SB 7.15.25–27 – Srila Prabhupada’s Vyasa-puja

Giriraj Swami: We have gathered for the most blessed event, the appearance day of our spiritual master and founder-acharya, His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. Srila Prabhupada appeared in Calcutta in 1896 on the day after Janmashtami, Nandotsava. It is said that he was scheduled to appear on Janmashtami but he didn’t want to detract from the celebrations of Lord Krishna’s appearance and so he waited one more day and came out on the next day, on Nandotsava.

Four years ago I visited Calcutta with the intention of seeing the various sites connected with Srila Prabhupada’s appearance and childhood. We visited the birthplace. The system was that when the mother was pregnant she would go to her father’s house to deliver the child and she would actually stay outside the regular house, a special cottage meant for the delivery. That ancestral property from Srila Prabhupada’s mother’s side has come into the hands of ISKCON and so we visited that nice place, quite expensive by modest Indian standards. Srila Prabhupada appeared under a jackfruit tree and there are a number of jackfruit trees in that area. So our guide pointed out the jackfruit that Prabhupada took birth under. We took pictures and so on. And then we visited the ancestral Radha-Krishna temple of Prabhupada’s maternal ancestors, beautiful little temple, beautiful Radha-Krishna deities. I could just imagine how Prabhupada’s mother would have been visiting the temple and praying to the deities for the welfare and protection of her son and development as a devotee of Krishna.

As we were walking back to our vehicles, one devotee, he wasn’t the person who showed us around the ancestral property—that person is based there—but he was the person who was just showing us around Calcutta in general and brought us there, so he said, “I have to tell you something very confidential but you must not tell anyone.” Radhanath Swami and I were together for that part. So he had the two of us come with him a little ahead of the rest of the group and he said, “You have to act completely nonchalant as if nothing special is happening and I am taking only the two of you and no one else can go.” And then he said, “Actually that jackfruit tree in that ancestral property is not the jackfruit tree. The jackfruit tree is actually across the wall down a lane but we don’t want anyone to know that that is the actual tree because if they know they will understand that we are going to want it and they will raise the price exorbitantly. 

So the three of us turned down this very small lane, almost like an alley, and there were a couple of kids playing in the alley and as soon as they saw us they said, “Prabhupada jackfruit tree! Prabhupada jackfruit tree!” So much for our carefully guarded secret. And then their mother came out of this very little, simple chaul—they call them, a hut, more than a hut but not much more—“Prabhupada jackfruit tree!” And then she took us. It was a very beautiful place, very sweet, very sanctified. So that was the place where Prabhupada appeared.

Then we visited the Radha-Govinda Mandira on Harrison Road which Srila Prabhupada used to visit as a baby. His mother would put him in a pram and roll him there and he would see the deities. That is also a very nice temple, pretty big for a family temple. There are other deities as well but certainly Radha-Govinda are the main attraction. Then again we could imagine Srila Prabhupada there as a baby in his pram, looking at the deities from there. Of course it is really hard to know what he was seeing or thinking. It was nice to consider it. 

And then we went across the street to 51 Harrison Road which was the place where Srila Prabhupada grew up, where he spent his childhood. That was a really big, old building and we went upstairs to the rooms where we believed he grew up, his family rooms, they were overlooking the street, although I actually heard contradicting stories about whether that was the original building. The guide who showed us the original jackfruit tree said that although parts of that very big building had been demolished and rebuilt this part was original although someone else there said that the whole building had been torn down and none of it was original but it was a very old building. The lift or elevator didn’t really work properly but that I experienced in 1970 when I went to India. So that doesn’t really place it that far back in history. But it was nice to imagine that Prabhupada as a child grew up in that place.

And then we visited the Motilal Seal School where Prabhupada had been a schoolboy and it was also nice. It was definitely the original building. You could see that in its day it would have a very aristocratic institution. We went in, took a look, same stairway, same hallways, looked in some of the classroom, and they had a register of all the students who ever attended the school. We saw Prabhupada’s name from way back in the very early 1900s. The only place that we intended to see but missed was Scottish Teachers College. We just didn’t have time and traffic in Calcutta didn’t make it easy. 

But I would recommend some little visit to these places if possible. We find in Srila Prabhupada’s Caitanya-caritāmṛta that in the purports there are directions to the sites of the homes and temples of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu’s associates. It is recommended that one visits all these places. So certainly one does get infused with spiritual remembrances of these personalities and one can think of them, pray to them for their mercy to follow them and engage in their service.

