Prabhupada life-story 16 – Establishing the foundation

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bhakti legacy in the West. Thank you. Hare Krishna.
Hare Krishna. Welcome back to our discussion on Shri Prabhupada’s life story. In the previous episode, we discussed about how Prabhupada got a group of dedicated followers, who were not just spiritual shoppers, but spiritual seekers, who didn’t want just to explore, but they wanted to, they were ready to commit themselves.
Once they were ready to commit themselves, the next step forward was logical. That was initiation. Just as on any path, if somebody may dabble in a field, let’s say, somebody may just want to learn a little bit about medicine, a little bit about engineering, a little bit about whatever subjects.
And we can all get some knowledge that way. But if somebody wants to become a doctor, somebody wants to become an engineer, somebody wants to become a professional in some field, then they have to officially commit themselves to studying that subject. They have to register in a university, they have to attend classes, and they have to learn that subject.
So, the spiritual realm is similar. In every field, for serious pursuit, we need coaches, guides, teachers. The teacher in a spiritual realm is called as the guru.
The guru word has become common, and now we have internet gurus, Google gurus. The word guru has become generic beyond the spiritual context. In the spiritual context, the guru is all the more needed because the spiritual realm is not so easily visible to us.
And the formal commitment to spiritual growth, to following the process that will lead one to spiritual growth, that formal commitment is called as initiation. Now, in the ceremony of initiation, the disciple accepts the spiritual master as one’s guide, as one’s spiritual director, we could say, in service of the Supreme Lord. Krishna is the Supreme Lord, and whoever is the guru is representing Krishna.
So, in the spiritual circle, we could say that there is a reciprocal journey up and down. So, the spiritual master gives knowledge coming from Krishna. So, there is a lineage of spiritual masters, going back to the holy antiquity, going back to the start of time, going back ultimately to the source of all knowledge, God, Krishna.
So, from him, the knowledge comes down. And so, spiritual knowledge comes down the lineage through the guru to the disciple, the shishya. And then, the disciple offers service to the spiritual master.
And when that service is offered, then as a reward of that service, mercy comes, kripa, in the form of realization of the spiritual knowledge, in the form of redirection of the heart, in the form of a higher perception of spiritual reality. This happens through a step-by-step progression. And the Bhagavad Gita talks about this, 4.34 it states, to know that spiritual knowledge, you should know what you have to do, offer obeisances, respectfully bow down, ask questions.
Now, bowing down does not mean that one just abandons one’s intelligence, rather, in a submissive mode, one is also inquisitive. So, then thereby, what happens? Through the humbleness, through the inquisitiveness, and through the service attitude, service-mindedness, through HIS, through humbleness, inquisitiveness, and service-mindedness, we get His grace, we get the mercy of God coming through the spiritual master. So, knowledge comes.
This knowledge can come from those who are already in knowledge. Those who are not just in knowledge, but those who are seers of the truth. So, those who have seen the truth, they can help us see the truth.
So, Shila Prabhupada himself accepted Shila Bhakti Siddhanta Saraswati Thakur as a spiritual master. And now Bhakti Siddhanta Saraswati Thakur was no longer there on the planet, and Bhakti Siddhanta Saraswati Thakur had given Shila Prabhupada the instruction to share Krishna’s message, to share the bhakti wisdom all over the world, and Prabhupada had come to the West. So, he started, he continued that lineage by starting initiation.
So, as we discussed, the group of devotees who started, group of people, young people started coming, very serious, and one of them at that time was the most serious, Keith. He asked Swamiji, Swamiji, can I become your disciple? And Prabhupada was so pleased by that. Prabhupada said, yes, why not? Your name will be Krishna Das.
You can. So, generally at the time of initiation, the disciple is also given a spiritual name, a new name. The idea is that they, when we become initiated, we are beginning a new life.
It’s called Dvija, one who gets initiated eventually. There is first initiation, second initiation, but when one gets initiated, one is said to be twice born, just as a bird is first born inside the egg, and then it comes out of the egg, and that’s the birth when it starts flying. So, like that, when we are born physically, that’s like our first birth, but even after being born physically, we are covered by the shell of ignorance.
