Mother Arca Vigraha’s Disappearance Day

Giriraj Swami: Thank you.

oṁ ajñāna-timirāndhasya
jñānāñjana-śalākayā
cakṣur unmīlitaṁ yena
tasmai śrī-gurave namaḥ 

Mother Arca Vigraha was an extraordinary person from the very beginning. And when I initiated her, I gave her the name Arca Vigraha dasi because one devotee had asked Srila Prabhupada, which of the nine processes of devotional service is painting. And Srila Prabhupada replied arcanam, decorating the form of the Lord, and she lived up to her name. She built a house in Vrindavan and she stayed downstairs, and she made a place for me to stay upstairs, which enabled me to have a very nice facility in Vrindavan. She loved Vrindavan and she wanted others to have the same opportunity that she had, to leave their bodies in Vrindavan and thus one of her last wishes took the form of the creation of Bhaktivedanta Hospice.

I think I would like to discuss how Mother Arca Vigraha’s painting of the deities in Vrindavan was met by Aindra Prabhu.

When the curtains opened one morning in the winter of 1989, Aindra was amazed by what he saw. Srimati Radharani’s eyes were newly painted. And they were incredible, more beautiful than ever. “Who painted them?” he asked Radha-Shyamasundara’s pujari Bhaktisiddhanta dasa.

“One of the brahmacharis,” Bhaktisiddhanta had replied.

Aindra knew something was off. No pujari, no artist he had ever known, would have been able to paint Radharani’s eyes with such bhāva or spiritual expertise. “No way,” he challenged. “Who painted them?” Bhaktisiddhanta held fast; he wouldn’t identify the source of the transformation. But when Aindra kept asking, Bhaktisiddhanta finally revealed the secret: a renowned South African devotee artist, Arca Vigraha dasi, who had come to India to find themes for her work but was then diagnosed with cancer and remained to spend her final days in Vrindavan, had noticed that the temple Deities were in need of repainting and done the work.

But there had been an obstacle: as was standard, even in ISKCON temples, in India, women were not allowed on the altar. But Bhaktisiddhanta, who had created the bronze bas-relief panels in Srila Prabhupada’s samadhi mandir and was himself an accomplished artist, had felt that the Deities deserved Arca Vigraha’s talents and come up with a plan. “I will arrange for you to do this service,” he had told her, “but you have to do it in complete secrecy. I will leave the key to the Deity room on the ledge above the door. Don’t use it earlier than 10:00 p.m. By that time, everyone except the boys on night shift for the 24-hour kirtan should be asleep.”

“How will I get in without them noticing?” she had asked. “They sit so near the door.”

“I don’t know,” he had said. “That is a challenge.”

A little after ten, Arca Vigraha had been hovering around the door to the altar, waiting for an opportunity, when Aindra had suddenly appeared beside her. “Do you need something, Mataji?” he had asked.

“No, no thank you,” she had replied, and left out the temple’s side door.

A little while later, the electricity had gone out, which it frequently did, and under the cover of darkness Arca Vigraha had slipped back into the temple and onto the altar, where she had spent the night painting the Deities’ faces, hands, and feet, then sneaking out before the pujaris came to prepare for maṅgala-ārati.

The drama had resumed each night for two weeks. On the final night, Arca Vigraha had painted Srimati Radharani’s eyes.

“Where is she?” Aindra demanded.

“Prabhu, calm down”

“Where is she?” he persisted. “If you don’t tell me, I will find out from someone else.” And, learning that Arca Vigraha was staying in the guesthouse, he rushed over.

When Aindra knocked on Arca Vigraha’s door, he heard a faint “Come in” and entered.

Arca Vigraha was lying in bed, visibly weak and ill.

Aindra went straight to her feet and touched them with respect. “How did you do it?” he asked.

“Do what?” she replied.

“How did you paint Radharani’s eyes like that?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I just painted what I was inspired to paint.”

“How do you know what Radharani’s eyes look like?”

“I don’t know what they look like. I just painted them by inspiration.”

And Aindra Prabhu said, “You painted them exactly as I envision them every day in my own meditations!”

And two months before Mother Arca Vigraha left this world, devi Shakti devi dasi interviewed her for the Sri Vrindavandam Newsletter. And that was a wonderful interview which is available and Kurma Rupa Prabhu wrote her on the publication’s letterhead. This was dated March 12, 1994, just about two months before she departed he wrote:

Dear Mother Arca Vigraha,

Please accept my respectful obeisances. All glories to Srila Prabhupada.

I consider this act of facing death so bravely your greatest work of art. I know you would rather be applying various colored ointments on the transcendental forms of Radha-Krishna, but Krishna is engaging you in more intimate service.

As He says in the Bhagavad-gītā, “No one is more dear to Me than he who gives this message to the devotees.” Now Krishna has asked you to preach this message to us, and I for one can say that by your doing so you are removing my fear of death. And except for Srila Prabhupada, I do not know anyone who has ever done that.

In this world we are all suffering from fear of death. We sing every morning that Krishna is braja-jana-bhaya-hari—the one who removes fear from the Brajabasis. Now He is engaging you as His agent to do this, and we are all feeling so grateful to you.