I thought to read one verse in the Seventh Canto. I didn’t have the book with me to look it up and I didn’t immediately find it but I found another verse. Of course it is all Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, it is all Prabhupada, so we will see what comes out.

This is Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, Canto Seven, Chapter Fifteen: “Instructions for Civilized Human Beings.” Now this straightaway puts the verse on a little higher level, because there aren’t that many civilized human beings around, and I don’t know if I am one, but we will just read and repeat. That is our system, try to learn.

TEXT 25

rajas tamaś ca sattvena

sattvaṁ copaśamena ca

etat sarvaṁ gurau bhaktyā

puruṣo hy añjasā jayet

TRANSLATION

One must conquer the modes of passion and ignorance by developing the mode of goodness, and then one must become detached from the mode of goodness by promoting oneself to the platform of śuddha-sattva. All this can be automatically done if one engages in the service of the spiritual master with faith and devotion. In this way one can conquer the influence of the modes of nature.

PURPORT by Srila Prabhupada

Just by treating the root cause of an ailment, one can conquer all bodily pains and sufferings. Similarly, if one is devoted and faithful to the spiritual master, he can conquer the influence of sattva-guṇa, rajo-guṇa and tamo-guṇa very easily. Yogīs and jñānīs practice in many ways to conquer the senses, but the bhakta immediately attains the mercy of the Supreme Personality of Godhead through the mercy of the spiritual master. Yasya prasādād bhagavat-prasādo. If the spiritual master is favorably inclined, one naturally receives the mercy of the Supreme Lord, and by the mercy of the Supreme Lord one immediately becomes transcendental, conquering all the influences of sattva-guṇa, rajo-guṇa and tamo-guṇa within this material world. This is confirmed in Bhagavad-gītā (sa guṇān samatītyaitān brahma-bhūyāya kalpate). If one is a pure devotee acting under the directions of the guru, one easily gets the mercy of the Supreme Lord and thus becomes immediately situated on the transcendental platform. This is explained in the next verse.

COMMENT

We actually experienced the truth of this verse in the association of Srila Prabhupada. We were actually elevated to a transcendental situation beyond that achieved by jnanis and yogis. When we first arrived in Bombay there was a sadhu Sammelan, assembly of saintly persons, being held on Marine Drive and our group arrived in Bombay coming through Belgium and then Cairo and then Bombay. Meanwhile Srila Prabhupada with another group had arrived in Calcutta and so we were waiting for Srila Prabhupada to join us in Bombay. Even before he arrived our host Kailash Seksaria took us to this assembly of sadhus in a hall and I realty could not believe my eyes. There were long rows of tables with sadhus sitting on the table and many had long hair. They had all different types of appearances and dresses and tilaka and symbols, tridents and damoro drums, and then some of them were sitting with books in front of them, some maybe the Bhagavad-gītā, but all sorts of books. Judging from their books, they probably had all sorts of books that they read. And I thought, “Wow! This is really amazing.” I was thinking, “What is the position of these holy men?” And then Srila Prabhupada came and he was like the sun in comparison to them. They were maybe like, with all due respect, like stars or something, and he was like the sun. It was such a difference, huge difference. 

In the evening the organizers had Srila Prabhupada speak and we began with kirtan. The kirtan just flooded the whole place and surcharged the whole atmosphere. And then Prabhupada had different disciples speak. Sometimes he had Tamal Krishna Goswami speak, sometimes Madhudvisa Prabhu, sometimes Yamuna devi, and then he would speak. There was just a huge difference and not just between Prabhupada and the saintly persons—of course that was the main difference—but by Prabhupada’s mercy we were engaged in a level of activity that was beyond them. We were directly chanting the holy names of the Lord, directly hearing and repeating the message of the Bhagavad-gītā and Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam and beyond that we were engaged in welfare activities for the people in general. Prabhupada engaged us in going out and meeting people and chanting the holy names. We would go out every day and chant and it was a very emotional experience for the Indians to see us. They could not imagine that fair-skinned Americans and Europeans would be dressing as sadhus and chanting the names of Krishna and dancing in ecstasy.

