take risk to those who are saving us Prabhupada also said that if people attack us, if people mislead us how should we see it he said you should see that this person has gone mad if the doctor becomes angry with the madman how can the doctor help the madman so he was very strong that no matter what difficulties come devotees should stay fixed in their service actually we should not fall prey to temptations but because of difficulties one cannot give up one’s service one has to find ways in which one can continue the service another time when the devotees were preaching at one time they made these big theistic exhibitions so these theistic exhibitions sometimes would be literally spanning over a kilometre and Bakhtansar Dacor was so intelligent that he would not only have a spiritual section, spiritual section would be most important but along that he would also have some apparently mundane section over there not mundane in terms of sensual but mundane in terms of that which would appear as progressive some new technology, some new innovation that would all be there and a lot of people would come to see that and they would come to the spiritual part also and there they would get proper philosophical doors and then this became a sensation when they would do this sometimes thousands of people would come not only from Calcutta, not only from Bengal but other parts of the country just to visit this exhibition because nobody else was doing anything like that so another thing that he with respect to his innovations was of course the use of technology now he he he would call his printing press as the Bhagwan Yantra the Bhagwan, he could call itself the printing press, the whole system of printing press but one of the machines in one of his printing press he called as Bhagwan Yantra because Bhagwan is manifesting through it so he says Prakriti when used by the Jiva for the service of Bhagwan will no longer be an instrument of material ignorance but will be a vehicle of spiritual enlightenment not an instrument of material ignorance but a vehicle of spiritual enlightenment and as we know of course that he he was practically only the second person who had a Rolls Royce apart from the governor of Bengal and he would go around in that Rolls Royce and people would get a culture shock when they would see a sadhu travelling around in Rolls Royce people would come to see the Rolls Royce and they would get Krishna literature they would get the holiness they would get prasad and he said that actually whatever is there in this world the best of it should be offered for not the sense gratification of karmic people but for the service of the Lord and he used that now another thing that he introduced was that at that time one of the one of the criticisms against Hinduism was that Hindus exploit and restrict women so and the culture at that time was quite conservative although this criticism was there so Bhaktananda did not he encouraged women to write articles and most of the Gaudiya magazine Gaudiya or the Harmonist most of the time more than 50% of the articles would be written by Matajis Mataji would come for his lectures, they would hear the lectures understand the concepts, they would write the articles and he would edit it and then they would publish it so you know you can imagine this you know the magazine was distributed by Brahmacharya and Sanyasis, it contained articles written by Matajis so that was how we envisioned that everybody can engage in preaching and of course the culture has to be preserved and at that time and to some extent even in India now women giving classes may not be appreciated by the conservative people but he said that no, the glorification of the Lord is the birthright of the Jeeva and that opportunity has to be given for everyone that was quite radical which he did then apart from that he also focused to a large extent on going into going into the grassroots levels, Bhaktivinoda Thakur himself he would preach to the intellectual people, many times before starting his class only he would say that I know most of you are not going to understand what I am going to speak and most people would not understand because he would speak at such a high level there was one Christian scholar, Professor Suthers Suthers land who came to meet him and this person, he asked some questions and the answer that Bhaktivinoda Thakur gave he just went back, he said that is English my mother tongue or his mother tongue? it was completely his idea he had received the whole Christian propaganda that Hindus are illiterate, primitive, superstitious and Bhaktivinoda Thakur was completely antithesis of that he found that this person is much more intellectual than me also so that was his brilliance, his application of Yukta Vairagya also was what inspired him in one sense to actually preach beyond the coast of India so actually three devotees went so the third devotee who went was Sundarananda who did a PhD Samvidananda so he actually sent one of his disciples that you know you should go to London and do a PhD in the teachings of Lord Chaitanya because at that time the idea of going to America going to Europe or America and getting education was very prominent so he said that yes we will go and in the