When we come out of that shell, that is what happens through initiation. So, it’s like a second birth, and to signify that we have got a new beginning, that now our whole identity is subordinated to a new identity that we have, a spiritual identity. Actually, we are always spiritual, but we didn’t realize that.
Now, we are on the process of realizing it, and to signify this, a new name is given. So, of course, Prabhupada just casually mentioned this name to Keith, but he said we will have a formal ceremony, and then he decided to have that ceremony on Janmashtami in 1966. In July 1966, he had incorporated ISKCON, and now he was going to have initiation on Janmashtami day.
The previous year on Janmashtami, Prabhupada had been alone in the ship Jaladuta, and he had just celebrated it with a few crew members and the crew staff who were there of the ship. Now, he had made significant steps forward. He had got his own place, he had got his own organization registered, he had a band of serious followers, and now he was going to take the step forward and initiate.
So, the people coming there, they were so new, they had no idea of initiation. They had heard about existence spirituality, and they knew that there was a concept of a Guru, but it was more something like something esoteric which they had heard. They had never thought of it as directly relevant to them.
So, what did initiation mean? When Prabhupada announced that he would conduct an initiation ceremony on Janmashtami day, which was the day of the appearance of Lord Krishna, so they started asking him, Swami, what does initiation mean? So, Prabhupada told them, I will explain to you. And during one of his classes towards the end, the issue of initiation came up. He said, so initiation means that the disciple accepts the Guru as God and worships Him accordingly.
So, this was like a bomb dropped on the disciples, because till then, Swamiji had been repeatedly and emphatically stating that the Guru is not God, the Guru is a servant of God. And he had even said that anybody who considers himself to be God is actually not authorized. Prabhupada would speak sometimes in extremely strong terms to emphasize the difference between truth and illusion.
He would say anybody who claims to be God is actually is a dog. So, dog in the sense that dogs have also the mentality, this is my land, they bark when somebody else comes into their land. So, one who thinks that I am God, I am the controller of everything.
And just mentality, similar mentality extrapolated to a very high level. Now, Prabhupada came from the Bhakti school of thought. He was a teacher of the Bhakti tradition.
Now, there are other schools of thought, there are the monistic schools of thought. For example, Dr. Mishra had been an exponent of the monistic school of thought. And monism itself advocates oneness.
But beyond that oneness, there is, there are some people, so oneness basically means absolute non-differentiated spiritual reality to which we are meant to merge. Now, some people put it in a more provocative way, when they say that actually, when somebody has realized one’s spiritual oneness, when one has become one with the absolute, then it is almost as if one has become God. Some people would claim, some spiritual teachers would claim that I am God, because I have, because they were claiming that they had realized their oneness with the absolute.
Now, the monistic idea of oneness is a partial understanding of the absolute truth. And it’s a partial understanding of what the teaching of the ancient Vedic literature is. So, yes, there is one absolute truth, but that one absolute truth is manifested in various ways.
There is a personal manifestation, who is Krishna. And Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita, in 14.27, that I am the sustainer of Brahman. That means that Brahman comes from me, supported by me.
And what is Brahman? Brahman is the all-pervading spiritual effulgence, which is what many people think of when they conceive of spirituality, and when they say that we want to merge into that spiritual truth. So, here, people, many spiritual seekers, they see the all-pervading effulgence, and they assume that is the absolute truth. And they wish to focus on that, and they want to merge in that.
Now, that is, that is, that is definitely the absolute truth, but that is not the complete absolute truth. The complete absolute truth, there is personal aspect, and there is the impersonal aspect. The impersonal light comes from the personal absolute.
And those who, there are some people who are attracted to the personal, and some may be attracted to the impersonal, that’s fine. But those who claim that the impersonal alone is the real, and the personal is simply an illusion, they claim that when one merges in the impersonal, one becomes, and whoever does this kind of merging, that person has become God. This is a, not just a misunderstanding, this is a serious misrepresentation.