And then we went to the Ardha-kumbha-melā. There were other stops along the way. There were a number of these sort of sadhu Sammelan in different places and it turned out there is a whole circuit and we would often see the same sadhus at the one and then at the next and then at the next and they would go from one to the other. Srila Prabhupada said, “They speak. . .,” and again with all due respect, but he said, “They speak but their main interest is chapattis. For one chapati there are many sadhus.” [laughter] 

In every case without fail we were the main attraction. Srila Prabhupada and his disciples stole the show. People really had very little interest in hearing the Mayavadis speak their dry speculation. They wanted to see the devotees chant and dance in ecstasy and they wanted to hear Srila Prabhupada speak. They wanted to understand how he did it, how he affected this miraculous change. 

So that happened one place after the other. The first stop was Amritsar. There was the Vedanta Sammelan and people basically just wanted to see the devotees. Prabhupada called us his dancing white elephants. Actually elephants do dance. We read about when Chaitanya Mahaprabhu passed through the Jharikhaëòa forest but I saw it myself years later after Prabhupada left. I visited the southernmost state of Kerala in India and visited the Guruvayur temple. It is like the temple in Kerala of Krishna. Many states have a specific temple and deity of Krishna and that predominates the mood of that whole province. So in Maharashtra there is the deity of Vitala in Pandharpur, in Orissa there is Lord Jagannatha in Puri, and in Kerala there is Guruvayoorappan in Guruvayur. Every evening they take the small deities, utsava deities on a procession in the temple compound on the back of an elephant and it is a very festive event. They have an elephant park where they breed elephants and train them to serve the Lord. We visited that elephant park and in general we wanted to do kirtan wherever we went and whatever we did. So we started to do kirtan to the elephants and they actually started to sway and rock back and forth in time with the kirtan. They are actually very special creatures. There is one, he was such a great devotee, that they have a little memorial to him in the temple compound. The stories about him, his devotion to the deities and his service to the deities, you know that he was just some special servant of the Lord who happened to take birth in the body of an elephant.

So Prabhupada called us his dancing white elephants. People have never seen such a thing. It was like that in Amritsar, then from Amritsar we went to. . . there were a few stops but eventually we came to Indore for the Gita-jayanti mahotsava and it was the same thing, the first night Prabhupada and the devotees stole the show. The organizers were very pleased. They wanted us to perform. They could see that people were coming for us, for Prabhupada. So the second night we went and the devotees didn’t immediately start to dance. It is not automatic; it wasn’t a show or a performance. It was just a spontaneous act of devotion. One of the organizers or someone was coming—we were on the stage—and he was touching the devotees. The devotees were dancing on stage but he wanted them to come in the audience like we had done the first night. He was tugging, tugging. He actually indiscriminately grabbed the bottom of one of the ladies’ saris and was tugging it. Prabhupada saw that and he just rushed forward with his karatālas swinging and he was like Nṛsiṁhadeva. He just stopped the whole thing.

Prabhupada did not want to sit and listen to Mayavadis speak their impersonal nonsense as he called it. So he told the organizers that, “We cannot do this. I can’t sit and listen to their impersonal speculations and I can’t ask my disciples to sit and listen to them speak in Hindi and the disciples don’t even understand the language. So the organizers said, “Okay.” Prabhupada said, “You just call us when you are ready for us. We will come and we will do our part and then we will go.” So they called Prabhupada and the devotees but they didn’t let Prabhupada speak because we were the real draws—Prabhupada and the devotees were the real draws—and no one would sit for the Mayavadis unless we were there. When we were there people started to pour in and sit down in expectation. So they had one speaker before Prabhupada then after him they had another one and then Prabhupada got up, we all got up, and Prabhupada said, “I am leaving,” and we all walked out. 

The organizers came running, “Please come back, come back. Everyone is waiting for you.” And Prabhupada said, “We had an agreement that you would call me just when it was time for me to speak and you placed two other speakers before me. This was not what we agreed. I already told you that I cannot sit and listen to this and I can’t subject my disciples through it and that is it and we are not coming back.” So the organizers were really upset and worried and they were begging and appealing and imploring and then Prabhupada said, “Well, okay, I will send my disciples every night but I will not come.” And then they were somewhat pacified. 

So that was the general routine everywhere. People just were not interested in the other speakers but the organizers didn’t really have the mood of pure devotion. They just wanted to use us to draw crowds. Otherwise they had their own philosophy and they just wanted to use us to promote their own agendas you could say.