name of doing a PhD we will teach them what is Gaudiya Vaishnavism that was his idea and the plan was that you know the full actually Kadamkananda Maharaj is working on this on presenting Gaudiya Vaishnavism systematically to the academic world and when I had met him in Mayapur he showed me the full outline it’s like Bhakti Sahasrakar gave Samvidananda Prabhu the outline for the PhD thesis and the outline was something like 150 pages for all practical purposes he has given him the full PhD this is what you should go and write this is what you should do so he had that plan people respect PhDs so we will have a PhD from London who will come and present Gaudiya Vaishnavism there and here both and his plan was that after the PhD thesis is done because what happens is that many times just like this devotee who did his PhD in Bhakti Sahasrakar to assess him also nobody knows enough about Bhakti Sahasrakar so you have to call another devotee scholar so Garuda Prabhu will be coming to assess him so it becomes like devotees only are doing the whole thing within the academic world and in this way they are influencing the academic world so the plan of Bhakti Sahasrakar was that when this PhD gets completed he was planning that these devotees were in America and he himself would go to London and he himself would go to London and he would actually preach to the academy over there with the means of this thesis so he had that plan of using mundane education in Krishna’s service and when he sent his disciples to Europe he told them that it’s very interesting how he applied that that actually we should go with a blade of grass in our mouth and we should fall at the feet of those people he said you are all very intelligent people you are all very intelligent hey sadhu you are so intelligent now please give up your intelligence and surrender to lord chaitanya that was the preaching formula so he said the western people are very proud of their material progress and to a large extent they are expert also in their material progress so he said that we should go and offer them all respects and we should not present ourselves as hindus we should present ourselves as messengers of lord chaitanya as vaishnavas and actually in one way their mission was very successful they got a lot of media coverage, they could meet a lot of people and they created an impact but with respect to gaining followers who became dedicated, there were not many well of course bhakti answer dacoit departed and the world war enveloped europe and then indian independence struggle also became more so the whole mission was disrupted and that was continued ultimately by shila prabhupada now the most important in one sense innovation that bhakti answer dacoit gave in terms of its lasting legacy for us as his devotees and his con was his introducing the concept of the GBC the governing body commission now the term GBC was used at that time by the indian railways and the indian railways had divided india into 4 zones east west north and south and later on they made 8 zones north east north west all that and for indians at that time the railways were not only technological but organisational marvel because if you think about it if you are going on a road you can always go on the other side and if some other vehicle is coming you can go on but if there is a train, two trains cannot go on the same track so you cannot shift on to the other side so the indians were very impressed by the organisation of the railways and the railways actually had a significant impact in spreading whatever either it was spiritual wisdom or material wisdom or whatever but they actually changed india very much at that time so he took that terminology and he said that when we, when i depart you should all form a GBC and you should all preach in different parts of india now this proposal now we know that the disciples his disciples didn’t follow it but you know we have to understand why they didn’t follow it also and how shila prabhupada niskant saved us from that actually the idea of a GBC is that GBC works on democracy there are a number of people they discuss and if they are not able to arrive at a unanimous agreement then they will vote and they will decide and if you see the vedic system of the acharya is autocracy absolute autocracy that this person, this acharya the spiritual master he is the representative of god his word is the word of god and his word is the absolute truth so now for a sadhaka you know to hear that he asks a question and then for him a pure devotee or whom he considers to be a pure devotee gives an answer, that is actually the word of god but if for a sadhaka it is told ok we have a body and the body will discuss and the body will give you an answer then even in the discussion somebody is saying this somebody is saying that and then there is voting then how is that the will of god how is that how is the decision of a corporate body the will of god so culturally within india it was very difficult for people or to speak of gaudiya mutt, for anyone to accept the idea that a corporate body could be the governing body of organisation and that’s why although he had given an instruction like that his followers what they did was, after he departed