I am completely convinced that the interview you granted Daivi Sakti Mata will soon become the most powerful preaching we have published to date.

I have the interview but for the sake of time I won’t read it now, but I can say that Mother Arca Vigraha, we owe a great debt of gratitude to her for so many things, one of which was her desire that others should also have the same opportunity that she had, to leave their bodies in Vrindavan. And her desire led to the creation of the Bhaktivedanta Hospice in Vrindavan.

So I am confident that she is watching over all of us. She is pleased with our humble attempts to gather together and remember her, and express our appreciation of gratitude for her and glorify her. And it is true, I do have to, unfortunately, attend another program right now but I am tempted, I know it is not a good quality, but I am tempted to be late for that other program if Kunti devi is speaking next.

Devotee: Hare Krishna. Thank you so much guru Maharaja for beautiful, sweet and enlightening words for us to follow in the footsteps of Mother Arca Vigraha, and follow her example of Gaura- Nitai bhakti, and love and reverence for devotees, Srila Prabhupada, acharyas, and the deities. Thank you. So we call upon Kunti devi Mataji now to please give her offering.

Kunti devi: Hare Krishna guru Maharaja and all the devotees, and especially Sarah, who is Mother Arca Vigraha’s daughter and [Unintelligible 01:02;45], Guru Maharaja, I just want to thank you for giving me the instruction to go to Vrindavan with Mother Arca Vigraha and to take care of her. I was so young and inexperienced but first of all going to Vrindavan and Arca Vigraha loved Vrindavan, and that is a gift that she gave me as well and coming from you. And hearing everybody speak, Mukunda dasa Prabhu, about the painting, Syndrananda Prabhu about her focus and at the same time, very expansive and generous spirit and Narottama Prabhu always just kept [Unintelligible 01:03:25] for Arca Vigraha, absolutely perfectly.

I am just very grateful that I had that opportunity in my life. I haven’t met anybody like Mother Arca Vigraha since then and, it is a little bit, in my heart I am always searching for that person. And there are many amazing devotees, many wonderful devotees, and they may have some special quality, let us say focus, but then there is a bit of a shadow side where they may be a little hard-hearted or something. But Mother Arca Vigraha just embodied so many amazing qualities, and at the same time just with such purity and childlike innocence almost, but at the same time being very sophisticated and worldly and experienced. And also, Narottama said something that made me remember how she once told me that her final attachment was color. And as a serious devotee who had worked on leaving her attachments behind, of course amongst the biggest were her children, Sarah and Michael, but then there was her identity as an artist and her paper, her colors, was really some… she told me once that just those colors were her final deepest attachment.

And just letting all those things go as you had instructed her when her cancer came back. I remember we were sitting in her house in Johannesburg in Yeoville, and we found you in Portugal, because that was before internet and cell phones and WhatsApp and Facebook. So somehow we had tracked you down and you were in Portugal at the time, and we phoned you. I don’t even know how we managed that, and you said just leave everything, go to Vrindavan and let Srimati Radharani take over. And even that was a challenge. She had been building that house but the property that she had bought, which is actually where Indradyumna Swami’s house is now. Keelan cheated her and sold it out from under her feet; she had to go back to South Africa and work really hard to collect money to buy a property again, which is where your house is situated now, or her house.

So there were many obstacles. it wasn’t that everything just came to her very easily, and she just kept meeting them with determination and grace and faith. Because really, without faith, in the word of the guru, without faith in our process Krishna, the dharma, Srimati Radharani, we can be very determined but we will fail spiritually. So just her faith that kept growing, her spiritual advancement just kept deepening and growing and I am just really grateful that I was able to serve her. It was such a pleasure, and she must have tolerated a lot because I was young. And it was just the most wonderful experience of my life. I have not really found anything comparable; so much association. All the senior devotees coming to read to her and Tamal Krishna Goswami. Govinda Maharaja came over all the time. He was our neighbor but he was there constantly and he would bring his deities over, cook for her, talk to her, sing for her in the evenings; just for us and I was just there in the right place at the right time, I guess, and very blessed.

So I thank you guru Maharaja, and thank you to all of the devotees for doing this every year because it is just so wonderful to remember a devotee like Mother Arca Vigraha. Thank you.

Giriraj Swami: Hare Krishna. Beautiful.

Devotee: Hare Krishna. Thank you so much Kunti Prabhu. Kunti was one person who was always there by the side of Mother Arca; a perfect friend, a perfect companion, with perfect service mood and she really, really dedicatedly did her service to Mother Arca, which is again a source of inspiration to all of us. Thank you so much.

Will guru Maharaja be joining us back now, or should we ask other speakers?

Devotee: I think you can ask other speakers.

Devotee: From the internet Kunti Prabhu, can you see somebody else who should be called to speak online? Is there somebody online who would like to speak?

Devotee: Maybe Syndrananda Prabhu’s wife, Nikunja Vilasini, she also knew her.

Devotee: Considering her [Nikunja Vilasini], she is not able to speak right now. She is not well.

Kunti devi: Can I say one more little thing please?