Coming back to this point, “Yogis and jnanis practice in many ways to conquer the senses, but the bhakta immediately attains the mercy of the Supreme Personality of Godhead through the mercy of the spiritual master,” at the end of December, beginning of January, we went to the Ardha-kumbha-melā. I hope many of you know about the Kumbha-melā in Prayaga, Allahabad. Ardha-kumbha-melā means half Kumbha-melā. The full Kumbha-melā is every twelve years. The Ardha-kumbha-melā is every six years. We had quite a good location near one of the gateways or entrances and full-fledged deity worship, the only pandal with full-fledged deity worship and prasāda distribution and Prabhupada’s talks and kirtan. There too was a wide array of sadhus and yogis and Srila Prabhupada said that most of them were not genuine. I think he gave a figure, maybe 75 percent, I am not sure exactly what the figure was, but he said some of them are genuine. He said some of them are three hundred years old but they look like young boys and by looking at them you can’t tell. So he said we should be very careful when we deal with them because we never who we are actually dealing with and some of them are very powerful.

And then devotees asked what is the Kumbha-melā and Prabhupada explained the story that every six years or twelve years there is a specific configuration of stars in the sky and this kumbha, “pot of nectar,” falls from the sky at specific times and if you bathed in the Triveni, the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna and Sarasvati which is underground you get liberation, you get eternal life. The devotees were interested, they also wanted to get that, but Prabhupada said, “But we are not here for that. We are here to glorify Krishna and to bring people to Krishna consciousness.” He said, “We don’t need to come here to be liberated. You all are already liberated because you are engaging in the service of the Lord and Krishna consciousness.” 

So that was Prabhupada’s conviction and it was true, the devotees were acting on a liberated platform. It was so austere, it was so cold, it was so meager what we had to eat. The devotees just kept working and preaching. Revatinandana was cooking. Day and night he was cooking over a pit. He didn’t even have proper wood to make a real fire with coals but he just had sticks. He would get sticks and he’d cook for the devotees, then he’d cook for the public. It was all day and night just tireless. And if you look at the footage from that period, like recently I watched again Yadubara Prabhu’s series, Following Srila Prabhupada, with the live footage, you can see what the devotees did and in what conditions they were living in and serving him. And of course the Prabhupada Memories DVDs you also get wonderful aural testimonies.

Just as exotic as all these sadhus—there were brahmānandīs, there were the ones that are naked and just cover their bodies with ashes, just so many different exotic varieties of sadhus—but more exotic than them were the dancing white elephants. We were looking at them with surprise. I think they were looking at us with even more surprise because they had never seen anything like Srila Prabhupada’s disciples. 

There was one fellow we kept on encountering, Vairagi Baba, he was a little bigger, he was actually quite big in stature with long, black flowing hair and beard, and he liked kirtan. He had big karatālas, say whompers, and Prabhupada really engaged him, he went out of his way to engage him, and he’d have Vairagi Baba come on stage with us and dance with us. But sometimes Prabhupada would get off the vyāsāsana and dance with us to encourage us and often he would just go right up to Vairagi Baa and jump up and down in front of him and then of course Vairagi Baba would jump up and down. One sadhu actually joined us along the way but anyway it was life on the liberated platform by the mercy of Srila Prabhupada.

So we will just read the next verse and purport. 

TEXT 26

yasya sākṣād bhagavati

jñāna-dīpa-prade gurau

martyāsad-dhīḥ śrutaṁ tasya

sarvaṁ kuñjara-śaucavat

TRANSLATION

The spiritual master should be considered to be directly the Supreme Lord because he gives transcendental knowledge for enlightenment. Consequently, for one who maintains the material conception that the spiritual master is an ordinary human being, everything is frustrated. His enlightenment and his Vedic studies and knowledge are like the bathing of an elephant.

COMMENT

I will read this again because it is very important because we were just discussing how by the mercy of the spiritual master so many of the early devotees were actually engaged on the transcendental platform in extraordinary service.

“The spiritual master should be considered to be directly the Supreme Lord because he gives transcendental knowledge for enlightenment. Consequently, for one who maintains the material conception that the spiritual master is an ordinary human being, everything is frustrated. His enlightenment and his Vedic studies and knowledge are like the bathing of an elephant.”

So by the mercy of the spiritual master, by the mercy of Srila Prabhupada, we were elevated to a very high standard of devotional service, but you can lose that position if you misunderstand the position of the spiritual master, realized soul.