So, Krishna condemns this in the Bhagavad Gita, when he says, अवजानन्ति मा मूधा मानुशिम्तनु माशुर्म। परंभावमुजानन्तो मं भुधमहेश्वर्म। Those who think that my form is temporary, material, and they say, परंभावमुजानन्तो, they don’t know my spiritual higher nature, and they will, those who misunderstand like this, they will be frustrated. Next verse 9.12 states that, मोगाशा मोग कर्माणो मोग ज्याना विचेतसः। राक्षसिमासुरिम्चैव प्रकृतिम्मोहि निम्षितः। They will be deluded. Their hopes for knowledge, for liberation, for success will be frustrated and they will be captured by the deluding energy.
So now, why are we going to this philosophical details over here? Because here Prabhupada had subjected his disciples to a test. He had been very emphatically giving the teaching of the Bhagavad Gita that the absolute truth is personal and we cannot become God. We are godly.
We are God’s parts. We are not God. We are Gods.
We belong to Him. And we are meant to be His loving servants. And even the Guru, the authentic Guru is one who teaches that we are His servants.
So when Prabhupada phrased it in this way, that you know, at initiation, the disciples worshipped the Guru as God, he had deliberately, he had phrased in such a way that it would provoke thought. Not just thought, it would provoke agitation. Was Swamiji teaching something different earlier and was He going to expect something different from us? So the disciples, those who were going to be His disciples, they became agitated.
So Harvard, Valley and all this, Swamiji dropped a bomb. He said, He has been telling us all along that we are not God, but now that the Guru is not God, but now He is telling us we should worship Him as God. They didn’t know what to do.
Some of them said that I don’t know whether I should get initiated or not. So they decided that let’s go and ask Keith. Keith had been like a natural leader among all of them.
But at this particular time, he had been, he was in a hospital. So and that’s why he was not there when Swamiji was giving this class. So they went to him and they met him and he heard out everything that he said and he said, now you are doing whatever He is telling you to do.
So in a sense, you are accepting His authority, His word like God’s word. You are accepting His authority. At the same time, Swamiji has been telling emphatically that the Guru is not God.
So you should go and ask Him. So here Prabhupada was actually forcing them to think deeply, to understand. So they came back and they asked Prabhupada, Swamiji, so when we become initiated, do we accept the Guru as God? Prabhupada said, only God is God.
The Guru is the representative of God and because the Guru is representing God, so He has offered the same respect, the same worship as God. So in that sense, we accept the Guru as God, but only God is God. Swamiji, that means the Guru is not God? No, no, Guru is not God.
Prabhupada made clear and they all hewed a sigh of relief. So Prabhupada didn’t want followers who were just sentimentally doing things. He wanted them to have proper philosophical understanding and right at the beginning itself, before the first initiation, he tested their philosophical understanding to at least ensure that they had the basics clear.
Thereafter, when the initiation came up on Janmashtami day, Janmashtami, he said that traditionally in India, people fast, the Krishna bhaktas fast. So all of you should also fast and now for them to fast all day throughout the day till night, that seemed very difficult and the news spread that Swamiji was going to initiate. So many of the people who were coming there, some of them said that, oh, it’s nice.
They didn’t know what initiation really meant. So some of them said, yes, I would also like to attend. I would like to initiate.
Some people said that, no, I don’t know. It seems to be too serious a commitment. Maybe I’ll not be initiated.
So there were people who were serious understanding the implications of initiation and taking initiation and there were others who were not serious, who were just there because they thought it’s just the thing to do, something to experience and since everybody is doing, let us do it. So there was a whole group of people, but none of them really understood the serious commitment of initiation and Kaushalya Prabhupada, this was the first initiation that he was giving, first initiation in the western world and he wanted to make it a big celebration. But practically speaking, at that time, no one came forward to assist him and he had to make all the arrangements, but most of the cooking he himself did for the feast after the initiation.
He himself arranged the fire sacrifice and this was the first time that a fire sacrifice was going to be there. So it was quite exotic for all of them. So people came just to see the fire sacrifice, how it would be and some of them felt that would it trigger a fire alarm and they were afraid that where would the smoke go, what would happen and when Prabhupada arranged for the fire sacrifice, he lit the fire and when he started the sacrifice, some of them started smoking, some of them started coughing because of the smoke and Prabhupada said this smoke is very pure.