they made his most learned disciple as the acharya why because they just couldn’t figure out how would they work in fact the same thing happened with niskanth also now of course prabhupada had made the gpc even when he was present but especially when prabhupada appointed devotees to become spiritual masters that created a problem because the spiritual master’s authority is absolute his word is the final word for the disciple but if the spiritual master who is in absolute authority is subordinate to the gpc then how is the spiritual master absolute so we will discuss the answer to this but this was a very difficult perplexing question and that’s why bhaktanishvaku’s disciples couldn’t adopt that basically what happened was they made one person the acharya and they were all preaching but then what happened was this one person is the acharya and others have different visions of how they should preach and they it’s actually in any religious organisation succession succession that means when one acharya departs and the next generation becomes the succession succession is a turbulent period and prabhupada writes in the fourth canto i think where puranjan when he becomes that woman what was the name vaidarbhi and her husband passes away so at that time in that section where an acharya departs when an acharya comes he brings order amidst chaos and when an acharya departs actually from that order chaos results now in one sense the chaos that results when an acharya departs is also a glorification of the acharya you say no how could they fall apart just because the acharya departed no it is the acharya who kept such widely differing people together so it is not that if you see if you look at the profile of the disciples somebody was a was a Bengali Vaishnava somebody was a South Indian Sri Vaishnava somebody was a Shankarite somebody was this somebody was that all these different people were living together and it’s amazing how the acharya can keep all of them together so as they were preaching different people had different ideas of how they should preach and then eventually now what would happen is there is only one successor you preach and all of them are under that successor so it became very difficult for them to preach so gradually they started rejecting that authority and they started splintering and eventually the person who was successor acharya he had some problems or at least he was framed to have problems whatever it was but what happened was the whole thing split so now when Srila Prabhupada made the GBC the expertise I have talked with several devotees what they said is that the speciality of the GBC is that actually different devotees can preach according to their vision even if it is different from others vision without having to leave the movement for example there is one acharya if you don’t agree with him then you are out at one time in the history of ISKCON soon after the GBC was formed the devotees decided to centralise everything all management will be centralised all funds will be centralised all decision making will be centralised and they thought this way we will make ISKCON very efficient and they made this whole decision without consulting Srila Prabhupada and Prabhupada got so angry and Prabhupada said that actually temporarily you don’t take any instruction from the GBC I will give directly instruction whatever you want and he talked with the devotees and told them that these material formulas will not work what will work what will work is the inspiration of the devotees to preach Krishna consciousness and he says you keep the organisation don’t centralise things let every temple be individual so if you see every temple within ISKCON is like a nuclear family we are all part of one joint family but every temple is like a nuclear family and every temple can grow on its own initiative and similarly every GBC member he can expand his zone on his own initiative so now in ISKCON what happened was when Srila Prabhupada departed Prabhupada had made this 11 devotees and now there are many more GBC members but then the zonal system became a zonal acharya system that means that particular devotee within that movement within that zone he became the absolute authority and this was something Srila Prabhupada did not want you know whether it was a guru whether person be a guru or non guru all of them as GBC members are equal as GBC member Prabhupada said before departing when he was asked who will be your successor not that one person knows everything all of you should work together so what happened was because of that ISKCON has expanded in many different ways in different directions and different devotees who have their different inspiration their initiative they can stay within the framework of the organisation and they can preach according to their vision and that way now of course the GBC is there which is like a governing authority overall to see that basically Prabhupada wanted the GBC not so much as a managerial authority but as an authority for spiritual standards you should make sure that in all the temples within ISKCON the morning programme is followed the chanting of 16 rounds is done the four regular principles are followed and he said let every temple preach