PURPORT by Srila Prabhupada

It is recommended that one honor the spiritual master as being on an equal status with the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Sākṣād dharitvena samasta-śāstraiḥ. This is enjoined in every scripture. Ācāryaṁ māṁ vijānīyāt. One should consider the ācārya to be as good as the Supreme Personality of Godhead. In spite of all these instructions, if one considers the spiritual master an ordinary human being, one is doomed. His study of the Vedas and his austerities and penances for enlightenment are all useless, like the bathing of an elephant. An elephant bathes in a lake quite thoroughly, but as soon as it comes on the shore it takes some dust from the ground and strews it over its body. Thus there is no meaning to the elephant’s bath. One may argue by saying that since the spiritual master’s relatives and the men of his neighborhood consider him an ordinary human being, what is the fault on the part of the disciple who considers the spiritual master an ordinary human being? This will be answered in the next verse,. . . 

COMMENT

Prabhupada is giving us the answer in installments so you have to keep reading to find out what comes next.

PURPORT (continued)

This will be answered in the next verse, but the injunction is that the spiritual master should never be considered an ordinary man. One should strictly adhere to the instructions of the spiritual master, for if he is pleased, certainly the Supreme Personality of Godhead is pleased. Yasya prasādād bhagavat-prasādo yasyāprasādān na gatiḥ kuto ‘pi.

COMMENT

So this very basic truth or the application of this most crucial principle has escaped a number of Prabhupada’s followers, at least for some time, and it goes on now. People are second guessing, “Did Prabhupada really know what he was saying?” “Did Prabhupada really say what he meant?” So many speculations and some of the programs that Srila Prabhupada gave us are questioned, are they really practical, did Prabhupada really know what he was talking about, did he really know what people are like, did he really know what the world is like, and so a lot of the programs to some extent are being neglected, and not just neglected but actually challenged by people who were at one time followers of Srila Prabhupada, considered themselves to be.

It is a complex subject but it is a danger and Prabhupada told the story of punar mūṣiko bhava in relation to the very same point, almost the very same point that there was once a yogi and a mouse approached the yogi and said, “I am being troubled by a cat. Please help me. Do something. Help me.” And so the yogi said, “What do you want?” He said, “I want to become a cat.” “Okay, you become a cat.” Then the cat came back and said, “I am being troubled by a dog.” “What do you want?” “Okay, you become a dog.” “I am being troubled by a dog, bigger dog.” “Okay, become a tiger.” So he made him a tiger. And then that tiger or that mouse who became a tiger by the mercy of the guru started to look at the guru, at the yogi like, “Oh, now I am a tiger, you are just a man, I am going to eat you.” And then immediately punar mūṣiko bhava, “Again you become a mouse.” So Srila Prabhupada said that if someone thinks he can become equal to the spiritual master, take the place of the spiritual master—punar mūṣiko bhava—-immediately he becomes a mouse again.

That is also happened in the history of ISKCON, you pretty much get everything—good examples and bad examples—and that is also happened. By Srila Prabhupada’s mercy devotees attain a very exalted position and then they think they know as much as him or more than him, they can take his position, and punar mūṣiko bhava.

Because Prabhupada said this will be answered in the next verse, I won’t read the purport—we don’t have time—but I will read the verse.

TEXT 27

eṣa vai bhagavān sākṣāt

pradhāna-puruṣeśvaraḥ

yogeśvarair vimṛgyāṅghrir

loko yaṁ manyate naram

TRANSLATION

The Supreme Personality of Godhead, Lord Kṛṣṇa, is the master of all other living entities and of the material nature. His lotus feet are sought and worshiped by great saintly persons like Vyāsa. Nonetheless, there are fools who consider Lord Kṛṣṇa an ordinary human being.

COMMENT

So you can see the connection, Krishna also appears like an ordinary human being. Of course He does things that no ordinary human being can do, but still there are people who think Krishna is an ordinary human being and they are mistaken. So in the same way that Krishna appears like an ordinary human being but is not, in the same Srila Prabhupada or any empowered acharya may also appear like an ordinary human being but he is not. If you consider him to be so then all of your enlightenment and Vedic studies and austerities and everything is useless. You end up being more or less where you were. You still might dress like a devotee and talk like a devotee and so on but internally you have actually lost your spiritual position.

So on this sacred occasion we pray to stay in the association of such devotees as will encourage our faith in Srila Prabhupada and never deviate from their association or our faith in Srila Prabhupada so that we can get the great benefit that he came to bestow upon us and not lose whatever little we have got but rather continue to allow him to reveal more and more of the precious gifts that he came to give. 

Thank you very much. Hare Krishna. 

All glories to Srila Prabhupada. All glories to Srila Prabhupada’s faithful followers. 

Hare Krishna.