Prabhupada started chanting Sanskrit mantras and as he chanted those Sanskrit mantras, he chanted mantras which he had never chanted before. Devotees had never heard him chant before. Om pavitra pavitrova sarva avastham gatopiva yah smaret kundi kundrikaksham bhaya bhyantaram shri vishnu shri vishnu shri vishnu that lord that lord one who remembers that lord who is lotus eyed that person either that person impure or pure and whatever stage the person will become purified internally and externally.
So this mantra signifies the essence of initiation. Initiation is a commitment to the process of remembering Krishna and by remembrance we will become purified. So Srila Prabhupada performed this initiation and one by one, all of them came in front of him.
I asked them to offer respects and then he gave them beads. The day before that, they had all searched in the local shops to find beads somewhere and Prabhupada had said many of them were chanting already but Prabhupada said you should chant regularly now and so he had got beads for all those who wanted to be initiated and he showed them how to chant on beads and he told them to commit themselves to chanting in a regulated prescribed way. So after a to and fro discussion, Prabhupada told them that if you chant 16 rounds every day.
So some of them felt 16 was a lot. Prabhupada said this is what will purify you and as they came and all of them got their new names, most of them couldn’t even pronounce their names when they got their names. So they had to have their names written down and then after that, after the whole fire sacrifice got over, the initiation went off.
Prabhupada was in a very grave mood but he had led a very wonderful kirtan and Prabhupada was very deeply satisfied to see them taking the step forward but then they all had the feast, they had the initiation garland, they had their beads and they just left and Prabhupada himself had to clean up everything after the initiation got over but he was satisfied doing that although he knew that the disciples were not so serious right now but he could see that they were progressing and they would become serious gradually and thus he was happy that they were taking the step forward and then he said that the process of spiritual connection or spiritual realization involves two things. One is that we focus on connecting ourselves with spiritual reality and the chanting of the holy names in a regular way with a regulated quantity vayavav is what connects us to spiritual reality and we need to disconnect ourselves from those aspects of material reality which are especially entangling and degrading for the consciousness. So Prabhupada had already talked about these principles but then he told the initiated devotees that they were expected to follow the four principles no meat eating, no intoxication, no gambling and no innocent sex.
Now some of the people who took initiation, they had no idea that these principles were mandatory. Prabhupada had spoken this in classes and they knew that he recommended this but they didn’t know that initiation meant that these became mandatory but Prabhupada told him that is the meaning of initiation you take this vow. So he had taken this major step forward in stabilizing the foundation of Krishna Bhakti in the western world and soon a few days later he took the next step.
The next step was that actually Michael Grant was one of the persons who had started coming to Prabhupada when he was living with David Allen and he had helped Prabhupada get the 26th second avenue place and he had also taken initiation. Now he was living with his girlfriend Jan and after the initiation when they came when Prabhupada said now that you have initiated you have taken this vow, no innocent sex, you cannot live like this. So then they said what should we do? So you should get married.
Prabhupada said I will perform marriage for you and thus Prabhupada himself normally in traditional India sanyasis don’t perform marriages directly. They may bless the couple but there are other priests who perform the marriage but Prabhupada was the whole and soul for his disciples over there. So he himself performed the first marriage ceremony they had become Jan and Michael had become at the time of initiation Mukund and Janaki and he told them about how to dress in a decorative way for the marriage, how a marriage is to be performed and he performed the first marriage ceremony and there too after marriage the disciples went to celebrate and Prabhupada himself had to clean up everything after the initiation but he was happy.
He had come to establish a spiritual mission in the west and several landmarks had been crossed after a period of extreme difficulty during the first year when he had been silenced, he had been robbed, he had been attacked, he had survived it all and now the foundation of the mission in terms of a place, in terms of followers, in terms of initiation, in terms of community of having marriage all that foundation had been laid and now hereafter Prabhupada would soon introduce the next major step in the expansion of his mission. Till now the temple and the Hare Krishna chanting and the bhakti was restricted to the storefront. Prabhupada’s next phase would be to take the same chanting out in public and inform more people, invite more people and inspire more people that we will discuss in our next episode.
Thank you. Hare Krishna. Hare Krishna.