according to their vision and even during Prabhupada’s times many different things were happening and Prabhupada would encourage all of them book distribution is the most important cow protection is most important or gurukul is most important Prabhupada would encourage all of them and he would encourage devotees to preach according to their inspiration when the devotees were doing book distribution it was very pleasing to Srila Prabhupada so at that time some of the leading book distributors came to Srila Prabhupada and they said Prabhupada you know we have found that there are certain lines which we can speak if we speak these people get influenced and people take books so can we go around all the temples in ISKCON and teach people these lines and Prabhupada became very brave Prabhupada said Krishna consciousness is individual voluntary and spontaneous when a soul desires to render service to Krishna then devotional service happens Krishna consciousness is individual voluntary and spontaneous he said rather than teaching people the lines that they should speak you inspire people to render the service of book distribution and let them speak the way they want of course there had to be certain guidelines of how they speak but the point is Prabhupada did not want to make everything into a stereotype yes the morning programme is a stereotype in one sense everybody does the same thing but yes there is room for individual expression and in the famous letter that Prabhupada wrote about how management should go on I think he wrote it to Mukunda Maharaj Prabhupada said that actually the purpose of the organisation is to fan something like fan I don’t remember the exact word to fan the spirit of serving Krishna among the devotees to fan the spirit of serving Krishna so you know this GVC which Shila Prabhupada made and the instruction of Bhaktivinoda what it does is it allows us to have a large organisation with people with many different ways of how they should preach and all of them still stay within the purview of the movement and of course if somebody goes way too far out then there is GVC which will correct them and that’s how actually if you see the succession problem which was there from Bhaktivinoda and Shila Prabhupada sorry Bhaktivinoda and his disciples a greater succession problem was there from Prabhupada and his disciples why? because practically this devotee scholar he was telling me that nowhere Rajiv Bihari was telling me that in no other organisation’s history was there such a big gap in terms of age, maturity and experience between the founder and the successor even with respect to Bhaktivinoda Thakur many of his senior disciples they were actually introduced at the time of Bhaktivinoda Thakur only so they knew Bhaktivinoda Thakur from beginning and they had his association for almost 40-50 years but with respect to Prabhupada Prabhupada was 70 plus and his disciples, his senior most disciples were around 30-35 so they were fit to be his grandsons for all practical purposes and they had association of Prabhupada only for 11 years at the most and most of the devotees who became the leaders may be 8, 9, 10, 7, 8 years whatever so the succession crisis that was inevitably going to come was much greater but the very fact that ISKCON not only survived but expanded his testimony to that arrangement which Bhaktivinoda Thakur created and which actually led to the spreading of ISKCON so now in one sense we say that the devotees over there in the Gaudiya Mutt couldn’t cooperate but they did whatever best they could according to their understanding but this was a profound concept and Prabhupada he hammered it in many times during the GBC meeting where Prabhupada would be present and Prabhupada says I am also a servant of the GBC so Prabhupada emphasised that authority very much and although now when we talk about cooperation which unfortunately did not happen in Gaudiya Mutt which should happen so once today is Gaurgoyen Maharaj disappearance day one devotee went to Gaurgoyen Maharaj and asked him Maharaj, he was a disciple of Gaurgoyen Maharaj he says can I divorce some of my God brothers can I divorce some of my God brothers so Gaurgoyen Maharaj became very grave and he replied I am asking Shrila Prabhupada can I divorce some of my disciples that devotee became completely quiet he understood the point actually yes we all have differences but we have to go on so it’s interesting that from both ways there is a in Iskcon GBC many of Prabhupada’s disciples especially what happened when their God brothers in Iskcon also their God brothers became Gurus their God brothers became authorities the independent tendency is there in everyone and to subordinate the spiritual master is easy but to subordinate yourself to your God brother who has now become an Acharya is much more difficult so many devotees left Iskcon in the wake of Shrila Prabhupada’s departure so now Iskcon is working to get all those devotees back Bhakticharu Maharaj along with several other GBC members has formed a committee by which they are trying to get all the Prabhupada’s disciples who had left to come back and the management has said that if any devotees want to live their final days in Mayapur, the Mayapur temple administration will provide them free accommodation and free food so they can stay there in Mayapur so many devotees are coming back and it’s interesting that a survey was done of those devotees who had left Iskcon and 93% of those devotees said that for them their Krishna faith is the most important aspect of their lives it was not that they have given up their Krishna consciousness and another thing, 59% of them were preaching in some way or the other that to some extent is as much as what Iskcon congregation devotees preach so this itself is the proof that the higher taste that devotional service provides is something which can never be forgotten so this, basically how the survey was done was, they were surveying different religious organisations, what happens when people become converts and they give up that organisation so they found whether a person becomes a Christian and then he gives up Christianity, a person becomes a Muslim and gives up Islam, a person becomes whatever, and they found that with respect to Iskcon this percent is 93, otherwise like 40, 30, 25, 50 that means, you know, people once they give up, they just give up but when it comes to Krishna consciousness one may not be able to because of whatever circumstances it should not happen, but actually that higher taste one can never forget and that higher taste is just the practise of Krishna consciousness and even greater higher taste is the preaching of Krishna consciousness and gradually devotees will come back and so Iskcon GBC has started a devotee care journal and they are called a devotee care ministry and a devotee care journal so I am serving as one of the editors along with Bhakti Purushotra Maharaj Bir Krishna Maharaj, Bhakti Chaitanya Maharaj and other devotees so there is a very interesting pastime in one article over there so it seems that some devotee asked Prabhupada when some devotee leaves Iskcon who is to be blamed for that so generally that devotee has gone into Maya so Prabhupada became very very yes, he said, if some devotee leaves Iskcon that is his fault but that fault is 50% so 50% fault is of those who were actually supposed to take care of him that means Prabhupada, you know, yes somebody has gone into Maya that is true, but Prabhupada was compassionate Prabhupada would cry when devotees would go and Prabhupada would bring those devotees back you know how Bhakti Sanskrit Akhwar stopped a whole temple installation deity installation and temple inauguration just to get one devotee back so actually from both sides from the side of the devotees, they have to provide as much support as possible for the other devotees to go on Krishna Consciousness and Ravindra Siruprabhu who was one of the main persons who did the reform in Iskcon so he writes one very important point he says that an organisation cannot cooperate if there is a blame game that means if those who are not practising, the authorities blame them that you are in Maya and the subordinates blame the authorities saying that you are not perfect what right do you have to demand from me that I should surrender so he says that Prabhupada did not play favourites with anyone now if Prabhupada selected the 11 devotees or whoever made the GBC, why was that? because they were the most dedicated devotees so he said rather than Iskcon devotees blaming that you know that things are going wrong because of leadership he says yes, why did I not become so dedicated that Prabhupada would have entrusted the responsibility to me and if you think that you could have done it better then you become responsible and you do it he says there is no point in playing the blame game he says that actually those who are the leaders we can practically see how committed they are, how dedicated they are the spiritual masters, they come practically they sleep a few hours throughout the day they are talking to people, guiding people and leading them, not just the spiritual masters but even the devotees who are leaders so the basis of cooperation is not blaming each other but helping each other the subordinates try to help the authorities and the authorities try to help the subordinates and at one time I’ll conclude with this at one time Bhaktishanth Sudhakar he was he received some complaint about some devotee who was apparently not using the funds properly so when that complaint came Bhaktishanth Sudhakar said so what had happened was the devotees had stopped raising funds only because they thought that he is not using the funds properly, why should we raise funds so that he will misuse them so Bhaktishanth Sudhakar asked what had happened so then he said that the devotees acted as one representative and the representative went and told them that this has happened so Prabhupada said, so Bhaktishanth Sudhakar said at that time that you know your business is to do your service your business is to do your service and if there is some other fault with some devotee it is the responsibility of your spiritual master to take care of that don’t think that you know it and I don’t know it because I know it and I will take care of that you don’t stop your service and you don’t go into the fault finding mode if you go into the fault finding mode what will happen is that nobody will do any service and nothing will happen so as I said instead of being a critic, let us be a model if something is going wrong, let us do it right and by that we can preach Krishna Consciousness so I will conclude with this very beautiful song dedicated to Bhaktishanth Sudhakar this was written by Bhaktirakshri Sridhar Maharaj when he was staying in the house of Srila Prabhupada Srila Prabhupada was in Calcutta at that time in his terrace Sridhar Maharaj and other devotees were staying and actually Sridhar Maharaj published a book called Prapanna Jeevana Amrit at that time and it was Srila Prabhupada who raised funds to get Lakshmi and when Bhaktishanth Sudhakar got this this was like a prayer to him Prabhupada Bhaktishanth Pada Padmasthava it is called so when Bhaktishanth Sudhakar got that actually he was so pleased he said that this should be sung in all the Gaudiya Maths everyday so prayer to Srila Bhaktishanth Sudhakar’s lotus feet by Srila Bhaktishanth Sudhakar was so pleased with this offering that he ordered it to be sung at all his Mathas daily so here Prabhupada refers to Bhaktishanth Sudhakar Your beautiful lotus feet are cherished by millions and millions of the purest and most qualified devotees and you are the most competent personality to preach the recognised process of this era Your sacred lotus feet are adorable as they openly grant fearlessness and bestow the highest benediction to all living entities I eternally offer my respects unto that charming effulgence that shines from the radiant lotus toe tips of Srila Bhaktishanth Sudhakar Prabhupada bhajanarjita sajjana sangha patim patitadhika karunaika gatim kati vanchita vanchaka chintya padam pranamami sada prabhupada padam You shine forth as a natural leading monarch among the high class of devotees and you are the exclusive ultimate aim of the truly fallen due to your far-reaching merciful embrace You are incarnation Your inconceivable lotus feet bestow full shelter for the cheaters and the cheated Your divine figure is so graceful and delicate Your skin so soft and your towering form so radiant and golden Your overwhelmingly beautiful appearance mocks the pride of golden lotus stems as countless cupids offer their humble respects to your lotus toes as countless cupids offer respects to your lotus toes which are like glowing white petals of the radiant moon Like the charming moon which pleases its orbiting stars You are surrounded by your intimate disciples and are fulfilling their heart’s desires Your loyal-like roar causes the envious to tremble and quickly flee while your tender toes gracefully bestow the ultimate benefit for the innocent You have widely spread the glories of Shri Gauranga’s holy abode Shri Mayapur Dham and you have openly declared the nature of Shri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu’s mercy throughout the universe Your graceful personality has planted the lotus of Gauranga’s holy feet in the hearts of your deserving servitors As the universal holy master you are the eternal refuge for Shri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu’s devotees You are always dedicated to serving your holy master Shri Gaurakishore and you are a careful servant of Shri Bhaktivinoda Thakur’s lotus feet The intense magnitude of your devotion allows you a glorious position within that intimate group of Raghunatha Das, Sanatana and Rupa Goswami Your happy and elevated philosophical conceptions have crowned and seated you along with the esteemed personality Shri Achyut Goswami and you share friendly relations with Krishna Das, Kaviraj and Arutam Das being as dear to them as their very own lives You serve the living entities by mercifully revealing your divine personality as the embodiment of Hari Kirtan and by so doing eliminate the offences which burden the earth Your loving disposition to the followers of Gauranga Mahaprabhu is more affectionate than that even of a father Just like a transcendental desire tree you fulfil all the desires of the Lord’s unalloyed devotees Your firm and patient nature insults the tolerant disposition of a tree what to speak of your benevolence The purity of your divine lotus feet attracts the worship of great demigods like Indra Being the storehouse of life’s greatest wealth pure Krishna Prem You surpass all the other great Mahabhagavad devotees Simply to rescue the fallen souls you accepted the dress of renunciate Hence your divine lotus feet are adorable in every respect for the greatest stalwart sanyasis Since you are an exclusive servitor of Rishi Bhanu Nandini, Srimati Radhika My bold aspiration is to take full shelter as a minute atomic particle of that shining dust that clings to your beautiful lotus feet Your wonderful shakti can deliver the whole world I eternally offer my respect unto that charming effulgence that shines forth from the radiant lotus tips of Shila Bhakti Siddhanta Sri Thakur Shila Prabhupada Shila Bhakti Siddhanta Sri Thakur Jai Let us all pray to him that the legacy that he has given all of us that we should be able to understand it accept it in our heart and share it with the world to the best of our capacity Shila Bhakti Siddhanta Sri Thakur Jai Shila Bhakti Siddhanta Sri Thakur Jai Shila Bhakti Siddhanta Sri Thakur Jai Jai Jai